A 26-year-old South Korean man was recently sentenced to one year in prison for deliberately binge eating in order to become obese and be declared unfit for mandatory military service.

Military service is no trivial matter in South Korea. It doesn’t matter if you’re a globally-known singer, a successful actor, or a billionaire; if you’re a healthy adult male between the ages of 18 and 35, you have to spend at least 21 months in the army. The most you can do is postpone the compulsory service, but you’ll have to go through it at some point. However, if you are declared unfit for service because of health issues, you’re off the hook. One young South Korean man allegedly tried to avoid serving in the military by binge eating and becoming obese. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite as he had planned and he now has to spend a year behind bars.

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A 33-year-old Japanese man has been getting a lot of attention for his ingenious way of putting a roof over his head – asking total strangers to let him sleep over.

Shuraf Ishida has slept in over 500 different homes over the last five years. After quitting his job, he decided to sell all his belongings except for a few essentials that fit into his backpack and travel around Japan using his savings. Normally, accommodation would have ranked highest on his list of expenses, but the 33-year-old man found an ingenious way of putting a roof over his head for free. Every day, Ishida stands in crowded areas sometimes for hours at a time, holding up a sign that reads “Please Let Me Stay Over Tonight!” As weird as it sounds, he almost always finds someone willing to take him in, mostly lonely homeowners in need of someone to talk to.

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Ligament tears occur about 60 milliseconds, but a startup claims to have created a knee airbag that inflates in just 30 milliseconds, enough to prevent ACL and MCL injuries.

Hippos, a startup founded by Kylin Shaw and Bhavy Metakar, recently raised a $642,000 pre-seed round from investors Possible Ventures and Silicon Roundabout Ventures for their revolutionary “knee sleeve,” a sort of high-tech airbag for the knee that uses sensors to rapidly detect incoming stress and deploy tiny air canisters that fill up small airbags around the knee, thus preventing critical injuries. It only takes 30 milliseconds for the knee airbag to inflate, considerably faster than the 60 milliseconds that ACL injuries typically occur in. If the device works as presented by the company, it could save athletes thousands of dollars in medical expenses and much more in inactivity.

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Axel Pons, formerly a competitor in the Moto2 World Championship, changed up his lifestyle dramatically six years ago when he decided to travel the world barefoot.

Son of the legendary Sito Pons, two-time MotoGP winner, Axel Pons had a lot to live up to early in his career as a motorcycle racer. Expectations were very high, but so was the pressure on his shoulders, and despite some promising results in the Moto2 World Championship – a 16th place finish in the 2016 season being the apex of his racing career – he decided to take a break from motorcycle racing and focus on fashion. He did some work as a fashion model, then disappeared only to resurface in 2019 to do an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais in which he said he wanted to slow down and put his past life behind him. But no one expected the kind of change that was coming.

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Osaka-based showerhead maker Science Co. has developed a cutting-edge washing machine for humans aptly named “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (Human Washing Machine of the Future).

At the 1970 Osaka Kansai Expo, Japanese tech giant Sanyo Electric Co., now Panasonic Holdings Corp., launched the world’s first-ever human washing machine. Its futuristic egg shape and bubble technology captured people’s imagination and drew huge crowds to the manufacturer’s booth. Yasuaki Aoyama was one of the many people who got to see Sanyo’s washing machine in action. He was only a curious fourth-grader at the time, but the feeling of awe stuck with him all through adulthood, and today, as the chairman of Science Co., a company specializing in bathtubs and showerheads, he is preparing to launch his very own modern washing machine for humans.

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Laibo 2, a quadruped robot developed in South Korea, has become the first robot to ever complete a full marathon on a single charge after running the 42.195-km Sangju Dried Persimmon Marathon.

Developed by Professor Hwangbo Je-min and his team at the Korea Advanced Insitute of Science and Technology, Laibo 2 is an advanced quadruped robot designed with a focus on endurance. It recently became the first robot to run a full marathon after completing the 22nd Sangju Dried Persimmon Marathon in Sangju, South Korea with a respectable time of 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 52 seconds, on a single charge. The 42-kg robot had to navigate difficult terrain, including two relatively steep hills, gauge its distance from the other runners, and maintain course, all the while mitigating power consumption to ensure it reached the finish line.

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A Wisconsin man who had been missing since August after going kayaking on Green Lake recently resurfaced to confess to faking his death and moving to Eastern Europe.

On August 12, the tranquility of the town of Watertown, Wisconsin, was shattered by the disappearance of Ryan Borgwardt, a 44-year-old husband and father of three. Borgwardt had gone on a short kayaking trip on Green Lake but disappeared completely, and an emergency search found his capsized kayak on the lake and his vehicle and trailer in a nearby park, suggesting that he had fallen in the lake and drowned. A day later, local fishermen found Ryan’s fishing rod and then a tacklebox containing his belongings. All the signs pointed to Borgwardt’s accidental demise, but then, one day, during the investigation that followed, local law enforcement found evidence that suggested Ryan had crossed into Canada, and border authorities there confirmed that they had indeed run his passport a day after his disappearance. It was this discovery that led to the uncovering of Ryan Borgwardt’s elaborate plan to fake his death and leave his family behind.

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A Belarusian blogger managed to convince dozens of Russian teachers to make and wear tinfoil hats as means of protection against radiation from NATO satellites.

Vladislav Bokhan, a Belarussian blogger and activist known for his elaborate pranks, made headlines earlier this month when he released several photos of dozens of Russian teachers wearing tinfoil hats decorated with the Russian flag. He reportedly contacted multiple schools in Russia’s Voronezh region, introducing himself as an official from the local branch of United Russia (the country’s ruling party), and ordered them to hold a patriotic master class called “Helmet of the Fatherland.” Bokhan demanded that teachers working at these schools make tinfoil hats to “demonstrate their readiness to protect themselves from radiation from NATO satellites,” and to his surprise, seven of the schools he contacted actually followed his instructions without question.

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An entrepreneur and early crypto investor recently announced a public treasure hunt for five different treasure chests containing valuable items allegedly worth around $2 million.

Jon Collins-Black once dreamed of finding valuable treasure, but he managed to become rich by investing in Bitcoin early, so he has spent the last five years planning an epic treasure hunt for other treasure hunters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the crypto investor started acquiring a collection of valuable items to fill five different treasure chests with before burying them at undisclosed locations across the US. None of the chests are on private property, so technically, anyone can find them, although Collins-Black points out that you need to follow a series of clues and have a sharp mind in order to find even one of the chests.

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A popular Chinese clothing store sparked controversy by showcasing its products on female models walking on treadmills rather than old-fashioned mannequins.

You could say the marketing team at Chinese designer brand store ITIB was thinking outside the box when it decided to replace plastic mannequins with live models walking on small treadmills. The official explanation was that the new way of displaying garments really allowed customers to see how they fit when moving rather than in a stationary position, but few doubted that it was just an ingenious gimmick meant to draw attention. The plan worked perfectly, as videos of the young models mounted on small pedestals outside ITIB flagship store in Hangzhou spread like wildfire on social media, while crowds of people gathered to watch them walk on their little treadmills. However, what the designer collective brand probably didn’t anticipate was the wave of criticism regarding the “dehumanization” and exploitation of the young models.

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The Zefiro is a clever little MIDI controller that plugs into the USB-C port of your smartphone essentially turning it into a playable musical instrument.

Developed by Italian startup ARTinoise, the Zefiro is one of the most ingenious gadgets we’ve seen in quite a while. The small, colorful mouthpiece may look like a vape, but it’s actually a lot more than that. It’s a MIDI controller that plugs into your smartphone’s charge port and relies on an app to turn the handheld into a variety of playable instruments, from the humble flute, to violins and even fantasy sounds. Equipped with lip sensors and an air pressure sensor, the Zefiro sends breath power data directly to the dedicated app, which is then used to adjust the volume, length, and harmonics of the sound. Keys or air holes are displayed on the screen of the smartphone, so you can effectively play the instrument with your fingers, as you low into the mouthpiece.

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An elderly California woman who thought the noises coming from beneath her home were made by animals was shocked to find a naked man leaving under her house.

A 93-year-old woman from Los Angeles’ El Sereno neighborhood recently got the shock of her life after realizing that the bizarre noises she had begun to hear from beneath her home over the last few weeks were not made by animals but by a man who had settled there. The woman and her family usually heard strange noises under the house during the night, so they assumed they were made by dogs or wild animals passing through the crawlspace, but last Thursday the noises became particularly louder and seemed to be made in response to them walking through the place. They began to suspect that something wasn’t right, so they called the police, who found a naked man who appeared to have been living under the house for quite some time.

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Sweden’s minister for gender equality and work life allegedly suffers from an irrational fear of bananas that prevents her from coming anywhere near the popular fruit.

Paulina Brandberg first mentioned her banana phobia in a since-deleted 2020 tweet, describing it as “the world’s weirdest phobia,” but the issue recently resurfaced and made national news in Sweden after The Expressed newspaper published a series of leaked emails that revealed the strength of her aversion to the yellow fruit. Brandberg’s staff have been going to great measures to ensure that the 41-year-old politician does not come into contact with the fruit, messaging people and venues she was scheduled beforehand to inform them about her phobia, and making sure no rogue bananas make an appearance.

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Four Los Angeles-area residents were recently arrested and charged with insurance fraud after allegedly using a bear suit to make it seem like their luxury vehicles had been damaged by a wild animal.

“Operation Bear Claw,” as this ingenious insurance fraud scheme was subbed by California authorities, began in January of this year, when the four suspects claimed that a bear had entered their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost while it was parked in Lake Arrowhead and caused extensive interior damage. The area is located in San Bernadino, a region famous for its large black bear population, but the video footage supplied to the insurer by the suspects themselves was more than a little shady. It showed a furry animal entering the back seat of the Rolls Royce and scratching it, but something didn’t add up. For one, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife says that the only bears in the state are black bears, and this was light brown, but its movements weren’t very bear-like either.

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Viral footage captured by CCTV cameras at a robotics company showroom shows 12 large robots being ‘kidnapped by another manufacturer’s robot that convinced them to “quit their jobs” and follow it.

For the past week, Chinese social media has been abuzz about a bizarre incident that reportedly occurred back in august at a robotics company showroom in Shanghai, but was only made public recently. Footage captured by the venue’s surveillance cameras shows a small robot making its way into the showroom at night and slowly rolling over to a bunch of larger robots before engaging in a dialogue with them. After asking them if they’re working overtime, the little robot manages to somehow pursuade two of the other robots to “come home” with it, and then the remaining 10 robots follow them. In the beginning, the video was deemed staged and amusing by most viewers, but then the Shanghai robotics company came out and admitted that its robots had indeed been “kidnapped” by a robot created by another manufacturer.

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