Fighting Capitalism with Capitalism - Astukari Newsletter #88
šØWhat Iāve Been Making
New writing:Ā Boys & Girls Part I editing is going well ā think Iām at about page 60 of 380. I feel as though there are some issues with the pacing but I actually am quite pleased with character progression, dialog, etc. Iām also in the process of writing a new short story which will be included in the upcoming collection, These Little Things.
New video/audio:Ā New podcast: Five Ways To Get Others To Agree With You. Iāve actually considered as of late to bring streams back in some capacity, though Iām still figuring out how to fit it into my schedule.
Other projects:Ā New fun stuff planned for JBR, including additional Twitter lists (Iāve seen how popular the Featured Creators list has gotten recently). This includes one for artists under 1k followers as well as a separate list for NSFW artists. More stuff, like curated print collections, will be coming soon.
šWhat Iāve Been Reading
Braintrust: Fighting Capitalism with Capitalism - For the past few newsletters, Iāve been talking about one of the main benefits of the blockchain is how it makes freelancing practical. Well, Braintrust is the closest company I have seen to hitting on that use case exactly. Itās not perfect, but itās a really good first step.
How Nike turned its brand into a $35B ācognitive shortcutāĀ - Thereās a simple (and rather counterintuitive) fact in marketing: brands that make more stances ā political, cultural, and otherwise ā actually get more sales. Weāve talked about this, in a way, during the Customer Takes Care of Itself. Nike is perhaps the biggest and most successful company in which this principle has been applied.
Willingness to PayĀ - Pricing strategy is something thatās always difficult for startups, but fortunately thereās a lot of good theory that can cover the details. I think, out of all the theory out there, Willingness to Pay (WTP) is a pretty good start. Rather than looking at the numbers and trying to deduce some econometrical argument out of it, WTP gets down to why people buy the stuff they buy in the first place.
Signaling as a Service - Weāve talked about signaling before ā the idea of ābuying credibilityā for yourself by producing signals which make people think youāre cool, smart, rich, etc. But weāve never really dived into the industry side of this argument before ā that is, what does it look like if the product youāre selling is just defined as signals?
My Approach to Automatic Music CompositionĀ - In the world of cool, machine-assisted creative endeavors, we have this blog post that goes over how to define music into small āblocksā which can then be crafted into melodies (and even full songs!) by an AI algorithm.