Last week, police in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta reported at least 11 cases of people completely stripped of their clothes tied to lamp posts and with the letter ‘R’ shaved on the back of their heads. So far, no one knows who orchestrated these attacks and why, as the victims all refuse to talk.

Police started receiving calls about naked men being tied to lamp posts in different areas of Puerto Vallarta last Monday. Between 9:26 PM on Monday, and 1:29 AM on Tuesday, four men were discovered in similar circumstances. They had all been stripped naked, had bruises on their buttocks like they had been repeatedly slapped, they were tied to lamp posts at various intersections across the city and they all had the letter ‘R’ shaved into the back of their heads. Authorities announced that they had started an investigation, but little did they know that these four cases was only the beginning.

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A Maine artist managed to carve a unique niche for herself by using moose droppings as the main medium for her artworks.

It’s not clear when or how Somerville resident Mary Winchenbach got the idea to use moose poop to make art, but after showing off her witty-named “Tirdy Works” at the Common Ground Fair, in Unity, Maine, people have been going crazy for them. Her official Facebook page has thousands of ‘likes’ and comments from people wanting to buy some. Her collection of Tirdy Works features clocks, figurines, jewelry, among other things, all made with genuine ‘Maine Moose Tirds’.

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A young system analyst from Brazil managed to save about half the cost of building a two storey brick house, by doing all the work himself, instead of hiring a professional construction crew. With absolutely no construction experience behind him, he turned to YouTube tutorials and advice from family and friends.

33-year-old Evandro Klimpel Balmant and his wife Ane Caroline de Jesus Balmant, 34, live in a beautiful 200 square-meter house that they built themselves, in Almirante Tamandare municipality, a metropolitan area of Curitiba, in Brazil. It took three long years to raise the house from the ground up, and they still have the upstairs to plaster, but they say it was worth the wait, especially since they manage to save around 50% what a house this size would have cost to build with a construction company.

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International media outlets have been reporting the shocking case of a dolphin, dozens of penguins and other wildlife that have been abandoned in a derelict Japanese aquarium that closed down months ago.

The operator of the Inubosaki Marine Park Aquarium in Choshi, a city in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, closed down in January 2018, citing a steady decline in visitors following the strong earthquake and nuclear crisis of 2011. However, the marine life that used to entertain guests – including a bottlenose dolphin and dozens of humboldt penguins – has been locked inside the abandoned facility ever since and are living in improper conditions. Although someone has reportedly been feeding them regularly, animal activists claim that Honey the dolphin is showing signs of stress due to loneliness and suffered serious sunburns this summer, while the penguins are living in crumbling pens, among debris. Park representatives could not be contacted about the situation and local authorities claim that their hands are tied.

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A man named Valery recently became the star of what may very well be the most epic fail in the history of iPhone launches. After becoming the first person in a monstrously long queue to set foot inside the Apple store in Moscow to buy an iPhone XS, he left empty-handed because he couldn’t afford to buy it.

On the morning of September 28, the Apple store in Moscow finally opened its doors to the crowd of people that had been lining up outside for over 24 hours to buy the new iPhone XS and XS Max. Apple fans have been queuing up for new iPhone launches all around the world for years now, but what made this particular event special was the amount of fail involved. For one thing, the first eight people at the head of the giant queue evaporated minutes before the store opened. It turns out they had never planned on buying a phone, hoping to sell their places in line for absurd amounts of money, instead. But they were actually the smart ones, because the ninth guy planned to do the same thing, only he didn’t have the brains to bail before the doors opened.

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The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is mostly known as one of the few places on Earth where people are forbidden from dying, but few know that this place also has a ban on cats, with one exception, a purring feline that’s technically a fox.

Cats weren’t always banned on Svalbard. It was only during the 1990s that Norwegian authorities enforced the ban, after it was decided that they were susceptible to rabies and echinococcosis (a type of tape worm) infections from foxes and rats, which in turn posed a big risk to the human population. Interestingly, rats are not indigenous to the northern archipelago, only arriving here relatively recently on board cargo ships, but being the resourceful creatures they are, they quickly adapted to the harsh conditions. Photos taken prior to the ban on cats show that felines were once popular on Spitsbergen and the other islands that make up Svalbard, but since then, only one ginger cat has been photographed on the archipelago. Her name is Kesha and she has a rather interesting story.

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A 37-year-old woman from Colombia recently shocked her entire country after managing to fake her pregnancy for nine months and then coming up with film-worthy story to explain the absence of a baby on her due date. And she did it all to keep her partner from leaving her.

Antonela Santiago Padilla and her partner Victor had known each other since they were 14 year old teenagers growing up in northern Barranquilla. Life split them apart for a long time, but many years later, Victor called to commemorate the memory of her brother, who had passed away. She started writing to him in September of last year, and soon their relationship became stronger and closer. However, Antonela knew that he was involved in a romantic relationship with another woman and didn’t want to break them up. Victor kept telling her that he and his partner weren’t getting along and that they were going to break up, so they started their own romantic relationship in December 2017. But Antonela wasn’t convinced that Victor had forgotten about his former girlfriend and it was this insecurity that made her create this elaborate farce that left everyone flabbergasted.

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A creative female farmer in China recently broke the internet with a gorgeous wedding dress she made out of 40 cement bags leftover after repairing her country house.

28-year-old Lili Tan has never taken fashion design courses, and spends most of her time farming, not creating wedding gowns, but looking at the amazing dress she created on a rainy day, when she couldn’t work in the fields, you could swear she makes dresses and accessories for a living. Using 40 discarded cement bags, the contents of which had gone toward renovating her village house near Longnan city, in China’s Gangsu province, Tan was able to create an elaborate wedding dress like the ones she saw in magazines, an impressive train for it, as well as a fancy hat. She showed them off on social media in a video which instantly went viral with several millions of views.

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Because to their thick, finger-like trunks and their eerie claw-like feet, the gooseneck barnacles growing on the rocks of Portugal’s most south-western coastline are known as Lucifer’s Fingers. They are sometimes referred to as the truffles of the sea, both because of their rarity and high price, but also because of how hard and risky they are to harvest.

Restaurants in Portugal and Spain charge up to $115 for a plate of Lucifer’s Fingers, which may sound sound outrageously expensive two some people, but is justified by their rarity and the dangers barnacle hunters expose themselves to when harvesting them. Lucifer’s Fingers, or percebes, cannot be farmed and only thrive on the on rocks in the ocean intertidal zone, where crashing waves provide them with plankton. This makes them notoriously dangerous to harvest, with hunters risking getting crushed against the rocks by crashing waves, or being rendered unconscious by the impact and drowning. The lucky ones escape with broken limbs or severe abrasions.

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Jesse Rix has been tattooing since 2005 and specializes in a wide range of styles, from realism to nature pieces, but it’s hid geometric, three-dimensional optical illusion tattoos that really get people talking. Some of his works are so trippy that you could swear you’re looking at a fantastic world underneath a person’s skin.

In most of his incredible tattooed optical illusions, Rix uses geometrical shapes like hexagons and cubes to “remove” pieces of skin from his subjects and reveal the colorful world beneath. However, his art and skills are constantly evolving, as shown in some of his latest works, which feature windows inked on to his subjects through which you can see the universe beneath their skin. The New Hampshire-based artist is obviously a master of the trompe-l’œil technique, and some of his tattoos are so insanely realistic they can be kind of creepy to look at.

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A man recently caused havoc at a car dealership in Tongren City, China, after turning up with a truck full of coins to buy a 480,000 yuan ($70,000) BMW.

The unnamed man apparently used to work as a bus driver and collected the coins during his many years on the job. Only instead of regularly exchanging them for larger denomination banknotes, he just kept them in his home, hoping to some day spend them on the car of his dreams. After seeing a new BMW that he really liked, the man decided that the time had come to exchange his sizable fortune for it, but only then realized that he had never even counted the coins. So he called some friends over and they spent four days counting them before loading them up in crates and driving to the car dealership.

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For some reason, many Japanese people find it incredibly difficult to quit their job and prefer paying a third party hundreds of dollars to quit on their behalf rather than have to face their boss and co-workers and handing in their resignation personally.

Senshi S LLC is a Tokyo-based startup founded by childhood friends Toshiyuki Niino and Yuichiro Okazaki last year. It operates ‘Exit’ a unique service that basically handles job resignations on behalf od clients, for a fee. Rather, than having to tell their bosses that they can’t or don’t want to work for them anymore, Exit clients prefer to pay between 40,000 yen ($350) and 50,000 yen ($450) to have someone else do it for them. Exit’s founders declared themselves surprised that so many people find quitting their jobs so stressful, but they have been more than happy to help hundreds of them get through this process.

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A Minnesota couple has been accused of abandoning a 5-year-old child in the woods as punishment for wetting his pants. The couple did reportedly come back for the boy after driving away a short distance, but couldn’t find him.

Lynda Michel and Gregory Wilson can kiss away their chances of winning a parents of the year award after showing off their parenting skills – or lack thereof – late last month, when they left a young child all by himself in a forest to teach him a lesson after he reportedly wet himself. The couple allegedly came back to get him after driving off a short distance, but the boy was nowhere to be found. He was spotted by a motorist on Aug. 28 walking along a highway south of St. Peter in Minnesota, all wet and sobbing.

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A 6-year-old girl from China’s Ningxia autonomous region managed to melt the hearts of millions with her dedication to her disabled father who she has been taking care of ever since her mother left them.

Tian Haicheng, a 38-year-old man from Haiyuan County, in Ningxia, had his entire world turned upside down four years ago, when he was involved in a serious car accident. He lost his ability to walk, and was left with use of arms, which made him unable to work and support his family. His wife took their son and abandoned him and their 6-year-old daughter. But instead of Tian having to somehow take care of his girl, she was the one who took up most of the responsibilities, including cooking, cleaning, and making sure that Tian was well taken care of.

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They say no good deed goes unpunished, and this kindhearted North-Carolina woman who took in dozens of abandoned pets as Hurricane Florence ravaged the US state is a prime example of that. She was arrested and is now facing several misdemeanor charges for practicing veterinary medicine without a license.

As Hurricane Florence was getting ready to make landfall in North Caroline, Tammie Hedges decided to turn a warehouse she had been remodeling into a shelter for pets. Pets came from the streets, where they were picked up by volunteers, but also from their owners, who had to evacuate but couldn’t take their animals with them. All in all, she sheltered 27 pets – 17 cats and 10 dogs – during the storm, and also administered some medical treatments to ensure their well-being. But whereas most people considered her actions an act of kindness to animals, local authorities saw them as a violation of the law and charged her with several misdemeanors.

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