The Tokay Stakes 2023 horse race at the Chukyo Racecourse in Nagoya, Japan was technically won by a racehorse that ran the entire race without a jockey.

While it’s true that a jockey can’t really help a slow horse win a race, their role in professional horse racing is undeniable. The jockey plays many roles during a race. They control the pace of the animal, either pushing it from the beginning in a race where setting the pace for the rest of the pack is important or conserving its energy for a final push. They are also responsible for how fast the horse comes out of the gates at the start and tactical movement during the race. At least that’s what most horseracing enthusiasts will tell you, but one animal recently proved that they are just dead weight…

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Ruben Jordan Langsted is a talented tattoo artist who specializes in photo-realistic black & grey tattoos with high contrast and soft shadows.

Born in Norway but currently working out of the Dropout Collective tattoo shop in Copenhagen, Denmark Ruben Jordan Langsted is regarded as one of the world’s best tattooers when it comes to realistic black & grey tattoos. He claims that he only does this style of tattoo simply because he’s “not good at anything else,” but according to other sources, he does it because it is such a technically demanding style that no matter how good you get, there is always room for improvement. Looking at some of his black & grey artworks inspired by classic sculptures and artistic interior design, it’s hard to believe he could do any better.

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Chu-hi-cha is the name of a new type of tea discovered by a Japanese researcher at Kyoto University. It involves brewing the droppings of caterpillars that have feasted on various plants.

Tsuyoshi Maruoka came up with the idea of caterpillar tea during graduate studies at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Agriculture, while researching the mysterious relationship between insects and plants. One day, a senior brought 50 gypsy moth larvae into the lab and told Maruoka that they were a souvenir. He didn’t really know what to do with them at first, but he eventually decided to at least keep them alive until he could decide, so he picked some leaves from a nearby cherry tree and fed them to the caterpillars. When cleaning the droppings left by the critters, he noticed that they had a pleasantly fragrant smell and was almost instantly inspired to brew them into tea.

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A Nagano-based company recently announced that it had created the world’s first noodle taste analyzer, a machine that can scientifically estimate the tastiness of soba noodles within seconds.

Japan’s Nagano Prefecture is well-known for its soba noodles, a popular variety made with buckwheat flour. To honor the prefecture’s soba noodle production, local tool-maker Yatsurugigiken Inc. teamed up with Shinshu University’s Faculty of Agriculture to create the world’s first noodle deliciousness analyzer. The high-tech device applies ultraviolet LED-induced fluorescence to around 2 grams of buckwheat flour and measures the levels of phospholipids, proteins, and other taste-related substances. Within seconds, flavor ratings in four different categories (taste, aroma, greenness, freshness) are displayed on an LED display.

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A Tennessee romance book writer whose own daughter announced her tragic death to friends and fans two years ago recently announced that she is coming back to writing, and everyone is really confused.

In September 2020, friends and colleagues of Susan Meachen, a self-published romance fiction writer, were shocked to hear that she had taken her own life due to online bullying. Someone claiming to be her daughter announced the devastating news on Facebook, and tributes from fans and authors who had known and worked with her started pouring in. For the next couple of years, Meachen’s Facebook profile was seemingly used by her family to post tributes to the author and inspirational stuff, as well as to promote her books. Some claim to have bought her work as a way to support her grieving family. But a couple of days ago, something weird happened – someone claiming to be Susan Meachen took to Facebook to announce that she wasn’t really dead, and that she was coming back to writing…

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A Chinese man who recently bought 20 robot vacuums online for an unbelievable bargain price documented his experience to the delight of the internet.

The average price of a decent robot vacuum in China is around 1,000 yuan ($145), with more advanced models costing several times that much. So imagine finding a robot vacuum for just 27 yuan ($4) online! Can you blame this guy who bought 20 of them at once, just to make sure that their number compensates for performance only to learn the hard way that that’s not how these things work? As you can imagine, there was a reason those things cost next to nothing, but at least he got a good laugh and a lot of online attention out of it.

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A 52-year-old “doctor” in Pakistan recently made news headlines for welcoming his 60th child and claiming he wants to have even more kids with his three wives.

Sardar Jan Mohammad Khan Khilji, a resident of Quetta, the Capital of Balochistan, has a very big family that he hopes to keep growing in the coming years. The Pakistani doctor, who runs his own clinic in the city, has three wives, and just welcomed his 60th child, a son he named Khushal. That’s a lot more than enough for most people, but Sardar said that he wants to take a new wife and continue having children.

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Momotsuki, a 20-year-old artist from Japan, blends her love of gardening and fantasy into a unique art form she calls named “Fairy Dress“.

If you think about it, flowers make perfect dresses for fairies, but you need the skill and imagination to turn them into functional garments, and Momotsuki, the talented artist behind the ‘Fairy Dress’ brand, has plenty of both. A passionate gardener with over 14 years of experience, the 20-year-old woman had the brilliant idea to combine her passion for plants with her love of fantasy, fairies in particular. She uses flowers like pansies, morning glories, roses and carnations to create beautiful dresses that any fairy would call herself lucky to wear.

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A new study recently revealed that some Swiss hospitals still rely on a medieval prayer known as ‘The Secret’ to protect patients from excessive bleeding after surgeries.

We live in a time when medical professionals have access to a variety of scientifically-proven tools to prevent excessive bleeding in patients, but according to data presented in a recent study, several hospitals in Switzerland still rely on a “healing formula” dating back to the Middle Ages to keep people from bleeding to death. Known as The Secret, this “blood charm is widely practiced in the French-speaking part of Switzerland,” and reportedly works by mobilizing “superior forces to help cure the patient”. The Secret was recently the subject of a study designed to test the efficacy of the ritual.

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According to NASA Earth Observatory satellites, the coldest place on Earth is a mountain ridge on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures can drop to -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit (-93.2 degrees Celsius).

For the past week, much of the US has been affected by an extreme winter storm that brought massive snowfalls, destructive winds, and freezing temperatures as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheit (-28 degrees Celsius). That’s low enough for the average person to suffer frostbite in just under 10 minutes of direct exposure, but it’s nowhere near as dangerous as the coldest place on Earth. NASA satellites recently a high mountain ridge on the East Antarctic Plateau where, on clear winter nights, temperatures drop to an abysmal -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit (-93.2 degrees Celsius).

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The Wind Wall of Rozenburg is a unique installation designed to block strong winds from hitting the large ships passing through a narrow canal on their way to the port.

After World War 2, the Dutch port city of Rozenburg grew both in size and prosperity, and in order to cope with the ever-growing maritime traffic a new canal parallel to the already existing Nieuwe Vaterveg canal was built in the 1960s. The Qalandia Canal, named after the civil engineer who built Nieuwe Vaterveg was a massive success, but it wasn’t long before it too became overwhelmed by the ships using it, primarily because of their size. These giant cargo ships were so big that the strong wind blowing from the sea threatened to alter their course as they passed through the narrow canal and leave them stuck. So local authorities started looking for solutions.

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Lithuanian artist Toma Skabeikyte uses body paint and makeup to turn her own body into various optical illusions.

Toma Skabeikyte, a 32-year-old makeup artist and body painter extraordinaire, has been getting a lot of attention on social media for her intriguing optical illusions. Using her own body as a canvas, Skabeikyte, who hails from Akmene, in Lithuania, spends hours creating all sorts of surreal designs inspired by anything from films to videogames and other artworks.

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Elito ‘Amangpintor’ Circa is a Filipino artist who rose to fame for using his own blood to create canvas paintings that have attracted both praise and criticism over the years.

Born in a poor family that couldn’t afford to buy improper art supplies, Elito Circa experimented with a variety of unusual mediums as a child, including plums and tomatoes, but it was when he accidentally scraped his hand that he discovered the art medium that would mark his artistic career – his own blood. He quickly realized that the blood not only made his paintings more durable, as it was harder to erase from the canvas, but that it also made his artworks his own in a way that he had never imagined before.

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A Chinese gamer recently went viral after claiming that he has been paid by the parents of at least two kids to beat them at online video games and crush their confidence.

Video games are generally pretty harmless if played in moderation, but in many cases nowadays children become so obsessed with these made-up virtual worlds that they start to ignore their real lives, school, and even their families. Getting them back on track can be a real challenge, and many parents turn to desperate measures. In China, for example, some parents sign their kids up for military-style camps, while others use sneakier techniques like hiring skilled gamers to beat their kids at their favorite video games and convince them to quit.

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Eternity is an A.I.-generated virtual K-pop idol group consisting of 11 members created using advanced deep-fake technology.

K-pop has really taken the world by storm in recent years, with groups like BTS and Black Pink conquering market after market with their catchy songs and energetic dance routines. The genre has become one of South Korea’s main exports, generating tens of billions in revenue, but despite its massive international success, the massive corporations behind the K-pop wave aren’t resting on their laurels. Instead, they are constantly looking for ways to stay relevant in this constantly changing industry, and artificial intelligence is apparently the next big thing. So it’s not that big of a surprise that A.I.-generated virtual K-pop groups are already a thing.

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