Things change all at once

Hello friends, Fantastic news! All of the introduction to Postgres videos are completely finished, I'm putting the final touches on the website, and we'll be launching in the next week or two. We've already gotten some pre-orders for the new Database School platform which will be a subscription learning site. If you're not on that list yet, you can head to [databaseschool.com](https://databaseschool.com/) and sign up. Almost two years ago, I got laid off and it's been a bit of a rocky journey since then. We've had some good successes and a lot of failures, but I think I'm finally getting to the point where I know what the business is, I know what I do, I know what people want, and I know how to move forward. It's a good feeling. We talked about it a little bit on [this week's episode](https://mostlytechnical.com/episodes/106-weve-got-arr) of Mostly Technical. It's kind of near the end of the episode, but there are some time stamps in there so you can jump ahead if you need. --- ### Thoughts from the week I've been thinking this week about how things don't ever seem to change… and then they change all at once. Over the past two or three months I’ve felt a lot of personal growth. I feel like I have picked up some new habits, some new strategies, some new methods, some new techniques, but they're not all completely new. For many years I've been writing in Amazon Basics notepads, before that I was using Moleskines in college. I've just been keeping notes and thoughts in there. I've always had this habit of writing random things down, but I've leaned a lot more into that recently. [I picked up a few new notebooks](https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/1988343210197086619) and started experimenting with Cal Newport’s “notebook method,” where you just walk around with a notebook, disconnected from the internet, writing down the thoughts that come into your head. I'm feeling very settled about that. It's very enjoyable and I feel like my creative output has gone way, way up by focusing on [reading and writing as the first part of my day. ](https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/1988668852583166317) I did try to start a book that Cal Newport mentioned in Digital Minimalism, Lead Yourself First. Kind of a stupid title, but it was supposedly about how leaders throughout history have pursued solitude. I made it one chapter before I returned it to Amazon. It's terrible. It's LinkedIn drivel. It's just a loose collection of anecdotes, so I don't recommend that book. I have started a new book called "Against the Machine" which so far is pretty incredible. I'm not very far into it, but right now it's just outlining the problem statement: Western civilization is already dead and we're living in its ruins. The reason for that is that we have become unrooted. We no longer have roots or connection to anything. The latter half of the book is about how to fix that, but… I'm not there yet so I can't tell you the solution, ha. --- 🎬 **YouTube** **Faster vector search with Turbopuffer CEO, Simon Eskildsen** I talked with Simon Eskildsen, co-founder and CEO of TurboPuffer, about building a high-performance search engine and database that runs entirely on object storage. We dug into Simon's time as an engineer at Shopify, database design trade-offs, and how TurboPuffer powers modern AI workloads like Cursor and Notion. Check it out on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ivDkMEclg) or your favorite [podcast player](https://share.transistor.fm/s/2ae920a0). --- ### 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://x.com/jhendersonYT/status/1989322444436308048?s=20) This is evil. I did a podcast [a while back with Paige](https://aaronfrancis.com/podcast/paige-against-the-machine-starting-a-robopocalypse-with-aaron-francis-9b472510) talking about AI and she asked me if I'd want my kids to create an AI-Aaron after I'm dead. I said absolutely not. I think that that is an abomination. First of all, an AI Aaron is not Aaron. It's a lie. It's fake. It's not real. I am not the sum total of my output! Neither are you. To create an AI version of somebody that's dead is to rob yourself of the very, very important process of dealing with grief. Grief is impossibly hard to deal with, but it is a part of life and a way to grow. To pretend that that person isn't dead because you can talk to an LLM is a disaster. --- [](https://x.com/makerstations/status/1989249499269607916?s=20) [](https://x.com/workspacesxyz/status/1988946348419477693?s=20) [](https://x.com/dearvotion/status/1988377095840690323?s=20) I'm aware that this is quickly becoming Aaron's Weekly Newsletter of Pretty Pictures of Studios. And frankly… I'm okay with that! It may not surprise you that I am a workspace maximalist and think it should be filled to the absolute brim with things that bring you joy and things that you love! Whether that's plants or books or posters or pens and paper, whatever it is. I think the ascetic, modern, Apple-esque style doesn't match the purpose of an office or a studio very well! It should inspire creativity! --- [](https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1989028232893759914?s=20) So this guy is an astrophotographer and he teamed up with his friend who's a skydiver to have his friend skydive in front of the sun. And I kid you not, it may have produced one of the most stunning pictures I have ever seen. You can find that on his profile. The tweet that I linked to shows you a video of the guy actually diving out of the paraglider and it's remarkable. --- [](https://x.com/JesperBylund/status/1988886317774561717?s=20) A long time ago I wrote an article for GitHub called "[Finish your projects](https://github.com/readme/guides/finish-your-projects)" and Jesper took that article and wrote his own short reflection about it. If you haven't read the original, obviously I recommend it because I wrote it! Jesper's is also good and you should read it! --- [](https://x.com/NielsHoven/status/1988731385222475977?s=20) Some good notes about making a living as an artist (make sure to click on the image to see the full tweet—it's quite lengthy), which not many of us probably are full-time artists, but there are still some good takeaways in here. The number one takeaway is if you can't accept you're running a business, you're hosed. This goes back to that theory that I have about operating in the world as it is, instead of as you wish it to be. Would it be great if artists could just make money without selling art? Sure, that would be awesome! But unfortunately, if you want to make money, you have to accept that you are running a business. --- [](https://x.com/frantzfries/status/1988457056710316430?s=20) We do love it when the strategically optimal thing to do and the right thing to do are the same thing! --- [](https://x.com/visakanv/status/1678745111411212290?s=20) One of the all-time great tweets. Originally tweeted a couple of years ago, it sometimes pops back up in my feed and every time I read the whole thing, even though I know the ending of the passage! --- ### Let’s close the loop I send out all this random stuff every week and I often get great replies from people that know a lot more about the thing that I sent, or know about something related. This section is for the things that y'all send that are related to previous issues! (I’m still working on getting the previous issues online, so bear with me there) [](https://keygen.sh/blog/luck-is-a-harsh-mistress/) [Zeke](https://x.com/_m27e) read the newsletter last week and then we exchanged several emails about Games of Luck and Games of Skill. He took some of that content from his emails and turned it into a blog post so we can all read it! --- 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." }}