Adam Bumas
@bumas.bsky.social
Pronounced "BYOO-muss". He/They. adambumas.01 on Signal. Head of Research and Assistant Editor, @garbageday.email. Researcher, @panicworld.com. Other research and journalism elsewhere. The perfect level of online.
I'm in your ears! Thankful to @slate.com and Kate Lindsay for the chance to talk about the existential questions raised by Jimothy the Raccoon on today's ICYMI podcast. slate.com/podcasts/icy...
We Need To Talk About Jimothy
The Seattle raccoon is not like any viral animal we’ve loved before.
slate.com
The definitive story of how a little raccoon dominated our feeds in the span of just five days. www.garbageday.email/p/how-to-go-...
How to go viral in 2026, as told by Jimothy
Read to the end for some real good 'Project Hail Mary' fanart
garbageday.email
Nixonmaxxing is as overstated as many rightward trends. The Nixon Foundation, which started this all off earlier this year, has been getting way less engagement since then compared to both the JFK Foundation and Reagan Foundation. www.garbageday.email/p/the-piggie...
The piggies eventually get sick of slop
Read to the end for some really good Backrooms fan art
garbageday.email
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 2w agoThe kids are “Nixonmaxxing”: More than half-a-century after Watergate, conservative youth are discovering the aesthetic, and adopting the attitude, of the late president. 🔗 www.wsj.com/politics/ric...
My ring Atreides, my sietch Fremen, my ghola from Ix, let's go Knicks. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndvq...
Dune: Part Three | Official Trailer
YouTube video by Warner Bros.
youtube.com
I wrote about betting on social media engagement for Bloomberg Businessweek a couple weeks ago, for anyone who missed it: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Polymarket Lets You Bet on Vibes
By taking bets on social media clout, the prediction market has made itself vulnerable to bots.
bloomberg.com
Kate Knibbs@knibbs.bsky.social · last mo.NEW: Spotify charts are getting botted, and a top Kalshi trader is convinced it's part of a market manipulation scheme: www.wired.com/story/spotif...
I wrote about FreddyLA7, the apex predator of World Cup tourists. Is he some kind of fake? Complicated question! More behind the paywall in today's @garbageday.email - link here: www.garbageday.email/p/the-intern...
Lisa's contributions to digital news couldn't fit in a Bluesky post. So I'll just say how excited I am to be working with her!
Lisa Tozzi@lisatozzi.bsky.social · 2mo agoSuper excited to work with @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social @cates.bsky.social and the rest of the @garbageday.email team! Thanks @status.news for calling me a splashy hire! www.status.news/p/new-york-t...
Congratulations to canonical Knicks fan Homestar Runner (cc @strongbadnofoolin.bsky.social)
Excited to make my debut for @bloomberg.com Businessweek! I'm writing about some hyper-online crypto communities and the effect they're having on the rest of finance. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Polymarket Lets You Bet on Vibes
By taking bets on social media clout, the prediction market has made itself vulnerable to bots.
bloomberg.com
YouTube's autodubbing is now so universal that the algorithm served me a @claireforny.bsky.social ad dubbed into Russian. Only recorded the last few seconds for all of Comrade Valdez's fans out there:
Russia has ruled a K-pop omegaverse fic to be illegal, sentencing its author to 18 months in a labor camp. So is it worth reading? Get the link I tracked down in today's @garbageday.email and decide for yourself! www.garbageday.email/p/everything...
Another day, another concept I first learned from The Simpsons.
My first ever scoop, such as it is: The DHS is treating a random shitposter X account like a legit news source, giving it exclusive info about foreign relations. www.garbageday.email/p/exclusive-...
EXCLUSIVE: DHS gave a scoop to a random shitposter
Exclusive
garbageday.email
I unfortunately have meme news regarding the Saudi blockbuster: boxd.it/ee11qT
A review of Desert Warrior (2025)
The credits and location titles for this movie are all in white Impact all-caps. Way to make all the lavish location photography look like something reposted onto Truth Social.
boxd.it
Mets game on one bar TV, Artemis II splashdown on the other. I believe they call this a happy place.
Today I'm talking bimbo politics. See more behind the paywall, if you dare. www.garbageday.email/p/bimbos-in-...
The Epic layoffs today are another sign of the same reason we're all talking about DLSS 5. The video game industry is showing signs of a mass extinction - a death stranding, so to speak. I wrote about it last week: www.garbageday.email/p/the-death-...
The death stranding of the video game industry
Read to the end for The Peg
garbageday.email
It is with some regret that I report Paul Leonard-Morgan did a first-rate original score for the new Louis Theroux manosphere doc. Imagine blasting this and then having to say its name out loud: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxqn...
The Manosphere
YouTube video by Paul Leonard-Morgan - Topic
youtube.com
"Can you ironically use Halo fancams to inspire a draft? Can you entertain your CHUD followers with fashwave Agartha edits when gas is $10 a gallon?" www.garbageday.email/p/waging-war... @bumas.bsky.social @garbageday.email
Waging war for the lulz
Read to the end for Zooey Deschanel’s Crumbl Cookie review
garbageday.email
The rare almost uniformly good comment section, on Paul McCartney's personal Letterboxd (yes, really) letterboxd.com/pmccartney/f...
A review of Paul McCartney: Man on the Run (2025)
It’s crazy; like a period of my life flashing before my eyes. It’s wonderful because it’s full of different emotions and facets. One of the big things for me is seeing so much of Linda, which is great...
letterboxd.com
WAGE! FUWY! CAWNAGE! THWOOD! Follow youw instincts! Aheheheheh - Elmer Fudd 2077
Discord has already quietly broken its promise that its new age verification tools will keep your data on your device. Here's the basics - read more behind the paywall in today's Garbage Day. www.garbageday.email/p/clavicular...
Hey, @nyt-first-said.bsky.social, you've got your work cut out for you with this profile of Clavicular. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/s...
Handsome at Any Cost
nytimes.com
Thanks for the ping! This video gets at least one thing wrong: There ARE separate apps for TikTok outside the US on both Android and iOS. This isn't just Douyin, it's two apps both called TikTok. Anything I say about the algorithm would be speculation, but that I know for sure.
Mae Torsion@tmawsm.bsky.social · 6mo ago@bumas.bsky.social hey does this check out? vm.tiktok.com/ZNRAMVyCq/
"For the good of upholding family values, men should be empowered by medical science to carry a mixed species baby to term!" -Scott Adams (RIP) & Larry Charles
Dilbert mpreg update (thanks to @synnviks.bsky.social) - this is both Dilbert mpreg and Dilbert forcefem.
I, for one, didn't know the short-lived Dilbert animated series ended with an mpreg two-parter.
![a screenshot of the garbage day newsletter that reads "The pre-Vine animated GIF boom has mostly been memory-holed. [Ed. note: Unless you’re still on Tumblr, where GIFs and GIF-sets still constitute a large percentage of posts.] In the early 2010s, message board users were moving from smaller websites to larger platforms — and getting jobs at digital media companies. And they ended up bringing a lot of shared culture with them. What we used to call “Weird Twitter,” for"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5osxikuplctdgn3messhahas/bafkreifboucaxgffw7jepkua77t6y5jfascx6ao3bjiropzyixbb25dkhi)
