The Dann Chronicles: September 🎒
A way to sound better, insights into polling, clocks going nuclear, background on markdown, and my favorite packaged cookie
September 2024
Hey all,
In August's newsletter intro, I mentioned how I was ahead of schedule with writing that month's newsletter. This time (if you look at the date) you'll see it's sort of the exact opposite. Oops.
Sometimes life is like that. And life this month is just like that.
-Dann
🔉 Sounds good to me
If I could give people a single recommendation for how to instantly sound more professional online, it would be to improve audio quality. Whether you're making YouTube videos, a podcast, or even just Zoom calls, improving audio quality is the single lowest-effort fix with the highest returns.
For videos and podcasts, that means using a nice XLR microphone and recording into an H4N. But for Zoom calls, I'm in love with a simple two-application stack.
The first is Audio Hijack, which allows me to improve audio quality on my voice in real time. The second is Loopback, which allows me to send those audio directly to Zoom. They're both by the same app development company: Rogue Amoeba.
Improving audio quality for Zoom calls is just one (very basic) use case for these apps (which are each insanely powerful). But if you're looking for a way to sound better as you bounce from one video call to the next (and you use a Mac), this stack is a great bang for your buck.
🗳️ Poll Dancing
I find polling to be such a murky topic. If someone is "ahead in the polls" what exactly does that mean? How can someone be ahead in one poll but not another? If someone is way ahead in the polls and they still lose, whose fault is that and why did it happen?
Even journalists and seasoned political commentators can see polling as a black box, which is why I really appreciated this interview on one of my favorite podcasts (Tangle) with Scott Keeter, a senior survey advisor at Pew Research Center. (The relevant interview is in the first half of the episode).
I think this conversation is particularly relevant because the entire industry standard methodology of polling has changed in the past eight years or so. And not just due to the result of the 2016 election, but moreso responding to changes to survey-takers behaviors.
If you keep seeing headlines about poll results and want better context about what's those results actually mean, it's well worth a listen.
☢️ Tick-Tok You Don't Stop
I don't really think of this newsletter as a good resource for Quantum Mechanics news, but I keep writing about that topic so I might need to change my perspective there.
There's just so much cool stuff happening in the world of Quantum Physics, and I'd be remiss if I didn't share cool updates to stories I've shared in past newsletters.
This month, we have another update on time itself (following up both March and November 2022).
To catch y'all up, our prevailing ideas about time are simply wrong. There is no such thing as time as an independent entity — time only exists to people who are experiencing it. Secondly, time is not constant: it changes depending on how close one is to large centers of gravity. Meaning, time moves slower at the beach (closer to Earth's center of gravity) than it does up in the mountains.
Physicists can actually measure this different using super-accurate clocks. And the big news this month is that these measurements are about to get way better thanks to advancements in Nuclear Clocks.
Specifically, new discoveries with the thorium-229 nucleus is showing it to be the best candidate for nuclear clocks—particularly its extremely low-energy transition that can be precisely controlled with lasers.
Better Nuclear Clocks means easier testing of these Quantum Theories about time. And more data means faster advancements in areas like Quantum Computing (which I've also written about before).
I still think Quantum Computing is a sleeping giant—a technology advancement on the same level as Artificial Intelligent but with much less media coverage. Every month, we seem to inch closer and closer to consumer Quantum Computing.
It's both exciting and terrifying.
🖋️ Mark-y Markdown.
As someone who spends a large portion of my work day in the note-taking app Obsidian, I find the lightweight markup language Markdown to be a revelation.
For the uninitiated, Markdown is a syntax that allows users to add style to plaintext—adding formatting, links, headings, tables, lists, and more—while maintaining simplicity and readability. I use Markdown constantly.
That's why I found this history and exploration of Markdown to be an interesting exploration of a well-loved tool.
Most importantly, while Markdown is a valued utility for writers, it has many limitations that irk developers. Different Markdown parsers will render text in different ways.
Programmers do not like ambiguity. It goes against so much of what programming is about. As a writer using Markdown, I love that I can pick whichever particular version is best suited to my needs. As a programmer, I hate that when I build something I have to make this same decision, which then affects all the people who use my finished product.
If you're doing any sizable amount of digital writing, and especially if you use tools like Obsidian, Markdown is an extremely powerful syntax to learn.
🍪 Cookie Monster
Continuing my trend of food recommendations, I'm currently obsessed with these Favorite Day Toffee Wafer cookies from Target. They come in both dark chocolate and milk chocolate, and I have a slight preference for the dark but they're both amazing.
In terms of mass-produced, pre-packaged treats, they're about the best you can get. They're a lot like lace cookies, but crunchier with a chocolate toffee flavor.
If that sounds appealing to you, be careful. It might be better not to ever try them, from a caloric-intake perspective.
End note
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Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.
Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Dann