Emily Pellegrini has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has nearly 150,000 fans showering her with compliments and date invitations. Only she’s not a real person…

AI-generated social media influencers are on a tear these days. A couple of months ago, we featured Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, a Spanish model who had amassed a following of around 110,000 people on Instagram in four months despite only existing in the digital world. She was the creation of a communication agency, but she looked just like a real person. It turns out that she was only one of many hyperrealistic digital avatars taking social media by storm and making their creators fortunes in advertising, sponsorships and paid personalized content. Emily Pellegrini, a digital model based on the guidelines of ChatGPT, has been getting a lot of attention in the media recently, sparking controversy in the process.

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Every year, Japanese pesticide company Earth Corporation holds a ‘transcendence ceremony’ at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City to honor insects that sacrificed their lives for research purposes.

Earth Corporation prides itself on being the ‘no. 1 preferred household insecticide company in Japan’, a status it has achieved over decades of research and trial & error. In order to test the efficacy of its products, the company uses them on various species of insects at a proprietary research facility in Ako City, and some of those bugs inevitably die in the process. The company breeds the bugs it uses for testing, but that doesn’t make their sacrifice meaningless, and to show that it doesn’t take the tiny creatures for granted, Earth Corporation holds an honorary ceremony at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City.

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The Swan Car is regarded as one of the craziest, most eccentric vehicles ever to hit the streets and one look at it is enough to explain why.

The Swan Car was commissioned in the early 1900s by Robert Nicholl ‘Scotty’ Matthewson, a wealthy British engineer living in Calcutta. It’s never been clear why he was so obsessed with swans – maybe because he lived in Swan Park, next to Calcutta Zoo, which was home to many beautiful swans – but he loved the birds enough to travel to England in 1909 and placed a very special with JW Brooks and Company of Lowestoft, Suffolk – a swan-shaped car. The following year, the unique vehicle arrived in Calcutta and immediately became the talk of the town. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, or would ever see again for that matter, and came with some intriguing features.

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Chinese media reports that a growing number of pet owners are putting their animals through painful cosmetic procedures in order to give them rounded ears inspired by Mickey Mouse.

Most cats and dogs have naturally pointy or droopy ears, but a new disturbing trend sweeping through China these days has pet owners ignoring common sense and their animals’ physical and mental well-being for the promise of stylish ‘Mickey Ears’. Apparently, some shady pet clinics will slice part of the animal’s ears off to achieve the Mickey Mouse look, but there are also a variety of special clamps available online for pet owners disturbed enough to perform the procedure themselves. Recent coverage of this bizarre trend sparked controversy online, with most of the general public urging authorities to ban the ‘Mickey Ears’ procedure and punish those who would torture defenseless animals purely for cosmetic purposes.

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