From One Project to the Next! | 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, my time has been split between tying up some loose ends related to How Big Pharma is Extending the Pandemic and beginning work on my next video.

With regard to the former, I’ve been keeping a slightly closer eye than usual on comments for this one just so that I can be certain to catch any that are particularly conspiratorial or just downright unhelpful to the conversation. It hasn’t been quite as bad as I thought it would be though, so I’ve clearly managed to avoid the video being posted in too, too many of the wrong places! I’ve also been doing some of what I call my “upload admin”(!) such as prepping the script that goes out to Patreon backers at some of the higher tiers.

At the same time, I’ve been making some good progress on research for my next video. After such a heavy topic and long process last time round, my hope for the next few videos is to work on some topics which are still of great importance but perhaps slightly further removed from death and disease. My intention is also to force myself to make these next few pieces a little bit shorter! I think I’ve got a really interesting bunch of topics lined up to cover and so I can’t wait to get around to covering them all!

I’m going to keep the topic of the next a secret for just a little longer but I will hint that it’s about media literacy and the presence of “misinformation” in places where most people perhaps don’t expect to see it. I’ve only got some scraps of the script itself written so far, but it’s going to start with a very silly story and then spiral out into something altogether more serious. I’m really enjoying working on and have already devoured on book on the topic so am looking forward to working out how it all comes together into a video!

And outside of work?

With the last video having been released, the pressure’s been off a tiny bit this week. That’s meant that I’ve managed to squeeze in a few added bits of fun in the evenings and over the weekend!

The other day, I popped to see Death on the Nile at our local cinema which, to be honest, wasn’t the best film I’ve seen recently(!) and contains some very, very dodgy CGI! Nevertheless, it was still nice to be out with some friends—having spent the past couple of months writing about COVID, I’ve really been appreciating those little joys!

I’ve also been picking up the mileage with my running again recently as I begin preparation for another Half Marathon later this Spring!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

Other than the pieces I’ve been reading for my next video, I’ve not had a chance to be reading or watching so much this week. Instead, I’ve largely been catching up on some of the comic books that I’ve fallen woefully behind on! Although, with a bit of sun now coming out, I’ve found myself listening to Bo Burnham’s Inside a bunch. Despite its somewhat depressing subject matter, the synth-y timbre gives it quite good summer-time vibes!

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!