A Blaze of Writing in the Blazing Sun | The Friday(ish) Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday(ish) 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?

This week has been mostly a blaze of writing and re-writing.

We’re making excellent progress on my upcoming video about the cultural ubiquity of online grifts. I’ve handed many terabytes of footage over to Georgia to edit in the past week or two. This has included everything from talking about AI in my living room to explaining the concept of rent-seeking in the bath.

Whilst Georgia has been adding all kinds of beautiful animations and other augmentations to that footage, I’ve been returning to Google Docs to work on some further sections.

As I’ve mentioned, this video is going to be pretty epic. It’s easily going to be the longest video I’ve ever made and is also pretty large in terms of its scope. It might begin with some petty grievances about annoying YouTube ads, but it ends with some much larger thoughts about contemporary capitalism.

Despite the length and depth of the video, a lot of it hasn’t been a massive strain to write. This video has been on my mind for a long, long time and draws upon a lot of previous research I’ve done. As such, it’s mostly been a case of giving shape and structure to thoughts I’ve had for a while.

Nevertheless, there have been some sections that have proven more challenging. A lot of this week has been spent tearing my hair out about a transitory section which, for some reason, I’ve just struggled to perfect. Hopefully I’ll be able to crack it soon though!

And outside of work?

A nice twist to this week has been that my partner and I have had some friends staying. Even whilst being really busy with work, this has given us the push to make the most of the evenings and the incredibly hot weather we’ve been having.

I will admit that I’ve still avoided going in the sea this year. I don’t quite have the bravery to throw myself in the freezing Atlantic just yet. But, one of our friends is a runner and so it was nice to have some company for one of my runs.

That being said, the past couple of days I’ve found the heat to be a bit too much. Our house is notorious among our friends for being quite cold; but I’ve been wandering round in a running singlet and gradually evaporating!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

I recently renewed my subscription to the Financial Times’ “FT Edit” app.

For those who are unaware, the Financial Times is a UK broadsheet that is quite popular among the UK’s business class. Whilst it definitely leans to the right in its opinion columns, however, it often lacks much of the “spin” of more mainstream right-wing papers.

(The way I’ve seen it described is that, because it’s read by business types, it has to be honest about how the economy and politics etc. rather than propagandise in the same way as the Telegraph or similar might).

I used to be quite fortunate in getting a free subscription to the Financial Times through the university I worked at. I lost that privilege a couple of years back and it’s far too expensive to subscribe to the full paper.

However, the FT has an app called the “FT Edit”. Each day, they pick-out somewhere between 5 and 8 articles from the paper and give you access to them. These are often more analytical articles including a long(er) read or two.

I was previously a subscriber to the “FT Edit” a while ago and have rejoined because I quite like the concept. I wouldn’t have time to read a full paper anyway, so having a few articles is more than enough. Whilst there’s occasionally one or two pieces that I disagree with or that are a bit “business bro”-esque, I mostly find it much more enriching that scrolling through Twitter!

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Friday(ish) 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!!