WEEKLY WHEATIES #2452
Newsletter Process, Jobs, Privacy, Movies, Merlin AI
In this newsletter:
📝 Post: Behind the Screens: The Weekly Wheaties Newsletter Workflow Unveiled
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: Tech Jobs in the US
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: Message Encryption and Social Media Privacy
😎 Pick of the Week: Favorite Tech Movies and Shows
📦 Featured Product: Merlin AI
📝 Behind the Screens: The Weekly Wheaties Newsletter Workflow Unveiled
Since January 2023, I’ve posted a newsletter like this every Monday morning (Sunday evenings for paid subscribers). Without fail, I’ve answered the same questions multiple times from subscribers. Things like: How do you keep up with everything? How do you decide what to write about? How do you write so much!? How long will this continue?
Let this stand to share with you my weekly process in hopes of possibly encouraging you if this is something you’d want to tackle, possibly sharing some cool tips and tricks if you can think of ways of incorporating them into other processes you have, and also plea with you to support my endeavors by sharing this with your friends and family, or consider becoming a paid subscriber! There’s a button at the bottom of this newsletter. I’m typically bad at promoting myself, so I appreciate it very much when others do it for me. If you feel so inclined, you could even purchase a branded water bottle or deskpad. I can even add other items if there’s something you’d like to suggest from the catalog of items.
Before we get too deep, a quick refresh. Every newsletter includes 4 areas of information:
Miniblog: general topics or information I’d like to share (mostly in the tech space)
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It - one or more pieces of news from the previous week with thoughts, explanations, or commentary
POTW: Pick of the Week - a website, YouTube video, or app I’ve been using or found that I want to share
Featured Product: Something I’d like to share that you may be interested in purchasing. I’ve either tested it out or had friends highly recommend it.
For each area, the process is similar. Ultimately, I have one main Notion page that stores all of my notes, links, and other useful information in database form. This page consists of the 4 tags to keep the items separate. Each item has a Word-style page where I may write the article. I add to this database and individual pages daily. Sometimes multiple times a day. Anything I read that will fit in one of the areas gets “shared” to my Notion database through the app’s sharing feature or a web plugin. I can do this from my phone, laptop, or desktop. I mostly write from my desktop, many times from my laptop, and rarely from my phone.
However, I don’t write bits and pieces at a time when adding something. I may ‘build and outline’ over time, but everything is written in one sitting for that piece of the newsletter. I do this on purpose for a few reasons. If I were to write a little now and a little later, I may never be completely satisfied or won’t make myself stop. Sitting down to write with purpose with a time limit of sorts requires me to complete what I write in the moment. I also know I will forget things, miss something, or even get things wrong. That’s part of it. Until the next week at least…
I also want to write all at one time to make it come across to the reader as more of a conversation tone of sorts. It doesn’t need to be perfect, because conversations are never perfect. This is what I think or believe at the given time, and those thoughts can and do change. We’ve all had thoughts in hindsight about things we wish we would have said sometimes. It’s inevitable no matter how long I spend trying to share my thoughts.
It typically starts with my phone or laptop. I take in tons of information for every area of the newsletter from multiple outlets across the internet. This includes social media sites like Reddit or Facebook (where I am a member of tons of very unique groups), but it also includes things I watch on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram (well, the last two are typically only because someone sends it to me).
Every time I open a web browser, I’m greeted with news articles for the day or week since I use Bing.com exclusively for search, and it’s set as my homepage. I do use Google, but not in the way you think. Every Friday evening, I receive an email from an automation tool I use called Packagesss. This lists the top 10 technology-related articles from Google for the previous 7 days. This helps me make sure I don’t miss anything major should I wish to include it. Lastly, I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters, including but not limited to:
Although other newsletters are the base of most of the information gathered, I also pull from many of the sites you’ve seen linked before: CNET, TechCrunch, The Verge, ArsTechnica, Engadget, and much more.
A lot of the topics and products I write about come from random text and emails from you! I love hearing what you have to share or what you’d like to hear about. Please feel free to reply to this email and let me know what you think. Is there a certain topic you’d like me to dive deeper into? Is there something I’ve never covered you’d like me to write about (tech-related, at least)? Are there parts of this you like or dislike? As a reader, I want you to enjoy what you’re reading, but I also want you to find it useful.
Lastly, a little bit about the hardware and software in use. Once the main miniblog is written in Notion, I use Grammarly to help with spelling and grammar. I then use Merlin (more on this below) to help brainstorm titles. The content of the post is always 100% me - for better or for worse. I usually have a working title but always get AI’s help for something a bit catchier.
Then, use Bing’s Image Creator. I copy and paste the title followed by a comma and the word “futuristic” to create what’s called the hero image for the post (the picture you see above). For example, this newsletter’s prompt was [Behind the Screens: The Weekly Wheaties Newsletter Workflow Unveiled, futuristic]. It will provide 4 images, and I will pick one to use. In some cases, I may have to regenerate the images a time or two.
Next, I simply copy and paste the writings into an article on my Substack page, add the image, set the titles and headers, and schedule the email to send! As best I can, I try to make an audio/video version for podcast apps and YouTube. I do this with an AI-cloned version of my voice through Voice Air. Then, I take the audio over to SoundMadeSeen to create the videos you see on YouTube.
For news articles, I use ZebraCat to create a quick social clip with stock video, music, and a voiceover. Sometimes this is a random voice, sometimes it’s mine. Follow me on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook to see these when they randomly post.
Now, something new for 2025!
I’ll be utilizing Substack’s Notes feature to share deals on softwares and apps I find. These will not be posted on any set schedule as I don’t know what and when I will find something to share. In some cases, I will link to an app or software that is offering a Life Time Deal (LTD), whereas there is only one payment, one time, and it will either be discounted compared to the monthly fee or free for a limited time. Posting to the notes section will give you the option to choose if you want notifications on or not and keep me from bugging you with more emails.
🗞️ ICYMI: Tech Jobs in the US
With technology and AI advancing all over the world, there have been a few announcements recently showing the US is trying to lead the way. For starters, tech giant SoftBank announced they were investing over $100 billion into AI projects in the states. Another large player across the US and Canada, Hut 8, announced a $2.5 billion data center planned for West Feliciana Parish in Louisiana. This project looks to create “several hundred” permanent jobs. With the amount of available land and power grid capacity in LA, Meta announced plans to invest $10 billion for their Louisiana data center.
Not to be left out, Amazon invests $10 billion in Ohio data centers to drive AI evolution. And when they say you can buy everything from A to Z on Amazon, they mean it. Thanks to Hyundai, you can now buy a car on Amazon. Well, kind of. You can order one and checkout, then go pick it up at your local dealership.
🗞️ ICYMI: Message Encryption and Social Media Privacy
I wrote about this same topic in Weekly Wheaties #2450, but there’s still a lot of buzz about this in the news cycle. Essentially, the Salt Typhoon hack exposed millions as they accessed networks of multiple US carriers and network service providers. Ultimately, standard text messaging is victim to these hackers monitoring anything sent across ATT, Verizon, and others.
The FBI describes the hacking campaign as "broad and significant" and warns Americans to keep their text messages secure. As I’ve mentioned before, a typical text message should be viewed as the digital version of a postcard, as anyone in the middle can see what is sent and received. This is why they want you to use end-to-end encrypted messaging.
In other privacy news, the TikTok ban case will be heard by the Supreme Court on January 10th, giving them time to make a decision before the law takes effect on January 19th. If the law does go into effect, TikTok would be banned if not sold to a US-based company.
😎 POTW: Favorite Tech Movies and Shows
For this week’s Pick, I’d like to share a few of my favorite tech movies and TV shows from over the years. With a bit of leeway, if that’s okay. I adlibbed a bit on the movies, I’ll leave the TV shows up to you. In alphabetically order:
Movies
Follows the rise and fall of the Blackberry phone.
Streaming on Hulu and Kanopy
Don’t think you can’t be tracked throughout your day? This was in 2008…
Streaming on Prime Video
Sure, they had a cool tech in 2008, but not before the turn of the new century, huh? Think again…
Available for rent or purchase in multiple locations.
Pretty cool early days of new tech. A little out there, but this has a very good roundabout way of explaining crypto, too! Well, at least the power of supercomputers.
Streaming on Roku, Hoopla, Tubi, Pluto TV, and more.
Follows the small startup now known as Microsoft, and how Apple played into their upbringing.
One of my all-time favorites. Follows Facebook and its rise. Also has an incredible musical score and cinematography. Not to mention the camera tech used for the Winklevoss twins.
Streaming on Paramount and Pluto TV.
TV Shows
Alias (Disney and Apple TV)
The Big Bang Theory (Max and Apple TV)
Halt and Catch Fire (AMC and Apple TV)
Leverage (Prime Video, Hoopla, Freevee, and Prime Video)
📦 Featured Product
I mentioned this above, but within the last few weeks, I’ve been using Merlin just about daily. In the past, I used a mix of Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini to get my fill of AI chatbots. I would reach the limit on a few of them every now and then but never use them enough to justify purchasing a monthly subscription. But then I found Merlin listed on AppSumo for $79. This is a one-time purchase available until the end of the year. So, what’s the catch? Nothing more than the credits received per month. You can pay more upfront for more monthly credits, but I can’t tell you how much you’ll use, so it’s hard for me to suggest how much. What I can tell you is that if you pay for any other Chatbot, you can probably stop, buy this, and come out ahead within 4-5 months. There’s a chrome extension that allows you to chat with webpages, summarize articles or YouTube videos, a web-based interface, and even a mobile app.
