I know, I know, the Internet is saturated with lists right now. The best overlooked science writing of the year, the best books of the year, the best podcasts, the best television, the best movies—and that’s just The Atlantic!
Welp, here’s another one to add to your list of lists: Our final monthly round-up of 2015 includes some of the best, most creative, funny, odd, and enlightening things from around the web in December.
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“How to Destroy an American Family”
Aaron Sankin and William Turton | The Daily Dot
Deliveries started arriving at the Strater residence in 2010. Chinese food would come that no one remembered ordering. Every nearby pizzeria would arrive, one stack of large pies right after another. Amy told all the restaurants in town to ignore calls from their address. If they wanted food, they’d get it themselves. Once, a large bouquet of flowers arrived—cash on delivery.
The deliveries culminated in a truck pulling up to the house with instructions to dump three tons of gravel in the driveway. “How was I going to get my car out?” Paul quips. “I don’t have a Dustbuster nearly big enough for all that gravel.”
Such events could be seen as the harmless pranks of teenagers with too much time on their hands. When the family started getting notices about their utilities being disconnected, they realized things were escalating out of control. Utility provider Commonwealth Edison once called the house to iron out the details about a request to have the power turned off after a supposed move. Something similar happened with their trash service. On Halloween 2013, Comcast shut off their cable and Internet service.
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