Brazilian Boy Sues Absent Father for Emotional Abandonment

A Brazilian judge recently presided over one of the most difficult cases of her career – an 18-year-old boy who sued his absent father for emotional abandonment, seeking no financial compensation, only a favorable verdict that would allow him to move on with his life.

Gabriela Jardon, a judge at Brazil’s Federal District Court, recently recounted one of the most emotional experiences of her career, the hearing of an 18-year-old trying to hold his absent father responsible for being completely absent from his life. The experience of growing up without a father apparently had such a traumatizing effect on the young man that as soon as he legally became an adult, he felt he needed to take his father to court and hold him accountable.

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Chinese Cop Sets Up Retirement Home for His Old Police Dogs

Bai Yan, a kindhearted police dog handler from Hangzhou, recently melted the hearts of millions of Chinese after it was reported that he had spent the last 7 years and around 1 million yuan ($150,000) on a retirement home for police dogs, where his former “comrades in arms” could live out their golden years in peace.

55-year-old Bai has been working as a police dog handler since 2004, during which time he has trained around 30 canines. Spending so much time with the animals, he became very attached to them, and having seen how some retired police dogs ended up, he knew he had to do something about it. The trainer recently told Chinese media that one of the things that convinced him to open a retirement home for police dogs was seeing  an old police dog who had been completely neglected by his new owner lying in the dirt with a chain around its neck and a bowl of spoiled food in front of him. Retired police dogs are usually put up for adoption with the general public, and there is very little vetting of potential owners.

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Tesla Engineer Quits His Job to Create Hangover Cure

Sisun Lee used to work as an engineer at Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors. Many would call that a dream job, and he loved it, but he decided to walk away so he could focus on a higher goal – giving the world a hangover cure that works.

Lee, who previously worked as a product manager for Uber and Facebook, says he got the idea for “Morning Recovery”, his science-based hangover cure, about a year ago, after a vacation in his native South Korea. He and his friends spent most of their time partying and getting drunk, but thanks to the traditional anti-hangover drinks his buddies gave him after a wild night on the town, he always woke up feeling great. He was fascinated by their effect, and started looking for similar products as soon as he got back to the United States.

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Meet Sid Barber, the Unbeatable Queen of Hot Chilli Pepper Eaters

Every year, the Clifton Chili Eating Club holds a popular eating contests where competitors have to go through several rounds of eating increasingly hotter peppers. It’s a grueling competition, but one that a middle-aged woman by the name of Sid Barber has been dominating since 2014, earning herself the nickname “Unbeatable Sid”.

If you like spicy food and think you could handle the heat in a serious chilli contest, than you’ve probably never seen how these event go down. They start off easy, with reasonably hot peppers like Red Fresno, or Jalapeno, which pretty much anyone can eat without serious side effects, but the challenge gets tougher with every round, and before you know it, you find yourself eating Ghost Chillies and Naga Vipers, flaming hot chillies with Scoville ratings averaging over 1 million unit . And if you can somehow push through, the final round has remaining contestants feasting on several Carolina Reaper peppers, the hottest chillies in the world, with an average Scoville rating of 1,569,300.

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Young Self-Taught Artist Creates the Most Insane Graphite Pencil Drawings

Jono Dry is only 28-years-old and has never taken art classes, but his incredible talent allows him to create these photographic quality drawings using only graphite pencils. The young South African artist is considered one of the few people in the world able to take drawing pat the limits of what is considered achievable with simple graphite pencils.

Jono spends most of his time working on his large-scale drawings, and usually takes about 2-3 months to complete a piece, but he once spent a whopping 5 months painstakingly drawing one of his most complicated artworks. Considering how incredible the result of his labor ends up looking and the fact that he only produces between 4 and 8 large-scale drawings per year, Jono Dry’s hand-drawn masterpieces are considered very exclusive among collectors.

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Lulu Hashimoto – Japan’s Creepy Real-Life Living Doll

Lulu Hashimoto is the world’s first “living doll fashion model”, and you can actually become her by putting on a realistic body suit consisting of  doll head mask, a wig and stockings patterned with doll-like joints. As you can see in the photos below, the effect is pretty disturbing.

Becoming a living doll used to be mostly about applying thick layers of makeup, putting on the right clothes and posing in a doll-like position. You’ve probably heard about famous such “living dolls”, like Kina Shen, Kotakoti or Valeryia Lukyanova, but they could never achieve the level of realism displayed by Lulu Hashimoto, a true living doll and Japan’s newest fashion sensation.

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Painting with Wool – Artist Creates Shockingly Realistic Felt Portraits

Creating hyper-realistic animal portraits with a paintbrush or pencil is a difficult skill that only the world’s most talented artists can master, but doing it with just a needle and wool felt sounds downright impossible. That only makes “wool painter” Dani Ives’ work that much more impressive.

Looking at Dani Ives’ impressive portfolio of “wool paintings” it’s hard to believe that she only uses a barbed felting needle to manipulate colored strands of wool on a basic foam pad, in order to achieve such impressive results. The self-taught artist apparently developed her own technique, which involves pushing the colored wool through the base before pulling it back through, which helped her push the boundaries of this centuries-old art form.

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The Alaskan Town Where Bald Eagles Are as Common as Pigeons

The majestic bald eagle is the national bird of the United States, but most Americans are lucky to see one first-hand during their lifetimes. Unless they live in the town of Unalaska, Alaska, where bald eagles are as common as pigeons are in other human settlements.

Unalaska is home to around 4,700 people who have to share their space with over 600 beautiful bald eagles. It looks and sounds like something out of a fairytale, but it turns out that sharing your home with territorial predators also has its downsides. For one thing, you’re more likely to get attacked by a bald eagle in Unalaska than anywhere else in the US, and locals constantly have to keep an eye out for the birds, especially when going near their nests. They apparently hate it when people get too close.

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Woman Loses Engagement Ring on Her Farm, Finds It 13 Years Later, Wrapped Around a Carrot

It was September of 2004, when Mary Grams, of Alberta, Canada, lost her diamond-encrusted engagement ring, while working on her family farm. She spent days looking for it, but to no avail. Last week, nearly 13 years later, her daughter in law plucked a weird-looking carrot from the garden, with a diamond ring tightly wrapped around it.

“I went to the garden for something and I saw this long weed. For some reason, I picked it up and it must have caught on something and pulled [the ring] off,” 84-year-old Mary Grams recalls about the day she lost her engagement ring, in 2004. She had worn it on her finger since 1951, a year before she married her husband, Norman. “We looked high and low on our hands and knees. We couldn’t find it. I thought for sure either they rototilled it or something happened to it.”

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Real-Life Blue Dogs Spotted in India

A number of blue dogs have been spotted near Navi Mumbai’s Taloja industrial area, in India, and initial reports that untreated industrial waste dumped into the nearby Kasadi River may be to blame.

Remember Huckleberry Hound, the adorable cartoon character created by Hanna/Barbera? He was a blue dog, but no one seem to find that weird. Then again, he was only a fictional cartoon character, whereas the blue dogs of Navi Mumbai are very real, which makes their unusual color a lot more disturbing. Photos and videos of several canines whose fur had turned bright blue went viral all around the world a couple of days ago, leaving people scratching their heads as to whether they had been doctored. Unfortunately, the Navi Mumbai Animal Protection Cell soon confirmed that blue dogs actually exist in Mumbai, and are the cause of excessive pollution.

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Girl Survives on Berries and Muddy Water for Nearly a Month, After Getting Lost in Alabama Woods

Lisa Theris, a 25-year-old radiology student from Louisville, was reported missing on July 23rd, and was believed to have gotten lost in the Alabama wilderness, after running away from the two men that she was with. Just one everyone had nearly given up hope that she was still alive, Lisa was spotted by the side of a rural road in Bullock County, by a woman who initially mistook her for a deer.

Judy Garner told police that was driving along Highway 82 in Bullock County, on Saturday, when she saw something moving in a bush, and thought it was a wild animal, probably a deer. The curious woman pulled her car over and went to investigate, only instead of an animal, she found a naked woman covered in scratches and insect bites. Her hair was matted, there was dirt embedded deep beneath her nails, and she looked like she had been living in the wild for a long time. The young girl told Garner that she had survived on berries and muddy water, and was so scared that she begged her not to leave her side.

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Designer Puts the “Suit” in Wetsuit with $3,900 Creation

If you thought business suits and surfing culture were mutually exclusive, you probably haven’t seen Thom Browne’s new wetsuit. Photos of the hand-crafted $3,900 haute couture item have been doing the rounds online ever since it was launched as part of the designer’s Spring/Summer collection, for being styled as a business suit.

Aptly called “Trompe L’Oeil” (Optical Illusion), the neoprene wetsuit showcases all the elements of a classic business suit, including trousers, jacket, top collar, lapels and even a tie. You never know when you have to look your best for a business meeting, and now a surfing break doesn’t have to be a problem anymore. All you have to do is spend $3,900 on an elegant wetsuit and you’re set.

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Motorcycle Enthusiast Creates Harley-Davidson-Infused Gin, Puts Real Bike Parts in the Bottle

If you’re looking to taste the true spirit of Harley Davidson, but can’t really afford to buy a motorcycle, you could just settle for a $1,000 bottle of gin that contains authentic Harley-Davidson parts.

Uwe Ehinger, a German motorcycle enthusiast who has been collecting vintage motorcycle parts from all around the world for the last 40 years, decided to put his collection to good use by creating the world’s first Harley-Davidson-infused gin. Every bottle of his exclusive Archaeologist Gin comes with a vintage motorcycle engine part submerged in high-quality gin. But it turns out that having a piece of steel swimming in alcohol is both unhealthy and dangerous, so to meet health and safety regulations, the parts are thoroughly cleaned and sealed with a tin alloy, before being soldered to a steel support in the bottle, so that they don’t move around and break it from the inside.

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7-Year-old “Gentle Giant” Reportedly Weighs 100 Kg, Is Unstoppable on the Rugby Field

A 7-year-old Samoan rugby player who towers over most kids his age recently sparked controversy in the world of children’s sports, after a video showing him effortlessly tearing through the entire opposing rugby team during a league game went viral online.

Vaka Tuitupou may be only 7-years-old, but he already weighs around 100 kg and is one or two heads taller than most kids his age. He’s also a pretty good rugby player and considering his physical advantages, it’s no wonder that his team, the Sydney St John’s Eagles, only play him when they really need to. In a video that has been doing the rounds online for the last two weeks, the boy effortlessly goes through the entire opposing team to score a try, despite their efforts to stop him.

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Japanese Company Creates “Rolls Royce of Fidget Spinners” That Can Spin Continuously for Over 12 Minutes

Fidget spinners are everywhere these days, but if you’re looking for ultimate performance, there is nothing like the Saturn Spinner, a marvel of engineering that can spin continuously longer than any other fidget spinner on the market – over 12 minutes.

Dubbed the “Rolls Royce of fidget spinners”, the Saturn Spinner was developed by a subsidiary of NSK, a Japanese precision machining company that specializes in ball bearings for satellites and computer drives. It is designed to resemble a ship’s wheel, with added weights on the outer ring and a light aluminium ball bearing in the center, to increase centrifugal force. It was designed to spin continuously for at least 12 minutes, so each manufactured toy is tested for performance, with those that fail to pass the 12-minute threshold being dismantled, cleaned, reassembled and retested until they can be certified as “compliant”.

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