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Sunfish Are In The News

I came across this interesting Tumblr post the other day. And I’ll admit, I was curious. So I went over to Google, typed “sunfish,” and clicked on over to the news section. And boy am I glad I did! There is some serious sunfish drama kicking off in Wareham, Massachusetts right now.

I then clicked into a very helpful MassLive article about the controversy. Basically, there’s a giant sunfish (or mola) swimming off the coast of Wareham right now. If you’re from New England and reading this and need more cultural information, Wareham is like one of those towns right where the South Shore meets the Cape, if you know what I mean 👀. The MassLive article also includes what is maybe the bitchiest Facebook post from a public agency I’ve ever read. When I say I live for insane local Facebook bickering, I mean it. I LIVE THIS FOR THIS.

Just imagine this being shouted at you in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot. If you click into the comment section, it’s unfortunately been overwhelmed both by people who go and shitpost on viral Facebook posts and weird fish people. A very passionate woman named Donna wrote:

“For god’s sake people!!! Nature can not even be nature because of the ignorance of people!!! Step back, take a look and feel blessed that you have seen this magnificent creature!! So very sick of you people and your fear! I am sure if it was ocean pollution floating by you wouldn’t do a thing, not one thing! Take those moments you spent calling police to pick up ocean trash!??”

OK, Donna, chill.

This is not the first time a person from Massachusetts has gone viral due to the overwhelming majesty of the sunfish. A guy from Malden went nuts over one in 2015. Apparently they’re as big as a freaking baby whale.

Check Out This Thing

My sister sent this to me the other day. She went through a brief Joel Osteen phase in college. We’re all very proud of her for swerving out of that entirely. Apparently, Osteen has developed a device called the “Inspiration Cube” and the ad for it is completely deranged. Osteen’s cube is free with a donation of $50 and it’s loaded with 400 inspirational audio messages. I was extremely worried at first that this thing had internet connectivity and that mega churches were branching out into IoT devices, but this thing is basically just a bluetooth speaker that has a bunch of recordings loaded into it. My two favorite things about this ad are 1) the amount of times the word “cube” is repeated and 2) how Osteen’s wife(?) doesn’t blink at all.

Good Ass Internet Study Time

Manoel @manoelribeiro

When toxic web communities get banned, they don’t disappear... Rather, they migrate to a new platform! In that context, it is worth asking: -> Should platforms ban these communities? Our new pre-print tackles this question 📜: arxiv.org/abs/2010.10397 1/

My friend Bijan sent me this excellent pre-print study last week after I wrote about Baked Alaska’s internet platform whack-a-mole. It’s titled Does Platform Migration Compromise Content Moderation? Evidence from r/The_Donald and r/Incels and it attempts to answer some questions I’ve been writing about in Garbage Day over the last few months — namely, does deplatforming work? According to the study, the short answer is yes, but it’s complicated:

We analyze data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two communities that were banned from Reddit and subsequently migrated to their own standalone websites. Our results suggest that, in both cases, moderation measures significantly decreased posting activity on the new platform, reducing the number of posts, active users, and newcomers. In spite of that, users in one of the studied communities (r/The_Donald) showed increases in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization, which justifies concerns that the reduction in activity may come at the expense of a more toxic and radical community.

The study found that, yes, deplatforming a community significantly decreases community growth and overall user engagement, but it also creates a huge spike in posts per user. Deplatforming also seemed to impact the content the communities posted, though, in different ways. In the case of r/The_Donald, sentiment analysis revealed a pretty intense rise in toxicity post-migration. But the content of r/Incels has become less extreme since they were kicked off Reddit. Here’s a really interesting takeaway:

On the one hand, we found that the interventions were effective in decreasing activity and the capacity of the community to attract newcomers. Also, we found evidence that relative increase in activity (i.e., fewer users posting more) is likely due to self-selection: the users who migrated to the new community were more active to begin with. On the other hand, we found significant increases in radicalization-related signals for one of the communities studied (TD), even when controlling for self- selection. In fact, these increases were even more substantial for the set of matched users studied.

This definitely matches what I’ve observed anecdotally in these kinds of communities. The authors of Does Platform Migration Compromise Content Moderation? Evidence from r/The_Donald and r/Incels concede their study was, obviously, a bit limited, but still, interesting nonetheless!

…Speaking Of Community Moderation

Kit 🎃'Connell @KitOConnell

I don't know who needs to hear this, but it's 2020 and if your nerdy subculture doesn't actively work to keep fascists out, you might as well be inviting them in. Study the furries and learn from their example. Yes, I'm 100% serious.

Furries aren’t the only subculture that’s been extremely good at pushing out bad actors and fascists. Many people in the replies to this tweet rightly point out that Juggalos have been really on top of it, as well. Quick aside, here’s a really good court exchange about Juggalos and the Boogaloo movement.

Shane Bauer @shane_bauer

Came across this exchange in a court hearing between a lawyer and an FBI agent, trying to work out the difference between boogaloo and juggalos.

An Interesting YouTube Channel

The YouTube user LimeTube has been reading the script of Shrek, one word at a time, every day (I think) for 550 days now. Today’s word is “feel” and yesterday’s word was “me”. I can’t possibly know how far into the script we are and, honestly, I refuse to figure it out. But one of LimeTube’s commenters said that there are 7,262 words in the script for Shrek. If that’s true, at the rate LimeTube is going, he should finish sometime around 2038.

It’s worth pointing out YouTube user One Giant Onion is still taking a bite out of an onion for ever day there isn’t a new Shrek movie is released. He posted his 639th onion video last night.

An Update On The Smack Barm Pey Wet

JOE @JOE_co_uk

"Oh f**k. I'm having a three-course Wigan meal." Wigan Kebab. Smack barm. Pey wet. Babby's yed. 7,000 calories of pure Northern delight, and one very full man.

I’m not sure I ever directly wrote about the Smack Barm Pey Wet meme here, but the TL;DR is a bunch of people recently rediscovered this jaw-dropping 2019 Joe.co.uk video and it’s become a pretty huge meme on Tumblr.

I spent four years in the UK and, because I was in my mid-20s and living like a maniac, ate at chip shops a lot. Talk to me about my British acne! I actually once drove from London to Glasgow and indulged in some local chippy delicacies along the way. Of the three dishes in the video, I’ve had something similar to a wigan kebab, or a meat pie sandwich (it was a fine lol, a little dry) and I’ve something similar to a baby’s yed, which is like a steak pudding (it was also fine, sort of unnervingly slippery). I have not, however, had a smack barm, which is a piece of fried potato between two pieces of bread. In Wigan, a town in the north of England where all this cursed “food” comes from, they serve a smack barm with “pey wet,” which is the green liquid from mushy pees. Well, luckily for us, Tumblr user imaginedsoldier had one and has written a review:

Literally the heaviest sandwich I’ve ever had. Tough chew. Flavors are inoffensive, if bland, and again- the pey wet is what saves it. The moisture is so welcome to break up the monotony of every bite. Its more boring than I anticipated- or so I thought after finishing it.
The sheer drudgery of getting through a potato sandwich covered in lightly seasoned pea water disguised what was the precipitating event in the most brutal food coma I’ve ever experienced.

imaginedsoldier gave it an 8/10 rating.

I Can’t Wait To Wear My New Plague Helmet To The Supermarket

Andrew Stroehlein @astroehlein

Wear a mask now, so this hellscape is not our future...

Back in September, I wrote about a different company called air. (lol) trying to sell a plague helmet. The air. helmets seem like they’re more business-focused, where as this one, which was made by a company called Vyzr (lol) seem way more versatile for traversing our new superbug-filled climate change-ravaged Earth. Vyzr’s website is even more grim than the video. The graphic at the top celebrates “our heroes” and talks about “work where distancing is not always possible.” Ah yes, I’m sure retail workers, fast food employees, and Uber drivers will love having to wear their late-stage capitalism exoskeletons so they don’t get sick and die before their jobs are ultimately thoughtlessly replaced by automation.

The website has a mission statement, which reads, “our mission is to take respiratory protection to the next level and bring powered air purifying technology to the people who need it most. From wildfires to urban pollution to pandemics, access to clean air can no longer be taken for granted.” Absolute Robocop TV ad hell world nonsense. It would be too on the nose be included in a William Gibson novel. The helmet is $379.

Here’s Just A Real Good Thread

Nunki @blodhundur

this is. a real good thread

And Finally, A Quick Programming Note

I don’t think Garbage Day publishing times should be effected by this, but I’m traveling for the first time since March. I’m honestly terrified about it all.

I’ll be going into this in more detail later this week, but my father recently used some of his retirement savings to impulse-buy a bunch of completely undeveloped property in Belize. The deal closes next month, so I’m escorting him down there this weekend to make sure he’s not being scammed. Luckily, we fly for really cheap because my mom is flight attendant (going buy her that plague helmet up there for her flights). It’s sure to be a tremendous ordeal and I plan to document all of it here in Garbage Day, maybe do a Content Mines episode about it, and, obviously, I’ll be throwing stuff on Instagram. I really don’t know what to expect, but it should be interesting!

P.S. here’s a mildly NSFW press conference from the Frott Bragg OnlyFans woman.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***

Garbage Day

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