To highlight a new type of water purification system, a restaurant in Kuurne, Belgium, has started serving its customers free drinking water recycled from its sinks and toilets.

The water served at the Gust’eaux restaurant in Kuurne these days is the same as any other potable water – it has no smell, no taste, no color – so it’s impossible to tell that it’s source is actually the restaurant’s toilets. By using a complex, five-step purification system, Gust’eaux is able to turn its sewage into a water so pure that it has to be enriched with minerals before being served to clients.

Read More »

If you’re short on cash and don’t mind selling the rights to your face, you can stand to make £100,000 ($130,000) by licensing your mug to a robotics company to be used on one of their humanoid robots.

According to a recent blog post by London-based outsourcing company Geomiq, a robotics company is currently looking for a “kind and friendly” to put on a humanoid robot once it goes into production. This will potentially entail using this person’s face on thousands of robots around the world, so the company is willing to pay no less than £100,000 ($130,000) in licensing fees. The robot in question is designed to be a “virtual friend” for elderly people, and is scheduled to go into production next year.

Read More »

Part extreme reality TV show, part social experiment, “Meat the Family” follows four meat-eating families for three weeks as they interact with the animal that they enjoy eating most. At the end they are forced to make a choice between going vegan or eating their pet.

The premise of Meat the Family is that the three participating families have to treat the animal that most frequently appears on their plates like a pet for three weeks, and then decided whether it goes to an animal sanctuary or into their bellies. Deciding whether the animal lives or dies is one thing, but having to choose between going vegetarian or eating the animal you got to know for three weeks is just crazy. Over the course of the show, the four UK families will have to spend time with their pet, taking it for walks and playing with it, but also travel around their country to learn about animal welfare, farming and production, food processing, as well as the impact that eating animals has on the environment.

Read More »

The “Click to Pray eRosary” is a smart gadget shaped like a regular rosary and designed to educate young, technology-focused youths how to pray the rosary.

The smart eRosary can be worn as a bracelet and is activated by making the sign of the cross. It comes with a companion smartphone app which synchronizes with the gadget and allows access to an audio guide, exclusive images, personalized content, and also tracks the user’s progress. According to the Vatican website, the eRosary is designed “to help young people pray the Rosary for peace and to contemplate the Gospel”.

Read More »

We humans have been looking for an effective way to prevent or at least treat hangovers for a long time, but one Silicone Valley startup claims to have finally found a way to ease the uncomfortable side effects of drinking.

Zbiotics is the world’s first genetically modified probiotic. It’s not marketed as an explicit cure for hangovers, because they include a wide variety of negative side effects; Downing a small bottle of Zbiotics before your first alcoholic drink of the night has a very specific purpose – to help your body break down acetaldehyde, a by-product of metabolizing ethanol. It’s this toxic compound that is associated with known hangover symptoms like headache, nausea, and heart palpitations.

Read More »

Baunei, an idyllic mountain village on the Italian island of Sardinia, has launched an appeal to visitors asking them to stop relying on the directions of Google Maps when driving around the area.

Salvatore Corrias, the mayor of Baunei, claims that in the last year alone the local fire service or mountain rescue team have been called 144 times to help stranded tourists who had followed the directions of Google Maps. Apparently, people are often using the GPS-powered app to reach so-called “hidden beaches” around Baunei and end up driving down lanes that are unsuitable for cars or onto off-road tracks. To stop this from happening, local police have put up signs that read “Do not follow the directions suggested by Google Maps”.

Read More »

Dutch police recently discovered a 58-year-old man and five young adults living in a “small, locked place” on an isolated farm in the province of Drenthe. They had allegedly never left the farm in the last nine years, and were waiting for the end of time.

The shocking discovery was made after the eldest of the five young adults, a 25-year-old man, allegedly escaped the farm and showed up at the pub in the nearby village of Ruinerwold. The pub owner told Dutch journalists that he immediately noticed the man’s long, dirty beard, old clothes and confused gaze, so after seeing him down five beers one after the other, he tried chatting with him. The young man told him that he had run away from a nearby farm after being confined there for the last nine years, because he didn’t want to go on living like that. Then he revealed that he had brothers and sisters living there as well, and that they needed help.

Read More »

A Chinese woman who spent 13,000 yuan ($1,850) on cosmetic double eyelid surgery has become unable to fully close her eyes, even when she sleeps.

Around 50 of Asians are born without a visible eyelid crease above their lash line, which basically means they have what is called a “monolid”. In 1896, to address this aesthetic issue, Japanese surgeon Mikamo developed a procedure called blepharoplasty or double eyelid surgery, which has since been performed millions of times. It’s the most requested plastic surgery in Asia, and in countries like South Korea, it’s been normalized as a way of becoming more attractive. But while the results of double eyelid surgery can indeed be visually appealing, in some cases it can have some really nasty consequences, like leaving patients unable to fully close their eyes.

Read More »

Japanese Police arrested a man suspected of assaulting a young pop star he was obsessed with, after allegedly figuring out where she lives by analyzing her social media photos, specifically the reflections in her pupils.

Hibiki Sato, a 26-year-old unemployed man from Saitama, a city north of Tokyo, has been arrested for allegedly attacking Ena Matsuoka, a 21-year-old pop singer with the group Tenshi Tsukinukeni Yomi. It is believed Sato was able to narrow down the area of Tokyo Ms. Matsuoka lived in by going through her social media profiles, enlarging her photos and analyzing the reflections in her pupils. He was thus able to recognize some Tokyo scenery and a bus stop, which he then located using Google Street view. Some sources claim that the alleged stalker had even approximated the storey Matsuoka lived on based on the windows and the angle that sunlight hit her eyes.

Read More »

A limited edition Nike Air Max 97 sneaker with its transparent sole filled with “holy water” from the Jordan River sold out within minutes of its official release, despite a prohibitive price tag of $3,000 per pair.

Officially named “MSCHF x INRI Jesus Shoes”, the white sneakers had their soles injected with 60 ccs of water from the Jordan River and were allegedly blessed by a priest. It’s been reported that although the limited edition footwear was designed from the all-white Nike Air Max 97s, Nike itself is not affiliated with this project. MSCHF are said to have bought the Nike sneakers at retail value and then applied their original design ideas to create a metaphor of “walking on water”.

Read More »

A 61-year-old man from Tokyo’s Ota Ward was recently arrested by Japanese police for allegedly stealing no less than 159 bicycle seats, as a bizarre way of taking revenge for having his own seat stolen last year.

Earlier this month, Akio Hatori was apprehended for the alleged theft of a bicycle seat on August 29. Surveillance camera footage showed him casually removing the seat of someone’s bike, placing it in the basket of his own bicycle and pedalling away. Unfortunately for him, the victim called the police and they started investigating the minor theft. However, when officers identified Hatori and raided his house last week, they only expected to find the one seat, not a stash of 159 of them.

Read More »

The mayor of a town in Mexico has come under fire from members of his community for deploying cutouts of himself at events that he can’t physically be present at.

Moisés Aguilar Torres, the mayor Pichuclaco, a town in the Mexican state of Chiapas, managed to outrage his constituents by sending a cutout of himself to a local health services event that he didn’t bother attending. Photos of actual attendees posing for pictures with Torres’ cardboard cutout have been doing the rounds on Mexican social media for days, sparking both criticism and hilarious comments.

Read More »

A Japanese student of ninja history was recently commended by her teacher for handing in a blank sheet of paper on an assignment that required her to write an essay on ninjas.

Ninjas were famous for their covert operations, so when Eimi Haga’s ninja history teacher at Mie University asked her to write an essay about a visit to the Ninja Museum of Igaryu, she decided to do it in a way that would reflect her passion for everything ninja. Plus, the teacher said he would reward students for creativity, so she had extra motivation to come up with something that would make her assignment stand out. Her essay was so ingenious that it left even her teacher scratching his head for a while.

Read More »

An Indian man recently shocked airport staff in Abu Dhabi, because his passport showed he was born in 1896, which would make him 123, the oldest human to have ever lived.

Swami Sivananda’s passport shows him to be a year older than France’s Jeanne Louise Calment , who holds the Guinness Record for the oldest verified person in history -122 – but the problem is that the only proof he has comes from an old temple register.  Mr Sivananda also looks decades younger than his alleged age, but he credits his youthful appearance and good health to leading a simple and balanced life, yoga, and a frugal, spice-free diet. His celibacy may have something to do with his longevity as well, he figures. He’s been trying to have his name included in the Guinness Book of Records for three years, but he has been having trouble proving his age.

Read More »

Chechen men are considered some of the most masculine in the world, and this is an image that authorities are keen to maintain, so anything that threatens to damage that hard-earned image of fearlessness is frowned upon. A young man recently learned that first-hand, after crying at his sister’s wedding.

According to historian Zelimkhan Musaev the public display of emotions at Chechen wedding parties is unbecoming, even among women, so when a video of a young man shedding tears at his sister’s wedding went viral on social media, it angered a lot of people. And seeing as the nation’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov – who boasts a very manly public image himself – had also criticized the violation of Chechen customs and traditions, the offender was identified and forced to apologize for showing excessive emotion.

Read More »