Josh

"For legends attract the very best in our times, just as ideologies attract the average, and the whispered tales of gruesome secret powers behind the scenes attract the very worst." (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism)

Even if you work inside the system, you don’t need to let the system work inside of you. And if you summon up the boldness to go in a different direction, others might even surprise you by following along.

One of my biggest mental breakthroughs was when I changed my mindset from

"This system is stupid and I'm going to spend all my energy fighting it."

to

"Even though this system is stupid, I'm going to operate within it to my advantage."

Much better results, way less stress.

John Cleese: “Now I suggest to you that a group of us could be sitting around after dinner, discussing matters that were extremely serious like the education of our children, or our marriages, or the meaning of life, and we could be laughing, and that would not make what we were discussing one bit less serious. Solemnity, on the other hand, I... See more

In a PLG model, the product sells itself through intuitive design, freemium tiers, and frictionless onboarding. Developers don’t need a community advocate or a conference talk—they sign up, try the product, and decide for themselves.

It’s pretty funny when you see how, being comfortable with being disliked, actually makes you even more likeable. It’s one of the many ways in which life can be really unfair.

This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.