If you ever find yourself having to convince someone that anything is possible, just tell them about a Pigcasso, a 450 pound (204 kg) pig who, after being rescued from a South African slaughterhouse at four weeks old, went on to become an acclaimed painter.

South African animal-rights activist Joanne Lefson adopted Pigcasso after rescuing her from a grim fate at the slaughterhouse, a couple of years ago. She took the animal back to her farm and offered her a variety of toys to keep her entertained. Among those toys were some paintbrushes, and the pig became so fascinated with them that she ignored all her other toys. Lefson decided to leave out some paint and canvas as well to see what the animal would do. Believe it or not, she started painting.

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Two years ago, Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin didn’t even know how to bake, but today she is widely regarded as the world’s most talented pie maker. And, believe it or not, she’s entirely self taught.

Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin’s amazing journey into the world of elaborate pies began a couple of years ago, as a New Year’s resolution to cut down on sugar. Pies just seemed like the safest way to satisfy her dessert cravings, but there was just one problem – she didn’t know anything about baking, or cooking in general for that matter. So she dedicated six months to developing her baking skills, and it paid off big-time. These days, Clark-Bojin’s fabulous pies are all the rage on social media and she’s able to make a living by selling how-to guides to like-minded pie enthusiasts who want to bake their own edible works of art.

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Arthur Wagner, a leading member of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right German political party whose slogan is “Islam doesn’t belong in Germany”, recently resigned after converting to Islam.

Originally created as an anti-euro party, the AfD has recently campaigned on an anti-Muslim, anti immigration platform, strongly criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow over a million refugees into Germany, since 2015. Just last summer, Arthur Wagner, who sat on the party’s executive committee in the state of Brandenburg, accused Merkel of “making a big mistake” by allowing so many Muslim refugees into the country, and warned that “Germany is mutating into a different country”. On January 11th, he left the party citing personal reasons, but it was later revealed that he had converted to Islam.

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Hair is not the easiest art medium to work with, especially when you’re trying to create detailed portraits of people and animals, but young Indian artist Midhun R.R. had developed a technique that allows him to manipulate thousands of short hair strands into impressive artworks.

All Midhun needs to create his art is some hair, obviously, a white sheet of paper for canvas and a long needle to manipulate the tiny hairs. He makes the whole thing look easy in the time lapse videos he posts on YouTube, but admits that arranging the hairs the way he wants is actually harder than it seems. To make it easier for himself he has the hair chemically treated before using it. The hair strands are then cut at various lengths, depending on the image he is trying to create, and carefully arranged on the paper canvas using the needle. Once Midhun is satisfied with the result, the artwork is sandwiched between two glass panes for long-term preservation.

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At just 30-years-old, Karol Rybakowski is already one of the biggest names in the world of tattoos, and looking at some of his works, it’s pretty easy to see why. His portrait tattoos look as if a picture has been slapped on the subject skin, and in many cases they turn out even better than the photos that inspired them.

It won’t surprise you to learn that Karol Rybakowski studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Warsaw, before becoming a tattoo artist, but while that explains his artistic style, I for one still can’t wrap my head around how a 30-year-old can create such stunningly-realistic tattoos. And apparently, I’m not the only one. About four years ago, just when his works started showing up online, people in the business who had never seen his tattoos in person actually thought that they were photoshopped. There was a particularly heated debate surrounding his tattoo of Bradley Cooper as sniper Chris Kyle in “American Sniper” with many people claiming that it looked too good to be true.

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Five years ago, a compassionate Shanghai policeman took on the role of son to help comfort an elderly couple he had never met before. They had lost their own son in a tragic accident 15 years ago, and the policeman’s similar appearance helped comfort them.

In 2003, Liang Qiaoying and her son, Liang Yu, from North China’s Shanxi province, were exposed to poison gas, during a freak accident. The woman survived, but her young son did not. Liang, a former schoolteacher, was left paralyzed and mentally impaired following the accident, and her husband, Xia Zhanhai, could not bear to tell her the truth about their son. Instead, whenever his wife asked to see Liang Yu, he kept saying that he had gone to work in another city.

In 2010, while watching a television show about police work in Shanghai, Xia Zhanhai was stunned to see an officer that looked just like his deceased son. He immediately knew that the young man was the answer to making his wife smile again, but he had know idea how to get in touch with him. He hadn’t caught his name, and all he had to go by was that he was stationed in Pudong, 1,500 km away. But that wasn’t going to stop him.

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From Whatsapp to WeChat or Skype,the world has plenty of choices when it comes to messaging apps that connect friends and strangers on the internet. The market is so crowded this days that for a new competitor to even get noticed, they’d have to come up with something completely new. Enter “Die With Me,” a fresh chat app that can only be used when your smartphone has 5% or less battery remaining.

Die With Me allows total strangers with low battery to log into an online chatroom and converse as they wait for their handhelds to shut off completely. Or, as the developers so poetically put it, to “die together in a chatroom on your way to offline peace.” Using Die With Me requires nothing more than choosing a username and allowing the app to read your battery status. The idea behind the strangely poignant app was to turn the frustrating experience of dealing with low phone battery into a positive one.

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Most of us see used teabags as stained, soggy pieces of trash, but to visual artist and graphic designer Ruby Silvious they are miniature canvases just waiting to be turned into artworks.

Three years ago, Ruby Silvious came up with an ingenious way of combining two of her favorite pastimes – painting and drinking tea – by using the used teabags as small pieces of canvas. She started a project called 363 Days of Tea, creating a unique teabag painting every day for 363 days. To the New-York-based artist, it served as a sort of daily diary, allowing her to record her feelings and thoughts as whimsical miniature illustrations, but also compelled viewers to re-evaluate their views on found and recycled materials.

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The tiny house movement has taken off over the past decade as urban developers have had to find creative solutions to soaring property prices worldwide. James Law Cybertecture of Hong Kong has joined this trend with their newly released Opod Tube House, made from repurposed concrete pipe.

Hong Kong, one of the most populous cities on the planet, has been especially hard hit as home prices have shattered historical records for 12 straight months this past year. According to the Bangkok Post, an apartment sold this past November for HK 32,060 (USD 6,915) per square foot, making it the most expensive apartment per square foot in all of of Asia. This trend has forced over 200,000 people into tiny partitioned apartments, averaging no more than 62 square feet, and some are only able to afford individual caged beds. Government data shows a 9% increase in the number of households living in “inadequate housing,” including partitioned flats and industrial buildings.

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According to a research paper published recently in the Journal of Ethnobiology, several Australian birds of prey have the habit of starting wildfires for the soul purpose of flushing out prey from the blazing grasslands. Interestingly, aboriginals have known about this for over 40,000 years and even have a name for the fire-wielding birds – “firehawks”.

Australia’s dry climate makes it prone to wildfires. Lightnings and human activities are considered the main causes, but according to a recently-published research paper, birds may sometimes have a part to play as well. Raptors like the black kite (Milvus migrans), whistling kite (Haliastur sphenurus), and the brown falcon (Falco berigora) can allegedly start fires in the continent’s 730,000 square miles of savanna by dropping burning sticks in the dry grass to flush out prey like insects, reptiles and small mammals. What’s even more remarkable is that they seem to be doing it on purpose.

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Most people throw away torn gift wrap as soon as they open their Christmas presents, but not Olivia Mears. The 26-year-old costume designer from North Carolina uses the colorful junk to create Disney princess-like dresses.

Mears is famous for turning unconventional materials into stunning outfits. Back in 2015, she went viral online for a “Taco Belle” dress inspired by Belle’s yellow gown from Beauty and the Beast, but with a dress featuring giant tacos. Keeping the Taco Bell theme going, she later created a dress exclusively out of Taco Bell wrappers, then a “Pizarella” dress shaped like a giant pizza, a warrior princess armour made of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer packaging, and even a toilet paper dress. But her torn gift wrap gowns are probably the most impressive.

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“Flat-earthers”, people who believe that the Earth is flat, have been catching a lot of flack for their ridiculous claims, but their’s is not the craziest theory regarding our planet’s shape and structure. Some people actually believe the Earth is hollow and that a race of superior humans live inside it.

The hollow Earth theory was first proposed in the 17th century by some of the leading scientists of the time. Unlike their predecessors, however, the modern hollow Earth theorists also believe that a race of superior humans, Vikings, and Nazis live in paradise at the center. These residents of the core frequently send UFOs, via holes in the North and South poles, to spy on us surface dwellers in an attempt to prevent a nuclear war.

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If run of the mill disaster survival kits just don’t cut it and you can afford to splurge a few extra bucks on something more befitting your social status, try Preppi, a luxury doomsday kit supplier for the super rich.

Film director Ryan Kuhlman founded Preppi in partnership with costume designer Lauren Tafuri, and they run the business out of their downtown Los Angeles loft. The couple experienced a small earthquake in 2014 and realized that they should have supplies on hand for such emergencies. Today, their Prepster disaster kits are the most popular luxury survival accessories on the market.

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A group of fraternity members in Bethesda, Maryland recently gave the phrase “drink the air” a literal meaning, after staging a monster party so fueled by alcohol that the air in the venue tested positive on a police breathalyzer.

Last month, Montgomery County police officers raided a home in an upscale neighborhood of Bethesda after receiving several complaints from neighbors, and broke up what must have been one hell of a party. Court documents show that the officers found insulated windows, plastic bags full of beer cans and liqueur bottles, and the floors sticky with spilled booze. The ambient air inside the suburban house was tested with at least one breathalyzer and registered a positive result of 0.1.

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A Berlin-based art collective known as Raubdruckerin – German for ‘pirate printers’ – has come up with a unique approach to creating textile patterns. They have been traveling around European cities turning utility hole covers into printing presses to decorate totes, t-shirts, hoodies, gym bags, and more.

Founder Emma France Raff began experimenting with the concept of ‘urban printing press’ in 2006 when she founded the project in partnership with her father, Johannes Kohlrusch. They started in Lisbon, but have since expanded to Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, the latter being their base of operations. The Raubdrucken team members find inspiration in the urban landscape and often overlooked surfaces of the city, such as utility hole covers and drains. Sustainability is a crucial component of the project, as they aim to offer an alternative perspective and approach to mass production.

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