Much Like the Night the Ocean is Dark and Full of Terrors

I've never been scuba diving and I never will because the ocean is a scary place.  For example, a commercial lobster fisherman recently found himself inside a whale's mouth.  His name is not Jonah but his first mate is Josiah so perhaps it should've been expected.

Also scary: moray eels.  Click on that link and feel bad for the reporter who had to write that story.  Her LinkedIn profile says she graduated from Brown in 2016 so she's probably delighted to be writing for the Times, and she has sufficient license to come up with witty captions like "When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray" and "If the squid is so big, it still eats like a pig, that’s a moray" but the subject matter is nightmare fuel.  Apparently moral eels can crawl out of the water and hurl themselves at food which they catch in their mouths, and then their second set of "pharyngeal jaws" shoot forward from the back of their throat to drag the food into their guts.  

Reminds me of a Xenomorph.

A glutton for aquatic punishment, the same reporter also wrote about why walruses clap.  Apparently it's "a demonstration of strength and fitness to rivals and potential mates."  Sort of like the clapping at Robbie's wedding.  The walrus at issue, Sivuqaq (that's his name, not a typo), "started clapping as he approached sexual maturity and the behavior was often accompanied with a visible erection."  Imagine if this is your job, studying walrus erections?  Even worse, imagine paying all that money to go to Brown only to report on walrus erections?

That's not the terrifying part though.  "Walruses are able to clap underwater so hard that the water between their flippers vaporizes into a cloud of bubbles, which then collapse onto themselves to produce an extremely loud sound."  The sound reached 200 decibels!  That's some ferocious clapping.  This is a family blog so I won't add a gif like the clapping at Robbie's wedding.  Instead, here's Sivuqaq making it clap.

Come Together

Yesterday in London, the Washington Wizards beat the New York Knicks, 101-100, in a regular season NBA contest. In somewhat Knicksian fashion, Washington's buzzer-beating winner came courtesy of a goaltending call, as Allonzo Trier swatted Thomas Bryant's layup away while it was descending into the cylinder.

That was neat, and all, but it paled in comparison to a most excellent collision of Gheorghie things that took place earlier that day. Including the most Gheorghie thing of all, Gheorghe.

Some enterprising Wizards staffer (a next-generation Shlara or KQ, if you will), thought it a good idea to recreate the image from The Beatles' iconic Abbey Road album cover, with Gheorghe, G:TB fave Elena Delle Donne, Bradley Beal, and Wizards mascot G-Wiz comprising an entirely new Fab Four.

I always did see Ghitsa as the Paul McCartney of the team. He's Maxwell's Silver (tongued) Hammer.

Here's a little bit of behind the scenes magic: