________________________

A message from Drew Curtis:  
________________________ 

Some of you may have noticed Fark's servers have been struggling lately.  The good news is it's entirely due to a massive increase in traffic this past week thanks to the current insane news cycle.  Fark doesn't experience traffic spikes that often, and since we've been in a short revenue situation since the pandemic began, up until this week it's made sense to shave every penny we can out of our cloud deployment.  However, several days after it began, it looks like the traffic surge is persisting, so we're making our stack more robust to handle it.  Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and don't blame Mike because the fault is squarely with me.

Normally a huge traffic surge would be a great thing.  Traffic has been out of sight, but unfortunately due to the time of year, ad revenue has not.  Most companies stack up ad buys in December for Xmas, so January is the weakest advertising month of the year. So while all the traffic has been great, it hasn't translated to revenue.

So I'm kind of rolling the dice on this one and increasing server expense to handle the load.  With any luck, this will pay for itself.  One thing that would help would be more BareFark and TotalFark subscribers.  Stock up on Farks2Give as well - these will be used for the upcoming Swear Jar launch as well, by the way.  I really wanted to make Farks2Give some sort of dumbass cryptocurrency, but it turns out there's a bit of overhead in doing that, so it's a non-starter.  But who knows what the future will hold?  Probably not Fark crypto, but stranger things have happened, as I'm sure we'll witness over the next week.

________________________

We now return you to your usual Fark NotNewsletter.
________________________ 


Top Comments

Some of the top-voted smartest and funniest comments from the past week

Funny:
NikolaiFarkoff had a question about Britney Spears' ex-husband, Jason Alexander, being at the Capitol riot
Osama bin Limbaugh explained why a cop punched his K-9 partner
Billy Liar thought an article about the author of "Brokeback Mountain" wishing people wouldn't try to rewrite it could've used some work
NikolaiFarkoff expressed shock at the FBI's use of a stingray device to locate Ghislaine Maxwell's mobile phone
Dead for Tax Reasons explained why someone would go for the world record for spinning a hula hoop on their butt
semiotix shared a photo of Wilford Brimley when he was young
Close2TheEdge had some surprising information about twirling a hula hoop around your booty
revrendjim knew what was next for a school that evacuated because a student brought in a piece of radioactive Fiestaware
ingo advised a fellow Farker on watching the hula hoop hiney video
sirrerun had something to say about old computer terms that younger people don't understand

Smart:
Lambskincoat thought that there was a slight overreaction at show and tell
dv-ous had a legal question about a cop abusing a police dog
Nadie_AZ discussed the fact that so many Americans are overweight
Hey Nurse! shared a story about how the pandemic is affecting medical care in the U.S.
thisispete pointed out evidence that Kevin Sorbo is as much of a dick in person as he is on the internet
Znuh discussed the direction "Doctor Who" has taken

CSB Sunday Morning: Your first time traveling in an airplane
Smart: luna1580 remembered what air travel used to be like
Funny: Cafe Threads was disappointed that the flight went as planned
Funny (honorable mention): El Dudereno's mom's cousin had a flight fright

CSB [Cool Story, Bro] Sunday Morning is a thread for Farkers to share true stories from their own lives based on a weekly topic. If you have a topic idea for a CSB Sunday Morning thread, please contact Farkback ahead of time, or just submit it on Saturday afternoon/evening. Please note: While submitted CSB Sunday Morning threads have a high likelihood of being greenlit, there is no guarantee they will be.

TotalFark Discussion:
Note: This section can only be accessed by TotalFarkers  
Smart: Drew shared the secret to being in a relationship for 20 or more years
Smart: Altimus Prime gave advice to a Farker who was driving to Alabama
Smart: Unikitty explained why a Farker's kitty barfed
Funny: Shakespeare's Monkey tried to help someone figure out what kind of wood they had

Politics Funny:
JerseyTim was talking about a recording of Donald Trump trying to get Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes for him, but now it sounds almost prophetic
CaptainCliche decided it was time to celebrate Democrats gaining control of the Senate
Jack Sabbath found Trump's new secret Twitter account
NateAsbestos explained why Trump complained about a "voter dump"
BenSaw2 considered clashes between police and Trump supporters

Politics Smart:
villianova possibly spoke a few hours too soon
maddog2030 commented about a veteran who was killed while storming the U.S. Capitol
cherryl taggart had a message for someone who complained about suffering consequences after going to a party during a pandemic
OdradekRex figured that the NSA needs to think about Russians right now
iheartscotch had a message for the Fark politics tab


Top Contest Entries

Some of the top-voted contest entries from last week, listed from highest number of votes down

Photoshops:
GoodDoctorB made the "Star Wars" spinoff you never asked for
Yammering_Splat_Vector gave this QAnon promoter a better costume
noazark brought enough sardines for literally everyone
Yammering_Splat_Vector made a musical you can arooo along with
Dodo David found out this restauranteur has been hitting the gym
Yammering_Splat_Vector wrote the worst cookbook
verchad prepared this team for the coldness of space
noazark gave Porkins a new flight suit
retrophil made the Fark adventure film we all need
opalakea asked us to put the candle back

This week's Fartist Friday theme, brought to you by E-brake: This week we keep it simple with another Show & Tell. Our theme: I Blue Myself. Show us your art projects featuring the color Blue and Tell us the story about it. Difficulty: Art you haven't posted in our F'artiste contests before.  

Farktography: Color Popping Naturally 2
This contest ended in a tie between common sense is an oxymoron's lovely little ladybug and edmo's cold crimson caboose

Farktography is Fark's weekly photography contest. If you would like to suggest a Farktography theme, please contact Elsinore.


Fark Weird News Quiz (brought to you by ox45tallboy)

Another fun time on the NNL, but it did wind up being one of the more difficult ones. Denjiro came out on top with 971, followed by The Third Man in second with 941 and Enigmamf in third with 927.Datanerd made fourth with 905, and Tax Boy rounds out the top five with 899.

The hardest question on the Hard Quiz was about what Florida Man was tossing out of his work van on I-95 before being apprehended by the Florida Highway Patrol. Only 9% of quiztakers caught the story about the North Port guy who thought golf clubs were the ideal way to show disdain for other drivers. I mean, fairway, freeway, we've all made that mistake, right?

The easiest question on the Hard Quiz was about a class action lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal court over a "Hawaiian" product, 80% of quiztakers knew some joker thought he was owed a lot of money over the fact that King's Hawaiian didn't make their Hawaiian rolls in Hawaii. McDonald's lawyers last seen reviewing their options over their French fries.

The hardest question on the Easy Quiz was over what astronaut (and now Senator) Mark Kelly helped to sneak on board the International Space Station so his twin brother Scott could prank his fellow astronauts. Only 48% of quiztakers knew that he had somehow wheedled NASA into shipping up a gorilla suit, If you haven't seen the video, a guy in a gorilla suit in zero gee chasing people around a space station should not be missed. 

The easiest question on the Easy Quiz was about where to get your "Extra Charged Coffee" with 20% more caffeine. 91% of quiztakers knew you could hit up Dunkin' for some Joe with extra Go. TBH I'm not sure they thought this one through - with all that's happening in the country, do we want all of our citizens extra wired? And during Dry January to boot?

If you missed out on the last quiz, you can catch up on the Fark Weird News Quiz here. Congratulations to the winners, and we'll be doing it all again this week.