it’s called a Hawser and is the thick cable or rope used for towing/mooring a ship

This is a line designed to hold in place a moving object that can be easily in excess of 10000 tons. AND THEY CAN BREAK FROM THAT TENSION ALONE.

You’ve heard of the term, “Going haywire,” right? Ever spared a thought to why that term exists?

See, time was there was a prototype automatic hay-baler. But this was in that magic period juuust before we really got into standardized sizes. So calibration of the machine was handled manually - a mix of guessing and learning from the results of guessing. If you’ve read Raising Steam by Sir Terry Pratchett you know that many people don’t get to learn from the results of their own guesses, due to being dead.

A poorly calibrated hay-baler had the mechanical strength to smush the hay into a tight bundle, wrap the wire around it, and tie that wire off to maintain the bale’s form. But the pressure of the over-packed hay was a constant outward force. Each bale made by an over-tight baler was potential energy in physical form. We have a word for “potential energy in physical form” and that word is “bomb.”

So sometimes, a man would toss a hay bale and it would land with a twang and the man who’d been reaching down to pick it up where it landed was dead.

but apparently this photo is fake which is an enormous burst of relief to my already fragile, suddering psyche.

sadly though THIS photo of a barrel jellfish is real

Some of my favorite jellyfish (sorry if I go on a tanget and vear off jellyfish)

are the Stygiomedusa gigantea, which I believe is also called the blanket jellyfish, but like dude look up a video of it moving it is chilling and fantastic! This thing is 10 meters long, so not the largest here, but ohohoho look at my love

It is a deep sea jellyfish and is one of the largest invertebrate predators known. However, according to Cambridge, it has been consistently recorded in the twilight and sunlight depth zones down south so do with that what you will :)

If we want to keep going down the large and length category of ocean creatures, allow me to introduce the current longest recorded ocean animal. A deep sea siphonophore that clocks in at around 46 meters; my beautiful death halo

Technically siphonophores are hundreds upon hundreds of tinier organisms that grouped together to make a bigger one, but for all intents and purposes, this is one animal. Some of them are incredibly beautiful!

However there is also ones not so pretty, main one was something I saw a month or so ago and it looked like someone had fused like a dozen human limbs together and they were flailing to move and jesus christ yall can go mentally scar yourselves.

Once upon a time, in a kingdom that was not enormously large, nor very small, there lived a sad and lonely princess.

She was not sad because she was lonely, as one might believe, but rather she was lonely because she was sad. All of her ladies in waiting would chitter and pace at her bedside, urging her to rise, to dress in some of her many fancy adornments, and leave her tower to go and dance in the great hall with them, but the princess always declined.

Soon, they stopped asking.

For years, people lost their will to bother her. She was alone in her tower, and as the months passed her loneliness grew until she could do nothing else but stare out of her decorated window and sigh wistfully out it at the common people below.

But dear lord, this is not a sad tale, I promise it.

For in this kingdom there lived a strange and magical creature. Members of this kingdom might not know what it was called, or where he was from, but the magical creature had a name, and his name was Ricodimous.

Ricodimous had a face like a mouse, eyes cunning and dark, and a shell by which he rolled himself into, in case the world got too much, too loud.

One day, Ricodimous was puttering through the market when he heard the most wistful sigh he had ever heard in his entire life. He looked about, questioning, but saw nothing until he rolled back onto his shell and gazed up, up high until he could see a window over the market square, where the saddest and loneliest princess of all sat on her window seat.

"Hello Princess!" He called. And even though the distance between them was great, Ricodimous was a magical creature, and the Princess heard him perfectly.

She gazed down at the wondrous little creature Ricodimous was, and sighed again.

"Hello Ser," she greeted politely. "You should roll along, for I am not of the finest stock for company."

Ricodimous tilted his head.

"You look to me to be the finest stock of anything," he replied. "Why do you believe not?"

The princess simply shrugged.

Ricodimous pondered for a moment. As a magical creature, his guesses on the ailment of princesses were often correct.

"Your heart is aching," he declared. "But you are too shy to say it."

The princess raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You assume much, Ser."

"I assume enough. Pray, would you come down from your tower, and we shall play a game."

The princess could not deny that she had longed to play a game for a time, even if it was with a mouse like creature.

For the first time in years, the Princess dressed herself in her finest silks, and exited her tower with a flourish. Dressed in deep blues and greens, she at last came down to the marketplace and met Ricodimous by the gardens entrance.

The game they played my lord, is one similar to Croquet. I will admit my lord, that this is a game I myself have never played, so you must use your imagination with my storytelling, and simply believe that while you know the rules, so do I.

And so the Princess and Ricodimous played their game, over the course of which the Princess found herself more and more joyous. She indulged in a full commitment of the sport, soiling her finest clothes all so she could kneel in the mud and get a better angle.

Even more scandalously, the Princess was referred to by her royal title less and less, which tends to happen when one is losing a game so terribly he must roll up into his shell and rock back and forth from frustration. So over the day the Princess was called more and more by her name, Ashley, and Ricodimous was simply called Ric.

But the sun was soon to set, and all stories, no matter how brief must end.

At the end of their game there was only one true winner, and Ashley wiped her royal brow and shoot Rics paw, smiling in victory. The magical creature was not disappointed, for he promised to never give up, and that he would return the next day for a rematch.

Princess Ashley was surprised.

"You mean that you'll come back?" She asked, and she realized how excited she was at the prospect.

"Of course I will!" Ric replied. "I would never run around and desert you."

BONUS: crocheted gaud pumpkin

In conclusion!