Danger, High Voltage! | The Friday 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?

The past seven days have once again seen me extremely busy trying to keep various different projects moving forwards.

I started the week by finalising the script to a further section of my upcoming video about energy privatisation in the UK. This particular section focusses on electricity generation and how a focus on short-term profits and share prices has led to some disastrous decisions which have left the UK uniquely vulnerable to swings in global gas prices.

The video is turning out to be a bit of an epic. The UK is just such a great case study of how not to run an energy sector. It’s also leans much more towards “proper”, “real-world” journalism than some of my other stuff. Nevertheless, I know there’s a lot of interest in logistics on YouTube so hopefully it will find an audience!

We’ve also been preparing to record our very first episode of the new podcast (see last week’s edition of the Friday Update for more information about that). As it’s the first one, both myself and editor Georgia, have been a little nervous and super keen to make sure all the tech works in the way it should!

Nevertheless, we’ve got a great first guest in Zoe Bee who’s going to chat with me a little bit about striking grad students and casualisation in academia. It’s going to be super exciting to finally get an episode in the bag!

I’ve also been trying to keep up with making the occasional YouTube short and arranging transport for a further super-secret project. But I’ll tell you more about those another time!

And outside of work?

This weekend was mainly taken up with doing some preparation for my wedding. As some of you will already know, I’m getting married this summer. This weekend, then, my partner and I spent some time making some decisions about our ceremony. And I also went on my first attempt to try and find a suit!

I was probably being a little keen on this front. We’re getting married in the summer and most shops still only have winter suits for sale at the moment. Nevertheless, it was good to have a browse. I rarely have occasion to wear a suit and so I didn’t have loads of ideas about what I might like. I’ve still not made any firm decisions but it was nice to do something a little bit different!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

Last night, I finally got round to watching the first episode of The Last of Us. My partner and I still had a few episodes of something else to watch so hadn’t got round to it. I, however, adored the video game. In fact, it was The Last of Us (the game) which first got me into comic books as, after I finished playing, I instantly went to buy the American Dreams comic book.

So far, it has absolutely met all expectations. We were on the edge of our seats during the initial outbreak scene—and I already knew what was going to happen!

It feels like we might be reaching the end of the golden age of streaming—in the UK at least, it seems as though we’re entering a viscous cycle of price rises leading to membership cancellations leading to price rises and so on… If that is the case, this would be a pretty good swan song for the streaming era!

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!!