alt.hn

3/1/2026 at 3:56:42 AM

Malm Whale

 https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/malm-whale

by thunderbong

3/5/2026 at 3:18:33 AM

Ok, wow… “The fishermen who first discovered the poor stranded whale started the procedure by poking its eyes out, so that it would "not be able to see us." Over the next two days, the creature was methodically axed, speared and shot until it finally died in a sea of its own blood.”

I guess it was 1865.

by pottertheotter

3/5/2026 at 4:26:31 PM

A pretty poor showing by the villagers. whalers were able to kill a full grown whale in at most a couple of hours, while it was trying to swim away, while balancing in rowboats.

by QuadmasterXLII

3/5/2026 at 3:37:58 AM

Humans are the worst species aren’t we

by AIorNot

3/5/2026 at 1:05:47 PM

No that's the domestic cat.

by ChocolateGod

3/5/2026 at 4:49:36 PM

If an animal gets its head stuck, predators will casually eat its meat without first killing the prey. This makes sense from their purely selfish point of view, especially as it provides a sort of short-term "food preservation".

Ducks have been documented engaging in necrophilic gang-rape.

Dolphins use literal waterboarding to rape.

Humans are just smarter assholes than other animals. Not worse or better.

by IAmBroom

3/5/2026 at 3:51:16 AM

No

by readthenotes1

3/5/2026 at 5:19:06 AM

I think we have the greatest depth and breadth of cruelty

by squibonpig

3/5/2026 at 6:27:42 AM

Our capabilities are so high and our population so differentiated we basically hold nearly all the records for everything (barring some extremeophile metrics) so it makes sense.

by fellowniusmonk

3/5/2026 at 8:19:51 PM

It helps we write the record categories. We only measure stuff we find relevant to our existence which happens to be what we probably do sorta well.

by squibonpig

3/5/2026 at 4:11:51 PM

I thought this was about giant IKEA drawers before reading

by martibravo

3/5/2026 at 4:38:09 AM

I wonder if the event visible in one of the photos is etymological source of the word festival?

The word can be deconstructed in Swedish as fest i val which translates to "party in whale"

by amarant

3/5/2026 at 7:20:45 AM

It's definitively not the source of the word, but it might very well be the reason the decided to have a "fest i val". Gothenburg is famous for their puns, and even today they open up the mouth of the whale for visitors on two occasions - valdagen (election day) and Valborgsmässoafton (Walpurgis eve).

by ostacke

3/5/2026 at 5:24:12 AM

Wiktionary says

> From Middle English festival (adjective), from Old French festival (“festive”), from Late Latin fēstīvālis, from Latin fēstīvus (“festive”). By surface analysis, festive +‎ -al. Displaced native Old English frēols. The noun is shortened from festival day, from Middle English festival dai, festiuall day (“feast day, festival”).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/festival

by tdeck

3/5/2026 at 4:54:19 AM

It surely is; 'fest' is the Swedish word for 'party'. I actually think Swedish or Norwegian (which are practically the same language) are closer to English than even Dutch. Many of the most common, short English words are the same.

by thomassmith65

3/5/2026 at 8:58:22 AM

"Fest" is also German for celebration - but just because several Germanic languages have the same word doesn't mean that it's a Germanic word. Actually all of them got it from Latin...

by rob74

3/5/2026 at 2:19:31 PM

I should have checked the etymology, but the way this reply is worded is a bit nitpicky. English did not loan 'fest' directly from Latin.

Edit: Though I realise now I misunderstood the original comment re: 'i val'. I took it to mean 'fest' only. No, I don't think 'party in whale' is the root of 'festival'

by thomassmith65

3/5/2026 at 7:29:11 AM

The Anglo-Saxon migrations made England English, and then the waves of Viking invasions littered North Germanic vocabulary all over it. You can see it in doublets like skirt/shirt that aren't in other West Germanic languages.

by Hemospectrum