#but still subscribed because you didn't actively insult him

[beardedmrbean]

California’s largest daily newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, announced on Tuesday that it is laying off at least 115 people -roughly a quarter of its staff- as it continues to hemorrhage money.

The layoffs were announced in a newsroom-wide email from L.A. Times president and Chief Operating Officer Chris Argentieri, according to reporter Matt Pearce.

“This total, while devastating, is nonetheless far lower than the total number of Guild layoffs initially expected last week,” Pearce posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Last Friday, members of the Los Angeles Times Guild, the union representing newspaper staffers, staged a one-day walkout to protest the anticipated job cuts.

“Slashing a quarter of the newsroom is devastating by any measure – to our members and their families, to our morale, to the quality of our journalism, to the bond with our audience, and to the communities that depend on our work,” the Guild said in a statement. “We believe our decision to go on strike saved scores of newsroom jobs today.”

Tuesday’s layoffs come after the paper slashed 74 positions in July, the union said.

In an article published in the L.A. Times on Tuesday, the newspaper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, said the cuts were needed to account for losses totaling $30 million to $40 million a year due to declining subscriptions and advertising revenue.

“Today’s decision is painful for all, but it is imperative that we act urgently and take steps to build a sustainable and thriving paper for the next generation. We are committed to doing so,” Soon-Shiong said.

Among the senior editors laid off were the paper’s Washington bureau chief and deputy Washington bureau chief, its business editor and music editor.

L.A. Times video game industry reporter Sarah Parvini was also let go.

“It’s been an honor to work at the paper for nearly a decade, launching a video game beat, helping to win Pulitzers, covering diverse communities. To my colleagues, [the L.A. Times Guild], readers: Thank you,” Parvini tweeted.

Soon-Shiong and his family purchased the L.A. Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune from Tribune Publishing for $500 million in 2018.

Layoffs and buyouts have hit a wide swath of the news industry over the past year. The Washington Post, NPR, CNN and Vox Media are among the many companies hit.

An estimated 2,681 news industry jobs were lost through the end of November, according to the employment firm of Challenger, Gray and Christmas. That was more than the full years of 2022 and 2021.

[pynkhues]

Another fanfic writer got ran out of the fandom this weekend because of a 'guilty by association' harassment campaign. She wrote fic of Loustat switching and having a very Canonverse relationship, and a teenager started insulting her writing and inciting harassment by others until she quit writing. The allegation was she was mutuals with someone else who was assumed to be racist, which is flimsy enough, but the real reason was obviously that she wrote popular, beloved fics that did not subscribe to the Hypermasculine Daddy Lestat and Hyperfeminine Housewife Louis Fanon.

This fandom is a horrible place and I am so glad you're still with us and haven't let these people bully you into silence, Sophie. It's so awful.

I'm really, really sorry to hear that, anon. Can I ask who the author is? I'd like to have a look and maybe send them a message or a comment if I can. Hopefully they might be a bit like me though and come back after giving themselves some time and buffer.

It's all pretty hideous behaviour though, and mm - - okay, you know. It's been a few weeks since it all went down with me now, and I've had a lot of people reach out very kindly in DMs, and also had to have y'know, I guess I'd say offbeat, haha, and awkward and heavy conversations with people in my real life, both personally and professionally (although I will say it's kind of been a relief, and half my family has already turned it into a running joke. My mum, who was the first person I told, watched Disclaimer after I recommended it to her, and she keeps texting me photos of the Kevin Kline stalker character with 'your erotic fanfiction haters' and asking me if I'm sure I didn't kill somebody's son, lmao), but I've been thinking about it all a lot, and - - yeah.

Look, this is going to sound off topic, but bear with me for a minute, alright? Over the last two weeks, purely by coincidence, I listened to the Behind the Bastards episodes on Rush Limbaugh. I love that podcast in general, and those two episodes are fascinating, and really worth listening to if you're at all interested in the media landscape's pivot to the right in the last few years. They really explore who he is as a person, his ascent in radio, how he managed that ascent, and the space he created in media which would after him be filled by Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan,et al.

One of the ways that he did this was by being loud, but also presenting himself as trustworthy, and really the only person anyone needed to listen to. He was a smart guy, anyway, anyone could hear that, and if people listened to him, they'd be smart too. One of the first majorly successful runs of this was his campaign against the show Murphy Brown, which is about a woman who is a single mother and a lawyer, successful, bright, and who interacts with a lot of gay people in different capacities in her every day life. Murphy Brown is famous for being one of the first shows to normalise both successful single motherhood, and LGBTQI+ people as varied members of our communities.

Now, Limbaugh positioned the show as offensive, and anyone who liked it as morally wrong, but more than that, he positioned his opinion as the only right one, and he would actively tell people not only to not watch the show, but to not engage with anyone who might have an opinion of it that wasn't his own. He did this by telling people they would be stupid, or 'missing something' if they didn't follow his obvious intellect, that they didn't need to think about it themselves, because he would do the thinking for them, Smart Person That He Was.

And so I'm like, y'know, listening to the podcast on my commute to work, and I just kind of think - - huh. Because it's kind of familiar, right? And I got thinking about how all those people were reblogging my 'vile anti black post' and telling all their followers to block me, thus trying to control their followers ability to see my posts, and presumably the posts of others, since they seem to do that a bit, and then I noticed that those same people trying to ensure everyone blocked me.....didn't block me themselves. And it suddenly just clicked into place.

Fascist rhetoric has come to fandom. Per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

In simplest terms, fascism refers to a specific way of organizing a society: under fascism, a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people in that society, and allows no dissent or disagreement. 

Fascism is more than just political, it's a philosphy and a mindset. Rush Limbaugh was a media figure, and he was a fascist, and interestingly - importantly - he did not believe in most of what he said. What he wanted was power, success, control, an audience, and to dictate the rhetoric in the media landscape because that granted him that power, success, control, and audience.

And look, I'm not saying these people attacking others with different opinions in the fandom are fascists, but they're using a fascist playbook. Their criticisms, harassment campaigns, threats to dox, actual doxxing, threats to not only involve but criminally endanger children (which I have since learnt my nephews were not the first target of - someone in this fandom who I won't name reached out to tell me they'd similarly threatened to send things to her children) (also I've seen posts that the people who initially were vocally strawmanning my arguments wouldn't do that, and sure, maybe they wouldn't, but all I can say is that if I knew members of my own corner of the fandom were threatening to find and send porn to any minor, let alone children as young as 7, I would be loudly and outspokenly condemning it), and attempts to suppress anything they don't agree with, is fascist behaviour.

They are allowing no dissent, no disagreement, and actively interfering with people's real lives to achieve that.

I don't think this will make any difference to them, I think some might not know what they're doing, but I think a lot do at this point, and I guess what I want to do in this post is just to share what I personally think that it is, and I guess - - mm, not offer words of advice exactly, but perhaps offer some gentle encouragement. I'd encourage anyone in this fandom - hell, everyone in life right now, given the state of things - to approach anyone who tells you there is only one way to create, only one way to enjoy something, or interpret something, or only a select group of people that you should listen to, with caution at the very least.

Fandom - again, hell, community - has always, to me, been about encouraging others to explore and engage with it on their own terms. Diversity of opinion is good, it's healthy, different takes on characters should be exciting, different iterations in fanart and fanfiction is a celebration of the fact that we bring our own stories to, well, stories, and anyone telling you who you should or shouldn't engage with without having a healthy, equal conversation about why you shouldn't engage with them, should be given respectful, reasonable doubt.

Anyway, I'm sure this'll piss people off again, but y'know, I don't really care about them at this point. I think their behaviour is ugly, antithetical to what fandom has always been about, and frankly, I think it's antisocial. I do care about you guys though, and I don't know. I hope this perhaps sheds a little bit of light for you in the same way that I felt it shed a little bit of light for me, or at least makes you think a little bit more broadly about what this desire to control is a part of, and how to engage (or rather, not) with it. But more than anything, I hope that author's okay, and that they've made friends in this fandom like I have who can offer their support.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday.

Castrated men live longer.

It only takes 0.2 seconds to fall in love.

Research shows vaping can shrink testicles and cause sperm counts to plummet.

New scientific research suggests finding new scientific discoveries is getting harder.

Not having enough sleep per day leads to a desire for sex, depression and alcoholism.

You are 13.8% more likely to die on your birthday than on any other day of the year.

Ferrero, the maker of Nutella, uses about 25% of the world's hazelnut supply.

In a lifetime, the average person will spend over five years of their life on social media.

Canada’s largest cemetery is plagued by groundhogs who keep digging up the bones.

People who sleep late have more mental stamina and can outperform early risers.

Steve Jobs was adopted. His biological father was Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian Muslim.

At least 1/7th of subscription service revenue is from people who forgot they were subscribed.

People who read books live an average of two years longer than those who don't, according to a Yale study.

Studies have shown that people who frequently use emojis in text messages have more active dating and sex lives.

In 2023, Canadian residents were shocked to see an enormous phallic iceberg float past their home town of Dildo.

A Japanese woman was having laser surgery on her cervix when she farted, igniting the laser and setting herself on fire.

A study found that marrying an older man reduces a woman's lifespan, but marrying a younger man reduces it even more.

The world’s first nudist colony, founded in India in 1891, was called The Fellowship Of The Naked Trust. (Good job Tolkien didn't name it!)

The most powerful way to win an argument is by asking questions. You'd be surprised at how it can make people see the flaws in their logic.

Athletic shoes are called ‘sneakers’ because, when they were invented, people used them to their advantage to move around quietly.

Walking for just one hour twice a week increases the size of the hippocampus, the brain area in charge of verbal memory and learning.

The word ‘dude’ was first used in the 1800s as an insult towards young men who were too concerned with keeping up with the latest fashions.

The best thing in life is finding someone who knows all your flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses, and still thinks you're completely amazing.

In Detroit, a man was arrested after installing and bolting a marijuana vending machine to the front of his home and selling weed to his neighbourhood. He was making over $2,000 a day.

Movie theatres in Iceland, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey and India often have a 10-minute intermission in the middle of the movie, giving viewers a chance to visit the concession stands or use the restroom.

Diddy has reassigned his publishing rights back to all the artists and songwriters who helped build Bad Boy Entertainment. Ma$e, Faith Evans, The LOX, 112 and the estate of the Notorious B.I.G. have already signed agreements to regain those rights.

The TV show ‘Dallas’, about the family of an oil tycoon from Texas, was named by a producer. When the writer protested saying that, “Houston is the oil city,” the producer said, “Who knows that? Who cares? Do you want to watch a show called ‘Houston’?”

Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca in Star Wars actually had to be accompanied by crew members dressed in brightly coloured vests while filming in the forest of the Pacific Northwest. This was to ensure that he wasn't shot by hunters who might mistake him for Bigfoot.

In 1940, the Nazis sent 12 spies to Britain to pave the way for an invasion. However, the spies were captured, partly due to their poor knowledge of British customs and lack of fluency in English. Two spies were arrested for biking on the wrong side of the road, another for ordering alcohol at 10 a.m.

The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is an area in London where an emissions standard based charge is applied to non-compliant road vehicles. Plans were announced by London Mayor Boris Johnson in March 2015 for the zone to come into operation in September 2020. Sadiq Khan, the subsequent mayor, introduced the zone on April 8th, 2019.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.