Akiko Obata has been fascinated by plastic food ever since she was a child, and 10 years ago she started collecting all sorts of plastic food items, amassing a collection of over 8,000 individual pieces.

“Sampuru”, the fake food displays used by most restaurants to showcase their dishes to potential diners, is an important part of Japanese food culture. They are considered superior to menus, as they give customers a much better idea of what they’ll be getting on their plates, and also help restaurant owners better showcase their dishes. Sampuru makers often go above and beyond to make their products as realistic as possible, and some do really look good enough to eat. Plastic foods are so popular in Japan that some people have actually started collecting them…

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MDZhB is the name of a mysterious radio station that has been broadcasting for nearly four decades, but that no one has ever claimed to operate.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week since 1982, MDZhB (pronounced ‘MJB’) has been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone followed by a second, foghorn-like sound every few seconds. But every once in a while, about once or twice a week, someone will also utter some random phrase in Russian, like “dinghy” or “farming specialist”, and the the droning sound returns. The mystery of MDZhB has fascinated radio enthusiasts around the world for centuries, and theories regarding its purpose range from nuclear war triggering device, to communicating with aliens. But, so far, no one has been able to crack the mystery of this radio station.

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A gaping, funnel-like hole estimated to be at least 50-meters-deep has been discovered in a remote area of the arctic, on the Yamal Peninsula, in Siberia.

Discovered accidentally from the air by a Vesti Yamal television crew en route from an unrelated assignment, the mysterious crater is the latest to be spotted in northern Siberia since the phenomenon was originally documented, in 2014. Chunks of soil and ice were thrown hundreds of metres around the funnel, which strengthens scientists’ theory that such craters are the result of methane gas buildups in pockets of thawing permafrost under the surface of the Earth. As pressure increases, the “lid” of the pocket is blown off and the methane gas is released.

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A 10-year-old Vietnamese boy has been turning heads on Asian social media after photos of his unusually muscular physique went viral.

Nguyen Hoang Nam’s parents claim that he was always more muscular than other kids his age. Even at birth, doctors noticed that he had more developed muscles than other babies, and by age 6, his body was so unusually toned that his parents took him to a hospital for a checkup. It’s here that Vietnamese media reports get blurry, as they mention “superman syndrome” as the cause of Hoang Nam’s impressive physique, but that is a chromosomal disorder with very different symptoms. The articles also claim that other than muscle stiffness and a general lack of flexibility, the 10-year-old boy is in perfect health.

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An artificial intelligence engineer has created an intriguing algorithm that learned human language from reading “the bible and nothing else” and is now churning out ominous prophecies based on the Holy Book.

George Davila Durendal, a childhood coding prodigy and current AI engineer and entrepreneur, recently unveiled his wackies creation yet, an A.I. algorithm trained solely on the King James Bible and dubbed “AI Jesus”. Described by Durendal himself as an “A.I. clone of Jesus”, the software is a Boltzmannian natural-language processing model that “tries to replicate the style of the King James Bible without quite copying it”. Designed to write about 3 different topics – ‘The Plague’, ‘Caesar’ and ‘The End of Days’ – using the language of the Bible, AI Jesus has so far come up with some pretty scary, if somewhat nonsensical, prophecies…

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The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing tourism businesses to think outside the box in order to stay afloat. Case in point, a Kerala hotel and spa that turned its pristine swimming pool into a fish farm.

The Aveda Resort and Spa in Kumarakom, Kerala had to shut down operations in March, as part of a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, and hasn’t been able to open since. To make sure that its employees have some activity and that the property generates some income to hopefully pay basic bills so it can survive until tourism opens again, management decided to repurpose a 7.5-million-litre swimming pool as a fish pond.

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Thirty-five young women were caught trying to cheat on their entrance exam into schools for teachers in the Mexican state of Michoacán; they allegedly had the correct answer pattern painted on their nails.

The entire admission process into teaching schools in Michoacán had been under suspicion of fraud since the first stage of exams, on the last day of July, when it was revealed that several of the students had bought the answers for 15,000 or 25,000 pesos. Although officially unproven, the claim was virtually confirmed by the astonishing test results in several Michoacán municipalities. According to Mexican media reports, 50 applicants who took the exam had answered all 100 question correctly, while another 300 had scores of 99 and 90 correct answers. This was unusual, as in other municipalities the highest score was 71 correct answers.

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Here’s another thing to add to your ‘weird things that happened in 2020’ list: a locked safe with a mysterious note attached to it was discovered in the middle of an agricultural field in New York state.

Kirk Mathes was out of town last Thursday, when he got a phone call about a large metal safe that had been found on one of his fields, near the town of Barre. Word spread so fast that deputies had to disperse a crowd that had gathered on the side of the road to see the oddity. The metal safe, which the farmer estimates weighs between 500-600 lbs., had to be transported to the field by heavy machinery, but no one appears to know who or when they put it there. But all everyone wants to know is what’s inside it, especially because of a mysterious note attached to it.

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Photos and videos of a functional Banco del Bienestar branch seemingly located in the middle of nowhere have been getting a lot of attention on Mexican social media this week.

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador was one of the very first people to get blamed for wasting government money on useless buildings after the photos and videos of a Banco del Bienestar branch located a long way from any human settlement, somewhere in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The building was used to mock Obrador’s “Fourth Transformation” of Mexico initiative, but a representative of the bank was quick to explain that although bizarre, the location of the branch actually makes sense.

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A Chinese couple has come under fire from both the media and the general public after allegedly filming their young, overweight daughter devouring whole plates of food and streaming the footage online.

Pictures and videos of a three-year-old girl nicknamed Pei Qi stuffing her face from multiple plates full of food have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media and sparking outrage among viewers. The parents are being slammed for abusing their child and using her as a cash cow by not only encouraging her to eat unhealthy amounts of food, but also streaming the eating sessions on the internet. The little girl’s video channel was recently removed from a popular video streaming platform, because of the online uproar surrounding this case. Pei Qi’s parents deny the accusations, saying that their daughter just has an unusual appetite, but is otherwise healthy.

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In what can only be described as one of the most bizarre divorce pretexts ever, a Muslim woman has asked a Sharia court to end her marriage because her husband because he lover her too much.

The unidentified woman from the Sambhal district of India’s Uttar Pradesh state recently approached the Sambhal Sharia court to ask for a divorce from her husband of just 18 months. Asked to explain her request, the woman said that her spouse loved her too much and never argued with her, which she just found impossible to accept. To make matters “worse”, the woman’s husband also cooked and cleaned for her, and helped with various house chores. She declared herself “fed up” and asked the members of the court to end her marriage.

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Businesses usually have to pay someone to keep their work spaces clean, but the shops on Sea Street, a popular jewelry hub in Sri Lanka’s capital city, actually require a fee to let people clean their premises.

Hong-Kong based media outlet South China Morning Post recently featured the sad story of a heroin addict from Colombo, in Sri Lanka in a short video documentary that also included a segment on a very peculiar job. Mavin, the 47-year-old protagonist makes a living and sustains his drug addiction by cleaning the bathrooms of jewelry shops on Sea Street, a place he refers to as “the most precious street in Sri Lanka”. The whole street is lined with gold, diamond and jewelry shops, only they don’t pay people like Mavin for cleaning, they actually demand a fee from them…

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A farmer who refused to sell his land on the outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin to apartment building developers continues to harvest crops using combines and tractors under the surprised gazes of his new neighbors.

Imagine living in an urban apartment and looking out the window to see a huge combine plowing through a field of wheat or maize? That’s the view that residents on Jantarowa street, in the Polish city of Lublin, are treated to every summer or fall. Apparently, while most land owners in the area sold their farmland to residential building developers, one farmer refused to budge, so the apartment building were built around his property, where he continues to farm every year.

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In a landmark ruling that will act as precedent for similar trials in the future, the Italian Supreme Court ruled against the appeal of a 35-year-old man who still expected financial assistance from his parents.

The historic sentence marked the end of a five-year case in which an adult part-time music teacher who earned an annual income of 20,000 euros (about $24,000) claimed financial assistance from his parents. In an initial ruling, a Tuscany judge actually awarded him a monthly allowance of 300 euros ($360) from his parents, a decision that was later overturned by an appeal court, and last week by Italy’s Supreme Court. Judges ruled that the 35-year-old’s parents financial support cannot be expected to continue indefinitely.

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Once every 7 to 10 years, Nevada’s Lake Pyramid experiences an algae boom so significant that its color changes from dark blue to a vibrant turquoise. This phenomenon is known as “whiting”.

Located in a remote desert area of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribes’ Reservation, about 40 miles northeast of Reno, Lake Pyramid is famous for the whiting events that occur there every decade or so. Over the course of a few weeks, the water turns light blue, turquoise, and, in rare cases, even white. This spontaneous precipitation of calcium carbonate is well documented, but not very well understood. All scientists know is that contributing factors include high water temperatures, algae bloom and increased calcium concentrations. Interestingly, whiting events are not dangerous to the aquatic life. However the same cannot be said for land life, including humans…

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