Chateau Erken, in the Russian Federation’s Kabardino-Balkaria autonomous republic, looks like an extremely well-preserved medieval castle, but in reality, this architectural wonder is just over a decade old.

Located in the vineyard-dominated countryside of Kabardino-Balkaria, Chateau Erken is a tourist attraction unlike any other in Russia. Not only does it mimic the fortress-like design of European medieval castles, but its location in the middle of a man-made lake full of fish and wild birds is just as impressive. People from all over the country come to this rural area in Southern Russia to see Chateau Erken in person. Photos and videos of this amazing castle have been doing the rounds on social media for years, but some people still can’t believe it exists and that it was built not by a king, but by a legendary businessman.

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Chinese real-estate giant Vanke Group recently sparked controversy after naming its advanced AI-powered debt collector its employee of the year for 2021.

Looking at a picture of Cui Xiaopan, Vanke Group’s employee of 2021, you’d think she was a woman in her 20s with a very determined look on her face, but in reality, she isn’t even human. The AI-generated photo that the Chinese company uses to depict its star debt collector is just an attempt of attaching an eye-pleasing face to what is otherwise a cold-and calculated artificial intelligence. However, when it comes to performance, the AI debt-collector managed to surpass her human colleagues by quite a large margin, registering a 91.44% success rate in collecting overdue payments.

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A young Chinese man who had been experiencing severe headaches lately was shocked to learn that he had been living with a bullet in the left side of his skull for about two decades.

Xiao Chen (pseudonym), a 28-year-old man from Shenzen, had been suffering from random headaches for as long as he could remember, only lately they had been getting more frequent and more severe. At first, Chen thought that the pain was caused by his lack of sufficient sleep on weekdays, but sleeping wasn’t the answer, especially since the headaches kept him up at night. Finally, things got so bad that he decided to go to the hospital, where doctors discovered a rather bizarre cause of the pain.

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Tropical rainforests are densely populated with a remarkable diversity of plant life, from various trees to vines, shrubs and flowers, but deep in the Amazon rainforest there are large areas that consist of a single tree species. These are known as Devil’s Gardens.

The indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest have known about Devil’s Gardens for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and they have eerie local legends that speak of evil spirits. In fact, it’s these stories that inspired the name of the mysterious tracts of vegetation randomly spread throughout the jungle. Many locals believe that they were planted by an evil spirit, and who can blame them? After all, how can one explain large areas of otherwise diverse rainforest where only a single tree species appears to thrive? Well, a few years back, researchers found that Devil’s Gardens are not the work of the devil, but that of a small ant that only aims to ensure the survival of its habitat.

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Residents of several villages in Russia’s Magadan region have recently reported black snow caused by the soot produced by an outdated, coal-powered water-heating plant.

In Omsukchan and neighboring Seimchan, two villages in the Siberian far east, snow doesn’t always look the way you’d expect. In fact, sometimes it’s quite the opposite. Instead of an immaculate white covering everything as far as the eye can see, locals are treated to a nightmarish view of black, soot-covered snow that the kids sometimes play in. Photos and videos of this disturbing scenery have been doing the rounds online every winter for years, but locals say that despite the temporary outrage they spark online, nothing ever changes.

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Corvid Cleaning, a Swedish startup specializing in training crows to pick up litter in exchange for food, claims that its program could save communities a fortune in cleaning costs.

According to the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, over a billion cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets every year which represents about 62 percent of all litter. Teaching humans not to throw cigarette butts on the street has so far proven impossible, but a Swedish startup claims it can teach crows to pick up after us and save local communities millions of krone in cleaning fees every year. Corvid Cleaning teaches wild crows to do our dirty work through a step-by-step learning process, that involves rewarding the birds with food for every cigarette butt they collect.

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People on the lookout for affordable housing in the Swiss city of Zurich can now opt for a two-person tent on an open balcony offering “a view of the starry evening sky” for just 500 Swiss francs ($540) a month.

Finding a cheap place to rent in Zurich is almost impossible these days, because of the city’s competitive property market, so one resourceful tenant decided to subsidize her own monthly rent by subletting the balcony of her apartment on the open market. The offer includes a waterproof tent complete with an insulating mat, mattress and pillows, as well as access to the apartment’s kitchen, living room and bathroom. Believe it or not, the woman, known only as Sandra, has already had a good response to the ad she posted earlier this month.

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The owner of a severely overweight feline that many have dubbed the world’s fattest cat is facing accusations of animal cruelty for allowing his pet to get so big.

Lyznia the Cat, an Instafamous feline whose adorable face and unenviable figure have earned it over 10,000 followers on the popular social network, recently landed her owner in hot water. After photos of the obese cat started doing the rounds online, her Russian female owner started receiving criticism online for overfeeding her pet and not caring about her wellbeing. However, the woman has since hit back at her critics, saying that Lyznia has been having weight problems ever since she first became pregnant a few years ago.

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A tattoo artist in Thailand has been getting a lot of attention online after it was revealed that he shares his home with eight young wives, all of whom get along great with each other.

Ong Dam Sorot, a young tattoo artist specializing in the traditional yantra style, recently sat down with a popular Thai comedian for an interview about his controversial marital status. Sorot is married not to one woman, but to eight, all of whom live under the same roof and consider themselves one big happy family. On the show, which has so far garnered over 3 million views on YouTube alone, Ong Dam Sorot introduced each of his wives and spoke about how they met. The eight women described their husband as the kindest, most considerate man on Earth and claimed to get along wonderfully.

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A Japanese restaurant has been getting a lot of attention for its unique Miso ramen dish which comes with a soft serve cone melting in the center of the bowl.

If you were to make a list of ingredients that you think best complement Miso ramen, milk and chocolate soft serve probably wouldn’t be at the top. But that just proves you’re not a gourmet visionary, like the people at Franken, a restaurant in Osaka Japan. On January 4th, Franken started selling its unique sweet-and-sour red miso ramen dish with a soft serve cone melting in it. Apparently, they went through many types of desserts, and the soft serve was just unexpectedly compatible with the ramen dish.

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Liang Xiaoqing is China’s most popular “auntie” fashion model, a niche segment aimed at marketing fashion products to middle-aged and elderly women.

Although Liang Xiaoning is only 29-years-old, you’d probably think she was well in her 40s, maybe even her 50s, if you looked at any of her professional modeling photos. She has been working as an “auntie” model since she was 18, trying her best to look distinguished and elegant, but also a lot older than her real age. Her tall figure and round, pleasant face apparently make her the perfect auntie model, and over the years she has perfected the art of posing and displaying the emotions that appeal most to her target audience.

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A Gentiana flower discovered only a couple of years ago in Tibet has been dubbed the world’s shiest flower for its ability to close in as little as seven seconds after being touched.

Chinese scientists recently published a study conducted on four species of Gentiana discovered in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, focusing primarily on the flowers’ ability to quickly respond to being touched. Plants are generally perceived as static organisms, with the only notable exceptions being carnivorous plants capable of movements designed to trap inspects inside. However, the four new species of Gentiana flowers discovered in the plateaus of Tibet have faster reactions than any other plants observed before. According to the above-mentioned study, these flowers can close completely in just 7 seconds. This ability has earned the Gentiana the unofficial title of ‘world’s shiest flower’.

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A team of Japanese high-school students recently won a regional innovation competition with a high-tech device that divides cake and pizza into equal portions every single time.

It’s a problem as old as the world – cutting a round treat into more than two equal parts. You either end up with portions that are not exactly the same size, or you’re left with a smaller extra slice that everyone has their eye on. Well, thanks to the ingenuity of a group of Japanese students from Kundong High School in Japan’s Oita Prefecture, dividing a cake or a pizza into perfectly equal portions need no longer be an issue. They have created a high-tech device that calculates the angle at which the tasty treat needs to be cut, depending on the number of necessary slices.

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Bubbles are fragile structures that only last a few seconds before popping, but a team of scientists has apparently found a way to keep bubbles from bursting for over a year.

Soap bubbles are subject to a series of processes that cause them to pop in a matter of seconds, minutes at best. They lose liquid through evaporation or gravitational drainage, and the gas trapped inside also diffuses through the membrane of soap and water back into the environment. However, a team of scientists at the University of Lille, in France, have been working on ways to address the fragility and ephemerality of bubbles, and they’ve apparently come up with a way of creating bubbles that maintain their shape and size for over a year.

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A Palestinian man who spent 15 years in an Israeli prison recently explained how he was able to father four kids during that time, despite not being able to be intimate with his wife.

Rafat Al-Qarawi was arrested in 2006 for terror activity during the Second Intifada against Israel and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. During that time, he allegedly fathered four children, and in a recent interview with Palestinian Media Watch, he revealed just how he managed to pull that off, despite never being intimate with his wife. Al-Qarawi claimed that he smuggled his sperm out of prison in potato chip bags which were then picked up by his wife and taken straight to an infertility clinic for insemination. His remarks raised some eyebrows in the medical community, as human sperm is known to only last a few seconds, minutes at most, outside the human body.

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