awkwardlii

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Only day you can reblog this

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In a gross violation of the ceasefire deal, the israelis decide that displaced Palestinians in Gaza will not be allowed to return to their northern homes !!

This is what the Israeli occupation has always accustomed us to: deception, lies, and destroying the joy of the Palestinians.

The suffering continues. ..Please donate, share and quote to end this suffering.

[awkwardlii]

Have you seen this post?

You probably have. It currently has over 120,000 notes, largely because of this addition.

Of course it's going to get reblogged, this kind of unsourced factoid does numbers on here. But something about it wasn't quite right.

A bit of searching turned up the origin of the "fact".

Alright, so it's someone who posted this on reddit 4 years ago and somehow ended up in the search hits. And the post confuses the electric eel (from South America) with the electric catfish (from the Nile, which the Egyptians would have known about).

Reminder: this is an electric eel (Electrophorus electricus). It is from South America. (image from Wikipedia)

And this is an electric catfish (Malapterurus electricus). It is from the Nile and would have been familiar to the ancient Egyptians. (image from Wikipedia)

And then of course people were speculating in the notes to that post about trade routes between South America and Egypt. Excellent scholarship everyone.

At this point I was ready to call it another made-up internet fact that gets reified by people repeating it. But something was still bothering me.

An ancient Egyptian slab from 3100 BC. What could that be...

Oh.

The Narmer palette. It's the goddamn Narmer palette. (image, once again, from Wikipedia)

So where is this "angry catfish"?

It's not the Egyptian name for the electric catfish.

It's... Narmer. It's Narmer himself.

Narmer's name is written as above (detail of top middle of the palette), using the catfish (n`r) and the chisel (mr), giving N'r-mr. The chisel is associated with pain, so this reads as "painful catfish", "striking catfish", or, yes, "angry catfish" or other similar variants, although some authors have suggested that it means "Beloved of [the catfish god] Nar".

So.

Where does this leave us?

It would appear that this redditor not only confused electric eels with electric catfish, but also confused a Pharaoh's name with the name of a fish. And then it got pushed to the top search hits by a crappy search engine and shared uncritically on tumblr.

In short, "the electric eel is called angry catfish" factoid actually literacy error. Angry Catfish, who ruled upper Egypt and smote his enemies, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

Also the Arabic name for the electric catfish is raad (thunder) or raada (thunderer).

References

Afsaruddin, A., & Zahniser, A. H. M. (1997). Humanism, culture, and language in the Near East: studies in honor of Georg Krotkoff. Eisenbrauns.

Clayton, P. A. (2001). Chronicle of the Pharaohs. Thames & Hudson.

Godron, G. (1949). A propos du nom royal. Annales du Service des antiquités de l'Egypte, 49, 217-221.

Sperveslage, G., & Heagy, T. C. (2023). A tail's tale: Narmer, the catfish, and bovine symbolism. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 109(1), 3-319.

[awkwardlii]

Ignoring me means you agree to kill me, my child and my family, I am Hadeel from Gaza 🍉 My husband was killed and I became a widow in this war and my child is an orphan, my mother and I are now homeless, we have been displaced more than 14 times, my child needs milk and diapers every day and I cannot provide them, we are 13 people who need water and food, understand the suffering we are going through and give us 💰 Please talk about my story and write about it to help us survive

Please, after my first campaign was stolen, this campaign I created a short time ago was documented, but it was never published. Please respond to me and help me spread the word. Please donate to us even if it is five dollars, do not ignore us I beg you

@90-ghost @moremyceliumnetworks @4ng3l-1z-d3d @ibtsmemes @atomic-chronoscaph @ghoulaug @gazafunds @gotinterest @gaza-evacuation-funds @nabulsi @a-shade-of-blue @shelbybunny @alexarken

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how have you been?

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Sharing the link.

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these palestinian suvivors & their families have reached out to me about sharing their campaigns. please share & donate

mohammed alanqer (gofundme / verified)

ahmed mohammed alanqar (gofundme / verified)

lubna alajrami (gofundme / verified)

salman anas (gofundme / verified)

ahmad (gofundme / verified)

majed (gofundme / verified)

nour alanqar (gofundme / verified)

hadeel mikki (gofundme / verified)

mohammed zaqout (gofundme / verified)

ismail almughanni (gofundme / verified)

ahmed al yazji (gofundme / verified)

ahmed halas (gofundme / verified)

salem alanqar (gofundme / verified)

yahya bkheet (gofundme / verified)

ibrahim yaser (gofundme / verified)

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they can't die god won't let them

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The Beast that Bothers

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The bean jar

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heading out the door

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one of the most infuriating things about becoming an adult is when you realize that it actually is 10x easier to solve problems by making a phone call vs literally any other communication method

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unstoppable force meets immovable object

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too many stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for pretending to be something you aren't and losing yourself in the process. not enough stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for choosing to openly embrace yourself even if it's strange to other people

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America be like "you cant have free healthcare or easy access to disability but you can have a gun"

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“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” Okay it’s fine to hate me or whatever but you do understand the horse is not a part of this right. Like he’s only here because I got on his back and steered him here. I treat him exceptionally well but if he saw anything slightly strange he would run into the woods and forget about me forever. Take it back.