Looking at the detailed leopard portrait below, you’d be inclined to think Franziska Treptow is a photographer. Every detail, from the tiny hairs of the animal’s fur to the reflection in its eyes, is so perfect that it’s almost impossible to believe that the young German artist paints or draws every one of her artworks.

Franziska’s ideas start as sketches and photos of wildlife. Using her skills in digital photo manipulation technology (Photoshop), she creates a digital model for her works, which helps her become aware of the composition and accentuation of light and shadow. She then sketches that model on paper or canvas and uses pencils or paints to create the ultra-realistic animal portraits exclusively by hand. The whole process, can take anywhere from a few hours to more than a month, depending on the complexity of the project. The end result is always breathtaking.

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When 18-year-old Liu Dawei ordered 24 toy gun replicas from a Taiwanese website, in July 2014, he never imagined the purchase would soon land him in prison for the rest of his life.

Liu never even got the fake firearms he paid 30,540 RMB ($4,600) for, as his mail order was held at customs. Instead, police soon arrived at the front door of his home in Quanzhou city and arrested him for arms trafficking. According to the official police statement, they had intercepted his package and found that 20 of the 24 gun replicas were actually real guns. That sounds like a perfectly good explanation for the boy’s arrest, but only until you learn about what qualifies as a real gun in China.

Chinese law classifies any weapon with a barrel that can fire an object at 1.8 j/cm2 as a real gun. During Liu Dawei’s trial, his lawyer argued that that is roughly the speed at which he could throw a handful of beans at someone’s face, and that the country’s current definition of an actual firearm simply makes no sense. Liu himself claimed that he had no idea that he would be breaking the law when he ordered the replicas, and that he thought he was merely buying a bunch of toys.

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There’s no denying that water plays a huge part in the overall quality of coffee, which is why most respectable coffee shops use filters to get rid of excess minerals or chemicals that might negatively impact the taste of their brews. But now there’s an even better way to ensure that your morning cup of coffee tastes just right – introducing Aquiem designer coffee water.

The brainchild of a group of entrepreneurs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Aquiem is “enhanced water” that has first been purified to zero mineral content and then enhanced with all-natural essential minerals to enrich the flavor, consistency and even the aroma of coffee. “What you definitely do not want is to have things like zinc and lead, fluoride, chlorine and large amounts of calcium in the water. All of that effects the taste of the coffee,” Aquiem co-founder Rob Vidacovich told Daily Coffee News. “What does have a favorable effect on coffee are things like magnesium, potassium, and a certain right blend of calcium.”

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The SymGym may look like a combination between a rowing machine and a stair stepper, but it’s actually a revolutionary video game controller that allows gamers to get a full body workout while doing what they love most.

Chicago-based startup SymGym describes its innovative device as “a resistance-based game controller and gaming platform” that adjusts the level of resistance according to gameplay. The joysticks and buttons are replaced with levers and pedals that you have to either push or pull to play the game. For example, if you have to walk uphill in a video game, pushing the pedals is going to be significantly harder than when walking on flat terrain. Picking heavy objects in the game is also going to require more strength when operating the levers than say pushing a door open.

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If you’re too busy or squeamish to pick up after your dog, you’re going to love this new smartphone app that connects you to someone willing to do it for you, for a fee.

A service that allows you to call someone to pick up your dog’s poop sounds unreal, which is probably why the announcement of Pooper has been met with skepticism. Articles claiming that the app is most likely fake have prompted the creators of Pooper to issue a statement saying that their service is real, but they are fine with all the doubts as long as it spreads the word and attracts more investors.

Here’s how Pooper works: after installing the app on a smartphone and opting for one of the monthly payment plans, a dog owner (referred to as “pooper”) can take a photo of the dog’s excrement, pinpoint its location on a digital map and call on a nearby “scooper” to come pick it up. They are then free to leave knowing that the dog’s business will be taken care of. You can opt to pay $15 a months for two scoops a day in 15-mile scoop radius, $25 for three scoops a day in a 30-mile radius, or $35 for unlimited scoops in an unlimited radius.

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A Russian bank has found the perfect way to leverage the popularity of Pokemon Go to promote its products. Sberbank is offering Russian players free Pokemon Go insurance, promising to compensate players with up to 50,000 rubles (about $800) in case of gaming-related accidents.

Playing Pokemon Go can be a very fun experience, but as you’ve probably already heard on the news, the addictive game can also cause serious accidents. Ever since the game’s release, people have been crashing into police cars, tumbling down stairs, getting shot and someone has even fallen off a cliff in their effort to catch the best Pokemon. These rare, but troubling occurrences have inspired Russian bank Sberbank to develop a product aimed exclusively at Pokemon Go players – free insurance that only covers injuries sustained while playing the popular mobile app.

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After the International Court in Hague ruled that China has no historical claims to the the South China Sea and is breaching the sovereignty of the Philippines by exploring resources, Chinese citizens started showing their support for their country by boycotting American brands like Apple and KFC.

Soon after the landmark decision was reported by national news outlets, photos and videos of smashed up iPhones started showing up on Chinese social media. But what do the United States and Apple have to do with a conflict between China and the Philippines, you may ask. The U.S. is seen as a strong ally of the Philippines and since the Apple iPhone is apparently considered the ultimate American product, it became a prime target for people to direct their anger against.

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Patrick Magno, from San Diego, California, recently won the grand prize in a fitness competition after he managed to lose 49 pounds and get into enviable physical shape in just three months.

After a medical exam revealed that he was 30 per cent body fat and at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes, Patrick Magno decided it was time for a drastic lifestyle change. He was a social worker and had to remove children from broken homes, abusive parents and other harmful situations for a living, a job that he says had a severe effect on his lifestyle and overall health. So he quit, proposed to his girlfriend of six years and set his sights on improving his health so he wouldn’t end up like his father, who had to deal with the terrible symptoms of diabetes.

“I couldn’t even recognize myself,” he said. “I was embarrassed. I was disgusted. I was ashamed that I had let myself get to this point.” So when he learned about Bodybuilding.com’s 250k Challenge, a contest that has entrants transform their bodies with the help of grueling physical workouts, meal-plans and supplements, for the chance to win a substantial sum of money, he decided to go all in. ‘hey said they would give tons of nutritional meal plans, options, workout guides and fitness advice absolutely free of charge, and offer a $250,000 (£190,000) in prize money. It sounded a little too good to be true,” Magno remembers.

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Computer geeks spend ridiculous amounts of money on high-end rigs all the time, but one digital electronics engineer from Cambridge, England, poured a small fortune into building a giant computer that he only uses to play Tetris.

James Newman’s supercomputer took five years to build, cost over $53,000 and takes up an entire room, yet it is a million times slower and has a million times less memory than a typical desktop. That’s because it’s actually just a mega microprocessor. “Computers are quite opaque, looking at them it’s impossible to see how they work. What I would like to do is get inside and see what’s going on,” Newman explains on the Megaprocessor project website. “Trouble is we can’t shrink down small enough to walk inside a silicon chip. But we can go the other way; we can build the thing big enough that we can walk inside it. Not only that we can also put LEDs on everything so we can actually SEE the data moving and the logic happening.” And that’s exactly what he spent the last five decades doing. As of June 22, the Megaprocessor is finally complete.

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The D+ Kirishima spa in Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture is believed to be the first one in the world to offer a “Pet Dog Exorcism Plan”. The ritual is performed by a Shinto priest at the revered Shingariyu shrine.

“Seven-year-old, 10-year-old, and 13-year-old dogs need to be careful of their health, as it’s easier in those years for them to gets diseases of aging,” the D+ Kirishima website reads. To help improve their condition, the spa offers an exorcism plant performed by an actual Shinto priest, which allegedly drives away the evil spirits wreaking havoc on the animal’s health. The Pet Dog Exorcism Planv costs 31,000 yen ($293) and includes the 30-minute exorcism ritual, a lavish room for two owners and their dog, breakfast and dinner.

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A 28-year-old man from New Delhi was recently arrested for selling a rented car online and then stealing it back from the new owner on the same day. His scheme actually worked the first time, but he was apprehended when he got greedy and tried to pull it off a second time.

Mintoo Kumar, son of a retired Army captain and struggling entrepreneur, was looking for a way to make some money after his businesses failed, when inspiration struck. He rented a used Mahindra XUV 500 and soon also started looking for an identical one in New Delhi. Once he found it, the conman spent the next couple of months trying to get the registration details of the car and used them to forge a registration certificate for the rented vehicle. Once the paperwork was ready, he posted an ad for the car on an eCommerce website and waited for gullible buyers. He actually managed to sell the car pretty fast, but in order to complete his grand scheme he needed to steal it back again, fast. Using a GPS device, he managed to track down the rented vehicle to its new location, and since the owner hadn’t had time to change the locks, stole it using a duplicate key.

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They might look like something created in a laboratory, but these “octopus tomato trees” are merely hybrids that grow from a single tomato vine but spread on a large trellis. Their crown grows to about 40-50 square meters and they yield tens of thousands of tomatoes every season.

The first time I saw a photo of an octopus tomato tree online, I was convinced it was nothing more than a clever hoax. It looked pretty cool though, so I decided to do a bit of research, just to be sure. At first, I only found a couple of mentions of these impressive plants on some gardening sites, but they didn’t offer much info on them, like how they are grown and where they can be found. Luckily, I stumbled across a travel blog that mentioned these tomato trees as a tourist attraction at Walt Disney World Resort. It even had a few photos of the trees, so I was starting to believe they were actually real. Soon after that, I found a bunch of people selling tomato trees on sites like eBay and Aliexpress, and even a short YouTube clip, so I finally decided they would make a great addition to our collection of amazing things most people don’t even know exist.

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36-year-old Richard Kimberley, of Kidderminster, Worcestershire, has been running his “csmicros” computer repair business for the last 20 years, but he plans to close it down on July 22nd, claiming radiation signals from wireless technology have given him a rare condition known as electro-hypersensitivity (EHS).

Ever since he launched his business in 1996, Richard has been working around phones, computers and Wi-Fi signals on a regular basis, and he believes the constant exposure to technology has taken a toll on his health. “Due to an over-exposure to the radiation from wireless technology, my health has declined to the point where I cannot continue with the business that I have spent my life building,” he says. “I’d wake up five or six times in a night, my joints were aching, I’d have headaches during the day and my memory was awful – I felt atrocious and I had no idea why. I’ve had to rely on staff for the past 18 months since becoming EHS. I have persevered, battling with electro-hypersensitivity for as long as I can.”

Mr. Kimberley said that his problems began in 2013, when he moved into a dual shop and house premise on Stourport Road, Kidderminster. He started experiencing black outs, headaches and extreme tiredness, yet his condition improved when he removed wireless technology from the house. But wireless technology is everywhere these days, and his electro-hypersensitivity has made it really hard for Richard to live a normal life. Since October last year, he has been living in a van fitted with aluminium lining to block out radiation signals. He says the only way to avoid feeling sick is to park the van in spots he feels are safe, every night.

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The Scribble Pen is one of those awesome things that exist in our imagination, but that we never expect to actually become a reality. This high tech pen lets you draw in any color imaginable just by scanning things around you.

‘The world’s first color picking pen’ incorporates a color sensor and microprocessor to detect and process whatever color you want to  replicate. All you have to do is place the top of the Scribble Pen -where the sensor is located – on the object, flower or anything else that you want to scan, and the device will copy its exact color. Say you want to draw in the exact red shade of a beautiful rose, or in the vibrant green of a certain tree leaf, all you have to do is scan it with the Scribble Pen and you’re good to go.

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With the imminent rise of the machines and everyone anticipating that robots will be taking all our jobs, a proactive human jobseeker has decided to become a robot in order to improve his odd sof landing a tech job. If you can’t beat’em, join’em, right?

Meet Canu, a man trying to stay ahead of the times. Inspired by grim predictions that robots will be taking over our jobs in the next 30 years, he has set up a tongue-in-cheek website where he advertises himself as a human-turned robot, with 4 years of experience in marketing under his belt, but also the ability to “program and download any other skills as needed”. Just one of the perks of being a machine, I guess. His human side presents some advantages as well, like being “already assembled” and not requiring batteries. So there you go, tech companies, the perfect employee.

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