A bizarre trend sweeping through China has unemployed youths paying fees to pretend to work in rented offices for absolutely no financial gain.

Millions of Chinese people report to their office jobs every day, but while the overwhelming majority get paid to do so, some actually pay fake companies to allow them to pretend to work there. In exchange for a daily fee of between 30 and 50 yuan ($4-$7), these specialized companies offer anyone the chance to experience various working environments, complete with desks, lunch facilities, and free Wi-Fi. While most simply allow clients to chill in their facilities, those looking for an extra layer of realism can pay extra for fictitious tasks, fake managers, and even staged employee rebellions. These so-called “pretend-to-work companies” have been growing in popularity this year to meet a growing demand among unemployed youths. Read More »

After falling for the local undertaker, a Brazilian woman spent two years attending funerals in her community in hopes of catching the man’s eye. Daniela Signor and Apollo Scariot surprised a lot of people when they arrived at their wedding venue in a funeral hearse, but to those who knew their unusual love story, the choice made perfect sense. Daniela first laid eyes on Apollo in early 2023, while attending the funeral service of a deceased relative, and immediately knew she had to do everything she could to draw his attention. He was the funeral director and seemed to be too focused on his job to notice her, but she didn’t let that discourage her. Every three months or so, she would attend funerals in her community just to see Apollo and hopefully get seen by him. It took a while, but her strategy actually worked. Read More »

A fake doctor who used forged documents to practice psychiatry in the UK’s national healthcare system for two decades has been jailed and ordered to pay back hundreds of thousands of pounds. Born in Iran, Zholia Alemi and her family emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, in the early 1990s. There, she failed to secure the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees required to work as a qualified doctor, but she didn’t let that stop her from fulfilling her dream. In the mid-90s, she moved to the UK, where she took advantage of a legal loophole that allowed Commonwealth doctors to practise without additional examinations. Normally, doctors who obtain their degrees overseas have to take the PLAB (Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board) test, but Alemi was able to bypass it using paperwork forged in the UK. She then went on to practice psychiatry all over the UK for about 20 years. Read More »

A 34-year-old Australian woman smashed the Guinness World Record for the most pull-ups performed by a woman in 24 hours by doing a whopping 7,079 pull-ups. To say Olivia Vinson put the old record for most pull-ups by a woman in 24 hours to shame would be an understatement, considering that the Australian fitness enthusiast nearly doubled it. The achievement began as a wild proposition from her husband and coach, and even though initially she just laughed at the idea of challenging a world record, it eventually started to make sense. Olivia trained for three months before taking on the challenge in September of last year, but 12 months into her attempt, she pulled a bicep tendon, which rendered her unable to perform pull-ups anymore. She had to cancel the whole thing, but after healing for a few months, she was back to breaking the Guinness World Record. Read More »

A growing number of young Chinese looking for low-maintenance companionship are turning their attention to jars of activated yeast that only need flour and water. So-called static pets such as stones, mango pits, paper boxes, and even toothpaste have become very popular with Chinese youths looking for low-commitment companionship to compensate for their stresfull daily lives and careers. However, one such static pet has been seeing massive popularity in the Asian country, “pet yeast”. Nicknamed “face worm” by netizens, the yeast can be “raised” in a simple container by feeding dry yeast with flour, water, and a bit of sugar. After stirring the ingredients, all you need to do is wait a few hours to see the yeast grow into a sticky, bubbling mass that emits a typical wine-like aroma. Apparently, this is enough for young people looking for easy companionship. Read More »

A young Chinese woman recently went viral after sharing the dramatic physical transformation she experienced during her pregnancy, changes that have since subsided. Li Wei, a young woman from Kunming, in China’s Yunnan Province, was ecstatic when she first learned that she had become pregnant. She even looked better, her skin cleared up, and she had this incredible energy. Doctors told her it was normal to feel more radiant, a phenomenon known as the “joy of pregnancy”, because of elevated estrogen and progesterone levels. However, by the fifth month of her pregnancy, Li noticed strange changes to her face; her nose got a lot bigger, and her fine wrinkles became noticeably deeper to the point where she couldn’t recognize herself in the mirror. But this was only the beginning. Read More »

Japanese researchers have published a small study about a virtual reality video game that can reportedly improve players’ eyesight instead of damaging it. Video games and staring at digital screens in general have long been associated with eyesight problems, but according to a study published by researchers from Kwansei Gakuin University’s Graduate School of Science and Engineering, in certain circumstances, video games can actually help treat short-sightedness (myopia). The researchers had a group of 10 people play a very simple VR video game at certain intervals over a period of six weeks to see how it impacted their eyesight. After analyzing the results, they concluded that even participants who had only played the game at three-day intervals showed measurable eyesight improvements compared to the start of the study. Read More »

A 33-year-old Japanese man has been raising eyebrows because of his radical change in appearance after making drastic lifestyle changes and turning to cosmetic enhancements. Aki, who goes by @Aki_fit on X (Twitter), was recently featured on a popular show by Japanese online television network ABEMA, where he spoke about the shocking physical transformation that made him somewhat of an anti-aging guru on social media. The 33-year-old man said that everything started 10 years ago, after his boss at the time ridiculed him for looking much older than his age and going bald. His girlfriend broke up with him soon after that, so he was in a real dark place, but instead of wallowing in self-pity, he decided to completely change his way of life to become a better version of himself. Read More »

A seasoned paraglider miraculously survived a rare and dangerous phenomenon that saw him being sucked up by clouds to an altitude of 28,210 feet (8,600 meters). Photos and videos of Chinese paraglider Liu Ge trying to keep his cool (pun intended) as he experienced dangerously low levels of oxygen and temperatures as low as -40 degrees Celsius (-40° Fahrenheit) went viral on social media this week. In them, the experienced paraglider’s clothes and face are covered with ice, and he struggles to breathe and keep from passing out because of the low oxygen. On May 24th, Liu Ge took off from about 3,000 meters in the Qilian Mountains, on the border between western Gansu and northeastern Qinghai, but as he was paragliding, a cumulonimbus cloud appeared behind him and he ended up being lifted higher and higher, above the clouds. Read More »

A Texas rheumatologist was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a cruel health care fraud scheme that involved diagnosing hundreds of healthy people with chronic diseases that required expensive and dangerous treatments. Jorge Zamora-Quezada M.D. of Mission, Texas, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, several counts of healthcare fraud, and conspiracy to obstruct justice and received a sentence of 10 years behind bars and three years of supervised release. For years, the 68-year-old rheumatologist falsely diagnosed patients with chronic illnesses to bill for tests and treatments that they didn’t need, for his own enrichment. Evidence presented by prosecutors showed that his fraud scheme involved over $118 million in false claims and the payment of over $28 million by insurers, which allowed him to fund an incredibly lavish lifestyle. By profiting off of innocent victims, Zamora-Quezada was able to amass a sizeable fortune, including 13 real estate properties, a jet, and a Maserati GranTurismo. Read More »

A group of squatters who illegally took over a house on the outskirts of a village in Spain’s Burgos Province has installed an alarm system to prevent others from breaking into their illegally occupied home. The people of San Miguel de Pedroso, a neighborhood in the village of Beldorado, are on high alert because of squatters who not only took over an unoccupied house in their community but also installed an alarm system there to prevent others from breaking in like they did. According to some local residents, “they have placed a sign belonging to the company that installed the alarm in the building” to prevent what happened to the owner of that house from happening to them. Some locals suspect that the squatters had been eyeing the property for some time, and after learning that no one had lived there for about two decades, they decided to move in. Now people are afraid that their houses could be at risk of being illegally occupied by strangers. Read More »

The CEO of a Dutch weather forecaster recently suggested that Belgian wind farms are inadvertently “stealing” wind from his own country’s wind farms in the North Sea. In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT, Remco Verzijlbergh, the CEO of Dutch weather forecasting service Whiffle, claimed that Belgian wind farms in the North Sea have an advantage over Dutch ones because of their placement, adding that they are effectively “stealing” Dutch wind. Verzijlbergh claimed that Belgian wind farms are taking up to 3 % of wind energy from Dutch installations, adding that wind speeds measured behind a wind turbine are measurably lower. He clarified that the phenomenon is purely accidental because of the location of the wind turbines, pleading for better coordination between countries in the near future. Read More »

A UK woman started suspecting her husband of cheating after checking the data on her electric toothbrush companion app and noticing that they were brushing at odd times of the day. Paul Jones, a British private investigator with over a decade of experience, recently recounted one of his most unusual cases. Catching a cheating partner in the act is rare, but rarer still is catching them cheating with the help of an electric toothbrush. And yet, it can happen! One of Jones’ clients, a married mother-of-two who was trying to improve her children’s brushing habits by monitoring their electronic toothbrush use via a smartphone app, noticed that the brush was being used at strange times of the day when her kids were supposed to be at school and her husband at work. After making sure her kids were indeed at school, she confronted her husband, who claimed to have been away at work all day. Read More »

A Chinese woman with severe vitamin D deficiency caused by excessive sunscreen use suffered a bone fracture just by rolling in her bed. Doctors at the XinDu Traditional Medicine Hospital, in Chengdu, China, recently reported the unusual case of a 48-year-old local woman who had apparently suffered a bone fracture just by casually rolling in bed. According to Dr. Long Shuang, tests performed at the hospital showed that the unnamed woman’s vitamin D levels were extremely low, which had accelerated bone loss and caused the onset of severe osteoporosis. Further investigation revealed that the patient had avoided sunlight since childhood, rarely wearing short-sleeved shirts and always applying sunscreen when going outside. Her case was presented as a warning for other sunscreen enthusiasts who might be overusing it and thus affecting their bone health. Read More »

Enhanced Games, a sports competition where performance-enhancing drugs are not only allowed but encouraged, will be held for the first time in May next year, in Las Vegas. Ever wondered how much better top human athletes could be if they were allowed to use performance-enhancing substances in competitions? Well, in May of next year, these questions will be answered, as the first edition of Enhanced Games kicks off. Marketed as an event designed to remove the stigma of using PEDs and to safely push the limits of human athletic performance, Enhanced Games has rightly been nicknamed the “Olympic Games on Steroids”. Originally announced as a concept in 2023, the Enhanced Games will host its first ever edition in May of next year, in las Vegas, with eight different events in swimming (50- and 100-meter races in freestyle and butterfly), track (100-meter sprint and 100/110-meter hurdles) and weightlifting (snatch, clean and jerk). Read More »