A French court recently ruled that a man fired from a consulting firm for not being fun enough at the workplace has the right to be as boring as he likes.

In 2015, Cubik Partners, a French management consultancy based in Paris, fired Mr. T, whose full name was not disclosed for privacy reasons, arguing that he was difficult to work with, a poor listener, and simply boring. What the company apparently meant, however, was that Mr. T didn’t go out with his colleagues enough after work, as part of the company’s “fun-based” approach to team building. The employee, on the other hand, clarified that he simply refused to forcibly partake in various excesses, such as consuming large quantities of alcohol and even sharing a bed with colleagues afterward.

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A Chinese couple recently sparked controversy online after punishing their child for watching too much television by making him stay up all night watching TV.

It’s a problem most modern parents – myself included – deal with at some point. Kids today love looking at screens, be they big or small, and unless you do something about it, they become little addicts. And it’s up to parents to either prevent that from happening or manage screen time to ensure they actually do something else. Anyway, this story is about a couple of parents who decided that more TV was actually the way to wean their son off watching TV. So they made him stay up all night watching whatever he wanted.

Before going out, the couple, who hail from China’s Hunan province, reportedly asked their 8-year-old son to finish his homework and be in bed at 8:30. But when they returned later that night they found him on the sofa watching TV even though it was passed his bedtime. They also learned that he had not done his homework, so they decided to teach him a lesson.

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A Canadian judge recently canceled a marriage annulment after discovering that the “wife” who testified during court proceedings had been an imposter.

Warren and Gina Zant married in the tropical Cook Islands on Nov. 27, 1999, but split two decades later, filing a separation agreement that stated that the ex-wife would receive survivor benefits under Warren Zant’s Operating Engineers’ Pension Plan. However, last year, the husband filed a bizarre case with the British Columbia Supreme Court in Kamloops seeking the annulment of his former marriage, based on a testimony of his ex-wife, who claimed that she had been fully aware that their marriage had not been legally binding. Only the woman claiming to be Gina Zant was apparently an imposter.

Almost a year ago, Justice Dennis Hori approved Warren Zant’s request to have the marriage annulled, which meant the loss of his ex-wife’s interest in the man’s pension plan, after hearing the testimonies of two people who identified themselves via “remote audio connection” as Warren and Gina Zant. However, the court would later hear from Gina Zant, who appeared distraught with the annulment, claiming to have never been involved with the case at all.

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The Greek Island of Ikaria in the Aegean Sea is home to numerous camouflaged houses built under giant rocks to make them harder to spot by pirates.

Nowadays, Ikaria is a popular tourist destination famous for its sandy beaches, picturesque villages and pristine natural landscape. But it wasn’t always the slice of paradise it is today. Hundreds of years ago, Ikaria was a prime target for the pirates who called the Aegean their home, so to protect themselves from their raids, the locals started building ‘anti-pirate’ homes deep into the mountains, to make their island look uninhabited from the sea. At one point, the entire population of Ikaria concealed itself in rock houses that didn’t attract attention unless you literally walked past them.

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Sergey Artemyev is a Russian artist who specializes in oil on canvas and pastel on canvas paintings, including some of the best optical illusions we’ve ever seen.

When creating painted replicas of real-life objects, depth and thickness are some of the toughest things to pull off, which makes sense, as creating painted renditions of three-dimensional objects is anything but easy. Still, we’ve some pretty impressive optical illusions in the past, so it’s definitely doable, but few can do it better than Sergey Artemyev. The Russian artist is so confident in his ability to paint hyperrealistic replicas of various objects that he places them right next to his artworks and you still can’t tell which one is real.

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A 26-year-old animal lover from China has been taking care of over 300 wolves at a wildlife rescue station in the country’s Inner Mongolia region.

Ever since he was a child, Wang Nan was fascinated by the unity and bonds of wolves as a species, so when he got a chance to work with his favorite animals as an adult, he jumped at the opportunity. In 2015, he started working at an animal rescue reserve in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia, taking care of injured wild wolves, feeding them, breeding them, and slowly earning their trust. Over the years, his pack of wolves grew to around 320 animals, including young pups, who seem to consider him their friend.

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Honeypot Ants, or honey ants, are specialized workers of several species of ants whose sole job is to gorge on nectar until they become living honey-storage.

Did you know that honeybees aren’t the only insects capable of producing the sweet, viscous, and brown-to-golden-colored natural product we know as honey? Several other species of bees, as well as bumblebees and even wasps are known to produce the sugary treat, but perhaps the most unusual insect able to convert nectar into honey is the honeypot ant. Belonging to a number of ant species, the most common of which is Camponotus inflatus, honeypot ants are specialized workers that act as living storage for their colonies when food is scarce.

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A five-month-old bar-tailed godwit recently smashed the record for long-distance migration after flying 13,560 kilometers non-stop over a period of 11 days.

Every autumn, millions of migratory birds take to the sky for a long and perilous journey to escape the coming cold, feed and breed for the next few months. Many of them cover impressive distances of over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), but this year, one small bird surpassed all expectations regarding long-distance flying, traveling a whopping 13,560 kilometers (8,425 miles) without stopping, and setting a new Guinness record in the process. And it was all because of an unusual detour that could have cost the bird its life, considering that the non-stop journey pushed its flight capacity to the limit.

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An entrepreneur in Can Tho, Vietnam’s fourth-largest city, has been getting a lot of attention for his unique home, which is gilded both inside and out.

Mr. Nguyen Van Trung is a Vietnamese businessman who reportedly made his fortune in the real-estate business. After visiting many countries around the world, he decided to return to his home city and build a house with a real touristic appeal, and after speaking with a home decorator he decided to go for a gold theme. To say that he went a little overboard with the gilding would be an understatement, as you can clearly see in the photos below. From the walls to the furniture and the various decorations, everything looks like it’s made of gold or at least gold-plated.

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A couple of Japanese math enthusiasts recently spent 24 hours covering the walls of an entire room with calculations in an attempt to find the ultimate answer to the ‘1+1’ formula.

It’s widely regarded as the easiest mathematical formula, but ‘1+1’ isn’t as simple as it appears. Well, at least not to math purists looking to apply multiple fields of mathematics while tackling this deceptively simple calculation. Popular YouTubers and math enthusiasts Hanao and Dengan recently proved this by spending a whopping 24 hours and covering the walls and floor of an entire room with calculations in one of their most intriguing projects yet.

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A bankrupt former millionaire in China has been making news headlines for his plan to pay a debt of 46 million yuan ($6.4 million) by selling grilled sausages at a street food stall.

Not too long ago, Tang Jian, a restauranteur in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, was considered one of the most successful businessmen in all of Zhejiang Province. By the age of 36, he already owned a chain of restaurants and had amassed an enviable fortune. But in 2005, Tang decided to invest a sizeable portion of his money into a completely new industry and things started going horribly wrong for him. Now at 52, the former millionaire finds himself over $6 million in debt, but he is working hard to repay every single cent by selling grilled sausages on the street.

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An up-and-coming fashion brand is selling a Yu–Gi–Oh!-inspired hoodie that lets you become Yugi Muto himself when you zip it all the way up.

“Craziest hoodie ever made” is a very bold claim, but it’s the one Unoriginal Ideas is going with for its first – and so far only – creation, a purple hoodie with the iconic head of Yugi Muto for a hood. Called the “YAMI HOODIE”, the intriguing piece of apparel has been going viral on social media in China and other Asian countries both for its design and its spicy price tag – $190.

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Pheasant Island is a tiny island on the border between Spain and France that alternates ownership status between the two countries every six months.

Located on the Bidasoa River, the natural border between Spain and France, Pheasant Island is a deserted patch of land with a rather fascinating history and political status. It might not look like much today, but hundreds of years ago it was where the Thirty Years’ War between Spain and France finally ended. The two countries sent a couple of their most important dignitaries to the island to negotiate, with their respective armies gathered on both sides of the Bidasoa, in case things went wrong. 11 years and 24 summits later, a deal was struck, and Pheasant Island became the world’s smallest condominium, under the joint sovereignty of the two nations.

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A herd of sheep in China has been walking in a circle for almost two weeks now, and no one seems to really know why.

The bizarre behavior was captured on surveillance video at a sheep farm in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. In a video released on Wednesday by Chinese state-run news outlet People’s Daily, dozens of shep can be seen walking clockwise in a large circle, as other animals stare from outside the circle or at times stand motionless in the middle of it. Although it has been reported that the sheep appear to be perfectly healthy, it’s unclear if the animals ever stop to eat and drink, and if others take their place in the circle when that happens.

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Izumi is a young Japanese food artist who specializes in detailed cake icing artworks inspired by popular manga and anime characters.

We’ve featured some incredible cake artists over the last 12 years, from the super-talented Sarah Hardy, who can create edible replicas of just about anything, to Chinese patissier Zhou Yi, whose creations look more like porcelain dolls than sugar paste, but when it comes to anime-inspired cake art, Japanese artist Izumi is in a class of her own. One of her latest projects, an edible, three-dimensional rendition of Kaoru Hakaze from the Ensemble Stars! video game recently went viral, and that’s how most people discovered her impressive portfolio of cake decorations.

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