The Creeping Devil is a rare and fascinating species of cactus that is not only capable of cloning itself to survive, but also of detaching from its major shoot to move through the desert over time.

Also known by its scientific name, Stenocereus eruca, this unusual species of cactus is endemic to the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California Sur, and is the only known moving cactus in the world. Unlike most other species of cactus, which typically grow vertically, toward the sky, the creeping devil is different – it lies flat on the ground with only its tip slightly raised. This plays a major role in the plant’s survival in isolation, but also in its unique capacity to migrate along the desert over long periods of time.

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A French street artist has found a way to bring Bitcoin to the art world. By incorporating QR codes in his murals, he is able to receive donations directly from passers-by who appreciate his artworks.

Pascal ‘PBOY’ Boyart started adding Bitcoin QR codes to his street murals in November 2017, and he has so far received over $1,000 in cryptocurrency donations from people who just wanted to show their appreciation and support for his art. The donation system is extremely simple and fast – anyone with a smartphone and a Bitcoin wallet can just scan the QR code in the mural and transfer funds directly to the artist. Boyart isn’t sure if he is the first artist to use this system, but he definitely sees others relying on decentralised currencies going forward, as it cuts the middlemen – art galleries or crowdfunding platforms – allowing artists to directly connect to their audience.

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Having your blood tested, getting a nutritional breakdown of every piece of food you out in your mouth and talking about high cholesterol and vitamin deficiencies sound more like a hospital visit than an enjoyable dinner party, but they are at the core of a new trend among health freaks – health optimization parties.

Keeping track of your calorie intake, drinking kale smoothies and eating quinoa salads are all fine and dandy, but if you’re really serious about your health, you’ll want to take things to the next level. That’s where health optimization parties come in. These social events allow health conscious friends and family to get an in-depth analysis of their actual health, while enjoying healthy foods and drinks and talking about the things that really matter, like cholesterol, vitamins and fitness routines.

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In China, health insurance companies apparently offer discounts to people who can prove they get enough exercise every day by using their mobile phones to monitor their movement. Only instead of actually going for walks, some people use ingenious perpetuum mobile devices to cheat the system.

I first learned about China’s “mobile phone cradles” a few days ago, after seeing a picture of a strange perpetuum mobile device with a smartphone attached to it, tweeted by Chinese comedian Dashan (@akaDashan). He had spotted it in a restaurant in Harbin, where patrons were invited to use it to trick their phones’ pedometer apps into recording thousands of steps artificially, while they relaxed, and had a bite to eat or a drink. Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? Well, that’s where it gets interesting.

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In what the local community has named a ‘catastrophe’, a museum in Elne, Southern France, dedicated to the work of painter Etienne Terrus recently discovered that at least 82 of its 140 artworks were actually fakes.

The Terrus museum in Elne had bought the paintings, drawings and watercolors over a period of 20 years, for a total price of around 160,000 euros ($193,000), but concerns regarding their authenticity were raised only recently. Art historian Eric Forcada, who was entrusted with overseeing the entire Terrus collection while the small museum was being renovated, apparently noticed that some of the buildings depicted in the artworks had been built after the artist’s death, so they couldn’t possibly have been painted by him. But the buildings that weren’t supposed to appear in Terrus artworks led the historian to more unusual discoveries.

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A young Chinese doctor was recently set free after spending three month in jail for claiming that a certain brand of medicinal wine was toxic and couldn’t cure heart disease and arthritis, as the manufacturer claimed.

It all started last December, when Guangzhou-based  physician Tan Qindong published a short article on Chinese social media platform Meipian, stating that the popular Hongmao Medicinal Wine was not only toxic, but also ineffective in treating serious heart conditions and arthritis, as advertised by the manufacturer. His post apparently drew a lot of attention, as Hongmao soon filed a defamation lawsuit against the 39-year-old doctor, claiming that it had “maliciously discredited” the brand’s reputation and had caused “significant financial losses” of as much as 1.4 million yuan ($223,000).

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Golf carts aren’t the fastest, most comfortable, or most spacious vehicles money can buy, but in Discovery Bay, an upscale residential development in Hong Kong, they are more coveted than Porsches, Teslas or other luxury cars.

In the US, the average price of a golf cart is around $10,000, but in Discovery Bay, the slow-moving buggy can sell for a whopping $250,000 (HK$2 million). That’s more than some people are willing to pay for a home, let alone a vehicle that barely qualifies as a car. But there’s a reason to this madness. You see, private passenger cars aren’t allowed in this upscale neighborhood of Hong Kong, and residents require a special license for golf carts as well, the number of which has been capped to 500 by the Transportation Department. The demand for motorized transportation in Discovery Bay offset by a supply crunch has catapulted the modest golf cart to luxury vehicle status.

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Slovenian artist Sašo Krajnc creates incredibly detailed portraits by tightly winding a single sewing thread on a circular wooden frame to create overlapping straight lines.

That’s actually the most impressive thing about Sašo Krajnc, that he’s able to create such detailed facial features, like the curvatures of the eyes and lips, using only straight lines. He starts out with a circular frame made of wood or aluminium and lined with metal nails. He then takes a long sewing thread and begins winding it around these nails creating hundreds, or even thousands of black straight lines that crisscross and overlap to emphasise the features of his subjects.

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A Chinese art student sparked a heated debate online after using the wings of over 500 butterflies to create a series of artworks symbolizing rebirth. While some consider her “sick” for using butterfly wings as an art medium, others think her creations qualify as original art.

Li Zheng, a fourth-year art student at Quanzhou Normal University in Fujian province, China, created a series of artworks consisting of meticulously arranged butterfly wings as part of her graduation piece. She and her colleagues were instructed by their lecturer to recreate famous artworks using different materials. Li decided she wanted to recreate some of the masterpieces of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, but at first, she had no idea what materials she was going to use.

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When it comes to metallic wire artworks, you’ll have a tough time finding a more talented artist than @tdaiki1216, a young Japanese art graduate who seems able to twist copper and brass wire into pretty much anything he sets his mind to, from sculptures that look like drawn manga, to slithering snakes and giant insects.

@tdaiki1216, whose real name is Tsutamoto Dawiki, first made headlines in Japan two years ago, when his incredibly detailed wire sculptures imitating manga drawings went viral on Twitter. Fixed into square wooden blocks and placed against a white background, his artworks looked exactly like manga comics, even though they were actually twisted pieces of wire. Those were impressive enough, but @tdaiki1216 has stepped up his game even more over these last few years, and is now specializing in more complex wire sculptures, some of which are simply mind-blowing.

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California-based artist Phil Vance spends hundreds of hours creating typography portraits of historical icons entirely out of handwritten words and phrases.

From afar, Phil Vance’s typography portraits look like expertly drawn artworks, but as you draw nearer to them, you start to see that every feature is actually made up of handwritten text. Once you start deciphering all the words, you realize they are famous quotes of the subject written over and over again. The talented artist describes his art as “cross-hatching but with words.”

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Kiev-based artist Olga Kamenetskaya is very popular among doll collectors for her ability to turn generic dolls of all shapes and sizes into unique works of art, some of them so-realistic looking you could swear they were real people.

Like most girls, Olga used to love playing with dolls as a child. She eventually grew out of it, only to rediscover her fascination with them a few years ago, after seeing a commercial for Monster High Dolls. She bought one, but then she wanted another one, and another one. She was so enthralled with Monster High Dolls that she spent a lot of time looking at photos of the different dolls online. One day, Olga spotted one that she had never seen before, and after doing some research, she learned that it was an OOAK (One Of A Kind). She found it incredible that someone could create that level of detail on a doll completely by hand, and she spent a whole year researching and watching tutorials online before taking up a brush and trying it herself.

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We’ve seen artists use all sorts of canvases in the past, from paper towels, to butterfly wings or fallen leaves, but never their own carpets. Well, thank to the genius of Japanese Twitter user @agito0219, we can now add carpets to the list of unusual things to create exceptional art on.

@agito0219’s art is as simple as it is impressive. If you’ve ever vacuumed a carpet, you probably already know they usually have two sides. Brush the fibers one way and you reveal one side, but brush them again against the grain and you can see patterns of a slightly or completely different color, depending on the rug. It’s this double-sided nature of her carpets that the mysterious @agito0219 exploits to create her intricate yet ephemeral works of art.

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Latvian performance artist Arturs Bērziņš has managed to spark a heated debate about the ethics of his latest project, where he sliced bits of flesh from two people’s bodies, cooked them in a frying pan and fed it back to them.

Bērziņš’ controversial performance, named Eschatology, was staged on March 6th, at the Museum LV un Grata JJ, in Riga. As promised, those in attendance were treated to something they had most likely never seen before. The artist, wearing a white forensic suit, practiced his surgical skills on two models – a man and a woman – slicing bits of flesh from their backs, then frying them in a hot pan and feeding the meat back to them.

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Evidence Immobilier, a real-estate agency in Montpelier, France, has become the first in the world to revolutionize the apartment viewing experience by turning it into an exciting “Escape Room” game where potential buyers have to look for clues and solve puzzles, while at the same time discovering the layout of the place.

Whether you’re looking to rent or buy a new apartment, the initial viewing is a very important part of the process. However, for most people – youths in particular – it’s just another chore that has to be completed, not something they are overly excited about.  One real-estate agency in France wants to change that, and their first attempt has been attracting a lot of attention from French media. They’ve teamed up with an Escape Room game designer in Montpelier to turn one of their available apartments into an interactive experience for potential buyers.

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