There’s a lot of misinformation that floats around online. Today there were two big bits that just needed something said.

The first was that ridiculous “Ishtar is pronounced Easter” image meme making the rounds. It misrepresents pretty much everything about Ishtar and Easter. I let it slide the first couple of times I saw it… but by the fourth or fifth I just had to start telling people it was utterly incorrect. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who was totally annoyed by it, so there was already a nice vitriolic article with the proper information to link to.

The second bit was a much bigger deal. The initial reports had Ukraine requiring Jews to register with the government. That, of course, never goes well and is totally not cool. It’s also a bit out of character for any actual country (especially one that’s recently had the eyes of the world on it) to do in this day and age… so it smelled a little fishy to me and I held off indignantly posting about it. Soon enough, in another thread, another friend of mine who is much more knowledgeable about the goings on in Russia and Ukraine chimed in, mentioning that the people passing out the notices of the required registration were being called terrorists by the Russian and Ukrainian media… pretty much cementing that it’s definitely not a government program. Then an article turned up laying all that out.

There was a third bit that I hoped was some sort of hoax, but, after some quick checking, it turned out that, no, a school did, indeed, distribute some of the absolute worst, most harmful, and utterly idiotic guidelines for how its 5th grade students should deal with bullies. It included “Don’t tell anyone about it,” and a bunch of other stuff that came down to “If it keeps happening, it’s obviously your fault.” Totally not cool. Thankfully, there’s an appropriate level of outrage about this.