The winning and commended images of the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024 competition were just announced, with Rafael Fernández Caballe named as the overall winner for his image of a Bryde’s whale swimming up to swallow a bait ball of sardines off Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Contest organizers at Oceanographic Magazine were once again kind enough to share some of this year’s top images below, and their full gallery can be seen here.

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When we read type we imagine that we read the whole of the type — but that is not so; we only notice the upper half of each letter. You can easily prove this for yourself by covering up the upper half of the line with a sheet of paper (being careful to hold the paper exactly in the middle of the letters), and you will not, without great difficulty, decipher a single word. Now place the paper over the lower half of a line, and you can read it without the slightest difficulty.

— George Lindsay Johnson, “Some Curious Optical Illusions,” Strand, October 1897

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Patreon subscriber Ivan points out that effectively his whole life became a football pull. I wonder if Lucy is watching from a distance.

Since 1982, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has celebrated the opening lines of imagined horrible novels. The winners of the 2024 competition have been announced and there are some real doozies in there, starting with the overall winner:

She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.

Here are a few of my other favorites:

Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.

That sweltering Friday evening she not so much walked but slithered into my shabby strip mall P.I. office, showing off all her curves, and I knew then I was in for a weekend of trouble because Dave’s Reptile Emporium next door, from which the ball python had escaped, was closed until Monday.

Sir Arthur Pendragon, High King of the Britons, son of King Uther Pendragon, nephew of King Aurelius Ambrosius, who was in turn the son of a long list of people who weren’t kings and thus don’t matter, only slept with his sister once, but boy did it come back to bite him in the ass.

His burnt flesh sizzling like a burger on the grill, blood pouring from his wounds like an overshaken cola, and sweat as salty as French fries pouring down his face, John knew that after this mission was over, he was getting McDonald’s for dinner.

“I do enjoy turning a prophet,” said Torquemada, as he roasted the heretic seer on a spit.

You can check out the whole wretched bunch here.

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