#Economic Times newspaper advertising

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Unlock the Power of Economic Times Classifieds: Reach Your Target Audience!

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[killervelveteenrabbit]

"The Ghost and Molly McGee", Ten Years After

Molly’s ongoing work to improve the economic, cultural, and mental well-being of Brighton has earned her the love and respect of everyone in town, a few write-ups in statewide and national publications… and a full scholarship to the University of Iowa’s civil and environmental engineering program. She’s returned to Brighton, working for City Hall as assistant city planner (with her dad as her boss, which isn’t awkward at all, really) while earning her master’s online.

Molly wasn’t alone while she attended UI—Libby was her dormmate all four years that she was there. She earned a scholarship of her own, majoring in English. She also returned to Brighton after graduating, becoming a part-time reporter for the town newspaper while helping run her mother’s bookstore. All of this is in addition to her literary career. Matias, her father, took a second look at the fantasy novel she wrote and realized it was publication-worthy. It wasn’t a best seller, but the royalties from this and two other books Libby has written since let her live comfortably and pursue her passions in life. Her latest project is a series of books helping small children understand and live with the effects of divorce.

Molly and Ollie hit a rough patch after an admittedly stupid argument during their senior year of high school, and their two-month breakup proved just as hard on their respective families as it was on each other. They got back together just in time for graduation from Brighton High, only to part ways as Molly went to UI and Oliver headed for Iowa State. But they carried out a successful medium-distance relationship (it was only a two-hour drive between the two campuses).

Ollie has parlayed his experience as a researcher for his parents’ MeTube videos into a career as a freelance researcher for an assortment of psychological and medical foundations. While he travels all over the Midwest and occasionally beyond, he’s based out of Brighton… specifically, the rental house he shares with Molly. Ollie and Molly are practically married already, but their parents are eager for them to make it official. The couple are waiting a while to save enough money to stage the dream wedding and after-party they always wanted without breaking the bank.

Several years ago, an ill-advised deal involving a shipment of counterfeit designer smartwatches and the Uzbek mafia landed Darryl in hotter water than usual. He’s lucky all he got away with was lockdown in juvie until his 21st birthday… which got commuted to two hundred hours of community service and time served due to an unexpected (and slightly suspicious) governor’s pardon. At any rate, the whole debacle soured Darryl on similar schemes. He’s kept his nose clean since then, barring a few school detentions. He takes business courses at a local community college with plans to transfer to a four-year institution this fall. His current side hustle involves promotions and advertising for assorted boutiques and under-21 nightclubs that have popped up in Brighton's revitalized downtown.

June lives away from home, majoring at Drake University. But she remains Darryl’s best friend, the only person outside his family who’s consistently been there for him after his schemes blew up in his face—figuratively and almost literally; she was the one who detected that leak in the ammonium nitrate storage tank Darryl stashed out near the water tower. They even dated for a while before mutually acknowledging the situation was “weird” and deciding they were better off as friends. On a related note, maybe Esther shouldn’t have paid out all that money to have her wedding dress remade.

Pete and Sharon are still happily married. Pete takes great pride in the improvements he’s helped make for his adopted hometown of Brighton, and he’s especially flattered that his daughter is following in his footsteps. The town’s successes have become Pete’s successes—in the last ten years, he’s fixed up the family home and bought his first non-used car. He’s even dusted off his vinyl for a few gigs at some of the new clubs downtown. Meanwhile, Sharon offers painting classes at the local community center and retirement home. These days, she primarily uses her Gig Pig account to set up painting parties in and around town, sometimes as far out as Perfektborg.

The Chens’ enlightenment about the true nature of ghosts has led them to step away from their “Ghost Chaser Chens” MeTube channel. Ruben has had far more luck marketing his brand of small-batch root beer, now available in grocery and convenience stores all over the state. Recently, Esther inspired Ruben to introduce a “spiked” version flavored with Habanero peppers. Reception has been mixed.

Grandma Nin and her friend Patty are the self-described “Bad Girls of Brighton Hills”, but their adventures have proven more constructive than mischievous. They’ve organized concerts at the bandshell, joined the Senior Construction Crew on home-repair projects for needy families, and hosted a weekly potluck dinner/board game session in the home’s cafeteria. These dinners always feature Patty’s homemade gumbo—Nin helped her fine-tune the recipe so now it’s actually edible.

The McGees look forward to David and Emmie’s annual visits, a chance to catch up with family and connect with their heritage. The Thai lessons Molly took on Triolingo have helped her feel slightly more at ease when the Suksais come to call. Also, Sharon has tried practicing some Thai dishes, with Pete’s assistance and (critically) while Nin isn’t in the vicinity.

A year after Davenport’s closed its doors, the family rolled the dice and started a supermarket specializing in organic groceries, local produce, and hard-to-find foreign brands… items Bizmart couldn’t or wouldn’t accommodate. The gamble paid off, and Davenport's Turnip Patch sells and ships to customers across the region—yes, even to Perfektborg. (Sharon and Nin are frequent visitors since they carry Thai specialties like jackfruit, pandan extract, and even durian.) Andrea maintains the store’s computer systems but pointedly avoids appearing in advertising. She’s back on her socials, but not as an influencer. Her “Girl Code” series on MeTube provides tips and tricks for entry-level coding enthusiasts. The videos feature occasional cameos by her girlfriend Alina, who’s also taken an interest in the subject.

Three months after Scratch cast off his Chairman’s robes, they settled upon the recently departed spirit of a retired manager of an IRS branch office. Since then, the Ghost Council has basked in bureaucratic bliss, leaving the denizens of Ghost World alone and happy. Not long after Todd left, Molly conducted a séance and told Geoff what happened to Scratch. He realizes it will be a while before he sees his friend again, but at least he has Jeff to keep him company.

Todd and Adia have photographed wild horse herds in Montana, kayaked off the Antarctic Peninsula, biked through Croatia, snorkeled with manta rays in Hawaii, and helped refurbish a centuries-old mosque in Brunei… and that’s just in the last year! Their adventures included a meditation retreat in India where Todd astrally projected his spirit out of his body for a few minutes. He “came back” talking about a young lady back in Brighton who showed him how to live even though he was already “dead”. On their next swing back to the United States, Molly is the first person they plan to visit.

[bbu-on-the-side]

BBU Community Days

[Image description: A visual representation of the prompt list following in this post]

Here it is - the official prompt list for the very first BBU community days!

The event is open for BBU writers, roleplayers, or plain enjoyers of that world. If you wonder if you're "allowed" to take part, yes, you are. Includes BBU AUs and "BBU-adjacent" universes.

All prompts are suggestions, there's no reward for completionists and no need to do them all - this event is a success if it allows any of you to find and connect with other creators and to make new friends.

Looking forward!!

Rules and prompt descriptions under the cut

The prompts are structured in "days", but you can do them at any time; they'll be reblogged during the event duration.

This blog @bbu-on-the-side will do its best to reblog what you either @ this blog in or#bbucommunity! Please also #day1, #day2... according to the prompt you chose.

One overall thing I'll be strict about is to indicate any nsfw content. This sort of content is welcome in this event, but readers should be able to make an informed decision if they want to click on that read more or not.

Community prompts

* {Day 1: Introduction} Introduce yourself and give a little overview about your BBU writing / creations. If you want, this is the moment to advertise yourself!

* {Day 6: Inspiration} How did you find the BBU, and how did you go down the rabbit hole? Are there any particular writers, characters or stories that inspired your journey?

* {Day 11: Exploration} Is there a premise you like to follow in BBU settings? A focus on a specific character dynamic that you want to explore deeply? Themes that resonate with you? What drew you to BBU, and what made you stay?

Worldbuilding prompts

* {Day 2: Questions} What's an open question you've always asked yourself about the BBU? Ask it, and see if other writers have found answers to it!

* {Day 7: Details} What's a detail of BBU worldbuilding you always wanted to dive into? (Newly emerging professions, legal aspects, pet fashion, economic side effects, societal aspects, facility workplace ethic, history, safehouse organisation, deconditioning…) Do it now, and ramble a bit!

* {Day 12: Decisions} What is something special about your setting (be it BBU or adjacent)? Does it differ from the "standard"? In what way does this decision influence the story you're telling?

Writing prompts

* {Day 3} Discipline

* {Day 8} Barcode

* {Day 13} Safety

Showcasing prompts

* {Day 4: Facility} Make a post linking a favorite facility / training piece (one by you, one by someone else) with commentary on what makes these ones special to you

* {Day 9: Owner} Make a post linking a favorite piece during captivity / time with owner (one by you, one by someone else) with commentary on what makes these ones special to you

* {Day 14: Recovery} Make a post linking a favorite recovery piece (one by you, one by someone else) with commentary what makes these ones special to you

Creation prompts

* {Day 5: Meme/Prompts} Create a BBU meme (that would work in-universe or as a meta commentary - your call!), or curate a little BBU prompt list to inspire fellow writers, artists or roleplayes!

* {Day 10: In-BBU-media} Create a piece of media that could exist within the BBU - everything from twitter post to newspaper feature to ad transcript to WRU press release! Pet lib call for action to desperate owner self help reddit thread. Go wild!

* {Day 15: Collaboration} Create any piece of BBU content together with another community member! Could be a crossover scene with both your characters, a collaboratively developed concept, an illustration to their story, an RP, … Anything goes, as long as you worked together within the BBU!

[raleigh-edward]

How do you think RC makes money despite all these diamond rushes? They have increased the frequency of dr also does it not cause them loss?

Hello anon, I thought a bit about this and have arrived at my own conclusion regarding the same. Now this is what I personally inferred so I advise you to take it with a grain of salt.

The revenue generation model of newspapers and magazines is the closest to these free apps for gaming or otherwise.

Newspapers usually cost a few cents, which is minimal considering the amount of money that goes into production which also includes the salaries of the employees. Even if the newspaper has a million subscribers, their total added expenditure is nowhere close to the production investment.

So one might think how are these publication houses making profits? It is simple, their subscribers are not only their customers but their products. Allow me to elaborate, advertising agencies agree to put their advertisements in newspapers and magazines based on their reach which means their total number of subscribers. The publication houses charge generous amounts for these advertisements and that becomes their primary source of revenue.

I believe this is RC's revenue model too. They make money primarily through paid advertisements on their app. The readers who spend money on in-app purchases are very less so that amount is not exactly contributing significantly to RC's revenue.

Diamond rush events contrary to popular opinion are actually profitable for RC. Why? Readers are very likely to read, replay and re-read books during diamond rush events, hence this is the time when there is the most traffic on their app, which works as a perfect incentive for potential advertisers.

It is highly unlikely that a corporation would take a decision that harms them economically, if Diamond rush events were actually causing them losses they wouldn't have increased their frequency.

Based on their financial documents that are public, they seem to be making minimal profits, but I can assure you that they are making enough to stay afloat. If they were to actually capitalise on the ad revenue model to its fullest potential like most western apps do, they might even be able to increase their profits while simultaneously keeping diamond rush events for non-paying users.

Apologies for the lengthy answer, but I hope this helped!

[soranihimawari]

Needle & Thread

An Azumane Asahi x reader short

Word count: 2.2k+

Rating:AAF (azumane asahi fluff)

Warnings: none, a little ooc moments from Sawamura & Suga//unspecified gender!// fluff

I just wanted to say perhaps Azumane having a crush is something I’d love to read about every once in a while. Also, this is how I think he hypes himself up mentally when yn is around

All was well in the home economics lecture hall at the community college you were attending this semester. The fashion course you had signed up for had been advertised as an introductory one and though you may have been one of the youngest designers among your peers, yet your desk mate was another student definitely from another part of your city.

You were always intrigued by both his designs as much as he was enamored with your use of unique materials when you had much simpler projects due. Perhaps it was your use of felt and wirework that inspired him to create an ornate jewelry set for that week and maybe he inspired you to create a three piece suit in hunter green and navy. You each had received praise from both your peers as well as the professor who hummed with a curt smile during the review.

Now, as the chimes on campus begin their late night tune to announce the hour, you settle into your seat and wonder about the young man whose seat has remained vacant for the second week in a row. It’s not like him to be absent, you wonder. Yet you recall him mentioning his volleyball team had won all necessary matches in their prefecture. Your professor drones on with the attendance list since art courses, especially design ones at that, where time is of the essence. Your sketchbook along with your personal tablet holds the keys of the past designs you had breathed into existence. As your attention is drawn back to the front of the classroom’s whiteboard, a singular word was written there: BIRDS.

The hell are we supposed to do with this? You think. Funnily enough, as you were zoning out, your hand had already picked up the stylus and you had already begun making several shapes that resembled crows’ feathers. The fact you remembered your deskmate had a little white crow plush on his sewing fabric bag to show ‘school pride’ must have been the silver lining when you continued to sketch a few more key components for the dress you will attempt to create.

An hour goes by and pretty soon you had a more refined sketch of the completed outfit. Your professor stops by your desk as you add a few more details thus tapping their index finger on the desk to announce their presence. You slower your stylus strokes of color to give your professor your undivided attention.

“Fascinating design as always,” they say.

“Thanks,” you reply. Holding up your tablet, you give a brief summary of the birds you chose to showcase with the completion of the project.

“Hmm… a crow and a pheasant, huh?”

“Yeah, I was thinking maybe adding some hints of sapphire satin or even amethyst tulle to the bodice…”

“Given your design, I suggest a more pliable fabric, but if sophisticated chic is what you were aiming for, try playing with nylon and pleather fabrics for those details,” was their advice.

You nod.

“By the way, y/n,” the professor pauses before moving on to the next workstation. “I heard Azumane-san’s team won against Inarizaki today. You ought to text him later.”

You feel the blush creeping up the back of your neck as you realize your professor’s intention on feeding you that intel. Your brain seems to have short circuited as you hear their voice give other advice a few work stations ahead. Nervously swallowing the pooled saliva in your mouth, you feign a cough as you shake your head side to side to reset your focus.

Class wraps up about twenty or so minutes later. On the train ride home, you decide to search the intramural results. There in the black white newspaper sports pages for the Tokyo City News you see the results from today’s match. You swipe that article away and immediately open your text message chain with Azumane, A.

It’s forty-five minutes post the Karasuno coaches’ “Light’s Out” call when suddenly Azumane’s phone lights up with your name flashing across the screen. He immediately picks up though the others the ace shares the room with suddenly scramble to take possession of his phone.

“Oh ho? Is that text from the illustrious y/n?” Sugawara wriggles his eyebrow.

“Or is it from your mom this time reminding you to buy her a souvenir?” Sawamura teases in a light hearted tone.

The fact Sugawara brings up your name so casually causes Azumane’s ears to sort of turn a magenta hue.

“And so what if it’s y/n?”

He unlocks his phone to read the texts you sent him. The first was fine:

-Y/L/N, Y. (23:13): Professor Z told me you had a game today. Missed having you in class tonight. Congrats on winning against Inarizaki! :]

His phone vibrates in his hands again after staring at your text for about five more minutes. There is something about your cheerful demeanor radiating over there words you sent that make Azumane’s face flush—perhaps when he returns to class he’d muster up the courage to ask you to walk home together. Maybe even pick up some hot cocoa at the combini near the train station by the college.

-Y/L/N, Y. (23:25): Been home for about an hour or so now. You must be tired. Is it too late to call?

“So, before you mentally shut down for the night Asahi,” Sugawara sits up on his mat with his arms crossed over his chest. “What did your crush say this time?”

“Suga!” Sawamura used his eldest sibling's tone this time thus forcing a playful yet sincere apology to come from the vice captain. “Ya can’t just blurt out facts like that aloud. I mean sure our Asahi is tall, devilishly handsome, and our charming ace finally has someone who caught his eye…”

“Y/N w-wants to call me,” Azumane’s voice is a mixture of excitement and nerves. It’s eerily similar to the first time he attended practice again in the dingy gym back on campus, yet glancing back to the way he was then versus now. He slides his phone in his pajamas pocket while reaching for his hoodie at the foot of his bed.

With an abrupt and politely uttered, “I’m headed out for a bit.” Azumane grabs his hoodie and slides the balcony door open. He slips on a pair on house slippers as well. Tokyo and the neighborhood they’re staying in seems to glow in the wintery haze. Once the door is closed behind him, Azumane taps his reply. He presses the green arrow only to be greeted with a delivered message under his reply. A couple minutes go by as the winter wind whistles through the barren tree branches in surrounding the hoteru when a familiar ringtone designated just for you reaches his ears.

Meanwhile, Sugawara and Sawamura updates the rest of the team of their ace’s latest installment rightfully dubbed by Yamaguchi: ‘love but make it fashion’. Even Kiyoko and Hitoka-chan were included in this team chat. Though by now most of the team had begun to drift off one by one prior to Azumane dialing your number.

Azumane breathes your name with a visible puff of air.

“Asahi,” there’s a cheerful register in your tired voice. It’s like a warm invitation to stay awake for a little while longer. “I’m surprised you’re still awake at this hour. Shouldn’t you be asleep by now?”

“Yeah, but I figured you could fill me in on what I missed in class today?”

“Oh,” you sound a bit disappointed. “Professor’s word today was BIRDS. It’s the theme for the next project.”

“Ah, I see.”

You hum into the receiver. “You played a really great game today. Saw some highlights on the late night sports recap on t.v. Almost makes me want to ditch classes tomorrow and cheer your team on, haha.”

He chuckles after regaining his composure because surely you’re flirting with him right now, yes? Absolutely.

“We play Nekoma next.”

You suppose it’s your turn to be a bit bold. A small smile tugs at your lips. You hear the wind whistling in the background.

“Is that an invitation I heard from my dear deskmate?”

“Yes.”

He hears you struggle with the sheets as you sit up bolt straight in your bed. A soft thud he imagines came from you clumsily hitting the back of your head on the wall by accident and a curse escapes your lips as you feel your heart beat increase.

“Smooth ass motherfucker,” you mutter through gritted teeth. “When do you play?”

Azumane on the other side leans against the railing trying to suppress his laughter. A few more minutes go by before your call ends with an open ended promise of attending the match in a few days time.

Come the morning, you awake with a bit of a headache. Your phone rests charging by the end table in your room along with a glass of water your parent typically leave behind before reporting for work. Across your bed on the wall located next to your computer desk is a rip off calendar themed with Chococat imagery. You realize you forgot to tear it off the night before, so as you mentally replay the conversation you had with your fashion course classmate, you hum blissfully to yourself until you pick up your phone with wide eyes.

“Oh shit!” you whisper yell into the air. “No way! It can’t be that late. Right? Arugh!”

Kicking off your sheets and tearing off the date off the calendar, you rush into the hallway to wash your face in the guest bathroom of your residence. Afterwards, you decide to dress rather quickly opting for the jeans and crew neck sweater along with a beanie to keep your ears warm when you leave. You knew attempting a day trip to Tokyo would be an ambitious endeavor, but if your parent can do it, so can you. You send a text quickly after sorting out a travel drawstring backpack complete with bottles of water, a few almond butter and jam sandwiches, your wireless headphones, your Canon AE-1 35mm camera, and external battery pack.

Leaving a note behind on the kitchen counter for your parent in case they would eventually blow up your phone like the first and last time you left for a day trip (to go shopping with materials at the beginning of the semester-long course) with a girl friend from your school.

The total amount of travel time to reach Tokyo, more specifically the sports arenas where the Intramural Spring Tournament for Volleyball was held, had been estimated to be a solid ninety-minute commute via trains. Apparently luck was on your side since most trains had been running on time. Renewing and purchasing the student monthly pass at the automated ticket kiosk had been a breeze and now you stand on the designated platform; you wonder if this rush of excitement and nerves will be as close as you’d ever feel to what Azumane felt when he (and by extension his team) walks on to the court. Once you arrive at your final stop (since your trip included two transfer trains), you walk off the up escalator and breathe the bustling capital city warming air. You see a sign for the local coffee haus: within a matter of fifteen minutes, you leave with a warmed bagel in a small brown bag and a cup of coffee. You follow a few cheerful students who came to cheer on their classmates; you figure you’re headed in the right direction when you bump into a voluptuous blonde who seems to have a very unique outfit despite the weather.

“Whoops, sorry miss,” you apologize as politely as you could.

The blonde raises an eyebrow at you as if to challenge you, then something changes in her demeanor as she extends her hand to you.

“You came to watch Karasuno beat Nekoma, right?”

You sip your coffee and nod. The bag with your bagel crinkles in your other hand.

“C’mon, I’ll take you to the arena where they’re playing. I’m gonna go cheer for my little brother,” she adds.

You bite into your bagel quickly before she calls out over her shoulder, “Tanaka Saeko. Call me Saeko-nei.”

“Y/L/N.”

The walk to the arena doors isn’t that far, nor is it too long. Saeko fills you in on what you had missed since the tournament began (or rather when she arrived with a few of the neighborhood ex-volleyball club members) to formulate the Karasuno cheer club. She had dubbed themselves that considering how the school was once considered powerhouse.

“Flightless crows?” you continue eating your bagel while pondering upon the insulting title. Saeko points to the banner hanging over the railing with the team’s motto: FLY. You crumple the now empty bag and toss it in the next trash bin while you still sip your beverage.

“Crows aren’t flightless creatures,” you mention to Saeko when she joins you in the second row of the bleachers. “They’re quite intelligent. Besides, a flock is known as a murder. How flightless were they?”

For once, the blonde remains quiet. She has a pensive look to her face, so much so that when other members of the neighborhood alumni come to join you two, one of them asks Saeko who you are.

“Oh, this is Y/L/N-san. They sort of bumped into me on the street on the way here, past the bakery. Mentioned they wanted to watch the match.”

“So you just tagged along?” the man with glasses and a kind smile asks. “Y’ know you shouldn’t really talk to strangers, haha.”

You shrug, mentioning that if it weren’t for his blonde friend you’d be even more lost and would probably be at the arena when a good chunk of the matches were done for the day. The man nods as he adjusts his glasses.

“I wanted to see what a classmate of mine does with his spare time. Attending fashion courses isn't cheap either,” you stick with the truth. “Besides, I go to a different school; one where a few of our sports team clubs were cut due to lack of funding. Unfortunately volleyball was one of them.”

“That’s awful, sorry to hear that,” the man continues. He turns to see Saeko busy conversing with another alum along with the rest of the drum line. “You want to sit here to stay a in the next section over? You might see your friend better from there.”

He points to the front row a few meters away close to the railing. It’s close enough to the side of the net where you would presume Azumane’s team would play.

Meanwhile, in the locker room provided for Karasuno today, an entirely different conversation was happening.

“Did Y/L/N contact you?” Nishinoya wonders.

“You better not freeze out there if you see ‘em,” Sawamura teases.

On the other side of the bench, two first years are having another tussle of words as well that had little and or nothing to do with trying to Azumane to calm down.

“Quit it boke!”

“You’re going to break my brain even more Bakayama!”

Azumane for the life of him decides to silence the room and his fellow teammates with a sharp squeak of confusion in a poor attempt to mask his incoming text tone. Funnily enough, though the majority of the club had already changed into their traditional ebony uniforms, hearing their ace squeak made them shut up rather quickly.

-Y/L/N, Y. (10:59): do your best. I know you and your team deserve to win, Azumane-san. Win or lose, you’re still an ace. [ : oh! And a damned good designer.

A strange sense of calm comes over Azumane when his shoulder receives a gentle yet affirming squeeze by Kiyoko who just nods with a small smile. Surely everyone knows of you, but considering how their friend currently stares at his sent reply to your message with a mere thumbs up emoji accompanied by a ‘Thenks’ line a child on the morning of their birthday, they knew they might need to cover for him for the first few plays of the match.

Lo and behold the telecasters begin their normal routine checks not too far from the court you’re standing above. The anchor men are having their microphones hooked on their lapels when a different chime to announce the hour goes off. You watch as both teams enter the court with to begin their warmup routines. It doesn’t take too long for you to open your bag to pull out your camera and watch as a few members of your classmate’s team take to the air to hit the airborne ball back over the net. Others on both sides of the court continue with their stretches. You snap a few photos here and there to test out the original settings, making adjustments as needed.

The game begins with a shrill call of a whistle. You hear the team chant and when you lower your camera for a split second, the player in the black jersey with a bright “2” on the front grabs Azumane’s attention; with a swift nod in your direction, your eyes meet briefly.

“Holy shit,” the ace who rarely curses suddenly becomes nervous all over again.

You just mouth out a quick “focus & excel,” with a raised fist.

And for once in his young adult life, Azumane Asahi chooses to embody the very definition of those words.

“Ready?” Sawamura asks him with a smirk.

“Let’s play,” Azumane chuckles preparing to receive the first serve of the match.

[16woodsequ]

Sunday Steve - Day Eleven

Things that would be new or unfamiliar to Steve in the 21st century, either due to the time period he grew up in, or his social-economic status and other such factors.

Day Eleven: Toilet Paper

People used many things as toilet paper before commercial toilet paper was available. As indoor plumbing became more common toilet paper became more necessary because pipes were not designed for almanac pages or newspapers.

In the late 1800s toilet paper was still a luxury but it was being developed. "In 1890, toilet paper started to look a lot more like stuff we’re used to seeing today. It came on a roll in perforated sheets. It was a tough sell though because no one wanted to admit to buying it. In Germany, a company called ‘ Hakle’ overcame the problem with the slogan “ask for a roll of Hakle if you don’t want to say toilet paper.” (Link)

Late 1800s toilet paper. 2500 sheets.

Charmin began marketing its toilet paper around its softness in 1928, as well as selling economy-sized packs of four rolls in 1932 (Link).

There were two types of toilet paper. Soft and hard. "The hard paper was more affordable and was very shiny on one side of it" (Link). Hard paper often had printed text on it (most of the examples I've found are British).

Every source I've found says that toilet paper began to be advertised as "splinter free" in the 1935. Most casual articles don't dig into what this actually means, but I found some ads for the infamous splinter free toilet paper.

Splinters resulted from the manufacturing process, and as you can see in the below images the splinters were usually very small. I haven't been able to find out how genuinely inconvenient this splinters were.

1930s toilet paper ad (Link) (Link)

You can see the various marketing methods for soft toilet paper, treating it like a medical issue and appealing to women.

You can also see 3 rolls being sold for 20-25 cents. I think that is very expensive for toilet paper in the 30s. I've found a source showing 2 rolls of Clifton toilet paper being sold for 9 cents in 1932. (Link) And this link shows 4 rolls of crepe toilet paper being sold for 19 cents in 1930 (Link is behind a pay wall but I managed to download the price list). I'm guessing the rolls in the splinter-free ads are soft toilet paper, and the cheaper examples I found are hard toilet paper.

1930 grocery price list. Toilet paper is the third item, listing four crepe rolls for 19 cents.

In 1940 one roll is being sold for 15 cents (Link), but it's not clear if this is soft or hard toilet paper. I'm guessing soft since it's almost the price of four rolls in 1930.

My guess is Steve paid around 9 cents for 2 (19 cents for 4) rolls of hard toilet paper. I doubt he bought soft toilet paper since it cost about 20-25 cents for 2-3 rolls. But I can't know the prices for sure.

One thing for sure is modern toilet paper is softer than the paper Steve would have bought. Britain didn't even start manufacturing 2-ply toilet paper until 1942. Over the years soft toilet paper become the norm (although institutions like schools often have thinner, harder paper).

Given this information, Steve would probably be used to buying harder, cheaper toilet paper for about 9 cents for 2 rolls/19 cents for 4 rolls. Soft 'expensive' toilet paper would be surprising as the norm, and I think he'd find our massive packs of toilet paper shocking. Although as we'll see, soldiers were provided Waldorf paper, which seems to be a more softer, expensive brand.

Army Toilet Paper

Soldiers were provided toilet paper with K-rations and later with C-rations. A soldier would get one accessory packet a day with either ration and it came with twelve sheets of Waldorf toilet paper.

(Link) Accessory packet with Waldorf toilet paper.

You may have seen the factoid that British soldiers were rationed 3 sheets of toilet paper per day compared to American soldiers having 22 sheets. I believe this is a misinterpretation of this book discussing the resources available to American soldiers on base in Britain (pg. 288). But after further research I think the actual number of sheets British soldiers got a day on the front was 4 sheets. (Link) American soldiers got 12 sheets included in their K-ration. (Link)

If a soldier ran out of toilet paper they most likely had to make do. I've seen stories of pages from books being used, or even paper bills. (Link)

Bonus

First paper towels sold 1931 (Link).

1936 paper towel ad

Facial tissue paper originated from gas mask filters in World War One. Kleenex were marketed as a cold cream and makeup remover in the 20s and began being marketed for colds in the 30s. (Link)

1930 ad for Kleenex for 25 cents.

Personally, I don't think Steve would have spent money on either of these things, but they did exist.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tom Toles

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 26, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 27, 2024

Yesterday, in a long story about “the petty feud between the [New York Times] and the White House,” Eli Stokols of Politico suggested that the paper’s negative coverage of President Joe Biden came from the frustration of its publisher, A. G. Sulzberger, at Biden’s refusal to do an exclusive interview with the paper. Two people told Stokols that Sulzberger’s reasoning is that only an interview with an established paper like the New York Times “can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.” 

For his part, Stokols reported, Biden’s frustration with the New York Times reflects “the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organization catering to an elite audience,” and their conviction that the newspaper is not taking seriously the need to protect democracy. 

A spokesperson for the New York Times responded to the story by saying the idea that it has skewed its coverage out of pique over an interview is “outrageous and untrue,” and that the paper will continue to cover the president “fully and fairly.”

Today, Biden sat for a live interview of more than an hour with SiriusXM shock jock Howard Stern. Writer Kurt Andersen described it as a “*Total* softball interview, mostly about his personal life—but lovely, sweet, human, and Biden was terrific, consistently clear, detailed, charming, moving. Which was the point. SO much better than his opponent could do.”

Also today, the Treasury Department announced that the pilot program of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that enabled taxpayers to file their tax returns directly with the IRS for free had more users than the program’s stated goal, got positive ratings, and saved users an estimated $5.6 million in fees for tax preparation. The government had hoped about 100,000 people would use the pilot program; 140,803 did.

Former deputy director of the National Economic Council Bharat Ramamurti wrote on social media, “Of all the things I was lucky enough to work on, this might be my favorite. You shouldn’t have to pay money to pay your taxes. As this program continues to grow, most people will get pre-populated forms and be able to file their taxes with a few clicks in a few minutes.” Such a system would look much like the system other countries already use. 

Also today, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Williams-Sonoma will pay a record $3.17 million civil penalty for advertising a number of products as “Made in USA” when they were really made in China and other countries. This is the largest settlement ever for a case under the “Made in USA” rule. Williams-Sonoma will also be required to file annual compliance certifications. 

FTC chair Lina Khan wrote on social media: “Made in USA fraud deceives customers and punishes honest businesses. FTC will continue holding to account businesses that misrepresent where their product[s] are manufactured.” 

In another win for the United Auto Workers (UAW), the union negotiated a deal today with Daimler Trucks over contracts for 7,300 Daimler employees in four North Carolina factories. The new contracts provide raises of at least 25% over four years, cost of living increases, and profit sharing. This victory comes just a week after workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to join the UAW. 

Today was the eighth day of Trump’s criminal trial for his efforts to interfere with the 2016 election by paying to hide negative information about himself from voters and then falsifying records to hide the payments. David Pecker, who ran the company that published the National Enquirer tabloid, finished his testimony. 

In four days on the stand, Pecker testified that he joined Michael Cohen and others in killing stories to protect Trump in the election. Trump’s longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff took the stand after Pecker, and testified that both Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels were in Trump’s contacts. Next up was Gary Farro, a bank employee who verified banking information that showed how Michael Cohen had hidden payments to Daniels in 2016.

Once again, Trump appeared to be trying to explain away his lack of support at the trial, writing on his social media channel that the courthouse was heavily guarded. “Security is that of Fort Knox,” he wrote, “all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial….” But CNN’s Kaitlan Collins immediately responded: “Again, the courthouse is open [to] the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on [trial] days, is easily accessible.”

Dispatch Politics noted today that when co-chairs Michael Whatley and Lara Trump and senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita took over the Republican National Committee (RNC), they killed a plan to open 40 campaign offices in 10 crucial states and fired 60 members of the RNC staff. According to Dispatch Politics, Trump insisted to the former RNC chair that he did not need the RNC to work on turning out voters. He wanted the RNC to prioritize “election integrity” efforts. 

The RNC under Trump has not yet developed much infrastructure or put staff into the states. It appears to have decided to focus only on those that are key to the presidential race, leaving down-ballot candidates on their own. 

While Trump appears to be hoping to win the election through voter suppression or in the courts, following his blueprint from 2020, Biden’s campaign has opened 30 offices in Michigan alone and has established offices in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Florida.

Finally today, news broke that in her forthcoming book, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem wrote about shooting her 14-month-old dog because it was “untrainable” and dangerous. “I hated that dog,” she wrote, and she recorded how after the dog ruined a hunting trip, she shot it in a gravel pit. Then she decided to kill a goat that she found to be “nasty and mean” as well as smelly and aggressive. She “dragged him to the gravel pit,” too, and “put him down.”  

Noem has been seen as a leading contender for the Republican vice presidential nomination on a ticket with Trump, and it seems likely she was trying to demonstrate her ruthlessness—a trait Trump appears to value—as a political virtue. But across the political spectrum, people have expressed outrage and disgust. In The Guardian, Martin Pengelly said her statement, “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story,” was “a contender for the greatest understatement of election year.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

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[journalofanobody]

A Yale professor suggested that Japan's old people should kill themselves in a mass suicide, and it made him a celebrity

By Joshua Zitser, Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/

A Yale professor said in an interview that mass suicide could solve Japan's aging population issue.

His controversial opinions have made him popular with Japan's youth, per The New York Times.

Yusuke Narita now has a large social media following and even appeared in an energy drink advert.

A Yale professor who suggested that mass suicide could be the solution to Japan's aging population has gained celebrity status among the country's youth, even appearing in an advertisement for energy drinks, The New York Times reported.

Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale University, has argued for the controversial solution to Japan's aging population in several public appearances and interviews, The Times reported.

Japan has the highest proportion of elderly citizens of any country in the world, and the percentage of the population aged over 65 has steadily increased since the 1950s.

Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the country was on the verge of a crisis.

In an interview with an online Japanese news program in December 2021, Narita said a "pretty clear solution" would be the introduction of mass suicide, or mass "seppuku" of the elderly.

Seppuku refers to the ritual suicide of samurai, which historically involved self-disembowelment.

When pressed by a teenager on his mass seppuku theory last year, Narita referred to a scene in the 2019 horror film "Midsommar" in which an elderly person is sent to die by suicide by jumping off a cliff, according to The Times.

"Whether that's a good thing or not, that's a more difficult question to answer," Narita said, per the newspaper. "So if you think that's good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that."

He has also discussed euthanasia, a politically contentious debate in Japan, saying that making assisted suicide mandatory in the future will "come up in discussion," The Times reported.

In speaking of euthanasia, Narita has sometimes mentioned his mother, who had an aneurysm when she was 19, describing how caring for her costs him 100,000 yen ($755) a month, per the newspaper.

The controversial positions have worried some Japanese policymakers, with critics concerned that it could lead to the kind of public feeling that resulted in a 1948 eugenics law, The Times reported.

The Eugenic Protection Law allowed for voluntary and involuntary sterilizations of people with hereditary diseases, mental illnesses, and intellectual disabilities.

Despite his detractors, Narita has gained a large following in Japan among young people who feel like the older generations are stunting their economic progress. 

He has more than 550,000 followers on Twitter, regularly appears on online Japanese shows, has been on magazine covers, and appeared in an advertisement for energy drinks, The Times said.

Speaking to The Times, Narita said his comments have largely been taken out of context, and his focus is on the dominance of "tycoons" in Japan.

He also told the newspaper that using the terms "mass suicide" and "mass seppuku" was intended only as "abstract metaphors," adding that he has since stopped using those phrases.

Narita did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

[mariacallous]

The times of largesse towards Hungary’s media regarded as close to the ruling Fidesz party appear to be over, as print newspapers and niche publications close, staff numbers are cut, and costs rationalised in the face of a mounting economic crisis.

“We are witnessing a trend of serious cost-cutting in the Fidesz-close media since the elections in April,” Daniel Szalay, editor-in-chief of Hungary’s media-specialising news site Media1, tells BIRN.

Examples abound. Print editions of historical newspapers, like Magyar Hirlap or Figyelo, were scrapped from July, while staff at regional dailies, like Delmagyar or Zalai Hirlap, once important propaganda tools of the government, have been reduced to a minimum.

Elsewhere, Pesti TV, an aggressively right-wing television station intended for young viewers, was also closed during the summer. And even the prime minister’s personal favourite – and the country’s only – sports daily, Nemzeti Sport, had to be bailed out by the state with 3 billion forints (7.5 million euros) during the autumn, while FourFourTwo, a sports magazine run by Orban’s favourite journalist Gyorgy Szolossy, simply went out of business.

While the pillars of government propaganda remain solid, the country’s dire economic situation no longer permits the funding of non-essential media, experts say. “The state is in trouble,” Szalay says, “which means that even companies close to the government need to tighten their belts.”

But that does not mean Fidesz is prepared to give up its tight control of the media, rather it is changing tack. “The election in April 2022 proved that a massive campaign via social media is powerful enough, there is no need to fund dozens of media outlets for years,” Agnes Urban, a media researcher from Mertek Media Monitor, tells BIRN.

Urban refers to the right-wing propaganda outlet Megafon, which aggressively disseminated pro-government messaging on social media, mostly Facebook and YouTube, to great effect during the campaign for April’s parliamentary election, which Fidesz won by a landslide.

Megafon was established in 2020 to train influencers who could help disseminate government propaganda and to strengthen the voice of those displaying “national sentiments” on social media. However, it quickly became one of the main public communications tools for the government, spending over 1 billion forints (2.5 millions euros) on Facebook advertising alone.

Although Istvan Kovacs, founder of Megafon and strategic director of the government-supportive Center for Fundamental Rights, has denied that Megafon ever received any taxpayer money, the independent news service Telex.hu revealed it is indirectly funded by the Cabinet Office led by Antal Rogan – dubbed the government’s Propaganda Ministry – which channels the money via a civic foundation.

“Investing 2-3 billion forints in businesses like Megafon is perfectly enough to win elections,” Urban claims.

She forecasts that print newspapers of all stripes will continue to go out of business as part of a global trend, but Fidesz will maintain its funding of TV and radio outlets and social media advertising. “But the government evidently lacks the money to finance non-essential ‘friendly businesses’,” she adds.