Life on ice

Representation Pic

Minsk-based Ivan Karpitsky's passion for ice and snow sculpting is well-known in his home country. His name first appeared in Belarussian newspapers in 2020, when photos of his ice violin first went viral on social media. He has since kept busy every winter, coming up with ever more impressive projects, but this year he really outdid himself with a beautiful and functional boat made entirely of ice.

Photos and videos posted on his Instagram page show the Belarusian man painstakingly carving blocks of ice and chiseling at them to create his impressive masterpiece. Not much technical information is known about Ivan's boat, apart from the visible information in the photos and clips posted on social media.

According to geolocation data, the boat was built somewhere along the banks of Tsnyanskoe reservoir, a lake north of Minsk, near the former village of Tsna-Yodkovo. The self-taught artist can be seen cutting rectangular blocks of ice and then gluing them together using water, and then chiseling away at the frozen lake to carve out the base of the boat. Karpitsky used a variety of power tools to create delicate ice panels that he carefully slides through blocks of ice, as well as a spinnable ice rudder that doesn't actually control the direction of the vessel.

Playa' grand-dad

A woman has shared her shock after discovering her grandad has a secret

A woman doesn't know whether to laugh or cry after discovering her grandad has a secret second family living just down the road from their house. She explained how her mum got really into tracing their family tree, but made a sickening discovery about her dad in the process. She came to learn her dad has an entire second family, who she bumps into regularly as they live at the end of their road. Taking to Reddit, the granddaughter said: "My Mum's generation has been really big into tracing our family tree. Turns out grandpa had two families!"

Handbag drip

An Italian fashion designer and digital entrepreneur has gone viral for sharing a bizarre video of herself hooked up to eight bags. "I need a new wish," Giulia Nati, 32, posted on Instagram this week as a caption to a video showing her lying in bed with an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. A tube connects her arm to a reddish-pink handbag as if it were an IV drip. A beeping sound can be heard in the background - mimicking a vital sign monitor. Seven more pricey Hermès purses can be seen on her bedside table in the clip, which has drawn over 17,600 likes on Instagram.

Kids, no-cussing!

Tina Midkiff was having trouble "trying to resolve cussing issues" with a little girl, she tells the animated little girl. "We're not cussing anywhere but in the bathroom. And we're not going to give the finger anywhere but, in the bathroom," she instructed in the video, which has garnered 11.3 million views. Midkiff informed the little student that her mother "approved" the secret bathroom cussing sessions.

Fivefold-lucked out

An Everett woman, identified only as KL, told, had her mother on her mind when she bought Match 4 tickets, so the numbers she selected were a combination of her mother's birthday and her own birthday. The drawing, resulted in all five of her tickets winning a Rs 8,28,483 cash prize.

Not-so-clean divorce

A woman, identified only as A.Y. by Turkish news media, filed for divorce from her husband, CY, citing his lack of personal hygiene as the main reason. The plaintiff's lawyer told the Court in Ankara that the defendant wore the same clothes for five days in a row.

Penguin's day out

Researchers doing a survey of seabirds in South Australia came across an unusual discovery: a king penguin hundreds of miles from home. Jeff Campbell, president of Friends of Shorebirds South East, said the group was performing a survey of bird populations in the Coorong area when they encountered the king penguin. Campbell theorised the penguin may have come to the beach to molt.