FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

Over the last weeks, I came back to the idea of fox vs. hedgehog by Isaiah Berlin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox): _"a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing"_. In the past I thought my thinking is more of the hedgehog type (rather axiomatic, tree like structure with a deep root). The thing with such assessments is the problem of meta-self-cognition: what you are vs. what you think you are vs. what you like yourself to be.

Over the past year I started to write notes, at times even an intermittent diary for a couple of days, sometimes weeks. I discovered that my mind perhaps is not behaving like a hedgehog type after all. In retrospect, my notes are scattered pieced of memories, loose tidbits, quips, quotes, metaphors I come up with, or I read. The thing is, however, that I seem to be quite good in connecting those independent dots. Disconnected thoughts and scraps of stuff collected at around the same time tend to take a shape of a connected network of thoughts which then mold and over time grow into a interconnected network of bigger thoughts. All that, however, happens mostly intuitively, not as a directed effort - although at times that too, when I focus on studying some topic of actual interest of mine.

So what is it? It seems like what a fox would do: many loosely connected things which over time seem to take a shape of a deeper rooted tree. It seems after all, my mind seems to meander and bounce between the two sides as it sees actually fit. A fox which desires to become a hedgehog one day?

> It helps to have a story, but it is not always possible to control what that story is.
> -- NIck Harkaway, Gnomon

@APoD Looks like a flexed muscular arm. The biceps and the clenched fist are just obvious. Space gym!

Attachment avoidance/emotion dismissing attitude is like driving 150km/h on an Autobahn with closed eyes. What the heck you think will happen?

@soundwave Look at it positively. That rational attitude gives you direct access to the real expert psychology right away ("things are like this..."), without the distraction of folk psychology foolishness ("I think that you think that I think...") everybody around needs to deal with. Maybe for such people life can actually be somewhat easier in some aspects of it- me speculating only.

On dogs and hierarchy.

> -- Nick Harkaway, Gnomon.

The character Konstantin Kyriakos in that book is like a walking library of quips. The writer apparently had a collection of witty pieces and he then wrote a character around them 🙂 .

> You should not be distracted by anything, you infant. When you work, you work. Does f*cking SEAL Team Six get distracted by Twitter? No. Why not? Because they focus. They have discipline. They know that what they do has consequences. People will die. Well, here's the news: the same is true of us. Money is life. Poverty kills. If you are going to get distracted by our computer, you don't deserve our job.
> -- Konstantin Kyriakos (banker) in Nick Harkaway's Gnomon

# How fear modulates our perception of others

> When we get into relationships with people, be they platonic or romantic, we tend to look for the similarities we share; so we find that person attractive, but we also find appealing “the complementing differences we have”.

But when fear enters the stage:

> "Fear ... distorts our perception of that other person, and _we start to look at people as a problem rather than a person._” You also stop seeing those similarities you once saw, the things that brought you together; all you can see are the differences, which have become a threat.
> -- John-Paul Davies, via [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/26/my-friend-is-an-anti-vaxxer-and-shes-converting-my-husband-what-can-i-do)

# Limits of folk psychology

Folk psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_psychology) helps us in everyday life a lot. It's a useful heuristic. It allows us to reason about ourselves, about other people and our relationships to them. It successfully takes us through maybe 90% of life circumstances. But then it tends to shows its ugly face. It sometimes leads us to dark swamps and we get stuck. Some earlier, some later, lucky (or naive?) ones who avoid the murky waters completely. It seems to be a function of how screwed up we emerge from our childhoods (thanks parents!) and the amount of life experience we collect over time. And it is the discipline of real expert psychology which then leads the way out of the swamps of misery back to sunny beaches and green islands. And some manage, though some remain in the swamp for too long causing them a lot suffering and again some remain there unhappy for the rest of their days. Perhaps one of the long-term goals of navigating life is to attempt not to end up in that last group.

# How to price your SaaS product

(summary of a blog post)

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy

This is a very useful 101 on SaaS pricing. Provides many good insights, worth
further study and referencing.

## In the beginning, the actual number you're charging isn't that important

Care for the magnitude. 5-10-100-1000-10k?

## Step 1: Determine your Value Metric

What are we charging for. Also, be wary of the revenue "under the curve".
Flat boxes "Good-Better-Best" are often not advantageous enough. Focus on
metric which scales with your customers.

## Step 2: Determine your customer profiles and segments

Be extremely aware who is the buyer and how they tick. The guy provides a
useful template for analysing the persona. It goes beyond what I saw on other
canvases, so it might be a useful analytical tool.

## Step 3: User research + experimentation

> 1. Priority 1: Foundational [See above]
> * Core customer segments
> * Value metrics
> 2. Priority 2: Core
> * Order of magnitude price point (are you a $10 product vs. a $500 product)
> * Positioning and value props
> * Packaging
> 3. Priority 3: Optimizations
> * Add-on strategy
> * Specific price point (are you a $10 product vs. a $11 product)
> * Price localization/internationalization
> * Discounting strategy
> * Contract Term optimization
> 4. Priority 4: Growth accelerators
> * Freemium
> * Market expansion (going up or down market)
> * Vertical expansion
> * Multi-Product

## Some other data

1. You should localize your pricing to the currency and willingness to pay of the prospect's region
2. Freemium is an acquisition model, not a part of pricing
3. Value propositions matter oh so much
4. Don't discount over 20%
5. For upgrades to annual discounts don't use percentages and try offers
6. Should you end your price in 9s or 0s? Depends on your price point
7. You should experiment with your pricing in some manner every quarter
8. Case studies boost willingness to pay quite a bit
9. Design helps boost willingness to pay by 20%
10. Integrations boost retention and willingness to pay

> Never underestimate the power of focusing on the customer through research. You should never, ever just do what they ask, but you need to be an anthropologist who knows them better than anyone else.
> -- Patrick Campbell, https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy

# Dolly Parton - The Grass Is Blue

> How much can a heart and a troubled mind take
> Where is that fine line before it all breaks
> Can one end their sorrow
> Just cross over it
> And into that realm of insensitive bliss
> -- Dolly Parton - The Grass Is Blue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFH-F6LUXIY


# Father and Daughter - by M. Dudok de Wit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo4KXZVApsQ


Oscar Winner ~ Short film about love and passage of time

Beautiful animated movie about a father which leaves to the sea to never be seen again by his daughter who loves him, longs for him and searches/waits for him to come back. She won't forget for her whole life till the end of her days.

@piggo So these are the mystery vines? If so, they grew really fast...

@Baa

@piggo Is that your question, or just a scream into the black abyss?

@kensanata

Is this Yucca? I did not know it can have a flower like that. Mine, even after 20 years of - well, sometimes somewhat haphazard care, I admit - did not treat me with such love yet...

@plants

@kensanata

Very recognisable. Just some eventually get unstuck and others remain unhappy...

@MasseR

@kensanata

This is a healthy approach. But there's a lot of damage you might get too, so be prepared (it's a BS statement, because nobody can even imagine what *really* happens in this context before they experience it the first time). There's a huge lot to expand on about this topic, so let's keep it short: this way, you'll quickly discover who around you are, what I call, "emotional blackmailers". I.e., people who are not able to tell explicitly what they want (sometimes they don't even know it themselves) and/or cannot ask for it, but they will passionately resent you when they don't get it. The consequences can be especially painful and damaging when it turns out they are your closest loved ones.

@MasseR