Style Icons | The Friday Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

What have I been up to this week?

Our next video about Patreon’s present financial troubles is currently making great progress. Georgia’s been working really hard on some really stylish editing to make it really compelling and I think it’s looking great!

When we were first chatting about what kind of aesthetic we’d use for this video, I began showing her clips from Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, which was a 1960s TV documentary about “western civilisation”. It’s a somewhat problematic documentary for various reasons. But, in talking about the “rise and fall” of Patreon, I thought it could look really great to try and borrow from its visual language.

We’ve ended up with this really vibrant, tactile, old-school slideshow aesthetic. It contains some elements which are very modern, but the addition of an element of that older style looks brilliant. I feel like we might borrow this style for some future videos too!

Whilst Georgia’s been refining that, I’ve been at work on the script for the video which will follow it.

That follow-up is a little bit different. It’s a little more “news”-y and a little more offline than some of the stuff we’ve put out lately. But I’ll reveal a little more about that in coming weeks.

As things stand, it’s looking like we’ll be on track to release two videos during October and a Christmas special before the end of the year which is super exciting!

And outside of work?

Earlier this week, I took an afternoon to visit my aunt who is currently on holiday near me.

We’ve had a very hot run of weather lately. This probably isn’t great news climate change wise as it never used to be this gorgeous this late in summer when I was growing up. However, I guess the upside is that we were able to go on a nice walk along the beach and eat some ice cream.

I got to see a lot of my extended family recently at my wedding, but anyone whose been married will know that you have to spend a lot of time talking to a lot of people on the big day. So it was nice to actually get some time to catch up and find out what all my cousins are up to!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

This week, I finished reading Graham Smith’s Abolish the Monarchy. The book is, as the title would suggest, about the British monarchy. It explores both the flaws in the monarchy itself and also the larger problems that Britain’s status as a constitutional monarchy presents for our monarchy more broadly.

As a long-time republican, I perhaps wasn’t the target audience for this book. Some of the more fundamental arguments against the continued existence of the monarchy (such as its entrenchment of class divisions or the huge cost of running it) were ones I’ve heard many times before.

Nevertheless, the latter part of the book explores the manner in which much of the power which was previously held by the monarch has since been transferred to the Prime Minister. Which means the Prime Minister (and their government) has considerable freedom to pass laws without much real oversight. Whilst opposition parties can stress their disapproval in parliament, there’s often not a huge amount they can to do actually block legislation for force it to be amended.

These later aspects of the book really laid bare the crown as a real and present force in British politics in a slightly different way than I’ve seen done before. It turned what otherwise could have been a rehashing of well-worn arguments into an interesting take on Britain’s constitution and political functions.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Friday Update. I hope you’ve found it mildly insightful.

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!