Brat Summer is apparently over, without my ever really finding out what it was. And it’s been a full fortnight since the ‘very mindful, very demure’ meme popped up and I’m still resisting the urge to look up what the hell that’s about too.

I guess this is coming to peace with aging. Trends can now pass me by entirely without my noticing or caring.

Some things I did this week

After a month or so of our team taking a deep-dive into existing (but earmarked-for-shutdown) sites, we’ve gathered enough insights to start to identify what functionality and templates will be needed to publish content on the new site. This feels like good progress.

This programme gives the client an opportunity to streamline what’s currently a hot mess of layouts into a more consistent, uniform one. But at the same time we need to make sure the new intranet can accommodate a wide range of publishing needs. It’s always a balance between flexibility for publishers and usability for end users, but where possible we lean toward the latter.

We’ve developed a robust process that means we’re mapping and tagging needs as we see them, which gives us some nice data we can play around with to find commonalities (which we can prioritise in templates) and differences (which we need to assess in detail; can the need be met in another way? Or is this a development priority?).

It’s early days but the future scope is already taking shape, and we’re getting more detail as the team work through more of the existing estate. It’s satisfyingly nerdy.

Our other big project is picking up pace too. In any multi-vendor collaboration there’s a strong need for clear but quick decision-making and open communication, as delays on one side can leave everyone twiddling their thumbs. I’ve been impressed across the board here. While the programme started a little later than intended, both our team and the software vendor have worked their socks off and we’ve already made up a good chunk of time and we’re all set to dive into actually getting content written and on the new site.

Not Work things

Saw Japanese electro-punk-pop auteur Cornelius at the Paradiso. A splendid ethereal show that mixed sound, animation and lights to transport you to another reality.

Went to an Amsterdam Fashion Week screening of The Devil Wears Prada. That this film is 18(!) years old and yet in my mind still feels recent-ish speaks volumes about my rapid aging. Nonetheless it stands up incredibly well. The main storyline – of Andi giving her all to work in the hope of getting ahead in her career, before having a moment of clarity and jacking it in – spoke to me on a level it did not when I last watched it. After I got home my Facebook memories reminded me that this time a previous year I was still in the office at 10.45pm again. I got a bit emotional, but that might have been the two glasses of wine at the cinema.

My second cinema visit of the week was for newly released directoral debut Blink Twice. It’s a psychological thriller in which a tech bro lures women to an island and Bad Things Happen. It was a decent enough film with some brilliant attention to detail and plenty of dark humour. But watching it the same week that Gisele Pelicot waived her right to anonymity to ensure the men who raped her while she was drugged unconscious are bought to justice… well that was a little too on-the-nose.

Finally, last we went to Utrecht to see plus sized popstrel Beth Ditto’s outfit, Gossip. That was a super fun show and Ditto was very funny indeed. As it was the final date in this current tour we were treated to a bunch of bonus encore tracks which were well worth getting home late for.

What I’m reading

After a fallow period I found my reading mojo again this week when I picked up Going Mainstream: how extremists are taking over by Julia Ebner.

This is a chilling and meticulously researched exposé on how far-right extremism has infiltrated mainstream society with unnerving stealth and speed. Ebner, a counter-terrorism researcher, embedded herself in online communities and real-life gatherings where ideologies once considered fringe now blend disturbingly into everyday discourse.

I started this book last weekend. Then the news of charges being bought against US right-wing media and influencers broke, so the points she raised about the journey of extreme ideas from fringe to influencers and to the mainstream were particularly timely and worrying.

Her investigative style brings the reader face-to-face with the unsettling realisation that the digital world, with its echo chambers and algorithmic nudges, has allowed extremist views to slip seamlessly into political and cultural norms. Ebner’s writing is sharp and unflinching, exposing how language, memes, and humour are weaponised to make radicalism palatable.

Reading this helped my maintain my resolve and not skulk back to Twitter.

Coverage

Travel

None this week but next week I’m in Brussels from Weds to Friday for the Brussels Digital Workplace conference. Hope to see some of you there.