A Vietnamese hospital recently reported the extremely rare case of a 24-year-old man who had a wooden chopstick lodged in his eye socket for three weeks without noticing. The unnamed man was admitted to the Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Vietnam’s Can Tho Province when he came in with symptoms of pain and swelling in his left eye. The 24-year-old patient told doctors that he had been experiencing the symptoms for about three weeks but they had gotten worse in recent days. He had previously sought medical help at another facility in his hometown, but after assessing his vision and checking for foreign objects, they prescribed medicine that proved ineffective. This led the man to the Can Tho University Hospital, where doctors once again confirmed that he had 10/10 vision, with no signs of eyeball injury. However, the left eye did appear swollen and there was a small pus discharge from the corner of his left eye. A subsequent CT scan showed that he had a 9-cm-long foreign body lodged in his eye socket. Read More »

Chinese robotics startup Engine AI recently launched a new humanoid robot that stunned everyone with its natural human-like gait which many attributed to CGI. Major robotic companies around the world have been trying to replicate the smooth human gait in their humanoid robots for decades, with relatively modest results, but last October, Chinese company Engine AI unveiled the SE01, its most advanced humanoid robot yet. Featuring an advanced end-to-end neural network system, the SE01 robot learns to walk like a human in a simulation, getting feedback for how well it does and constantly improving over time. It is powered by dual processors from Nvidia and Intel and features three stereo cameras that help it navigate and interact with complex environments. Read More »

Infinity Studio is a Shanghai-based company that specializes in hyper-realistic silicone statues and busts based on popular movie, cartoon and video characters. There are plenty of studios producing high-quality silicone collectibles, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find one better than Infinity Studio. Founded in 2014 in Shanghai, China, the company quickly established itself as the go-to source for the most realistic-looking statues and busts of pop-culture characters, securing licenses for popular franchises like Dragon Ball, Batman, Wonder Woman, Predator, as well as Chinese culture classics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Although some of its most impressive works sell for thousands of dollars, you really get what you pay for! Read More »

Located in the basement of a department store in Kawasaki, Japan, the world’s smallest escalator only has five steps and measures 83.4 centimeters (32.8 inches). The escalator is one of humanity’s most useful inventions, allowing people to effortlessly travel between floors in places where elevators would be impractical, but the world’s smallest escalator is actually a useless oddity that holds no real purpose than to claim the Guinness record for the world’s smallest escalator. Known as the ‘Petitcalator’ or ‘Puchicalator’, this unusual contraption is located in the basement of More’s Department Store in the city of Kawasaki and is considered more of a tourist attraction than a useful piece of technology. Yes, it’s useable, but it measures just 83.4 centimeters so it offers no real benefit to whoever is riding it over traditional stairs. Read More »

A Chinese company has come under fire for installing surveillance cameras in the restroom too see which employees spent too much time on bathroom breaks and posting offenders on ‘wall of shame’. Many Chinese companies have long been trying to discourage workers from spending too much time in the restroom by various means, like installing countdown timers on bathroom stalls or limiting bathrooms breaks to one per day. A Shenzen-based tech company took things even further by reportedly installing hidden surveillance cameras in its restrooms to monitor employees’ activity and then shaming those who wasted too much time there by posting screenshots of them for everyone to see. A spokesperson for the Lixun Electro-Acoustic Technology Company admitted that employees were surveilled in the company restroom, but claimed that the measure was meant to discourage time wasting during work hours. Read More »

An ER doctor recently shared “one of the most insane X-rays he has ever seen,” showing a person’s lower body infested with hundreds of calcified tapeworm eggs. Tapeworms are parasites that usually anchor themselves to the inside of the intestines of their host, absorbing nutrients directly from the gut, but few people know that tapeworm eggs can travel anywhere inside the body of their host, from their feet all the way to the brain. Over time, these eggs calcify and are no longer viable, so they don’t pose much of a threat when they get lodged in soft tissues like muscles or fat, but they can cause a life-threatening condition known as neuro-cysticercosis when they calcify in the brain. Read More »

Vinicius Moschen is a talented tattoo artist from Brazil who specializes in colorful patch and sticker-style tattoos that seem sewn or stuck onto the skin. We’ve seen tattoo artists go viral for patch-like tattoos and sticker-style tattoos, but 29-year-old Vinicius ‘Vinni’ Moschen has mastered both styles and often blends them to create unique works of art inspired by various themes, from cartoon and video game characters to football club logos. Not only is the young artist able to expertly get the stitched effect of his patch-style tattoos just right, but he also leaves some loose strands to enhance the realistic look and also gives them a 3D effect as well.

Vinni travels all over Brazil practicing his trade, and you can book your own session via his Instagram.

 

For more incredible tattoo styles, check out the debossed tattoos of Daniel Gulliver, the photorealistic tattoos of South Korean artist Yeono, or the UV tattoos of Jonny Hall.

Subida Impossível (Impossible Climb) is a challenging motocross hill-climbing event in Portugal that more than lives up to its suggestive name. Every year, dozens of experienced motocross bike riders gather in the Portuguese city of Silves for a chance to become legends among their peers. Subida Impossível is one of the toughest motocross challenges in the world, requiring perfect control of the bike in order to complete a 110-meter-long course up a rocky hill. 110 meters may not seem like much for professional riders, but keep in mind that in some places, the gradient is over 80%, not to mention the unpredictable terrain and a very narrow course. Let’s just say that it’s not called Impossible Climb for nothing and that there is a reason why only a handful of participants have completed the hill climb in over two decades. Read More »

A veterinary clinic in Turkey recently shared the touching story of a stray dog who carried her unconscious puppy in her mouth and left it at the clinic door as if begging for help. If not for the viral video footage captured by CCTV cameras, most people would probably think this story too heartwarming to be true. A vet clinic in the Adnan Kahveci neighborhood of Beylikduzu, in Turkey’s Istanbul Province, recently reported one of its most incredible cases. On January 13, an animal lover brought a young puppy they had found on the street, claiming it was the only survivor of a stray’s litter. The clinic rushed to treat the pup only to then have its mother show up on the doorstep with another unconscious puppy in its mouth. A technician noticed the desperate animal and rushed to tend to its offspring, which suffered from hypothermia and had a very low heart rate. Read More »

‘El Inmortal’ (The Immortal), is an iconic building in the Ecuadorian city of Machala famous for its precarious look due to having an unusually narrow ground floor. Located on the corner of Pichincha and Buenavista streets in the center of Machala, The Immortal has been defying earthquakes in Ecuador for more than 30 years. Looking at it, you would think that the slightest tremor would be enough to bring the four-storey building down, but you would be wrong. It has survived serious quakes, including one in 2023 measuring 6.5 degrees on the Richter scale, with minimal damage. It’s most famous for having the upper three floors overhanging a whopping five meters without any pillars for support. Its now legendary resistance to earthquakes despite its precarious appearance has earned it the nickname ‘The Immortal’. Read More »

A Taiwanese plastic surgeon has been getting a lot of attention for sharing a video of performing a vasectomy on himself on social media, as a gift to his wife. Chen Wei-nong, a father-of-three who works at a plastic surgery clinic in Taipei City, went viral this week after sharing a rather unusual clip on his Facebook and Instagram profiles. To put his wife’s mind at ease, the young doctor decided to get a vasectomy, and to make sure there was no risk of botching the procedure, he performed it himself, recording the entire process for educational purposes. After presenting a list of 11 steps involved in the operation, Chen got local anesthesia and then started working on himself, so to speak. Because operating on yourself isn’t very common, a procedure that usually takes about 15 minutes ended up taking an hour, but it was a success. Read More »

There are around 45,000 species of spider in the world, all of them carnivorous, with one exception – Bagheera kiplingi, a jumping spider known for feeding almost exclusively on plants. Native to the forests of Central America and Mexico, Bagheera kiplingi is only 5-6mm long and spends most of its time on the old leaves of acacia trees, waiting for their opportunity to snatch their favorite meal – the Beltian bodies that grow on the very tips of young acacia leaves. There is only one problem, in order to gorge on their meal of choice, these tiny jumping spiders need to go through a gauntlet of aggressive ants that also feed on Beltian bodies, quickly clip it off with their fangs, and then run away to a safe place to feast on it. Rich in lipids and proteins, Beltian bodies are very nutritious for insects, but extremely unusual for arachnids,  the vast majority of which are carnivorous. Read More »

For over a month now, the Gaîté Lyrique Theater in Paris, France, has been taken over by a group of homeless migrants who needed a roof over their heads during winter. The occupation of Gaîté Lyrique began on 10 December when the cultural venue hosted a free conference titled “Reinventing the Welcome for Refugees in France”. Ironically, the 250 African migrants who attended the event refused to leave after it was over, and they were later joined by another 50 or so migrants who didn’t have anywhere else to hide from the cold Paris weather. It’s been over a month since the Gaîté Lyrique was occupied, and management admits that it was forced to cancel all performances until at least January 24, which threatens to bankrupt it, as the institution relies on such performances for 70% of its income, with the other 30% coming from the state as subsidies. Read More »

An Australian woman asked to have her marriage annulled in Court, claiming that she was tricked into it by her husband who told her that it was just a stunt to boost his Instagram following. The woman, whose name has not been revealed by the Court, told the presiding judge that she met her husband in September 2023 on a dating app. They started seeing each other regularly in Melbourne, and in December of that same year, he invited her to a “white party” in Sydney, telling her to bring a white dress to fit the theme of the event. The young woman accepted, but when she arrived at the party venue, he was “shocked” and “furious” to see that the only other people there were her partner, a photographer, the photographer’s friend, and a marriage officiant. Her partner took her aside and explained that he had planned a fake wedding to increase his social media following and asked her to play the bride. Read More »

A 53-year-old woman was scammed into paying hundreds of thousands of euros to a person posing as Hollywood megastar Brad Pitt as payment for hefty medical bills he couldn’t cover due to his divorce. For more than a year, Anne, a French interior decorator, thought she was in a long-distance romantic relationship with Brad Pitt. This bizarre tale started in February 2023, when the middle-aged woman joined Instagram to share photos from a recent skiing vacation in the Alps. She was immediately approached on the social network by someone claiming to be Jane Pitt, the mother of legendary actor Brad Pitt, who started chatting with Anne and telling her what a good match she was for her son. It wasn’t long before someone posing as Brad Pitt approached Anne on Instagram. They chatted online every day, and before long, Anne fell in love which made her an easy target for a surprisingly effective scam.

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