GIFs are usually only a few seconds long, but Finnish artist Juha van Ingen has created one that will run for the next 1,000 years. Or so he hopes, anyway.

Named “As Long As Possible” or “ASLAP”, the world’s longest GIF is a “very optimistic” artwork because it relies on future generations to take responsibility and keep it running until it reaches its end, in the year 3017. Hopefully, someone will still be around then to see the last of the 48,140,288 frames that make up this record-breaking GIF.

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31-year-old Mimi Choi, a makeup artist from Vancouver, spends hours turning her face into mind-boggling optical illusions that look photoshopped at first glance.

A former schoolteacher, Choi got into makeup only three years ago, attending classes at Blanche Macdonald, a local beauty school, to learn the basics of the craft. She’s come a long way since then, though, and today she uses her makeup skills to turn her own face into incredible optical illusions.

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Jake Vella suffers from a rare hormonal condition that causes him to rapidly gain weight despite eating healthy and doing regular exercise. There is nothing anyone can do to stop the weight gain, but in order to stop the process and stay alive, the 7-year-old boy competes in triathlons.

Jake’s parents first noticed there was something wrong with him three years ago, when he gained about 20 pounds in just six months. He kept putting on weight despite eating only salad. In 2015, Jake was diagnosed with ROHHAD (Rapid-onset Obesity with Hypothalamic dysfunction, Hypoventilation and Autonomic Dysregulation), a rare condition that affects the nervous system and causes rapid weight gain, as well as an inability to regulate body temperature and maintain normal water levels. It can cause tumors to develop, and Jake already has one on his back. Unfortunately, the condition is currently incurable and the life expectancy of sufferers ranges between 5 and 9 years.

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An 8-year-old child has been dubbed “Mowgli Girl” after she was found living with monkeys in the jungle of India’s Uttar Pradesh state. The girl is believed to have been separated from society for a long time, as she can neither speak or understand any language, and gets scared at the sight of other people.

In Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”, Mowgli was brought up by a pack of wolves, but it the case of this real-life, feminine version of the jungle boy, it was monkeys who provided the care and protection that ensured her survival. Two months ago, Suresh Yadav, a sub-inspector with the Uttar Pradesh police department, was patrolling the Motipur range of Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary, in the jungle of Bahraich, when he spotted a young girl surrounded by monkeys.

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The International Food Information Council recommends a daily caffeine intake of 300 mg, while the FDA recommends 400 mg, but just one 12-ounce cup of Black Insomnia brew contains 702 mg of caffeine, which will definitely keep you up at night and may even cause some health problems.

Black Insomnia Coffee was founded in 2016 by South African coffee lover Sean Kristafor. From the very beginning, his goal was to create the strongest coffee in the world, and he managed to do it by using the stronger Robusta variety, instead of the more aromatic Arabica. The secret to its high caffeine content is apparently in the way that the coffee beans are roasted, but Kristafor is obviously not interested in revealing the process. He only says that they can make it considerably stronger, and actually had to dial it down a bit for the commercial version, just so it was safe to consume.

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Horses need to have their hooves trimmed every few weeks, but Poly, a Shetland pony recently rescued by an animal shelter in Belgium, hasn’t had hers trimmed in over 10 years. Now, she may never walk normally again, due to damage to her joints.

As you can see in the gruesome photos below, Poly’s hooved had grown so much over the years that they eventually became thick keratinous spirals that made it impossible for the animal to walk properly. It’s hard to imagine how someone could ignore something like this for so long, but unfortunately, the pony’s owner was the only one who knew about it.

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They say claw machines are rigged to prevent users from actually catching a prize, but one Chinese man seems to have learned their secret. In just one year, Chen Zhitong has amassed a collection of over 15,000 plush toys from claw machines.

When we first heard about Chen Zhitong, about a year ago, he was making headlines in China for his ability to control claw machines in his home city of Xiamen. He had already collected over 3,000 toys at the time, which is a lot more than most people catch in a lifetime. But our boy has been very busy this past year, and now his collection of claw machine toys stands at a whopping 15,000. That has to be some kind of record!

Chen’s reputation as a claw machine master has now transcended Chinese borders, and he was recently featured in a short documentary by Great Big Story. In it, he talks about how he chooses the claw machines he plays at, his relationship with claw machine operators and what he does with all the toys he wins.

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Paan has been a part of Indian cuisine since Vedic times, and today, many varieties are served at street stalls all across the Asian country. But with competition as fierce as it is, paan vendors are constantly working on new types of paan, the most impressive of which is definitely fire paan – a flaming hot snack that is literally set on fire.

Found at nearly every street corner in India, paan regularly consists of a mixture of spices, mukhwas, dried fruits, and sugar wrapped inside a betel leaf. According to Ayurvedic medicine, paan can cure a variety of ailments, including coughs, colds and headaches, but it is also used a breath freshener and a virility booster. Fire paan is basically a regular paan that just happens to be on fire when it goes into your mouth.

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Remember the tragic yet heartwarming tale of Hachiko, the loyal Akita Inu who spent nine years waiting for his owner to return from work, not knowing that he had died of a brain hemorrhage? His legendary loyalty is now being emulated by Thor, a dog of the same breed, who goes on the same walk he and his departed owner used to go on, every day.

Every day, the people of Caçapava do Sud, a town in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul region witness a touching display of animal loyalty. In the morning, Thor, a white Akita Inu, takes to the streets, retracing the daily walk he and his owner used to take up until a year ago, when the 58-year-old man died. He stops at all the usual places his master used to spend time in, lets those who know him pet him on the head and even poses for pictures, before returning home to his adoptive family. That’s become his daily ritual for the last year or so.

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A hot-pot restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, recently got a lot of attention online after photos of young bikini-clad waitresses serving and interacting with customers went viral.

The hot-pot restaurant business in Taiwan and mainland China is very competitive, and it’s very hard for newcomers to get an edge by relying solely on the quality of the food and impeccable service. So the owners of ‘Fresh Feast’, a new restaurant that opened in the Songshan district of Taipei, decided that they needed some extreme marketing in order to get the word out about their eatery and attract customers. For the grand opening, they hired five good-looking models and had them serve customers dressed only in skimpy bikinis.

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For the last 8 year, about 200 residents of Strunino, a small town in Russia’s Vladimir Oblast region have not had to worry about buying bread, thanks to the generosity of a local grocery store owner who has been giving it away for free.

Mamoud Shavershyan came to Russia, from Armenia, 25 years ago. He worked as an engineer, before setting up his own business, a small grocery store no different than other such stores in Strunino. But everything changed one day, 8 years ago when, sitting behind the counter, Mamoud saw an old lady counting dozens of coins to pay for a couple of loaves of bread. He found it humiliating for the pensioner and ended up giving her the bread for free. That day, he made the decision to print coupons that pensioners in Strunino could exchange for white or black bread at his store. To make sure that people knew about his offer he advertised it a local paper.

But that was only the beginning. Soon, Mamoud extended his generous offer to people with disabilities, large families with low income, and the generally poor. News spread like wildfire, and soon poor people from neighboring villages started coming by his shop to receive coupons. Today, the “Eric” grocery store in Strunino gives away around 2,000 loaves of white bread and 1,000 loaves of black bread, every month. They also regularly donate gingerbread to local kindergartens, and to coupon holders during holidays. And for their kindness, Mamoud and his family are “rewarded” with insults, racial slurs and accusations of theft…

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Luu Cong Huyen, a 58-year-old man from Yen Giao, in Vietnam’s Nam Dinh province, has been growing his fingernails for over three and a half decades, and takes great care to avoid any activity that might cause him to accidentally break on of his keratinous treasures, even bathing.

If you’re hoping to find a good reason for why anybody would want to grow their fingernails for over 35 years, you’re not going to find one here. For Mr. Huyen it simply started out as a hobby that he never really got over. “Others like raising birds, planting trees or collecting old vehicles… I just like growing long nails,” he says. “Raising nails is more difficult than parenting. I must be very careful in every move to keep my nails.”

Huyen is not exaggerating one bit. His fingernails, the longest of which measures about 55 centimeters, may look thick and sturdy, but he claims they can break very easily, especially when wet. Which is why he avoids even touching water as much as he can, and rarely bathes. When it rains outside, he covers his hands with plastic bags, so that the water doesn’t reach his precious nails.

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Unable to find a prosthetic hand that fit him him properly, Leonardo Viscarra, a 14-year-old boy from Bolivia, decided to build one himself, using 3D-printing technology.

Leonardo was born with an undeveloped left hand. As a fetus in his mother’s womb, the boy’s right hand was caught in the placenta and unable to develop properly. He was diagnosed with amniotic band syndrome at birth, and could never use his left hand for basic tasks like picking up or grabbing objects. However, an incident during his childhood sparked an interest in assembling and building things, which ultimately helped him achieve his goal of one day gaining almost full use of his undeveloped hand.

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Game2:Winter is an upcoming reality TV show where 30 participants will compete against themselves and the dangers of the Siberian wilderness – including brown bears and extreme temperatures – for a prize of $1.7 million. But the most shocking thing about this show is that, just like in the Hunger Games, “everything is allowed, fighting, alcohol, murder, rape, smoking, anything.”

News about this seemingly brutal reality show first broke out about a month ago, but reports were coming mostly from obscure news outlets and the whole idea seemed so extreme that I was pretty sure it was nothing more than a prank. Then I read that contestants had to survive until April 1st, 2018 – April Fools’ Day – and I was convinced it was fake. But the news never really went away, and now the Siberian Times newspaper announced that this Russian real-life version of the Hunger Games is actually happening, and it promises to be just as ruthless.

Ever since watching the hit TV series ‘Lost’, 35-year-old Yevgeny Pyatkovsky, a millionaire from Novosibirsk, Russia, had been wanting to create a reality show about surviving in the Siberian taiga, with little, to no help from the outside world. Now, thanks to technological advancements in surveillance equipment and online streaming, he is ready to make his idea a reality.

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Justin Kobylka, a selective reptile breeder from Georgia, claims that he spent eight years trying to create a snake specimen with detailed smiling emoji patterns. He finally did it, and the result looks as unreal as you can imagine.

As a selective breeder, Kobylka specializes in taking relatively common reptile species and creating specimens with striking physical features which he then sells for a much higher price. He has created a number of visually-impressive over the years, but none as stunning as the Emoji Ball Python, a Lavender Albino Piebald Ball Python with three orange smiley emojis on its skin.

The unique pattern is caused by recessive mutations, and while these occur naturally, the chances of them occurring in the wild are “astronomical”, according to Kobylka. He claims his Piebald Ball Python is the world’s first to have three detailed smiley face emojis on its slithering body.

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