Bryan Ray, a 31-year-old man from Los Angeles, California, is so obsessed with pop superstar Britney Spears that he has spent $80,000 over the last 14 years to look like her.

Ray says he knew there’s was something special about Britney the first time he saw her. The look, her voice and her choreography were “the perfect package” for him and he knew he wanted to be like her. So at age 17, when the dentist designing his veneers asked him which celebrity smile he wanted to base his on, he answered almost instantly. But that was only the beginning of Ray’s transformation, as over the last 14 years, he has had over 90 cosmetic surgeries to make himself look more like his idol.

“So many people refer to me as ‘Britney’ and for a very long time friends have greeted me with the infamous quote ‘It’s Britney, bitch!’ from her song ‘Gimme More’, which I absolutely love,” Bryan proudly says. “Britney will always be one of my biggest inspirations. I love that she was the biggest star in the world, went through an incredibly hard time and came out on top.”

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Most dating services match their users by the things they like, but a new dating app called Hater completely turns this idea on its head, using common disinterests to help people find love.

Hater founder Brendan Alper, who left his job at Goldman Sachs to become a comedian, first came up with the idea for the app as a joke. But the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that it would actually be an interesting real-life dating app, and after finding some scientific studies that confirmed his intuition, he decided to turn it into a reality. Hater has been in testing since December 2016, and will be officially available for iOS and Android devices on February 8th. So get ready to let the things you hate guide you to true love.

“What we hate is an important part of who we are, but it’s often swept under the rug in our public persona,” Alper says. “We want people to express themselves more honestly. Plus, it’s easy to start a conversation with someone if you know you both hate pickles.” The app utilizes the same swiping function as Tinder or Bumble, but instead of swiping on people, you swap on topics ranging from butt selfies and bad tipping, to sidewalk etiquette and Donald Trump. You simply swipe down to hate, up to love, left to dislike or right to like. Hater than finds potential matches based on the things you hate and your location.

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London-based company Naturist Cleaners, “one of UK’s leading naturist and nude cleaning service providers”, is currently looking for women willing to clean private houses wearing just slippers and cleaning gloves. Women “of all ages and sizes” can apply, and the job pays £45 ($57) an hour.

“We are looking for female naturist cleaners who can clean private houses nude,” the job ad reads. “The job will require doing all general cleaning like dusting, tidying up, vacuuming, watering plants, making beds, using the washing machine, ironing clothes and cleaning windows.” So it’s a regular cleaning job, minus the clothes. Clients, most of which are part of nudist community, are charged £65 for the first hour, and £55 for every hour after that. They also have to agree to a “no touching” policy and also not to photograph or film the nude cleaners as they perform their job.

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Creative Home Engineering is the world’s most famous company dedicated to making hidden rooms and secret doors. From wannabe superheroes, to wealthy businessmen looking for a safe space for their prized art collections, they all turn to this particular company when they want one of those fancy hidden doors that you see in the movies.

The idea for Creative Home Engineering was born in 2003, when founder Steve Humble was working as a mechanical engineer designing surgical lasers for a medical device company. He had always been fascinated by hidden doors and passageways, and that year he decided he wanted one for himself, but realized there was no one to build it for him. “I was renting a large house with a bunch of my friends at the time, and we had some extra rooms that we weren’t using. I thought it would be fun to have a secret door like I had seen in the movies, but when I did a little research I was surprised to learn that there was no company anywhere that specialized in hidden passageways,” he recalls. Soon after, Steve quit his job and started building motorized secret passageways for people out of his parents’ garage in Arizona.

Humble got a special contractor’s license created for designing secret lairs, and went on to create over 150 custom installations for clients all over the United States, before expanding globally. Today Creative Home Engineering is the world’s premier designer and manufacturer of motorized and high-security secret passageways, with a portfolio of over 500 satisfied customers from all walks of life.

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Every winter for the past three years, 80-year-old Mette Kvam, from the Norwegian town of Aurland, has been getting two daily visits from a very special friend – a majestic stag who seems to love her tasty snacks.

It all started three years ago, when Mette first saw her friend “Flippen” hanging out in her yard, on the edge of the nearby forest. She opened the window and offered the beautiful animal a crunchy cookie. To her surprise, the animal came closer and stretched its neck to grab the treat. Flippen must have liked it very much, because he has been coming back for more ever since. He visits Mette every morning and evening, from early November to April, when he and his deer friends head higher up into the mountains for the warm season. But as soon as they come back down, he starts coming by the woman’s house again.

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When Andy Poineau of Boyne City, Michigan, posted a set of photos showing him seemingly levitating on the clear water of Lake Charlevoix, he had no idea he would soon become an overnight internet sensation. But looking at the photo below, it’s easy to see why people went crazy over it.

At first glance, this photo of Pointeau, a 63-year-old architect, sitting on what looks to be still water, looks like a classic case of botched Photoshop. It just looks like someone cropped him and his shovel out of another photo – probably of him shoveling snow – and just placed him in the middle of the lake. But as several photo-editing experts have already pointed out on social media, this image has not been altered in any way. It’s just a rare photo of a brave man sitting on the perfectly clear ice of a frozen lake.

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A cancer survivor forced to have her left foot amputated below the knee as a final solution decided to keep her foot after the operation, and even set up an Instagram account for it, where she posts funny photos of the bleached limb.  You can say that Kristi Loyall’s amputated foot is a lot more popular than she is. Its Instagram page @onefootwander currently has nearly 13,000 followers, while Kristi herself has yet to reach the 1,000 mark. But she’s not jealous, after all, she made it all happen.

Last year, 25-year-old Kristi Loyall, from El Reno, Oklahoma, was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer that affects soft tissue, four years after baffling doctors with her symptoms. They told her that the only sure way to keep the cancer from spreading was amputate her foot. Despite being devastated by the news, her first reaction was to make a joke of it, asking doctors if she could keep the foot after the operation. She later realized that she actually did want her limb back, and a month after having her left foot amputated, she got it back in a biohazard bag.

“It was really peculiar. We went to pathology to pick it up and the first thing I did was move my toes,” Kristi said. “My mom was really grossed out by that. At that point I was emotionally separated from it, I had a lot of time to deal with it at home so at that moment I was excited about starting to make a joke out of the situation.”

Hil.ar.i.ous. omg. Can’t even rn #amputee #skeleton #foot #butcher #cemetery #onefootwander

A photo posted by cancer foot (@onefootwander) on Dec 2, 2016 at 9:50pm PST

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It’s hard to believe that a family with no construction experience could build a two-storey, five-bedroom house all by themselves, by watching tutorials on YouTube, but Cara Brookins and her four kids are living proof that it can be done. Their amazing story is now the subject of a book – ‘Rise, How a House Built a Family’.

In 2008, Cara Brookins took her four children (ages 7, 15, 11 and 2) and left her abusive husband in search of a better life. They moved into a tiny home outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, for a while, while they looked for place that could comfortably house her four kids. Her initial plan was to buy a house, but she quickly realized that they were either too expensive or too small for their needs. One day, they passed by a house ravaged by a tornado that had all of its inner workings exposed. It was this sight that inspired them to undertake a challenge that would change their lives.

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Mike Eze-Nwalie Nwogu, co-owner of a nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria, was recently arrested for dehumanizing young girls by putting collars around their necks and parading them on a leash in public.

Nwogu, who is known as “Pretty Mike” among the socialites of the African metropolis, has apparently been turning young girls into “human puppies” for at least a year. His first appearance as a human puppy handler was recorded last year, while attending a wedding, but the photos snapped at the event didn’t attract much attention. He must have gotten quite a lot of attention for his stunt, because he has been pulling it regularly ever since. But as his controversial appearances became more frequent, they started causing a stir on the internet, with many users complaining that nothing was being done about his degrading treatment of women. The last straw was a photo of Pretty Mike holding two girls on a leash under the eyes of five police officers who seemed to be laughing at the bizarre sight.

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In what can only be described as a heroic act, a golden retriever managed to save his owner’s life by lying on top of him for almost 24 hours to keep him from freezing to death after slipping on ice and breaking his neck.

On New Year’s Eve, 64-year-old Bob (who chose not to reveal his last name for privacy reasons), of Petoskey, Michigan, was watching the Fiesta Bowl between Clemson and Ohio State. It was around 10:30 pm when he decided to go outside and fetch some more wood for his fireplace wearing only long johns, slippers and a shirt. He had taken the short, 15-foot walk to the firewood shed thousands of times before, but this time his poor choice of footwear made him slip, and the fall left him unable to move. The man started screaming for help, but his closest neighbor’s house is a quarter of a mile away, and at that hour, there was no one around to help him. Luckily, his 5-year-old golden retriever came to help.

“I was screaming for help, but my nearest neighbor is about a quarter-mile away and it was 10:30 p.m., but my Kelsey came,” Bob recalls. “By morning my voice was gone and I couldn’t yell for help, but Kelsey didn’t stop barking. She kept barking for help, but never left my side. She kept me warm and alert. I knew I had to persevere through this and that was my choice to stay alive.”

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Remember the Iranian real-life Hulk? Well, it seems neighboring Pakistan has its own version of the popular Marvel superhero. His name is Arbab Khizer Hayat, he weighs a whopping 436 kilograms, and claims to be the strongest man alive.

Hayat, who is popularly known as Khan Baba, hails from the city of Mardan, in northern Pakistan, has risen to internet fame thanks to his imposing physique and a number of impressive feats of strength, including preventing a tractor from backing up, by holding it with his bare hands, and doing the same thing with a car, but using only one hand. However, these are apparently not his greatest achievements. He recently told reporters in Pakistan, that in 2012, during a weightlifting contest held in Japan, he managed to lift 5,000 kilograms. “No one can break this record,” he boasted. And I’d have to agree, even the real Hulk might struggle a bit with this challenge.

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Chiengora – the art of spinning dog hair to make warm clothing items – has been around for thousands of years, and is still used today by people in extremely cold climates near the Arctic Circle. Now one Chicago-area woman wants to make Chiengora clothing available to dog lovers looking for a way to always stay close to their beloved pet.

Jeannie Sanke, from Evanston, Illinois, started practicing Chiengora – “Chien” is French for dog and “Gora” is  derived from angora – two years ago, and has since created all kinds of custom pieces from dog hair, including sweaters, ponchos, mittens and fluffy cup holders. She sells her creations on the Etsy online store, and regularly posts photos of her newest items on her Facebook page, Knit Your Dog. Most of her clients are dog lovers who want to feel their pet’s fur on their skin as often as possible, and especially owners who have lost their loyal friend and want something special to remember them by.

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Up until a few years ago, the Mexican border city of Juarez was considered one of the most dangerous in the world due to the violent drug trafficking cartels operating in the area. Today, Juarez is a much safer place, but there’s still some trafficking going on, involving something just as addictive as illegal drugs – Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Let’s face it, the whole of the United States is obsessed with glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and things are apparently not much different south of the border. The American company first started operating in Mexico in 2004, setting up shop in virtually every major city, Juarez included. People absolutely loved them, so when Krispy Kreme decided to shut down its operations in Juarez due to the violent drug war that was taking place in the city, they had to come up with alternative ways of getting their hands on their favorite sweet treats. When boarding a plane out of Mexico City, it’s not uncommon to see people holding boxes of Krispy Kreme boxes for family and friends in places that don’t have their own shops. But what if you don’t have anyone to bring you such gifts, or if you need a constant supply of delicious glazed doughnuts? You turn to the local doughnut black market, of course.

Yes, there is such a thing as a Krispy Kreme black market in Juarez, and it’s apparently booming. Local entrepreneurs with U.S. visas drive to El Paso, Texas and buy dozens of boxes of doughnuts, which they later sell to doughnut junkies back home at a slightly higher price. Whereas most Krispy Kreme fans saw the closing of the local shop as a tragedy, these people saw it as an opportunity to fill a void, and supplement their income while making many people happy.

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M’Kenzie and Derek Tillotson, of Utah, USA, are planning to embark on an epic trip around the world with their three young children, and are looking for a travel nanny to assist them on their journey. They posted a Facebook video hoping to get a few dozen applications, but ended up with messages from nearly 20,000 people hoping to get the job.

The couple runs a family travel blog called ‘Five Take Flight’ and recently decided to sell their home in Utah and go on an unforgettable adventure around the world.  They plan to leave in July, flying from their home in Utah to New York City, then to Iceland, and the rest of Europe. They’ll return to their home city for a two weeks over Christmas, before flying to Hawaii, New Zealand, and finally Asia. It sounds like an incredible experience, but it’s also going to be pretty tough to manage with three kids, which is why they’ve decided to take someone to travel with them and lend a hand when necessary.

“We’re looking for somebody who’s going to love our children as much as we do, even when they’re acting like this,” M’Kenzie says in the video, while two of their children goof around in front of the camera. “You’ll be an honorary member of the family and will be treated with respect and be able to voice your opinion.” The travel nanny will be required to handle most of the homeschooling for the couple’s two boys, while also looking after their baby sister and also handle some of the cooking and cleaning.

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Japan has one of the highest adoption rates in the world, with over 80,000 legal adoptions recorded every year. Yet when it comes to adopting children, the Asian country is lagging way behind most developed countries. That’s because around 98% of Japanese adoptees are bright young men in their 20s and 30s.

At the same time, while studies have shown that family-controlled businesses are generally unsustainable over long periods of time –  mostly due to the fact that business acumen and intelligence are only partially inherited – it’s interesting to see that not only are a third of Japanese corporations family-run, but they are also clearly outperforming professionally managed companies in almost every way. Statistics show that family firms are more profitable, have a higher market valuation and increased sales compared to their rivals. Even more curious is that giants like Suzuki, Toyota or Matsui Securities have managed to keep it all in the family for over a hundred years, and other family businesses for even longer than that.

But what does the remarkable success of family business have to do with the high rate of adult adoption, right? Well, in Japan at least, these two curiosities are very closely linked. Prior to the Second World War, civil code in Japan decreed family wealth could only be passed down through male lines, traditionally to the first born son. So families with no male heirs or with sons deemed unsuitable to take over the family business turned to adoption, but not the kind most of us are used to. Instead of simply adopting a baby or a young boy, they adopted young men who displayed the intelligence and knowledge of business required to ensure that their name and legacy endured until the next generation. And while the law no longer prohibits people from passing down their fortune to female heirs, the age-old tradition of electing a ‘mukoyoshi’ (or ‘adopted son-in-law’) is still very popular in Japan.

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