6

A Chilean Artist Burns $500 Million In Student Loan Debt From A Corrupt University

The only thing worse than owing money to your alma mater is owing money to a criminal operation passing itself off as your alma mater. That was the case for former students of Chile's Universidad del Mar, which was shut down by the government due to "financial irregularities," like money laundering, unpaid salaries, and shamelessly squeezing every last cent they could out of their students. Unfortunately, that last part was perfectly legal, and continued even after the university ceased operations. Despite being left with unfinished, useless degrees, students were still harassed to pay up for the education they only sort of received.

That didn't sit well with visual artist Francisco Tapia, who goes by the odd moniker Papas Fritas ("Fried Potatoes," i.e. "French Fries"). After studying the situation for a year, Papas Fritas managed to enter the school's facilities by claiming he was collecting material for an art project. And he was. It's just that the "material" happened to be $500 million in student debt notes, which he snuck out of the archives, and his "art project" consisted on setting them on fire.

5

A Hacker Exposed Greedy Hypocrites In Latvia's Government

After the world's economy took a zany pratfall straight into a toilet back in 2008, Latvia adopted some serious austerity measures to qualify for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. (Because austerity always works out so well.) Pensions went down, taxes went up, and schools and hospitals had to close, but through it all, the country's heroic public servants managed to soldier on as if nothing had happened. Mainly because for them, nothing did. Government officials secretly kept giving themselves juicy bonuses and fat salaries, even as they forced the rest of the country to tighten their belts.

4

A Kazakh Woman Creates A Pirate Database Of Science

Anyone who's tried to look up a scientific paper online (most likely to win a bar argument, though we guess there are other uses) knows that publishers have a pretty good racket going. It typically costs around $30 to see a full paper, which builds up to over $24 billion in yearly profits. That's right between the music and film industries, but with a much bigger profit margin, since scientific publishers don't have to pay Brad Pitt's salary or put up with Kanye West. They don't even pay the scientists themselves, since the studies are usually funded by universities or, uh ... you.

As a result, researchers and institutions end up having to buy back their own work in the form of academic journals, and if they can't afford the increasingly expensive subscriptions? There's nothing they can do. Well, not legally. Enter Sci-Hub, which is to science what the Pirate Bay is to The Walking Dead.

3

A Reverend Scammed Colleges To Get Poor Students An Education

In a world where the simple act of going to college can ruin your finances until the end of time, one man found a way to reduce that cost for families in his neighborhood: Just fucking lie.

In 1986, Dr. Rev. Ozel Clifford Brazil started the Los Angeles Community Outreach Program with the intention of helping minority high school students get a chance at college. At first Brazil would merely help students with their applications, or offer free financial and academic guidance. But then he came up with a more effective (and illegal) technique. In the time-honored evangelical tradition of twisting the truth to fit a personal narrative, Reverend Brazil taught families how to lie about their living situations to qualify for financial aid. The way he looked at it, society had been scamming minorities for centuries, so it was time run some of it back.

2

The Clown Who Refused To Stop Feeding People's Parking Meters

"Beloved local clown risks going to jail for being too kind" sounds like the plot of a Disney Channel movie, but it really happened. In the '90s, a clown named Mr. Twister (human name Cory McDonald) started going around Santa Cruz, feeding expired parking meters to prevent absentminded drivers from getting ticketed. Problem was, putting money in someone else's meters without their explicit permission was illegal. After all, what if someone wants to get a ticket? Or what if it's your ex-wife's car which you stole, and this clown's ruined your revenge plan? It's a personal freedom issue, really.

Of course, the real reason was that Santa Cruz issued 70,000 tickets a year, and made nearly $1 million from them. So when they found out about Mr. Twister's criminal endeavors, the city fined him and slapped him with a citation. Here's a picture of McDonald and his lawyer, in case you were wondering how demoralized he was feeling throughout the ordeal.

1

Somebody Is Stealing Back China's Looted Historical Artifacts

Since 2010, a string of movie-worthy heists have rocked museums throughout Europe. In Stockholm, thieves set fire to cars across the city, which distracted police while they broke into the Swedish royal palace, before escaping by speedboat. In Paris, they were in and out of a museum in under seven minutes, using a fire extinguisher to erase their footprints behind them. In Norway, they rappelled down from a glass roof ... then came back to the same museum three years later to pick up some stuff they missed.

So what are they stealing? Priceless jewels? The pieces of an ancient amulet that grants immortality? Nope. They've ignored many expensive items to focus on one specific thing: historical Chinese treasures stolen by Europeans in the 19th and 20th century. A particular target seems to be art from Beijing's Old Summer Palace, which was captured and burned to the ground by British and French troops in 1860. And what do you know? At least some of the stolen artworks seem to have ended up back on display in China, where public opinion is very much that the Europeans openly stole them in the first place, so they can't complain too much if someone steals them back.