Bugatti Now Sells Self-Leveling Pool Tables for $300,000

Bugatti, a company known for its exclusive sport cars, recently unveiled a $300,000 luxury pool table that relies on highly advanced gyroscopic technology to remain perfectly level in any conditions, making it usable on yachts.

There are a few things in this world that money can’t buy, and until now, playing pool at sea was one of them. Try as they might, engineers could not design a table to negate the rocking of the boat and remain level. Until now, that is, because Bugatti apparently managed to create a self-leveling pool table that will allow the rich and powerful to enjoy a game of billiards on their expensive yachts.

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Company Develops AI-Controlled Shoes That Help the Blind Avoid Obstacles

Austrian company Tec-Innovation recently unveiled smart shoes that use ultrasonic sensors to help people suffering from blindness of vision impairment to detect obstacles up to four meters away.

Known as InnoMake, the smart shoe aims to become a modern alternative to the decades-old walking stick that millions of people around the world depend on to get around as safely as possible. The currently available model relies on sensors to detect obstacles and warns the wearer via vibration and an audible alert sounded on a Bluetooth-linked smartphone. That sounds impressive enough, but the company is already working on a much more advanced version that incorporates cameras and artificial intelligence to not only detect obstacles but also their nature.

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Homeless Man Goes From Sleeping Under a Bridge to Modelling for Fashion Shoots

They say finding yourself in the right spot, at the right time, is the key to success, and this Nigerian homeless man who got the opportunity of a lifetime while sleeping under a bridge is the perfect example.

You could say it was fate that Ali Olakunmi, a young Yoruba man from Nigeria’s Osun State, found himself sleeping under the same bridge that a creative director had chosen as the backdrop for a fashion shoot. As a homeless man in Ikeja, a suburb of Lagos, he didn’t really have any better options, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Afolabi (AL), the creative director we mentioned above, was waiting under the same bridge for a male model that was running late, and he happened to notice this young man who seemed to have all the features he was looking for in a model, so he approached him about putting on some clothes and posing for some pictures. And that’s how Ali the homeless became Ali the fashion model.

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Man Has Been Livestreaming From Locked Room for 100 Days, Is Willing to Go 5 Years for $5 Million

A man has spent the first 100 days of 2021 livestreaming 24/7 from a locked room in Los Angeles, but he plans to stay there for the rest of the year, or even longer, if he gets the right financial incentive.

34-year-old Tim C Inzana has been locked in a shed since the start of the year, and he has no intention of coming out anytime soon. The Los Angeles artist he hopes to spend at least a whole year isolated like this, and then sell his livestream in a custom frame as an unusual piece of art. Right now, he is streaming for free on Twitch, but plans to find people willing to shell out $5 million and keep him locked for a whopping 5 years. He has also offered to stay isolated for 1o consecutive years, if someone agrees to pay him $10 million for the effort.

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Man Ordered to Pay Ex-Wife $72,000 for Housework During Their 30-Year Marriage

Portugal’s Supreme Court of Justice has ordered a man to pay his ex-wife 60,000 euros ($72,000) in compensation for the cleaning and cooking she did during their three-decade-long marriage.

There was a time when housework was considered a wife’s duty, but those times are long gone, as evidenced by the avalanche of court rulings in favor of housewives asking for compensation from their ex-spouses. The latest such case comes from Portugal, where the Supreme Court recently ruled that a woman was entitled to $72,000 in compensation from her ex-husband for performing domestic activities like cooking and cleaning throughout their 30-year marriage.

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Controversial Website Documents Japan’s Noisy Children and Other Phonic ‘Nuisances’

A website that maps Japan’s noisiest and most annoying neighborhoods to help people avoid public nuisances when looking for a place to live has sparked controversy, with many accusing it of criticizing normal behavior, like children crying or speaking loudly.

While Japan is still sometimes portrayed as this serene, and calm land, in reality it is one of the nosiest countries on the planet. With over 90% of its 126 million-strong population living in urban areas, noise pollution is a part of daily life, and it’s no wonder that many are valuing peace and quiet more than ever. Japan has even coined a special term that describes the kind of person who talks loudly and generally acts as a public nuisance, completely disregarding the people around them. They are called “dorozoku” or “street tribe”, and they are the focus of a controversial online platform that maps Japanese neighborhoods likely to be plagued by them.

DQN Today is the brainchild of a 40-something freelance web developer from Yokohama, who has allegedly been working from home for the last 12 years. Back in 2016, after finding himself unable to work on some days due to the constant ruckus made by noisy children hanging around his home, the man, who preferred to remain anonymous, decided to create an online crowdsourcing website where people could map and share their experience with dorozoku.

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Functional Stone Violin Gives ‘Rock Music’ a Whole New Meaning

Blackbird is a unique stone violin carved by Swedish sculptor Lars Widenfalk, based on drawings by Stradivarius, but with modifications that allow it to be played.

Lars Widenfalk came up with the idea of creating a violin out of stone in the late 1980s, while chiseling away at a piece of diabase and being impressed by the pleasant sound it made when hit with hammer and chisel. It wasn’t until 1990 that he finally got his hands on a piece of diabase large enough to be sculpted into a life-size violin, but as soon as he did, he got to work. In the end, he needed a second piece for the back of the violin, but after two years of hard work, Blackbird, the stone violin named after the homonymous bird, was finally completed.

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Liquor-Infused Toothpicks – The Perfect Way to Enjoy Spirits Without Drinking

What do you get a man who has everything? Why, whiskey-infused luxury toothpicks, of course!

With so many things just one click away nowadays, it’s hard to surprise people with truly original gifts, but every once in a while you stumble across something special. For example, I was surfing the web yesterday, as I usually do, when something caught my eye. The words ‘whiskey’ and ‘toothpicks’ rarely go together in a sentence, but here they were in the name of a product I never imagined existed – whiskey-infused toothpicks.

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Hundreds of Sinkholes Appear Across Croatian Region After December Earthquake

Thousands of people are living fear of being swallowed up by the Earth after hundreds of sinkholes appear in an area that was shaken by strong earthquake just over two months ago.

On December 29, 2020, Croatia recorded its strongest earthquake ever. Measured at 6.4 points on the Richter magnitude scale, the quake directly affected 116,000 people, mainly in the cities of Petrinja, Sisak, and Glina, and the rural areas around them. Over 35,000 homes and 4,550 businesses were damaged by the strong tremor and its many aftershocks, and five fatalities attributed to the destructive natural phenomenon were reported. Now, over two months since the earthquake, people in the affected area are even more worried about the sink holes that keep appearing.

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The Controversial Agencies Paid by Parents to Retrieve Their Kids from Their Former Spouses

Single parents separated from their former partners are allegedly turning to controversial “recovery agencies” to get their children back from former spouses that take them abroad without permission.

Normally, when parents separate, custody of the children is settled by a judge, along with visitation hours and rules, but sometimes one party doesn’t want to play by the rules, and that’s where agencies specialized in child retrieval come in. Most operators of such controversial services claim they are an essential tools for desperate parents with no other means of retrieving their beloved children from dangerous situations, but some sources claim that that isn’t always the case. Some recovery agencies allegedly don’t put in the time and effort to objectively research cases, and downright kidnap kids for parents, even if they don’t have custody rights.

Louise Screene (pseudonym, to protect her identity), recently told Mail Online the shocking story of how she saw her two children kidnapped from arm’s length by a recovery agent paid by their father. Following her divorce from Andrew (not his real name), Louise agreed to share custody of their two children, even if that meant they had to travel between the UK and the Middle East, where Andrew had moved.

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Artist Meticulously Drills Over 45,800 Tiny Holes to Create Record-Setting Egg Shell Carving

A very patient Vietnamese artist spent three years meticulously drilling a whopping 45,863 holes smaller than a human hair into a hollowed-out ostrich egg.

Nguyen Hung Cuong, a talented artist from Hanoi, Vietnam, has been turning chicken eggs into intricate works of art for over a decade, but his most recent project is by far his most impressive yet. The 30-year-old reportedly spent the last three years of his life carefully drilling tens of thousands of holes, some only 0.2 mm in diameter, to create one of the most impressive egg carving in human history.

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Programmer Loses Password to Wallet Containing $220 Million in Bitcoin

A computer programmer who years ago wrote down the password to a cryptocurrency wallet on a piece of paper, has since lost the said paper, and with it access to around $220 million in Bitcoin.

Can you imagine having over $200 million and no way to ever access it? That’s exactly the story of San Francisco-based programmer Stefan Thomas, who has been trying to remember the password of his IronKey, a special hard-drive that contains the private keys to a digital wallet with 7,002 Bitcoin. He received the digital currency 10 years ago, while living in Switzerland, from an early Bitcoin adopter, as payment for an animated video he made, titled “What is Bitcoin?”. He lost the password to his IronKey that same year, but since a Bitcoin was only worth around $5 back then, it didn’t bother him that much. Things have changed a bit since then, though…

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Coquitos – The Tiny Coconuts of the Chilean Wine Palm

Coquitos, also known as pigmy coconuts or dwarf coconuts, are the tiny equivalent of the coconuts we all know (and some of us love).

It’s hard to believe that I spent over three decades on this Earth and only learned that there is such a thing as a tiny, marble-sized coconut, today. Well, it may be common knowledge to a lot of people – especially if you’re from, or have travelled to South America – but it’s definitely news to me, so I thought I’d share it with similarly clueless people like myself. Known as coquitos, these miniature coconuts are the fruit of  Jubaea chilensis, a feather-leaved palm native to Chile, and, just like regular coconuts, they have a brown exterior, a white interior with a hollow center, and very similar taste.

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The Delicate Plant Leaf Embroidery of Hilary Waters Fayle

Using embroidery and carving as techniques, Hilary Waters Fayle transforms plant leaves into delicate but intricate works of art.

Fabric or leather embroidery is hard enough as it is, but can you imagine practicing it on dried plant leaves and actually creating something beautiful? That’s exactly what Hilary Waters Fayle, a talented artist based in Richmond, Virginia, is capable of, using only leaves, a small needle, some thread and mountains of patience. Although, it seems simplistic in nature, her botanical art is truly awe-inspiring and carries a very deep message.

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After 20 Years, Court Tells Baker to Stop Selling Cookies Made With Sawdust

A German baker who has reportedly been selling sawdust cookies for around two decades has recently been ordered to stop, as the finely milled wood has been deemed unfit for human consumption.

An administrative court in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe has upheld a decision to ban the sale of cookies made with sawdust, despite the producer’s claim that they were a traditional vegetable product. The unnamed baker had been operating a mail order business, selling his sawdust cookies all over Germany. He openly listed sawdust as an ingredient on the packaging of his biscuits, and had already written to the city of Karlsruhe about his practice back in 2004, but received no answer. Then, in 2017, a routine examination of a biscuit sample led to a sales ban which he then contested in court.

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