To understand just how crowded Dameisha Beach can get during the summer months, it’s enough to go on platforms like TripAdvisor and read the reviews of angry visitors, some of whom complain that they couldn’t even reach the water because of how jam-packed with people the place was.

Dameisha is a public beach, so, technically, anyone can use it, but in recent years, Shenzhen authorities decided to limit the number of daily visitors to 80,000 from May to October to avoid overcrowding. People need to use a mandatory reservation system to make sure they can access the beach on the day they plan their visit.

While 80,000 people sounds like a lot, it’s worth pointing out that, on occasions, Dameisha Beach hosted as many as 200,000 people at once, making it extremely hard to even move around, let alone sunbathe or swim.

Paradoxically, one of the “problems” that contributes to the overcrowding of Dameisha Beach is the public transportation. There are multiple bus lines available to reach it, and, most importantly, a metro station is located right in front of it. This, coupled with the fact that it is free to access, makes Dameisha extremely popular among both locals and tourists.

Despite the negative reviews on TripAdvisor and other online platforms, Dameisha Beach remains extremely popular during the summer months, and photos of the sea of people that gather there routinely go viral online.

Despite their best efforts to capture the cat, its behavior was so erratic that tracking it and anticipating its movements proved impossible. It was dubbed Nine Lives for its ability to avoid capture for several years, and its reign of chaos eventually became the stuff of legends among conservationists. As the death toll among pāteke – New Zealand’s rarest mainland duck – continued to rise, in 2024, scientists introduced 20 more specimens into the wild, but the feline quickly killed 15 of them.

“It was a really stressful time. So we brought in more traps, gear, night cameras to try and get to the root cause of the problem,” Andy Mentor, project manager for Pest Free Purerua, told The Guardian. “This particular cat would be very erratic. It would show up in a particular place and then not show up for another two or three months. It would show up in the dusk, midnight, early morning, through the day, so it was never a predictable pattern, which made it very, very difficult to track.”

Scientists came close to cornering it on a number of occasions, but it always slipped away into tall grass, earning itself the nickname Nine Lives.  Over the three years it was known to be roaming the Purerua peninsula, the proficient predator is believed to have wiped out dozens of brown teals (1% of the entire population), as well as a number of kiwi chicks, native geckos, and other native wildlife.

Nine Lives became notorious among conservationists, so when a team of them noticed that the elusive feline that had thwarted their efforts for years had visited the same spot three nights in a row, they knew it was an unmissable opportunity. They installed cages and traps, and used salmon, fried chicken, and rabbit to attract the feral cat. This time, it finally worked!

After a three-year-long hunt, Nine Lives was finally captured. But this is where the controversy begins. Instead of keeping it caged, a team of trappers “humanely shot” the cat on the spot, thus brutally ending its prolific onslaught. Conservationists celebrated its end, but cat lovers were appalled. They insisted that it could have been kept in captivity, even in a zoo where people would have paid to see the legendary scourge of Purerua wildlife.

“Why was it necessary to kill a cat that was already safe in its cage?” one person asked on social media.

“Why wasn’t it given a chance to live out its life in a zoo or an enclosure? Thousands of people would have flocked to see this legendary cat!” someone else commented.

While they never admitted it, conservationists probably considered that the price of Nine Lives somehow escaping would have been too high for the helpless wildlife. The contents of its stomach will now be analyzed and the body taxidermied as befitting such a legendary tabby.

The wealthy woman reportedly set two main conditions for bankrolling the 50-episode short drama series: she had to play the lead female role, and she had the final say on the script. This gave her free rein over production, and because she could always pull the plug on the whole thing, no one dared argue with her, no matter how absurd her decisions were.

For example, the script she greenlit featured over sixty kissing scenes, and no matter how many times the director and other members of the filming crew tried telling her that the unusually high number of smooching scenes risked disrupting the rhythm of the plot and making the audience lose immersion, she never listened.

“I’ve seen more short dramas than you’ve ever made,” the woman allegedly said, completely ignoring any and all advice.

23-year-old Zhong Yufei, who was selected to play the male lead in the drama series, said that he was shocked when he felt his co-star French-kiss him during their first of many romantic scenes. He instinctively tried backing away but she allegedly grabbed the back of his head with one hand and held him there as she forcibly kissed him.

The young actor, who had only played a couple of supporting roles in short dramas before, felt like this series could be his big break, so he didn’t object despite the constant harassment. He claims he was also discouraged from speaking out by the behavior of the other people on set who chose to ignore what was happening under their very eyes.

Film producer Meng Xing revealed that due to the unusually high number of kissing scenes, the series was rejected by the platform it was supposed to stream on. After filming was completed and the series entered post-production editing, the platform reviewed a few episodes and rejected them outright because they were too explicit, with too many kissing scenes, which could easily violate regulations.

Given the commercial disaster of the drama series and the negative reactions of the general public to the poorly scripted mess, producer Meng Xing decided to come forward and explain that he and his team had n]almost no say, and that all decisions were made by the lead actress/sole investor.

The recent revelations went viral on Chinese social media, sparking a heated debate about the harassment that young actors are subjected to on set, with accusations that capital turns film sets into private hunting grounds where actors are treated as objects to be disposed of at will.

Commissioned by a Saudi family for a royal wedding, Suárez spent about a month and a half coming up with a suitable concept, and another four months making his vision a reality. Even though he normally works alone, for this particular project, he enlisted several of his pastry chef friends, as well as their family members, because of the amount of work required. Simply placing the 33,000 petals on the cake was an extraordinary effort.

“Family, friends, and acquaintances all pitched in,” Suárez told RAC1. “I usually work alone, but this time the order was so large that even with my pastry chef friends, we didn’t have enough manpower. I had to call on the mothers and fathers of friends who all pitched in to help me make the 33,000 petals, paint them, and assemble them with branches and flowers.”

In total, some 1,800 hours of work went into making this incredible-looking cake, which ended up weighing a whopping 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs). It was unveiled at the Paris Opera Garnier for the wedding of a Saudi couple who asked to remain anonymous.

Explaining the extreme intricacy of his cake, Marc Suárez said that the newlyweds “wanted a cake that didn’t look like a cake, but rather a kind of monument that would pay homage to the event” and to the flamboyant venue that hosted it.

Interestingly, Suárez revealed that only about 0.1% of his incredible creation is actual cake, with the rest being hand-moulded sugar paste and white chocolate.

Mayu Yoshida, a 32-year-old restaurant worker from Osaka, was recently arrested for disrupting the commercial activities of Shueisha Inc. by using no less than 238 different accounts to place thousands of online orders knowing full well that she would never complete them. Between 2024 and 2025, Yoshida reportedly placed over 2,000 orders for merchandise worth about 4.3 billion yen ($27.2 million).

Japanese investigators discovered that Mayu Yoshida took advantage of Japan’s convenience store prepayment system, which allows people who don’t have or don’t want to pay with a credit card to place an order but pay for it at a convenience store, with the seller shipping the item once payment has been confirmed. After a certain time passed without the buyer picking up the product, the order was canceled automatically, but the company still incurred logistical losses.

Alternatively, Yoshida also selected cash-on-delivery when ordering products from the Shueisha online store, only to reject them when they arrived. All in all, the company estimates that the woman’s antics caused a net loss of around 7.5 million yen ($47,000) in fees, not to mention other potential sales when the products she ordered were listed as “out of stock”.

Mayu Yoshida was arrested on Tuesday, following a year-long investigation. Confronted with the evidence, she admitted to placing over 2,000 orders from 238 different accounts, but insisted that it was just a way to cope with the stress in her life.

“I do not have any resentment towards Shueisha,” the 32-year-old woman said. “I have been feeling stressed from daily life, and I felt a sense of satisfaction and refreshment from ordering items before they sold out.”

Perhaps she sould try one of those fake online shopping platforms to deal with her shopping addiction.

Wang noticed that the cicada noises became noticeably louder around noon, but he remained in the forest until evening, when he began experiencing tinnitus and a sensation of fullness in his ears. As the cicadas started going silent, he noticed that he couldn’t hear the chirping of birds, or even the notification sounds of his phone.

Terrified that he could lose his hearing completely, Wang went straight to the hospital, where a quick checkup revealed that both his ears were swollen. He was prescribed medicine to bring down the swelling and advised to avoid loud noises for at least 14 days. Luckily, after two weeks, the teenage boy healed completely.

“Many people mistakenly think that the sounds of nature are harmless to the ears,” Li Ji, a senior doctor in the otorhinolaryngology (Ear, Nose and Throat) department of Ningbo University No 1 Affiliated Hospital, explained.

Cicadas are recognized as the world’s loudest insects, but one single cicada can’t really cause and hearing damage, as its clicking rarely surpassed 70 decibels. The problem is that a choir of cicadas can exceed 85 decibels, the threshold past which hearing damage occurs.

“The hair cells in the cochlea can develop oedema due to the irritation from loud noises for a relatively short duration. They typically recover after avoiding the noisy environment and resting for 1-2 weeks,” Dr. Li explained. “However, if the hair cells become necrotic, they cannot regenerate. The resulting hearing impairment is permanent and irreversible, forcing the patient to rely on hearing aids for auditory assistance.”

Ever since the Russia-Ukraine war began, Russian media have been reporting about so-called ‘black widows,’ women who approach and trick men into marriage just so they can then send them off to war and cash their compensation check as soon as they get killed.

CNN recently sat down with Maria, a 37-year-old woman from St. Petersburg whose father had recently been shot on the front lines in Ukraine. She didn’t even know that her father had enlisted in the Russian army, nor that he had married a woman 22 years his junior, who apparently had no problem seeing him off to war just two days into their marriage. That same woman, whom Maria has never even met, conveniently cashed the handsome compensation following her husband’s death.

“I’m still in shock and still can’t accept what happened,” Maria said. “At first, it felt like a dream. Even now, I sometimes wake up thinking I must have just dreamt it all. But it is really happening. I’ve never even spoken to this woman. I don’t know what to say to her because I immediately suspected it was a scam.”

The black widow phenomenon is no secret in Russia. It is discussed openly online, even though the Government frowns upon those making claims they can’t prove. For example, in a viral clip, a female real estate agent talks about women who marry men going off to war just so they can cash in the compensation upon their deaths and buy a home.

“It’s simple,” real estate agent Marina Orlova said with a laugh. “Find a man who’s serving in the Special Military Operation, and when he gets killed, you get 8 million rubles ($102,000). Lots of women are buying cheap apartments like that these days. It’s business.” 

The real estate agent’s shocking remarks sparked outrage and eventually attracted the attention of Russian authorities. She was prosecuted, issued a suspended prison sentence and forced to apologize to the soldiers fighting in the war and their wives.

In some instances, members of the Russian army were allegedly involved in black widow schemes, conspiring with them to send their newly recruited husbands on dangerous missions in exchange for a cut of the compensation package when they got killed in action.

In an investigation in Primorsky Krai, a warrant officer, a sergeant, and a military accountant were suspected of recruiting vulnerable men, arranging marriages for them, and then sending them to the front line of the war where they were more likely to be killed.

According to experts, a smaller bust can favor the formation of a kind of “air pocket” at the level of the cyclist’s abdomen, which marginally increases the drag coefficient. For example, Bert Blocken, professor of aerodynamics at Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), told the British newspaper The Telegraph that chest fairing could provide a reduction of up to 3.6% in drag.

That small percentage might not sound like a lot, but in a sport where even the slightest edge can make a huge difference, chest fairing is considered an unfair advantage.

Originally reported last month by Dutch newspaper “WielerFlits,” the chest fairing trend caused quite a scandal on the women’s cycling circuit, and on August 4th, the cyclists taking part in this year’s Tour de France underwent an additional check of their clothing. It’s unclear if the checks uncovered the use of breast padding, but it’s clear that organizers aim to discourage the practice.

“Special attention will be given to compliance with article 1.3.032 of the UCI regulations, including non-essential elements and clothing or other items/accessories used by the cyclist (including, but not limited to, helmets, glasses, shoes or communication devices during the race) that may modify the cyclists’ morphology,” an official statement put out by the Tour de France read.

The HercShirt V5.0 was designed to stay fresh for over a month without washing. It sounds preporsterous, especially in the summer, when most of us sweat a lot more under the scorching sun, but HercLeon claims that this alchemy they came up with is real!

To keep the newest HercShirt odorless for such a long period of time, the American clothing brand used seven special ingredients – copper, silver, zinc, gold, volcanic ash, and two secret ingredients – all of which were woven into the fabric, rather than simply applied on the surface. Copper, for example, inhibits odor-causing bacteria, while zinc neutralizes harsh sulfur compounds produced by active sweating. Volcanic ash absorbs moisture and external odors, acting like a porous inner sponge.

According to HercLeon’s Kickstarter pitch, the HercShirt V5.0 stays fresh for over a month, even under heavy use. And because it only rarely requires washing, it lasts a lot longer than conventional t-shirts. It may cost $79, but ti’s suppose to last you longer than 7 regular t-shirts, so it should be worth the investment.

When it becomes avaulable for shipment in early November, the HercShirt V5.0 will only be available in black, but HercLeon has already announced plans to sell navy blue, burgundy, and dark green versions.

If you feel $79 is just too much to spend on a t-shirt, even one that remains odorless for so long, you can opt for the budget option ($39), which remains fresh for 3 days of heavy use, or the standard version, which doesn’t require washing for up to 14 days.

Motivated by his own fear of blood and needles, Cipher X CEO Ferdinand Cole founded the company with the declared goal of fundamentally changing the centuries-old process of skin tattooing. He focused on microneedling technology, which was already used in cosmetology for some time, and came up with a tattooing process that he claims is virtually painless.

“What began as a personal question has evolved into a much larger exploration of how tattoos can be reimagined through modern engineering, manufacturing, and human-centered design,” Cole wrote in a recent press release.

The revolutionary tattooing process developed by Cipher X involves the use of patches covered in microscopic structures that carry a pigment and introduce it into the upper layers of the skin. The patch is applied using a specially-designed applicator and must be left in place for around 15 minutes for the pigment to be fully released.

The design first appears only faintly on the skin, but as the pigment settles into the skin, it darkens and becomes very visible within 24 to 48 hours. The process may sound similar to that of applying a temporary tattoo patch, but these are permanent tattoo stickers, so you will need a laser machine to have them removed, just like old-fashioned tattoos.

The appeal of a no-pain tattoo is obvious, but the technology developed by Cipher X has some serious limitations. For one, the designs are really small, because they need to fit inside a circular canvas measuring only 15mm across. The company currently offers a number of available designs, like hearts and emojis, but it has also announced plans to work with various tattoo artists to offer custom designs as well. Another notable limitation is that you are currently limited to black as a pigment color, and it’s unclear if Cipher X will ever introduce other pigments.

So you won’t be able to get a painless sleeve tattoo anytime soon, but if you’re looking for something small to start you off on your tattoo journey, or if you’ve always wanted to get some work done but couldn’t overcome your fear of needles, Cipher X’s new technology may be the solution you’ve been looking for. The bad news is that it’s currently limited to the company’s location in London for the time being.