Wall for Amethyst (page 337)

As is yourself

Like I already finished the first gym

I'm trying to do Professor Oak Challenge in let's go Pikachu but I finished except I have a catch combo of 200 oddishs and I haven't gotten a single shiny and I don't want to progress on my oak challenge  until I find a shiny Oddish cuz a 200 catch combo is to laugh at but he won't appear

Umu

History has a long and rich tradition of apocalyptic predictions – all of which were wrong – yet some people still think that this time ’round in 2012 is the real deal.

Why 2012?

Because of ancient Mayan calendars. Obviously.

Mayan calendars not only recorded the days and years, but also longer cycles of about 5 Millennia.

So they could easily make calendars that went 1,000s of years into the future. But, of course, 1,000s of years in the future from 1,000s of years ago brings us to current times when the Mayan calendars stop in 2012.

Modern new-agey people decided that the wise Mayans stopped making calendars because they knew when the world would end.

And because new agers are happy – though scientifically illiterate – people their vision of 2012 was a great spiritual awakening or world reboot or other hippy-consciousness-expanding nonsense that the Mayans, who spent time puling strings of thorns through peoples’ tongue, probably didn’t have in mind.

To a normal person the thought that: calendar finishes therefore end of the world is an odd conclusion to draw.

After all, the amount of time in the Universe is infinite and the amount of stone is limited. So, at some point the Mayans had to stop carving calendars.

But never mind.

What should have stayed a fringe belief turned into mass hysteria with the 2012 disaster movie that swept the academy awards and the numerous emmy-nominated apocalypse documentaries on

::sigh::

The History Channel.

What happened to you guys?

Anyway. After this NASA became so inundated with questions that they had to take time away from their busy robot building, frontier pushing, knowledge expanding, civilization inspiring schedule, to write a webpage explaining that no, a human-sacrificing, stone-age society with neither wheels to pull carts nor glass to make telescopes, didn’t know more about science at the dawn of history than real scientists do today.

But the parade of crazy marched on anyway making wilder and wilder predictions for Earth including:

Geomagnetic Reversal (a process that unfolds on a geologic timescale, not a single day)
A collision with mysterious Planet X (That no astronomers have found)
A local star going supernova (Despite there being no such candidates)
An Alien Invasion (Which is ludicrous on the face of it… or is it?)
And a galactic synchronization beam, whatever the hell that is.
A sane person, at this point, would wonder how the Mayans were able to predict astro-physical anomalies thousands of years in advance and millions of miles away yet didn’t foresee the Spanish coming across the Atlantic.

And that’s because the Mayans never predicted apocalypse. The only people to claim the Mayans knew about the end of the world were distinctly not Mayans.

February is home to one of the most important holidays of the year not to forget: Groundhog Day.

If you live outside of Can-merica then you might not know what a groundhog is so… here you go: this is a groundhog. They’re basically giant grumpy squirrels who dig burrows underground.

Burrows large enough, in fact, to occasionally make their comfy home a structural hazard to your comfy home.

This explains the first half of their name. The second half is because they’re kind of fat – though unlike their fellow Can-mericans – when winter arrives they need their excess weight to go into hibernation.

The story of the holiday is that on February 2nd the wise groundhogs wake from hibernation to peek out of their burrow and look at the world. If they see their shadow they go back inside which predicts six more weeks of winter. If they don’t, then spring will come early.

The holiday started in the 1800s as a Pennsylvania Dutch custom of weather prediction and today is celebrated in Canada and 49 of the fifty states, the exception being Alaska which in 2009 decided to forgo groundhog day in favor of marmot day.

Outside of Alaska, many groundhogs contend with each other to be the King of Seasonal Weather prediction their their main weapon in this war being their delightful names such as:

Queen Charlotte and Sir Walter Wally in North Carolina,

Shubenacadie Sam of Nova Scotia

Staten Island Chuck from New York

French Creek Freddie in West Virginia

And… Gus from Athens Georgia though this last groundhog is somewhat overshadowed by his neighbor, General Beauregard Lee, who one must assume has stylish facial hair and fans himself on the veranda of his plantation home while drinking Mint Julep and pining for the day when the south will rise again.

1,000 miles north of the General, Wiarton Willie is the groundhog king of Canada, who throws an annual party to help him stay on top and make sure that people keep building epic statues of him.

But, if there could be only one, Punxsutawney Phil would be him. Not only is his name the most fun to say but he also has quite a posse of top-hatted, tuxedoed men who look after him and call themselves the inner circle.

According to them, Punxsutawney Phil has been making predictions since the 1880s. Not a Punxsutawney Phil, mind you, but this Punxsutawney Phil who is functionally immortal because of a magic life-extending elixir the inner circle members prepare for him so that he can continue to make predictions – and bring in tourist revenue – until the end of time.

He also speaks a language called groundhogese that only the president of the inner circle can understand.

If you think that Groundhog day is a dumb, pointless holiday then, there are two things you should consider:

1st: you have no sense of fun and 2nd, you better be careful on Groundhog day, because in addition to their weather predicting day jobs, these groundhogs also have the magical power to trap you in a infinite time loop until you learn to be less of a jerk.

Happy Groundhog Day!

we dare not go ashore lest perchance we should fall into some snare

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/596875011168534538/797912819462307860/IMG_20210110_144005_652.jpg

What's with people on Pokemon Home? Somebody traded me a Regidrago for a Litwick O_o

Yes, I think I'm on the Smogon server....