Hua Zhibing officially registered and became a student of Beijing’s Tsinghua University on Tuesday. But she’s not just another student, but China’s first AI-powered, virtual student.

Hua Zhibing’s appearance, voice and even the music playing in the background of the vlog she introduced herself to the world in were all created using on a record-breaking AI modeling system called Wudao 2.0. It was unveiled at the 2021 Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) Conference on June 1, and, according to its developers, it is the first trillion scale model in China and the largest in the world. Wudao 2.0 is designed to enable machines to think like humans and is reportedly close to passing the Turing test in poetry and couplets creation, text summaries, answering questions and painting.

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Muscle Girls is a Tokyo-based women’s gym that doubles as a fitness-themed bar staffed by a group of young, muscular women.

Japan is famous for its plethora of themed bars and cafes, from black cat cafes to cafes dedicated to women’s thighs, but Muscle Girls is the country’s first and only bar dedicated to female weightlifting. Founded by a young fitness enthusiast who goes by the name of Eri Muscle, Muscle Girls started out as a women’s gym, but recently transitioned into the entertainment industry, opening its own unique bar as well as a popular YouTube channel. Photos and videos of the venue started going viral earlier this year, mainly because of its staff, which is made up exclusively of muscular, fitness-loving girls.

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What to you get when you combine an old Soviet tank with two Soviet jet engines and a lot of water? The answer is Big Wind, a fire truck capable of stopping oil well fires all by itself.

In February of 1991, near the end of the Gulf War, the retreating Iraqi army set over 700 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire, thus creating the desert into an almost apocalyptic landscape. Up to six million barrels of oil burned every day for 30 weeks, sending flames as high as 300 feet into the air and covering the sky with thick, black smoke. The fires reached temperatures of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and even the air around them was an unbearable 650 degrees Fahrenheit, but even if anyone managed to get close enough, putting out the fires was a nearly impossible task. But that was just the kind of job that Big Wind was built for…

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A group of Pakistani police officers are facing suspension after allegedly arresting 19 employees of a fast food restaurant in Lahore for refusing to give them free burgers.

According to local reports, staff at a Johnny & Jugnu fast food restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan, were rounded up and arrested at around 8 PM on Saturday and held in custody overnight for having the audacity to refuse a group of policemen free burgers last week. Employees weren’t even allowed to close down the kitchen, allegedly leaving the fryers running and customers waiting in line for their orders. In an official statement, Johnny & Jugnu representatives offered details about the incident, explaining that it had been caused by staff’s refusal to give policemen free burgers.

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Most 90-year-olds can barely walk, let alone exercise, but 90-year-old Takishima Mika not only conducts daily fitness regimens religiously, but she actually works as a fitness instructor at a gym.

For most of us, “age is just a number” is just a tired cliché, but people like Takishima Mika, aka “Takimika”, are proof that it doesn’t have to be. The sprightly pensioner, who turned 90 on on January 15, is more active than most 20-year-olds and probably fitter too. She is Japan’s oldest fitness instructor and has become somewhat of a minor celebrity in the Asian country, both because of her excellent physical shape, and her positive attitude and infectious smile. But Takimika wasn’t always like that. In fact, her transformation began late in life, when she was already in her 60s.

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McGuire’s Irish Pub is a popular restaurant and local landmark in Pensacola, Florida, famous for having an estimated two million dollars in cash hanging from the ceiling.

The history of McGuire’s Irish Pub’s unique decoration can be traced back to 1977, when Martin McGuire and his wife, Molly opened the opened the business. He tended the bar while Molly waited tables, and when she made her first $1 tip, she celebrated by writing the date on it and tacking it to the back bar for good luck. Little did she know that this was the start of a longstanding tradition that is still being respected by patrons of the pub. The very next day after that first bill was tacked to the bar, people started adding to the collection, and they’ve been doing it ever since.

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A team of researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has managed to genetically modify potato plants to glow under fluorescent cameras when stressed by various factors.

One of the biggest challenges of modern agriculture is reacting to stress factors before it’s too late. Plants don’t really have a way of conveying how they feel, and, more often than not, by the time visible symptoms appear, it’s already too late to do anything about it. But scientists are hoping to fix this big problem with the help of advanced genetic manipulation. A team of Israeli researchers led by Dr. Shilo Rosenwaser managed to genetically modify a potato plant so that it glows under fluorescent camera when affected by physical stress (lack of water, cold weather, lack of sunlight, strong light etc.).

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Brought into Colombia as exotic pets by the most notorious drug kingpin in human history, have been breeding at an alarming pace over the last few decades and have become a serious threat to the Colombian flora and fauna.

In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar smuggled four hippos from an American zoo into Colombia, as exotic pets. They were kept at his luxurious Hacienda Napoles, in Puerto Triunfo, Antioquia, but after the collapse of his crime empire, they were set loose into the jungle. With no natural predators, plenty of water sources and suitable climate, the hippopotamuses thrived and multiplied. The initial four water giants have now ballooned to an estimated population of over 100, which scientists say could reach over 1,400 specimens by 2039.

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BW Kafe is an unusual-looking cafe with venues in Moscow and Sankt Petersburg which look like the setting of A-ha’s famous “Take on Me” video.

BW Kafe first made international headlines last year, when photos of the Sankt Petersburg branch went viral online. Designed by Russian artist Anfisa Toshina, the interior of the cafe looks sketched with charcoal on a piece of white paper, creating the illusion that you are the only 3D “object” in a two-dimensional world. It’s a pretty nice trick, but one that might seem oddly familiar if you’ve been on the internet sometime in the last two years…

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Fan Bingbing, a popular actress, model, singer, and China’s highest-paid celebrity for the last four years, is suing one of her doppelgangers for relying on her looks to sell products during online streams.

In many cases, looking like a popular celebrity can be considered a blessing, but in the case of one doppelganger of Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing, this turned out to be more than a curse. Up until September of last year, 32-year-old Chen Xinling had been able to use her striking resemblance to Fan Bingbing to build a strong following on a series of Chinese streaming platforms and even start a lucrative business selling products on Chinese e-commerce site Taobao. But the dream turned into a nightmare when Chen discovered that her uncanny resemblance to Fan Bingbing was actually a legal liability.

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A new Japanese service is drawing attention for allowing both individuals and companies to rent out “fat people” for 2,000 yen ($18) per hour.

Renting people for various purposes isn’t anything new in Japan. From renting someone to befriend your cheating partner’s lover and convince them to back off, to renting middle-aged men for company, the offers vary a lot, and starting this month you can add another option to the list – renting fat people. Called “Debucari”, the new service allows virtually anyone to rent a fat person by the hour. Apparently, fat people – over 100 kilograms – are somewhat of a rarity in Japan, so the entrepreneur behind the service thought that making them available via an online service would be a great business opportunity.

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Anand Dhawaj Negi, a retired bureaucrat turned desert farmer, spent over two decades of his life turning the cold wastes of northern India’s Himachal Pradesh into a vibrant oasis.

In 1977, the Indian Government kickstarted an ambitious program to mitigate the adverse effects of desertification in the Asian country’s cold and hot deserts. A. D. Negi  worked in the financial department in charge of the Desert Development Program and saw millions of dollars go down the drain with no real results to show for it. Whenever he asked scientists and officials involved in the program why there was no real progress, the answer would always be that they lacked the technology to develop any type of sustainable crops in the inhospitable environment that is the desert. A farmer’s son himself, Negi grew tired of excuses and took a leave of absence in 1999 to take a crack at it himself. By 2003, he had already permanently retired from his job to concentrate all of his energy on his growing desert oasis.

A native of Sunam village in Kinnaur, Negi took it upon himself to turn a barren patch of land in the cold desert of Himachal Pradesh into a green oasis just to show everyone, particularly the struggling farmers in the area that it could be done. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do in the world, but the former bureaucrat knew what he was getting into and had the ambition and patience to see it through.

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A 75-year-old retired attorney from Chicago recently became the oldest American to ever conquest Everest, the world’s tallest mountain top. The craziest thing is that he had only started mountaineering 7 years prior.

Arthur Muir, a married father of three and grandfather of six, had been fascinated with mountain climbing ever since his father gave him a book about the Himalayas when he was a child, and that fascination only grew when  Barry Bishop, a legendary climber and conqueror of Everest, visited his high-school in 1964. However, he never followed his dream of picking up mountaineering until a friend convinced him to do so, seven years ago, but once he did, he couldn’t stop.

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Despite having round anuses like all other mammals, bare-nosed wombats do not produce round pellets, tubular coils or messy piles; they are the only creature on Earth that poops cubes.

Wombats, marsupials native to the grassy plains and eucalyptus forests of Australia, are among the most adorable animals in the world, but to animal experts they have been a tough-to-solve mystery for a very long time. And it has all been because of their poop. You see, wombats have the unique ability to produce up to 100 distinctive, cuboid pieces of poop every day. Now, researchers say they have uncovered how the wombat intestine creates this unusually-shaped excrement.

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A Thai doctor recently took to Facebook to share photos of a rather unusual patient – a cockroach that someone spotted on the side of the road after being stepped on.

Last week, Thanu Limpapattanawanich, a veterinarian from Krathum Baen, in Thailand, found himself having to save the life of a very special patient. A person came in one day with an injured cockroach that they had witnessed being accidentally stepped on by someone else. Unable to let the insect die on the side of the road, the person took it in the palm of their hand and brought it to the Sai Rak Animal Hospital. Instead of laughing at the person who brought in the bug, Dr. Limpapattanawanich took the case and treated the cockroach for free.

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