Hi!

Today, I’m going to give you a quick behind-the-scenes look into some of the tools I use to write this newsletter. I’ve talked about my process a few times, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared the things I use to write this.

What you won’t find here is any real insight into how I find stories — that’s driven by curiosity. When I see something interesting, I dig deeper, and ultimately, those items become Now I Know stories if warranted. But I’ll quickly talk about where I save the stuff I find. The answer is “everywhere.” I’ll set a reminder on my phone, using what I think would be a good Google search string. I save articles on the New York Times and Washington Post’s websites — I have subscriptions to both — and use reddit’s “save” feature. When I used Twitter more often, I used their bookmarking feature, and I’ve found myself using Instagram’s pretty often recently. When it comes to sharing what I’ve discovered, I’m not very well organized. And if you’re looking to write a newsletter or anything else in the future, that habit probably won’t work for you. But here are five tools that may.

1) The laptop

I’m really glad I found this.

I write wherever I can, and often, that means on the commuter train. And that means I’m carrying a laptop with me, which in turn means that there’s a decent change of it breaking. I’ve actually had very good luck in this regard — I haven’t had a laptop break in a long time — but there’s always that risk. I can find structural resilient laptops but they’re expensive, and that doesn’t make a sense (or cents) — Now I Know doesn’t require a high-end laptop with an expensive graphics card or processor, so a cheap laptop is the way to go. The solution? This $150 refurb via Amazon. I have two right now because the older one — which is three years old at this point — looked like it was about to die but didn’t (in fact, I’m using it right now to write these words), but I don’t mind having a backup. It’s cheap, it works, and it gives me peace of mind that I won’t have to be laptopless for a week.

2) The home setup

I dock the laptop in a Dell docking station with two HDMI outputs for two monitors, a mouse, and a keyboard. The monitors were about $100 each — I’m using these 22” Viewsonics that are no longer in stock — and I bought them at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic because I realized I’d need a home office. They’ve been basically flawless since. The keyboard and mouse were the cheapest USB ones I could find. I used to use this docking station but it didn’t work with my work computer, so I had to replace it, but it worked with my home/Now I Know setup.

But that’s not the crown jewel of the setup: this is. It’s among the best $28 dollars I’ve ever spent. It’s an iPad stand, and it’s wonderful. It doesn’t do anything special — it just elevates an iPad so you can use it at eye level. I use it as a background TV for news or whatever else (often Star Trek) while writing, I’ll bring it into the kitchen when I need it for a recipe, and I bring it to the TV in our family room (with this iPhone to HDMI cable) so the whole family could get on a Zoom call. (That was super-helpful during Covid.) I’ve also used it (with an iPhone) as a camera stand when my kids need to record speeches or whatnot for school. It’s not all that important for Now I Know specifically (although I really do need background noise), but it’s a valued part of my desk setup.

3) The software

I have three things I rely on a lot — and a lot of things I rely on a little. I’m only sharing the big ones because the little ones change a ton.

a) Beehiiv

I use beehiiv as the “ESP” or “email service provider” to actually send these newsletters. I’ve talked about my switch from Mailchimp to beehiiv a lot, but I’ll do it again because I really love beehiiv. I write most of the emails in the text editor and, thankfully, it autosave, because otherwise I’d run the risk of losing stories whenever I accidentally closed the tab (which happens often). It’s helped with design, monetization, and more. It’s a great platform if you’re looking to start a newsletter and I highly recommend it.

b) Google Docs

As I noted before, I do a lot of writing on the commuter train. Unfortunately, there’s no WiFi on the trains and the cell service is hit or miss. So I need a way to write while offline. I use Google Docs for that. There’s some risk to this because, when using it offline, everything is saved in your browser, and there’s a decent chance that something will go wrong and the work will be lost. I’ve only had that happen once or twice (and it sucked!) but such is life. I’ve had one document, titled “Document for Train,” that I’ve used for years — it’s a graveyard of half-written stories and random ideas, but it’s also an effective platform for writing a mostly-complete story. If you’ve ever wondered why an m-dash comes through as a double-dash, particularly on a story I share on a Tuesday or Wednesday (my Monday commute is prime writing time), it’s because I wrote the first draft of the story in Google Docs, which doesn’t convert double dashes to m-dashes automatically while in offline mode, and I missed it when I copy/pasted it to beehiiv.

c) OneTab — The superstar of the process.

OneTab is a Chrome browser extension; you can get it here. It takes all the web pages you have in the same browser window and collapses them into a series of links on, you guessed it, one tab. And it’s a powerhouse for Now I Know.

When I find something interesting to write about, I immediately do a Google Search and let myself go through the rabbit hole of information related to that topic. I typically find five or more links worth perusing and often have 15 to 20. That causes two problems. First, if I don’t write about the story right then and there, it slows down my computer. Second, if I find another story I want to write about and repeat the process, everything is a disorganized mess. OneTab fixes both. With one click, all the web pages become an organized list of links about that topic. And all those lists are stored on the same page, so if I find six things to write about in the same sitting, I can do the initial research for all six and just add them to that OneTab page. As of this writing, I have probably 50 different link collections in mine.

The only downside of OneTab is that it stores the information locally, so I switch computers, I have to move things over manually. That’s not great, but it’s manageable. And the extension is such a game-changer, it’s worth that minor inconvenience.

That’s the top-line stuff. If you have suggestions for other things I should add to my toolbox, hit reply and let me know!

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: Took it off for Washington’s Birthday/Presidents Day.

Tuesday: Dead People, Supporting Each Other: So, I screwed up.

This is the story of Lal Bihari, a man from India who was declared legally dead but, alas, was far from it. I won’t recap it here because if you’re interested in his story and those who he tried to help, you can just click that link.

Or you can click this one, from April 2014. Because I, accidentally, wrote up the same story twice. Same facts, similar approach on my end, but it’s a different write-up. When I sat down to write Tuesday’s, I forgot that I had already told Bihari’s story. And I didn’t check to see if my memory was faulty. I think this is only the second or third time I’ve made this kind of mistake.

The good news is that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t notice! Only two readers wrote to tell me about my mistake, and I’m sure a handful of others also noticed. But if it was new to you — even if it’s because you forgot about it before! — well, that works for me.

Wednesday: The Winner Who Was a Loser (and Vice Versa): A rose by any other name, yadda yadda yadda.

Thursday: How Disney Saved The Rescuers From Scandal: A small bit of nudity is hidden in a Disney classic.

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “If You Ever Stacked Cups In Gym Class, Blame My Dad” (Defector, 22 minutes, February 2025). If you know what cup stacking is, this will immediately resonate. If you don’t, you will after you read this!

2) “Love in This Tub” (New York Times/gift link, 8 minutes, February 2024). The subhead: “A Poconos hotel closed last year. What happened to its iconic heart-shaped tubs?” If that doesn’t mean anything to you, sorry. But if you grew up in the New York City area in the 1970s or 1980s, you almost certainly know about the beautiful Mt. Airy Lodge and other Poconos resorts that catered to couples (especially newlyweds), this is the story of why they went away.

3) “The San Francisco stadium that fog killed” (SFGate, 7 minutes, January 2025). In 1914, a baseball team called the San Francisco Seals played their games at Ewing Field in San Francisco. They didn’t play there in 1915, though — the ballpark got so foggy, playing there wasn’t an option.

Have a great weekend!

Dan