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Every year, I demand to know why Groundhog Day isn’t more celebrated on the internet. It’s the perfect absurdist holiday. There’s a big, round, adorable animal. He’s a prophet. Some guy in an old-timey top hat claims to be able to speak to the groundhog. Does he understand the animal’s language? Is it through telepathy? It’s a secret we are not allowed to know. People come from miles to worship the groundhog and learn the fate of the weather, which doesn’t even matter anymore with science and weathermen. The groundhog makes his prediction. He’s wrong 70% of the time, but we keep asking him. We are not interested in learning anything from our blind trust in a giant rat.

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This

Has equal and opposite vibes to this

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The trapdoor spider doesn't receive today...

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Their mom gave birth to them

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hmmm

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Belphie is so annoying

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Ryan Adamczeski at The Advocate:

Michigan's hate crime law has been updated to include sexual orientation and gender identity after Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed several bills into law last week. House Bills 5400 and 5401 amend the definition and sentencing guidelines of the state's 1988 “ethnic intimidation” statute to include sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, and age, designating them as protected groups against hate crimes if they are found to be a motivating factor for violent behavior.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is an out lesbian, said in a statement that “it’s incumbent upon those of us with the authority to unilaterally denounce such sentiments; otherwise, there’s no stopping this behavior." “Over the past decade, we have seen not just an uptick in hate crimes, but a normalization of racist, antisemitic and bigoted language, symbolism and actions – including a close adviser to the President giving the Nazi salute during an inaugural rally just this week,” Nessel said. "I applaud the Governor for signing these long overdue changes to the state’s statutes.” The bill amending the hate crime statute's definition was first introduced by Democratic state Rep. Noah Arbit in 2023, but failed to pass after conservatives falsely claimed that the law made it a felony to misgender someone. Arbit noted in a conversation with CBS at the time that the bill did not contain the word "misgender" in its entire text, calling the claims "far-right fiction."

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signs hate crime laws protecting sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or age status.

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: Michigan expands hate crime law to protect LGBTQ+ identities

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Sacrificial

Pure, without marking or blemish, innocent, and unwilling.

Prints are available, 8x10, 25 each, pm me if interested

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poked my head into the FR bluesky

this is certainly an exchange of all time

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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.

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always confuses the hell out of me when someone sends an ask that's just "you follow someone problematic" with no name or any description of what they've done. bitch what do you want me to do find their pages?????

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I HATE WHITE BOYS

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i made atoegus in spore [2008]