Danish startup Autofuel has developed a robotic arm capable of refueling a variety of vehicles at gas stations without any kind of human assistance.

A Neste fuel station in Finland is currently the only place in the world where you can have your car refueled by a robot. It’s the pilot site chosen by Autofuel to test its futuristic refueling system – a robotic arm that can locate a car’s fuel tank door, select the right type of fuel, and operate the pump without any kind of human assistance. The third-generation Autofuel robotic arm has been in testing for over a year, and the Danish company is planning to start public testing later this year. Although it may be a while before refueling robots become mainstream, Autofuel believes they will become invaluable when truly autonomous vehicles finally hit the roads.

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A young Indian mother locked herself up with her child in an apartment for three years because she was convinced the boy would die of Covid-19 as soon as he set foot outside the home.

In what can only be described as an extreme case of Covid-19 paranoia, a 36-year-old woman from Gurugram cut herself and her son from the outside world when the pandemic started. The woman, likely shocked by the wave of coronavirus infections and Covid-19-related deaths that swept India in 2020, somehow got it in her head that cutting off all contact with the outside world was the only way to protect her son, who was 7 years old at the time. The woman’s husband was also forced to stay indoors with them at all times, but when he started going out to work after lockdown restrictions ended he was forbidden from coming back. Sick of being cut off from his family for years, he finally sought help from the police last week.

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Swedish company Mo’cycle recently announced the world’s first airbag jeans which offer impact protection for motorcyclists’ lower body in case of accidents.

Inflatable accessories that protect motorcyclists in case of accidents are nothing new. We’ve seen helmets with inflatable add-ons that act as a cushion, and backpack-like strap-ons designed to protect the wearer’s back from impact, but Swedish startup Mo’cycle claims to have created the world’s first airbag jeans. Made out of Armalith, a special fabric that looks and feels like actual denim, but is actually water-repellent and abrasion-resistant, the inflatable jeans come with built-in airbags that get triggered during motorcycle accidents to protect the rider’s lower body.

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SpoGomi, a combination of ‘sport’ and ‘gomi’ (Japanese for rubbish) is a popular competition in which teams of 3-5 people try to pick up the most trash of the highest quality in a set period of time.

Japan recently announced that it would host the first SpoGomi World Cup in November of 2023, with teams from all over the world scouring the streets of Tokyo in search of trash to pick up. Each team of three players will have 60 minutes to gather the most trash from a designated area while trying to sort it correctly into color-coded bags for each type (burnable waste, recyclable plastic, metal cans, etc.). When the time is up, the trash will be weighted and checked for proper sorting, and the team with the most trash wins. In case of a tie, the winner is determined by the quality of the trash, with points awarded by type (cigarette butts win the most points).

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Vibrant is a smart ingestible capsule that vibrates inside your intestines to mechanically stimulate the colon and increase the frequency of bowel movements without the use of drugs.

No one really likes talking about it, but chronic constipation is a serious health issue of our time. Either because of age-related issues, questionable lifestyle choices, diet, or just bad genes, constipation affects a large number of adults in the developed world. Things like exercise and fiber-rich foods can help, but for a significant number of people, they simply aren’t viable options. Chronic idiopathic constipation sufferers struggle to find relief even with strong laxative therapies and eventually have to undergo uncomfortable medical procedures to clear their colon. Luckily, they now have a drug-free alternative in the form of a vibrating capsule.

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A 17-year-old boy in India was so incredibly nervous about being the only male in an exam room full of hundreds of girls that he simply passed out.

Many young people experience some degree of anxiety when interacting with or even being close to members of the opposite sex, but in some people, this feeling is so overwhelming that they simply pass out. Case in point, Manish Shankar Prasad, a shy 17-year-old boy from Allama Iqbal College in Bihar Sharif, was supposed to take his mathematics test in Sundergarh at the end of last month. he never got the opportunity to do so, as he lost consciousness after finding himself surrounded by around 500 girls in an exam hall.

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Lajamanu, a remote community in the Australian outback, near the Tanami Desert, recently experienced its fourth rain of fish in the last 50 years.

They say lightning never strikes in the same place twice, but apparently the same cannot be said about raining fish. The arid town of Lajamanu, in the Northern Territory outback, sees very little normal rain, but somehow it has experienced no less than four ‘fish rains’ in the last half-century – once in 1974, another in 2004, again in 2010, and last Sunday. Although the nearest fish-containing body of water is many miles away, locals swear that live fish started falling from the sky during a powerful storm, and they even have photos to back up those claims.

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Talented Nigerian artist Patrick Onyekwere creates stunning, emotionally-charged portraits that look more like photographs than ballpoint pen drawings.

Living and working in Lagos, Nigeria, Patrick Onyekwere started drawing professionally in 2015 and has since become one of the world’s leading ballpoint pen drawing masters. A fan of Kelvin Okafor, himself an accomplished hyperrealist artist specializing in pencil portraits, Onyekwere is able to capture and convey the emotions and feelings of his models like no one else. He actually has an entire selection process that starts with inviting subjects to talk about their lives and their culture, before taking a few snapshots of them for reference.

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A pastor in Mozambique, south-eastern Africa, recently passed away after suffering digestive organ failure attempting to emulate Jesus Christ’s 40-day fast.

It’s unclear why exactly 39-year-old Francisco Barajah, the founder of the Santa Trindade Evangelical Church, decided to imitate Christ’s 40-day fast in the desert as described in the Gospel of Matthew, but one thing is for sure – it was a fatal decision. 25 days into the grueling fast – no food or water – Barajah had become so weak that he couldn’t even stand, let alone move around or perform any menial tasks. Still, he insisted on going through with the Biblical fast, and by the time his family and followers finally decided to take him to a hospital, it was too late.

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Calgary-based sculptor Jeff de Boer has made a career out of creating intricate metal suits of armor for cats and mice.

“It all started with a mouse,” Jeff de Boer recalls. He was looking for a creative way to combine his longtime passion for medieval armor with his trade as a jeweler and one day it simply dawned on him – he could make a tiny suit of armor for a mouse. It seemed like an interesting idea at the time, but he had no idea he would go on to become known as the world’s first and only animal armorer and create over 500 suits of armor for mice and cats.

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A man in China had what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of his life turned into a nightmare when a number of ex-girlfriends showed up to sabotage his wedding ceremony.

On February 6th, attendees at a wedding in Hengdi Village, China’s Yunan province, were stunned by an unusual display. Around a dozen women showed up outside the wedding venue with a large red banner that read “We are Chen Song’s ex-girlfriends, and today we will destroy you”. At first, many believed the unusual scene to be part of a friendly prank, but it was later revealed that the women were indeed Chen’s scorned ex-girlfriends out to ruin his big day.

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A chamber inside Microsoft’s Audio Lab holds the Guinness record for the world’s quietest room. It’s a strange place that reportedly causes people to start hallucinating.

With everything moving at such a crazy pace in this day in age, we all crave a little peace and quiet from time to time, but it seems absolute quiet is absolutely terrifying. Luckily, it’s something you don’t have to experience, unless you want to challenge yourself because the only place you can experience total silence is in an anechoic chamber. There are only a few of them in the whole world and the absolute quietest of them all is inside the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Virginia. Rated at -20.35 dBA, this room stops all outside noise, making any sound produced inside sound downright eerie.

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Sandry Riffard is a talented tattoo artist from France who specializes in macabre hyperrealism with a three-dimensional layer.

We’ve featured some amazing tattoo art over the last 15 years, from titans of the trade like Arlo DiCristina and Karol Rybakowski, to talented newcomers carving out their own niches, like Eduardo “Duda” Lozano or Mexican artist Yatzil Elizalde, but when it comes to hyperrealistic macabre tattoos, it’s tough finding someone better. The French artist has always had a thing for horror-inspired art, but he has come so far in the last few years, setting himself apart from other practitioners of the style with some incredible projects.

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The small village of Coyllurqui is famous for a controversial “blood festival”, the highlight of which is a symbolic battle between a condor and a bull.

The Peruvian Blood Festival known as the Yawar Fiesta is a big deal in Coyllurqui, a small mountain village a nine-hour bus ride away from the city of Cusco. It’s pretty much the only place in the South American country where tourists can experience the traditional bird vs. bull fight anymore. Formally known as ‘Turupucllay’ (Game of the Bull), it used to be held in cities like Cusco centuries ago, but animal rights activists managed to get it banned in Peru years ago. However, in remote rural settlements like Coyllurqui, enforcing the law is tricky, especially when that goes against the economic interest of the locals.

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At just three years of age, Zayn Sofuoğlu can barely reach the pedals of a car, and he can’t even see past the steering wheel, yet he somehow drives better than most people.

The youngest son of Turkish motorcycle racer Kenan Sofuoğlu, Zayn spent most of his young life around powerful motorcycles and supercars and he probably has more experience with them than most adults. Zayn wasn’t even two years old when his father, who holds a record of five Supersport World Champion titles, started posting videos of him riding a motorcycle in the driveway of their family home. Since then, the prodigy has been honing his motorist skills, and he is now able to expertly maneuver and park various supercars even though he can’t even see through the windshield…

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