Behind the scenes of the apartment studio

Hey y’all, Last Friday (after I sent the newsletter) I released a [twitter thread](https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/1979246823492460725) last week about the behind the scenes build out of the apartment studio. How I got the chalkboard mounted, the camera setup, all that good stuff. If you're a nerd or interested in nerdy things, I'd recommend you go check it out. I've also spent a lot of time futzing about with audio. Turns out wearing a lav mic is more complicated than just speaking directly into a microphone at your desk. Who coulda guessed! Fortunately I think I'm close. A timely [tweet by Thomas Frank](https://x.com/TomFrankly/status/1979304649917370520) and some help from my editor and I think I'm there. I hope it all pays off! I've also discovered a new musician this week that I've been binging. His name is [Petey USA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Qpmi4aKN22M5xkmVK_7KA) and he absolutely rules. My friend Zach sent him to me and it slotted directly into my brain. It's exactly what I've been looking for! Apparently he was a short form comedian first. I checked out some of his videos and man, he's funny. Finally, I'm listening to Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism on my continued quest to redefine my relationship with social media. I'm 4 chapters in, but I'll go ahead and recommend it anyway. --- ### Thoughts from the week On this [week's Mostly Technical](https://mostlytechnical.com/episodes/104-cash-cow-mode) I said that I'm in a great and terrifying spot where my future success comes down to me simply doing the work. That's a good spot to be in! I think I have lots of things going in my favor. It's also a terrifying spot to be in! I can't blame anyone! I'm trying to scope down my thoughts and plans to daily practices. What do I need to do today to move things forward. Do that enough days in a row and you're rich! Or something like that. Record videos, write scripts, do work. Day after day! --- 🎬 **YouTube** **A million transactions per second: building TigerBeetle with Joran Greef** I talked with Joran Greef, CEO and creator of TigerBeetle, the world’s first financial transactions database. Joran takes us on a deep dive of on how TigerBeetle brings double-entry accounting principles directly into the database layer to achieve extreme correctness, performance, and fault tolerance at scale. Check it out on [YouTube](https://youtu.be/9oyhNDv882U) or your favorite [podcast player](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-million-transactions-per-second-building/id1752196733?i=1000733181400). --- ### Things I found this week *Just a heads up that each Twitter/X screenshot has a link to the original post if you want to go follow the account.* [](https://www.nan.fyi/database) My friend Joe sent this to me, and it's one of the best blog posts I've seen in a long time! It's all about [how to build your own database](https://www.nan.fyi/database), which may or may not be interesting to you, but the page itself is beautiful, thoughtful, and extremely well crafted. I looked around at his other posts and they're all of equally high quality. He only posts once or twice a year, but when he does, they're gorgeous like this. I like the idea of taking more time on fewer things. --- [](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/24/amaterasu-extremely-high-energy-particle-detected-falling-to-earth) Ok, so we all know space is amazing and terrifying and enormous and incomprehensible, right? Well here's another example! Here's an excerpt > Astronomers have detected a rare and extremely high-energy particle falling to Earth that is causing bafflement because it is coming from an apparently empty region of space. > > The particle, named Amaterasu after the sun goddess in Japanese mythology, is one of the highest-energy cosmic rays ever detected. > > Only the most powerful cosmic events, on scales far exceeding the explosion of a star, are thought to be capable of producing such energetic particles. But Amaterasu appears to have emerged from the Local Void, an empty area of space bordering the Milky Way galaxy. > > “You trace its trajectory to its source and there’s nothing high energy enough to have produced it,” said Prof John Matthews, of the University of Utah and a co-author of the paper in the journal Science that describes the discovery. “That’s the mystery of this – what the heck is going on?” What the heck is going on! One of my existential disappointments is that we won't ever get to explore space, at least not in my lifetime. I do hold some hope that I'll get to explore space in the next lifetime though, as the Bible doesn't specifically preclude it. (This is a far out belief, for the record!) My daughter was reading her Jesus Storybook Bible the other day and saw a picture of space and said "Daddy Daddy come look! You love space." It's true, I do. --- [](https://x.com/OW_Root/status/1979043501942722614) Fantastic guidelines! Especially the "Don’t continually comment on the discourse." Whenever something happens, everyone feels the need to weigh in. And most people don't know anything about it! More than that though, it becomes annoying. I don't need to see the 40th tweet about whatever the topic du jour is. Be the most "you" you can be. That's what makes you interesting. I wrote my own set of guidelines 4 years ago that I still stand by! . --- [](https://x.com/TalebWisdom/status/1979624906372395262) This is kind of a [Chesterton's fence](https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/) thing. There is something to be understood when everyone agrees on something except you. And here's the thing, they may all be wrong. And that's ok! You don't have to let go of your deeply held beliefs because the majority doesn't hold them, but there is still something to be learned. Like… why is the other side so persuasive? Why is my side not persuasive? "Everyone is an idiot" is an easy out, but actually trying to figure out why everyone believes something that you think is dumb is hard. And it can strengthen your argument! But, ya know, you could also be wrong. It's important to stop and ask "ok, everyone agrees but me, am I missing something here?" Why is this fence here? --- [](https://x.com/lamxnt/status/1979600357345931381) Bad for society, good for you. If everyone's attention span is 30 seconds now, you can win if yours is a minute (maybe the saddest thing ever written.) If no one shows up to work on time, you're the star employee if you're 2 minutes early. If no one reads the docs, you can win by reading the docs. It all sucks and society is not trending in the right direction, but at least you can get ahead! ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ --- [](https://x.com/tim_cook/status/1980375071475790105) Remember the Apple ad where they [crushed all the beautiful stuff into an iPad](https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/why-apple-ipad-ad-controversy-backlash-1236017855/)? This is not that. This is old school. Good job Apple! --- [](https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1980563891584397421) I had no idea you could build staircases out of a single layer of brick. Cool. --- [](https://x.com/clairevo/status/1980485614123581692) Good notes on the rise of slick videos. Slick videos are fine! But show your personality. Give us someone to root for. It's not the slickness that makes it work, it's making the audience feel something. --- If you’ve been enjoying the newsletter and think a friend may enjoy reading it each week too, please forward it to them! They can sign up to receive it weekly here: . That’s it for this week! I enjoy reading all of your replies, so if you see something interesting or just have a thought you want to share, please hit reply and let me know. Talk soon, Aaron {{ ENV.unsubscribe\_personal | default: visitor.unsubscribe\_url | hyperlink: "Click here to unsubscribe." }}