Japanese designer Yasuhiro Suziki has created a unique boat shaped like a giant zipper puller that looks like it’s opening up the water when sailing.

Unveiled as part of the Designart Tokyo 2020 event, the zipper puller boat – officially known as ‘Zipper Fastener Ship’ – is the brain child of Japanese designer Yasuhiro Suzuki, who claims it was the result of a simple observation. He was looking down from the window of an airplane and saw a ship sailing through Tokyo Bay; the movement of the water as the boat passed created the illusion of a zipper splitting the water, just like one opens a jacket, so he decided to create a literal representation of this illusion.

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The Germans are known for their machine engineering, but it turns out that they’re not to shabby when it comes to genetic engineering either, and the jagdterrier, a living breathing hunting machine, is a perfect example.

Literally German for “hunt terrier”, the jagdterrier is a hunting dog developed in Germany between the two world wars, in a time when German nationalism and feeling of superiority were at an all-time high. Hunting cynologists Walter Zangenberg, Carl Erick Grunewald, and Rudolph Friess decided that the popular Fox Terrier was being bred more as a show dog, and less as an efficient hunting machine, so they started working on a new breed of terrier, one that would be superior to British and American breeds.

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James Blackwood, a retired Mounted Police Officer from Nova Scotia, calls himself a “Raccoon Whisperer”, a worthy title, considering that he has been feeding dozens of them every night, for over two decades.

Blackwood and his furry friends recently became the talk of the interwebs, after a video showing the pensioner getting mobbed by a about two dozen raccoons, as he feeds them grapes and hot-dogs. This one video has been viewed 10 million times on YouTube, in the last two weeks, and has turned the retired RCMP officer into an overnight sensation. Truth be told, he already a healthy following on YouTube, with over 200,000subscribers, but those were mainly racoon and animal lovers, now the whole world knows about the Racoon Whisperer.

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Vietnamese social media has been abuzz with the story of a girl who went under the knife at age 19, after breaking up with her boyfriend because of her looks.

Nguyen Tuong Vy became an overnight hot topic in Vietnam after taking to social media to share photos of herself from a few years ago, before undergoing extensive plastic surgery to her face. The 21-year-old woman from Dak Lak province said that she made the decision to drastically change her looks after breaking up with her 11th grade boyfriend, when she was only 17. Apparently, they were very much in love, but even though he constantly told her that he liked her for who she was, not how she looked, her boyfriend never introduced her to his friends. It was only when one of his friends invited them to his birthday that she realized it was because of her looks.

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Silpo, a popular supermarket chain in Ukraine, has attracted a lot of attention since the opening of its new Lviv venue, which is decorated with elements from the popular GTA: San Andreas video game.

Featuring decorative panels in the same style as the artwork for Rockstar Games’ 2004 hit open-world game, as well as the same font for it isles, the new Silpo supermarket in Lviv has been scoring a lot of points with GTA: San Andreas fans. The venue also features visual references to Venice Beach, and iconic elements like lifeguards, surfboards and lots of color.

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For some reason, a 22-year-old Argentinian woman who decided to get her fallopian tubes tied to make sure she never gives birth has become the talk of Latino social media over the last few days.

Ailin Cubelo Naval is only 22 years old but she already knows she doesn’t want to have children, not now, not ever. The young Argentinian cites a variety of reasons for why she decided that she never wants to be a mother, from the fact that she considers parenthood more of a cultural imposition than a natural instinct, to her refusal to dedicate 20 years of her life to bringing up a child. Her views were apparently so controversial in Argentina that she was refused by gynecologists twice when she decided to have her fallopian tubes tied and sent to see a psychologist instead.

After going through the humiliation of having to seek medical assistance after being denied the surgical procedure twice, Ailin was shocked to learn that tubal ligation had been a guaranteed right in her country since 2006. She looked for another doctor and finally got the procedure.

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The Eximus IV, a student-built railroad car that has been setting records for fuel efficiency since 2016, has once again proven itself the world’s most efficient vehicle in the annual Delsbo Electric contest.

Every year, teams from all around the world travel to a specially-built track in Sweden to test their ultra energy-efficient vehicles designed to cover the longest possible distance on as little fuel as possible. Contestants are tasked with driving their vehicles on a 3.36 kilometer rail track to keep rolling resistance to a minimum, while carrying a total of six passengers, with an average weight of 50kg per person. Ever since it entered the competition four years ago, the Eximus IV has become somewhat of a legend of the competition, and this year it once again proved why.

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Whether you’re looking to stand out from the crowd at rave parties, or just keep your love for tattoos a secret from the world at large, UV tattoos are definitely something to consider.

Although they’ve been around for many years now, UV tattoos, also known as black light tattoos, have been growing in popularity, both among club goers craving attention, and tattoo lovers wanting to make their traditional ink stand out in certain conditions. And then there is the third category, the people who want to keep their ink virtually invisible in their day to day life, only to showcase it in all its glory under ultraviolet light. Whatever the case, there are a few interesting things you should know about this intriguing tattoos.

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Who would have though that simply painting a mural on the side of a building would one day have the same pollution-cleaning effect as planting 780 trees?

Organized by the sportswear company Converse as part of their City-Forests campaign, the latest mural in the Polish city of Warsaw is not only an aesthetically pleasing artwork, but also an ingenious way to tackle urban pollution. Painted using photocatalytic paint with titanium dioxide, on a building that faces the busy metro station Politechnika, the ingenious mural reportedly attracts airborne pollutants before converting them into harmless nitrates through a chemical process involving sunlight.

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The Alpine Ibex is a species of big mountain goat-like herbivores that inhabit the highest peaks of the European Alps, using their pincer-like hooves and impressive agility to climb up even the steepest cliffs, thus avoiding most predators. But it’s their ability to climb even vertical walls that has made ibexes famous all over the world.

The Cingino Dam, located in Italy’s Piedmont region is one of many masonry dams in the European country, but it became somewhat of a tourist attraction a few years back, after photos of ibexes climbing the vertical damn all the way to the top went viral online. And looking at these photos, or watching the videos of the herbivores expertly traversing the seemingly unclimbable structure, it’s easy to see why millions around the world declared themselves fascinated. Somehow, the ibexes are able to grip any rock that protrudes from the dam ever so slightly, which allows them to scale the 50-meter-high wall and reach the mineral they so desperately crave – salt.

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Every year, at the end of October, tens of thousands of people flock to a Buddhist temple in China to see a majestic gingko biloba tree shed its foliage and turn the temple compound from green to gold.

The Gu Guanyin Buddhist temple in the Zhongnan Mountains of China’s Shaanxi Province is home to a 1,400-year-old gingko biloba tree that some say was planted for the Tang dynasty (618–907) emperor Li Shimin, one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history. It towers majestically over the temple, and for a few days every autumn, it rains down a gold carpet of leaves that stands out against the muted tones of the season. Because of its striking appearance, it has been called the world’s most beautiful gingko biloba tree, and has become a tourist attraction in it own right.

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Platonic or elective co-parenting is a new way of having and raising children which involves two people conceiving (naturally or artificially) and taking joint physical, financial and emotional responsibility for raising them, but without being romantically involved.

Whether it’s because they want to raise a child without being involved in a romantic relationship, or because they feel like their biological clock is ticking and they haven’t yet found Mr. or Mrs. Right, a growing number of people are turning to specialized websites like PollenTree or Modamily to find likeminded people to raise children with without any romantic strings attached. The rising popularity of platonic co-parenting is seen by experts as a consequence of many people’s realization that the person you have kids with doesn’t be the person you grow old with, or even someone you live with.

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New Kim, a two-year-old racing pigeon from Belgium has recently been crowned the world’s most expensive pigeon after a South African collector bid a whopping 1.3 million euros ($1.5 million) in an online auction.

Hok Van De Wouwer, a renowned pigeon breeder in Antwerp, Belgium has recently put its entire collection of racing pigeons on sale this month. Father and son duo Gaston and Kurt Van De Wouwer have an enviable resume among pigeon breeders, winning numerous national ace pigeon titles and 1st place at nationals, so it’s no wonder that their birds are sought after in the still ongoing online auction. But even so, no one expected the star of the show, a two year-old female named New Kim, to break the world record for most expensive pigeon.

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To get an idea of what mobile phones were like before the smartphones took over, take a look at this Turkish man’s impressive collection of outdated handhelds from the pre-iPhone era.

It’s hard to believe that kids today have to imagine what it was like having to push physical buttons, not figures on a touchscreen, to dial a phone number, but for us older folk who actually experienced those times, old handhelds still have their charm. Some us even keep such gadgets around, as keepsakes, and a few, like Sehabettin Ozcelik, a phone repairman from Turkey, keep all of them around. In his case, the collection of outdated cellphones consists of over 1,000 models, including classics like the Nokia 3310 or Motorola Razr V3.

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Catching fish as small as a penny would be nothing short of embarrassing for the average fisherman, but in Japan it’s a source of pride, as in the old art of Tanago Fishing, the smaller the fish is, the bigger a catch it represents.

Most fishermen believe that the bigger the fish they catch, the greater their fishing skill is, which is why you routinely see them posing only with very large fish, and hear them telling tales about veritable sea monsters that only narrowly eluded them. However, things are very different in Japan, a country where minimalism is pervasive in all aspects of life, from gardening, to architecture. Fishing makes no exception, so it’s not very surprising that fishermen judge their skills not by how large their catch is, but by how small it is.

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