A Japanese man recently shocked the internet after announcing that he managed to save 132 million yen ($640,000) over the last two decades with the goal of retiring early from his stressful job.

The unnamed 45-year-old man took to social media to announce that he had finally achieved FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) after dedicating the last twenty years and ten months to this goal. In the early 2000s, he managed to secure a stable but very demanding job where he was constantly required to work overtime, sometimes past midnight. He had a decent salary of around five million yen ($32,000) per year, so instead of quitting his job and looking for something less stressful, he decided to push through all the hardships and save as much money as possible so he could retire early. However, the level of frugality he endured throughout the last two decades left a lot of people wondering if his efforts were worth it.

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A UK woman recently admitted to exaggerating her physical disability claims in order to receive bigger benefits, all the while competing in over 70 running events.

Sara Morris was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2005, but four years ago she applied for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) by exaggerating the extent of her symptoms in order to claim £20,000 ($25,800) that she was not entitled to. According to the evidence presented in court, the 49-year-old woman from Stoke on Trent claimed that she experienced difficulties getting out of the bath unassisted, lacked proper balance and didn’t have the power to stand in front of the gas cooker. Morris also said that she felt so anxious when leaving the house that even a short trip to the pharmacy put her on edge. She was thus able to receive £2,292.63 in benefits per month, while also participating in dozens of 5K and 10K running competitions.

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Koi Pla, a popular traditional dish consumed in Thailand and Laos is said to be responsible for the deaths of around 20,000 people every year.

Considered a salad by the Lao people of Laos and Thailand’s Isaan region, Koi Pla consists of minced raw fish, lemon juice, herbs, and spices. As you might have guessed, the fish is the problematic ingredient in this dish, although technically, it’s the parasites living in the fish. Koi Pla is most commonly made with raw freshwater fish from the Mekong basin which are often infested with parasitic flatworms known as live flukes. These parasites have long been known to cause one of the most aggressive types of cancer known to man, cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, which causes the deaths of around 20,000 people in Thailand alone.

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A Russian man who had experienced pain and discomfort under his ribs for the last nine years was shocked to discover that he had a 9 cm glass shard embedded in his liver.

The 53-year-old unnamed man told doctors at the Kirov Regional Clinical Hospital, in Russia, that he had long experienced sharp pain and discomfort on the right side of his body, under his ribs, but he never bothered getting it checked out. After finally deciding to seek medical help for his problem, he underwent a CT scan which revealed a sharp object stuck in the right lobe of his liver. When doctors asked what the object might be, the patient told them that he had no idea, as he had no history of trauma, nor could he remember an incident where a sharp object could have entered his body. After operating on the man laparoscopically, surgeons removed a 9-cm-long glass shard from his liver.

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Pan Xiaoting, a 24-year-old Chinese streamer specializing in mukbang (eating large quantities of food for viewers’ enjoyment) recently died during her livestream due to consuming too much food.

China cracked down on mukbang streams and videos in 2020, in a bid to reduce overeating and ‘shameful’ food waste, with offenders risking fines of up to 10,000 yuan ($1,400). However, mukbang streams are still incredibly popular in the Asian country, with thousands of people putting their lives at risk by stuffing their faces with insane amounts of food for views. One such streamer was Pan Xiaoting, a former waitress turned professional mukbanger, who lost her life earlier this month during one of her streams after her body just gave out due to overeating. The autopsy showed that her stomach was filled with undigested food and her abdomen was severely deformed.

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Savor, a California-based startup backed by legendary businessman Bill Gates, has come up with a method of producing butter-like fat out of just carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Starting from the idea that all fats are composed of chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, Savor patented a thermochemical process to build fat molecules and then produce dairy-free alternatives to products like milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream that not only have the same texture as the real thing but also taste the same. This process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does, so this synthesized fat has a much lower carbon footprint than real animal fat. So far, taste tests have shown that Savor’s alternative to butter has an almost indistinguishable flavor from the real thing, but the company still has a lot of challenges to overcome before bringing it to market.

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Jorit Agoch is a famous Italian graffiti artist known for his clean style and large-scale, ultra-realistic portrait murals painted on the side of buildings all over the world.

Over the last 16 years, we’ve featured many impressive graffiti artworks, like the mind-boggling optical illusions of Portuguese street artist Odeith, the ingenious portraits of Fabio Gomes Trindade, and the three-dimensional masterpieces of Carlos Alberto GH, just to name a few. However, in terms of realism, few can compare it to the work of Italian street artist Jorit Agoch. Hailing from Quarto, a commune in the Naples metropolitan area, Jorit quickly made a name for himself in the urban art world thanks to his impressively clean style and a degree of realism that is very hard to achieve using spray paint. Today, his awe-inspiring portrait murals can be admired in dozens of cities around the world, from Italy to Russia, the USA, and South America.

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A 36-year-old man has become known as “China’s most stubborn man” after taking the national college admission exam 16 consecutive years in an attempt to get accepted to the prestigious Tsinghua University.

Tang Shangjun took the gaokao, China’s notoriously difficult college admission exam, in 2009. He scored a mediocre 372 points out of 750, much too low to get into his dream school, Tsinghua University. He was unwilling to compromise, so he spent the next few years studying harder and taking the gaokao. By 2016, his score had improved to a respectable 625 points, more than enough to secure admission to several universities in his home province of Guanxi, but still not good enough for his chosen majors at Tsinghua. So he kept at it, year after year, ignoring all other universities, but never quite reaching the level required to get into his desired faculties at Tsinghua University.

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Fourteen high school students in Tokyo, Japan were recently hospitalized with stomach aches, nausea, and mouth pain after sharing a bag of potato chips infused with Bhut Jolokia peppers.

On July 16, around 12:40 pm, an emergency call was made after several first-year students at Rokugo Koka High School in Tokyo’s Ota Ward started complaining of nausea, as well as stomach and mouth pain. The thirteen girls and one boy had apparently been among 33 students at the high school who had shared a bag of super-spicy potato chips infused with “Bhut Jolokia,” which was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “world’s hottest pepper.” The students ended up at the emergency room, treated for their mild symptoms, and released later that day. Jiji Press reported that some of the students collapsed in the school infirmary because of the pain. The incident is being promoted as a cautionary tale for young students considering trying such spicy snacks.

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A Chinese man reportedly caught his wife cheating with her boss during work hours by using a remote-controlled drone to spy on them from afar.

The resourceful man known only as Jing began suspecting that his wife was having an affair after she became increasingly distant and changed her routine significantly, including visiting her parents more frequently than ever and coming up with excuses whenever he offered to accompany her, and spending more time at work. Eager to get to the bottom of things, but afraid of having to explain himself to his wife in case his suspicions ended up being unfounded, Jing decided to use a commercially available drone to spy on his spouse from a distance. He would drive to her workplace and then fly the drone to survey the area without risking to be spotted by his wife or her colleagues.

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Hosun, a South Korean dog who suffered severe injuries and was thought to be dead after being hit by a truck, gained legendary status after crawling out of its grave and walking home.

Hosun the “miracle dog” first made news headlines in South Korea six years ago, after going through a terrible car accident and coming back from the dead. She was only a four-month-old puppy when she was hit by a truck close to his owners’ home in the city of Yeongcheon, and her injuries were so severe that a neighbor who found her on the side of the road thought her dead. The man buried Hosun in a shallow grave in a nearby field and delivered the bad news to her owners when they came home. However, four days later, Hosun’s owners heard an animal’s wailing coming from a roadside ditch near their home and were shocked to find their beloved pet, terribly injured, but alive.

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Chinese prosecutors recently filed lawsuits against at least 16 companies accused of requiring female jobseekers to undergo pregnancy testing.

Chinese law explicitly prohibits employers from carrying out pregnancy tests as part of pre-employment examinations, but some companies are so worried about the costs of maternity leave and benefits that they prefer to make sure the women they hire are not pregnant. Earlier this month, prosecutors in the Tongzhou district of Nantong, China’s Jiangsu Province, announced that it had sued 16 companies for illegally testing female job applicants for pregnancy without even formally informing them about it. Their investigation revealed that companies violated women’s right to equal employment opportunities, as at least one candidate was rejected after it was revealed that she was pregnant.

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A bike-riding poodle has been getting a lot of attention on social media for his ability to get on a bicycle and ride it, using his front legs to steer and his hind legs to pedal.

Xu Laifu is not your average dog. The adorable poodle who hails from somewhere in China’s Jiangsu Province can ride a bicycle about as well as a three or four-year-old child. The canine became somewhat of an overnight sensation after videos of him riding a bicycle around a basketball court went viral, first in China and then in other Asian countries. He was recently featured by Japan’s Fuji News Network where photos and videos of his bicycle riding left people speechless. According to the Japanese outlet, Laifu’s owner spent about a year training the poodle to ride a bicycle, and he apparently loved every minute of it.

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A Chinese influencer specializing in dishing out dating and relationship advice for women has come under fire for encouraging her followers to choose wealthy partners for financial gain.

Qu Qu, real name ‘Le Chuanqu’, is one of the most controversial social media influencers in China. A former singer, she quickly transitioned to the status of online love guru, offering her followers dating and relationship advice with the main goal of elevating themselves financially. What differentiated Qu Qu from the many other dating gurus on the internet is her open view of relationships as ‘benefit exchanges’ to be exploited for one’s financial gains. Often referring to herself as the “McKinsey of relationships,” Qu Qu tells her fans that romantic relationships and marriages are steps to climbing on the social and financial ladder, so they have to be managed very carefully to achieve the desired results.

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A series of thefts involving the use of ultra-realistic silicone face masks in China has ignited a debate about the legality of these widely available products.

In March of this year, four homes in Shanghai were broken into, and over 100,000 yuan ($13,760) in valuables were stolen. When the police identified the main suspect, they discovered that the 40-year-old man had a silicone mask that he had used to disguise himself as an elderly man when committing the crimes. Last month, police investigating a series of burglaries in Jiangsu Province identified a man who disguised himself as an electrical worker using a realistic mask in order to minimize the risk of being identified. These are only two examples of a growing trend in China that experts warn could lead to a crime spree unless the sale of realistic silicone masks is regulated.

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