A Mass Shooting in Maine

+ Meta took down an important Instagram account, & have we reached PEAK celebrity memoir?

Oct 26, 2023

Ok first of all why did it take me SO long to take up Normy/ Ruby’s recommendation to start playing Connections??? I JUST started playing it, and even though I wish I could do it more than once a day, if you’re feeling a Wordle-sized hole in your life or just love a little online word game, this is THE ONE.

In the meantime, I’m currently experiencing the WORST writer’s block!? Not so much for the newsy (there is always news and interesting things to look at and talk about) but for our BOOK! It’s like… I have so much to say, all the time, about all the things, and I know the exact topics I need to write about, but as soon as I sit down to do it… BOOM, NO THOUGHTS! SO! If you have any tips for dealing with this, I’m begging you to please send me them 🥺

AND here’s a pic of my Mum’s little dog Max and what I thought was an EXCELLENT pun from her:

A Mass Shooting in Maine
Meta took town the biggest Instagram account sharing media from Gaza
Australia launches a three-year project to address toxic masculinity on social media
Culture Vulture: Britney, Jada, & Reaching Peak Celebrity Memoir
The Shit Show: Toxic Masculinity in Australia & Trans Rights in Japan

A Mass Shooting in Maine

I hate when I have to start the newsy/ your day with news like this, but unforch, this world we live in. Yesterday at least 18 people were killed and 13 injured in mass shootings at a restaurant and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine. At the time of writing this, a manhunt is still underway for a suspect, but a person of interest has been identified as a 40-year-old who should be “considered armed and dangerous,” and is a certified firearms instructor and member of the US Army Reserve. The person of interest also has reported having mental health issues, been committed to a mental health facility this summer, and has threatened to carry out a mass shooting before.

This is an updating story, so I’ll keep you in the loop, but (and it doesn’t even need to be said) this is the 565th mass shooting in the United States this year alone, and there remains to be no excuses for it.

Meta took town the biggest Instagram account sharing media from Gaza

@Eye.on.palestine - the biggest Instagram account reporting media from within Gaza - has gone dark on Instagram after Meta said its “security staff had detected a possible hacking attempt on pro-Palestinian accounts with millions of followers.” The company have said that they’re currently trying to reach the account owners.

“These accounts were initially locked for security reasons after signs of compromise, and we’re working to make contact with the account owners to ensure they have access,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement.
“We did not disable these accounts because of any content they were sharing,” he said.

This comes at a time when there have been reports of shadowbanning on pro-Palestinian content and users are calling for the account - which was getting information to over 6 million people - to be reinstated.

Will keep you in the loop if it goes back up!!

Australia launches a three-year project to address toxic masculinity on social media

The federal government in Australia has announced it will fund a three-year trial project tackling harmful messages of toxic masculinity on social media. It’s called the ‘healthy masculinities trial project’ and it will receive $3.5 million “to run both face-to-face and online presentations at schools, sporting clubs and other community organisations to teach school-aged boys about respectful relationships not just with their peers, but also with themselves.”

It’s going to start with boys as young as five years old, and the program is meant to counteract the messages being sent out and circulated by online influencers like *shudders* Andrew Tate.

I think this is actually super interesting - I feel like last year (was it last year? What is TIME) when the internet was (rightly) freaking out about Andrew Tate we had a BUNCH of teachers in our DMs telling us how worried they were for the boys in their classes, and how useful something like this could be. Obv it’s just a trial, but at least it’s something?

PS I talked about this on The Shit Show this week if you wanna know more!

Culture Vulture: Britney, Jada, & Reaching Peak Celebrity Memoir

This week on Culture Vulture Bel and I (yes Bel!!! London Laura is bogged down, oh just STUDYING AT OXFORD???) chat about all the tea from the new memoirs being released at the moment. From Jada and Will’s separation/non-separation to Britney’s tell-all about Justin Timberlake (and anyone else who wronged her), we fill you in on it ALL. Then we go into whether we’ve reached peak celebrity memoir, and whether they’ll look the same in the future now that there’s not much mystery left to share in a memoir (because we’re all sharing it all over social media these days!!!) I HIGHLY rec as a listen for this week!

The Shit Show: Toxic Masculinity in Australia & Trans Rights in Japan

Ok, first things first can you PLZ reply to this email with something I can forward to Squish begging him to join me on the pod every week again? This week I was on the mic on my own (he’s on holiday you see) and it was NOT the same, but I gotta tell you, it’s still a pretty informative episode. First I chat about a new initiative to combat toxic masculinity in Australia (as I wrote about above), then a step forward for transgender rights in Japan, AND a good news story about a new turtle species named after Steve Irwin 🥺