Elon Musk’s Frozen Peaches | 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?

This week, I’ve been beginning to make some real strides in writing my upcoming video about Elon Musk, Twitter, online freedom of speech and the public sphere. As I wrote in my last update, I already had a few snippets down on paper but, now that I’ve had a bit more time to read some of the foundational books and articles in the relevant fields, I’ve found myself able to flesh things out a little bit and start getting much more detailed!

It’s not all been plain sailing as there are a couple of sections I’m still wrestling with. One is towards the beginning of the video and sees me explaining why I think the lens of more vs. less free speech is a bit misleading. At the moment, this part isn’t quite as engaging as I’d like it to be; I always think it’s much better when there’s a bit of a story involved to articulate the ideas and, as it stands, it’s a bit overly theoretical with me quoting a bunch of legislation. So, I still need to find some way of making that a bit more exciting!

While there’s still quite a bit of work to do (and certainly a lot of agonising hours of writing ahead!), I think the video’s coming together okay. I feel like I’ve read a *huge* amount of scholarship and so feel pretty knowledgable about both online content moderation and the history of the public sphere but that means whittling it all down into a fun, accessible video can sometimes be more of a challenge!

Even with Musk seemingly trying to pull-out of the Twitter deal, I think it should still make for a really fun video!

And outside of work?

Last week, it was a bank holiday weekend in the UK (which essentially means people who work “normal” jobs get an extra day or two off work) as it was the Queen’s jubilee. Now, I’m not a massive fan of the monarchy (to say the least!) but I thought I’d be kind to myself and give myself the same days off as everyone else. I ended-up going to Wales with my partner and a few friends to stay in a little cottage and go on some walks.

It was a fairly relaxed weekend (if you find long walks relaxing!) but I’ve been feeling as though I’ve been spending a lot of time staring at screens lately so it was really nice to have the opportunity to get outdoors so much!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

A few days ago, I started watch The Boys on Amazon Prime. This had completely passed me by when it was first released a few years ago and so I’m very, very far behind (although not quite as far behind as I am on Better Call Saul if I ever decide to start watching that). I’m absolutely hooked though.

I’ve seen and read quite a lot of “anti-superhero” stories and so the concept of “what if superheroes were bad, actually” isn’t something that feels groundbreaking to me but I’ve still found it to be a really captivating watch so far. I think the characters are really well drawn and the world of it is intriguing enough to keep me coming back for more!

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!!