At just 30-years-old, Karol Rybakowski is already one of the biggest names in the world of tattoos, and looking at some of his works, it’s pretty easy to see why. His portrait tattoos look as if a picture has been slapped on the subject skin, and in many cases they turn out even better than the photos that inspired them.

It won’t surprise you to learn that Karol Rybakowski studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Warsaw, before becoming a tattoo artist, but while that explains his artistic style, I for one still can’t wrap my head around how a 30-year-old can create such stunningly-realistic tattoos. And apparently, I’m not the only one. About four years ago, just when his works started showing up online, people in the business who had never seen his tattoos in person actually thought that they were photoshopped. There was a particularly heated debate surrounding his tattoo of Bradley Cooper as sniper Chris Kyle in “American Sniper” with many people claiming that it looked too good to be true.

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From Whatsapp to WeChat or Skype,the world has plenty of choices when it comes to messaging apps that connect friends and strangers on the internet. The market is so crowded this days that for a new competitor to even get noticed, they’d have to come up with something completely new. Enter “Die With Me,” a fresh chat app that can only be used when your smartphone has 5% or less battery remaining.

Die With Me allows total strangers with low battery to log into an online chatroom and converse as they wait for their handhelds to shut off completely. Or, as the developers so poetically put it, to “die together in a chatroom on your way to offline peace.” Using Die With Me requires nothing more than choosing a username and allowing the app to read your battery status. The idea behind the strangely poignant app was to turn the frustrating experience of dealing with low phone battery into a positive one.

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Anton Maltsev, an ex-member of Russia’s Special Forces and a Kossovo War veteran, was recently pardoned for turning his Moscow apartment into a veritable forces chuck full of traps, firearms and even a DIY titanium exoskeleton he used to fight off debt collectors.

Maltsev’s unusual story first made news headlines in 2016, when military bomb disposal experts were called to break down his apartment door, after debt collectors failed and triggered a pepper-spray trap in their attempt. Inside the apartment, the experts found several tripwire traps, reinforced doors, an AK47, several semi-automatic firearms, numerous pistols, a grenade launched, and eight kilos of explosives. But the most startling discovery was a home-made exoskeleton made up of titanium plates, aluminum, and featuring a bullet-proof helmet and vest. It was this contraption that earned him the nickname “Russian Iron Man”.

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Most of us see used teabags as stained, soggy pieces of trash, but to visual artist and graphic designer Ruby Silvious they are miniature canvases just waiting to be turned into artworks.

Three years ago, Ruby Silvious came up with an ingenious way of combining two of her favorite pastimes – painting and drinking tea – by using the used teabags as small pieces of canvas. She started a project called 363 Days of Tea, creating a unique teabag painting every day for 363 days. To the New-York-based artist, it served as a sort of daily diary, allowing her to record her feelings and thoughts as whimsical miniature illustrations, but also compelled viewers to re-evaluate their views on found and recycled materials.

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200 schools in Germany have begun asking hyperactive children, typically those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), to wear heavy sand-filled vests to calm them down and keep them in their seats during classes. The controversial vests, which weigh between 1.2 and six kilograms (2.7 – 13Ib), have sparked misgivings among parents and psychiatrists.

There are plenty of advocates, however, who claim to have witnessed remarkable changes in behavior among the children who have worn them and insisted that they help curb restlessness. There has been a growing number of ADHD cases diagnosed in Germany each year, and schools that use the vest claim that they are a gentler and less complicated way to tackle the phenomenon than administering psychiatric drugs such as Ritalin.

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Chinese patissier Zhou Yi is better known as the “Sugar King” in his native country, and looking at his hand-made cake decorations, it’s easy to see why. Yi can mold fondant into virtually any imaginable shape, and his human figurines are so incredibly detailed that they look more like exquisite porcelain dolls than edible decorations.

Zhou Yi has long been known as one of China’s most talented cake decorators, but after winning three gold medals and two bronze medals at the International Cake Competition, last year, he is now a globally recognized as one of the world’s top patissiers. His entries featured elements of Chinese culture and traditional art, including a mind-blowing figurine of Wu Zetian, China’s first and only female emperor, which was so insanely detailed you could literally count her eyelashes.

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If you’ve ever had to chop an onion, you probably know that it’s one of the most annoying cooking experiences. It just fills your eyes with tears and, apart from wearing goggles, there’s not too much you can do about it. Scientists and farmers have been working on a solution to this problem for decades, and they’ve apparently come up with a tearless onion.

Called the “Sunion”, this new vegetable is the result of a natural cross-breeding program that’s been going on farms in Nevada and Washington since the 1980s, which should put consumers worried about genetically-modified produce at ease. It’s supposedly a sweet, mild-tasting onion that doesn’t leave that strong, pungent aftertaste, but what really sets it apart from most other onion varieties is that it doesn’t cause teary eyes when it’s chopped.

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A Missouri family recently got a taste of internet stardom after sharing a series of hilariously bad “professional photograph” that they had paid just under $250 for. And the funniest thing is they consider it money well spent.

In May of last year, Dave and Pam Zaring, of Hillsboro, Missouri, were contacted by a middle-aged woman who marketed herself as an experienced professional photographer. Having gotten married three years ago, the couple decided it was time for their first family photo shoot, so they took the so-called professional photographer up on her offer.  The couple, their two sons, Cade, 12, and Connor, 8, and Dave’s mother Sharon drove to the lovely Forest Park, in St. Louis, where they paid the photographer just under $250 to snap a few pics of them as one big happy family. The shoot went great, and the woman said she would be in touch again in a few weeks, after editing the photos. However, weeks turned to months, and the family nearly forgot all about the pics. I guess, they figured they got scammed and moved on with their lives.

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A devoted father in the eastern Indian state of Orissa has single-handedly constructed an 8-km (5 miles) stretch of mountain road so that his children, who live away from home for school, can visit him more frequently. For the past two years Jalandhar Nayak, 45, set out every morning with an ax and crowbar and spent up to eight hours a day cutting rocks and moving boulders.

Nayak, who has never received formal education himself, lives in an isolated village, 10 km (6 miles) from the residential school where his three sons study. It would be a small distance with proper roads, but the commute takes the sons three hours as their route includes a trek across five hills to reach their home. “My children find it difficult to walk on the narrow and stony path while going to their school,” the man recently told Kalinga TV. “I often saw them stumbling against the stones, and I decided to carve a road through the mountain so that they can walk freely.”

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In a world of dumb social media trends, we may have reached peak idiocy. Somehow the absurd and dangerous ‘Tide Pod Challenge’ has become a thing among teenagers, and is on the verge of going viral. The challenge involves filming yourself biting on one of the colorful laundry detergent pods, posting the video online, and daring friends to do the same. In the videos, teenagers are seen chewing on the pods, gagging, spitting up the colorful liquid, and sometimes even swallowing them.

The so called “delicious-looking” pods are very hazardous to human health, and doctors have had to issue warnings about the dangers of eating them. Any amount of liquid from the pod can lead to diarrhea, vomiting, burns, and in severe cases, death. The concentrated detergent contains highly toxic chemicals like ethanol, hydrogen peroxide and various polymers, none of which you want anywhere near your mouth, ever.

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We all post photos of our loved ones – especially adorable children – on social media all the time without ever giving any thought to the potential legal consequences, but as this recent case in Italy proves, posting photos of other people online is not as simple as we all think it is.

Last year, a 16 year-old Italian boy took his mother to court for constantly posting photos of him on Facebook without his consent. The boy claimed that his mother’s actions had such a serious impact on his social life that he was considering transferring to a high-school in the United States so he could “start over”. One December 23, 2017, Judge Monica Velletti of the first section of the civil court in Rome made a historical decision, ruling in favor of the teen, and ordering the mother to delete all references of him from her social media account by February 1, 2018, or risk a fine of €10,000 ($12,270).

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The tiny house movement has taken off over the past decade as urban developers have had to find creative solutions to soaring property prices worldwide. James Law Cybertecture of Hong Kong has joined this trend with their newly released Opod Tube House, made from repurposed concrete pipe.

Hong Kong, one of the most populous cities on the planet, has been especially hard hit as home prices have shattered historical records for 12 straight months this past year. According to the Bangkok Post, an apartment sold this past November for HK 32,060 (USD 6,915) per square foot, making it the most expensive apartment per square foot in all of of Asia. This trend has forced over 200,000 people into tiny partitioned apartments, averaging no more than 62 square feet, and some are only able to afford individual caged beds. Government data shows a 9% increase in the number of households living in “inadequate housing,” including partitioned flats and industrial buildings.

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A new and first-of-its-kind gene therapy treatment for inherited blindness, called Luxturna, was approved by the FDA last month. The groundbreaking medication, however, comes with the staggering cost of USD 850,000, making it one of the most expensive treatments in the world, and placing it far beyond the means of most patients.

Spark Therapeutics, the company releasing the drug, had initially planned to sell Luxturna for 1 million USD but lowered the price after health insurers expressed concern over their ability to cover the cost of the injectable treatment. Despite the small drop in price, Luxturna is still significantly more expensive than almost every other medication on the global market, including two separate gene therapy treatments approved last year by the FDA. Luxturna is the first gene therapy that treats an inherited condition. It has proven to improve vision for those with a rare form of inherited blindness that is estimated to affect less than 2,000 people in the US.

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Despite being a hub for technological advancement, California’s bay area is also notorious for absurd anti-science health trends such as the movement opposing vaccinations which, in 2014, lead to the most significant measles outbreak the state had seen in decades. Joining the absurdity of the “anti-vaxxers” is a new and equally ridiculous trend – “raw water”. That’s actually unfiltered, untreated, raw spring water, which, even when from the seemingly cleanest of sources, can spread diseases like cholera, E. coli, Hepatitis A or Giardia.

To add insult to potential injury, this unsterilized water, bottled and marketed by startups like Live Water, is priced at $36.99 per 2.5-gallon containers and $14.99 per refill at the co-op Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. The water is often out of stock and typically sees a price hike with every restock.

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Thailand’s fascination with skin whitening treatments is well known, but while most people opt to have the most visible parts of their bodies whitened, an increasing number of men are undergoing special laser procedures on the dark parts of their groin region.

News of the “penis whitening” craze in Thailand reached the Western world a couple of days ago, after photos of men undergoing the unusual procedure at the Lelux aesthetic hospital outside of Bangkok went viral on social media. They showed a number of men lying down on a medical chair while hospital staff operated the “Pikachu laser” on their groin region. If that name sounds a bit strange, you should know that the popular Pokemon is slang for “penis” in Thailand.

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