astukari Newsletter #72 - Architecting Choice
Hi friends,
This biweek I began experimenting with Facebook ads for the newsletter. Yes, I know. Great week to start back up again on Facebook. I think this newsletter now has a running pattern of coinciding with the collapse of others. Whoops.
Jokes aside, doing paid ads has been an interesting experience. The first few ads I put out definitely reek of “beta” (as in beta version, not beta male). I had originally planned on tying ads to discount codes for the premium sub, but then I realized this got all confusing because of Substack’s choice of landing page. Anyway, I’ll probably write up a full report on my experience on the Ko-fi, as I promised last biweek. For now, let’s get into the good stuff!
🔨What I’ve Been Making
Intersection of Technology and Art - Between artists and technologists, there’s a lot that one side doesn’t understand about the other (Hey, just look at NFTs!). Since I see Astukari as a whole as this bridge between art/creativity and technology/business, I wanted to dedicate an entire post on its intersection.
Blog Writing for Robots - Content writing and SEO have taken the marketing world by storm. But is it the same as writing?
[I’m putting a pause on audio versions for now, though these might come back later in some capacity]
📚What I’ve Been Reading
Stablecoins, Stability, and Financial Inclusion - I believe we’ve talked about stablecoins and their potential for providing financial stability before, but this is a pretty good high level overview of the concept.
First come, first served - Is there logic to your waitlist, or are you just doing what everyone else is?
Choice Architecture - I may have posted this before very early on, but it’s worth the return. This is the original Thaler/Sunstein paper where they introduce the idea of “choice architecting”, known more in layman parlance as “nudging”. Can you design a person’s choices in such a way that they are more likely to choose one over another?
Chicken and Egg Problems - For the most part, this is a fairly standard article on marketplace design. But I think it’s opening lines provide a unique insight: companies always advertise within the negative of their industry. For example: a cigarette company will say they’re healthy, a paper company will say they are for the environment, an airline will say they have quick and easy service, etc.
Why Web3 Distributed Libraries will Change the World - This article, like most things web3-related, has somewhat of an exaggerated title. Still, seeing how a fully distributed, decentralized library might work is pretty cool.