A team of Volkswagen designers and engineers developed a high-tech office chair that you can drive at a top speed of 12mph (20km/h)

Most high-tech office chairs are either simply waterproof, or stainproof, or are designed at a higher standard in terms of ergonomics. But Volkswagen’s recent take on a high-tech office chair shows just how low the bar sits at the moment. The German car manufacturer designed and built an office chair with a built-in motor and controls, allowing the user to drive it at a respectable top speed of 12mph. And that’s just one of the crazy features built into this one-of-a-kind piece of office furniture.

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Japanese convenience store chain Lawson recently launched a rather intriguing new product – flavorless candy that apparently tastes like emptiness.

Whether it be sweet, sour, salty or even spicy, candy has always been associated with a type of flavor. Well, at least until now, because flavorless candy is a thing these days. Lawson, one of Japan’s largest convenience store chains is currently testing a number of products, including the aptly-named Aji no Shinai? Ame (Tasteless? Candy), which apparently tastes like nothing. As you can imagine, the marketed lack of flavor has been raising eyebrows in Japan, and for good reason, after all, can you even imagine sucking on a candy that doesn’t have any taste?

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Japanese clothing and housewares company Nissen recently launched its most intriguing product yet – a line of bed linens and blankets that try to mimic cat fur.

Studies have shown that petting a cat for just 10 minutes reduces the levels of stress hormones, and any cat lover will tell you just how relaxing the experience can be. But what about people who would love to have a pet cat, but are living in rented apartments that don’t allow pets? Or how about people who are allergic to cats, what are they supposed to do to relax? Well, that’s where the new Neko Feel (“Cat Feel”) material developed by Nissen comes into play. The Japanese company just launched a line of bed Neko Feel linens that it claims mimics the feel of cat fur.

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TinyCircuits, a hardware company specializing in creating tiny electronic devices, recently unveiled the world’s smallest television sets.

When it comes to modern TVs, the general consensus is that bigger is better, but one company is trying to prove that it can be successful by going against the trend. TinyCircuits, an open-source hardware company that makes all sorts of tiny electronic devices, has created the world’s smallest television sets – the TinyTV 2 and TinyTV Mini. While these retro-looking devices may be the size of postage stamps, they actually work about as well as regular-size TVs, featuring channel and volume-adjusting knobs, remote control, 8Gb of storage, and PC connectivity for uploading videos.

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Mayutamu, a 16-year-old male teenager from Japan, has been getting attention for his ability to pose as a girl, using makeup and female clothing.

The 16-year-old teen rose to fame thanks to his job at a unique maid cafe in Tokyo’s Akihabara district. Maid cafes are really popular in Japan, with Akihabara alone being home to dozens of them, but none quite like ‘NEWTYPE’. This establishment is known as a ‘pseudo-girl’ maid cafe, because all the waiting staff is actually made up of boys posing as female maids. Among all the maids, Maytamu stood out as the most feminine of all, with many people confessing that they would have never guessed he was a boy.

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Cleveland-based company Save My Ink Forever offers people the opportunity to have their tattoos preserved as artworks after they pass away.

Third-generation mortician Michael Sherwood and his son Kyle came up with the idea for Save My Ink Forever a few years back, while having a few drinks with some friends. One of them said that he would like his ink preserved somehow and asked the Sherwoods how he should go about doing that. They laughed at the question at first, but their buddy pushed the issue and it got the two morticians thinking. Tattoos mean a lot to the people who have them inked on their bodies, as well as to their families, so it made sense that some of them would like them preserved. After devising a technique for removing and preserving tattoos, the Sherwoods founded Save My Ink Forever and started taking orders.

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Marlene Engelhorn is not your average millionaire. At age 29, she has more money than she knows what to do with, so she has decided to give away 90 to 95 percent of her inheritance of tens of millions of dollars.

Marlene Engelhorn is the granddaughter of 94-year-old Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, a member of the famed German industrial family whose patriarch, Friedrich Engelhorn, founded the chemical giant BASF in 1865. Traudl’s brother-in-law, Curt, ran the family business until 1997, when it was sold to Roche for about $11 billion. At the time of the sale, Marlene’s grandmother received approximately $2.45 billion, a veritable fortune that ballooned to $4.2 billion, at the time of her death, earlier this year. Marlene Engelhorn now stands to inherit tens of millions of dollars, but she doesn’t want it.

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The Synthetic Party is a new political group in Denmark that is committed to following the platform thought up by an AI entity known as Leader Lars.

Out of all the political parties eyeing a seat in the Danish Parliament this year, the Synthetic Party has to be the most intriguing, by far. Founded in May by artist collective Computer lars and non-profit art and tech organization MindFuture Foundation, the new political party is dedicated to following the policies of an AI programmed on the policies of all Danish fringe parties since the 1970s that have never obtained a seat in the parliament. Apart from promoting the presence of AI in politics, the Synthetic Party also aims to become an alternative for the 20 percent of the Danish population that never votes in elections.

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Researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University claim to have identified a drug that replicates the benefits of exercise on muscles and bones.

Many of us may not want to admit it, but modern life in developed countries is easier and more comfortable than it’s ever been. Gone are the days when humans had to rely on heavy labor to sustain themselves and their families, but this particular part of our evolution has had some unwanted health-related consequences – the vast majority of people aren’t getting enough exercise and that is taking a toll on their bones, muscles and overall health. The problem is that many of us don’t want to put in the physical work to keep our bodies in good shape, even though we know we should, but the good news is that we may not have to…

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A boat tour organizer in Thailand has been getting a lot of attention because of his original-yet-controversial business idea – fishing trips in the company of nude ladies.

I’ve always found fishing quite boring – hot take, I know – but one Thai entrepreneur in Chon Buri recently came up with an intriguing way of spicing up the experience and thus getting a leg up on the competition. The mysterious person or outfit behind the controversial endeavor advertised on social media with a series of lewd photos showing two men apparently fishing on a boat next to two completely naked women posing for the camera with their legs spread open. That’s one way to get people’s attention…

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A 27-year-old man dubbed the “unluckiest man alive” suffers from a rare disease that causes him to experience flu-like symptoms whenever he orgasms.

The unnamed man’s case was recently reported in the medical journal Urology Case Reports by a team of doctors who successfully managed to treat the condition with antihistamine. Scientists described the man’s rare illness as an allergic, or autoimmune, response to his own sperm, which caused flu-like symptoms like fever, a cough, sneezing, muscle weakness, as well as concentration, memory, and even speech issues. Because of these debilitating symptoms associated with his own orgasm, the man had actively been avoiding sleeping with his girlfriend for a long time.

As bizarre as the case described above may sound, it is certainly not unique. Scientists have so far uncovered almost 60 cases of people affected by this rare and serious condition known as Post-Orgasmic Illness Syndrome (POIS). In fact, it is increasingly being recognized as a debilitating cause of sexual dysfunction in males, but because it’s so rare and unusual, it is often misdiagnosed.

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A California ophthalmologist recently shocked the internet by posting a video of herself extracting 23 forgotten contact lenses from a patient’s eye.

Last month, Katerina Kurteeva, an eye doctor out of Newport Beach, California, posted an Instagram video of herself carefully removing a few contact lenses from a patient’s eye. ‘A few’ maybe isn’t the right word to use in this context, seeing as Kurteeva claims to have removed no less than 23 old contact lenses that her patient, an elderly woman, had forgotten in her eye for months, maybe even years. The video went viral a few days ago, leaving millions scratching their heads about someone could simply forget that many contact lenses in their eye.

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Photos and videos of people walking futuristic robot dogs instead of actual canines have been going viral in China lately, signaling a trend among the younger generations.

Robotic dogs inspired by the impressive creations of Boston Dynamics have been available on Chinese shopping platforms for a while now, but they’ve only recently started actually becoming popular. Although they are sometimes being described as soulless machines that can never compare to real dogs who love their owners unconditionally, there is no denying the advantages of robot pets, and judging by the increasing number of people spotted walking their robot dogs in China lately, they may one day rival the animals they emulate.

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Hajime, Japan’s most popular YouTuber, recently surprised his millions of subscribers by covering his body with the world’s blackest commercially-available paint.

Musou Black, a special type of paint developed and sold by Koyo Orient Japan, isn’t the world’s blackest paint. That title belongs to Vantablack, an incredibly black coating capable of absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light. It makes everything look like a black hole, but it is obscenely expensive and currently unavailable on the open market. Musou Black, on the other hand, absorbs a respectable 99.4% of visible light, making it the world’s second blackest paint, and it is available on Amazon for $17 per 100ml. So it was the ideal choice for someone wanting to become a walking shadow, or the blackest man on Earth.

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Monte Testaccio, an artificial mound in Rome composed almost entirely of broken pottery, might be the largest trash heap in the ancient world.

At first glance, Monte Testaccio looks like an ordinary greenery-covered mound, the likes of which can be found all over the world. But underneath all that shrubbery and the thin layer of dirt that supports it lies the largest pile of discarded pottery in the history of the ancient world. Covering an area of 2 hectares and with a volume of approximately 580,000 cubic meters, Monte Testaccio consists almost exclusively of millions of broken ancient pottery containers known as amphorae. It is estimated that this man-made mound consists of  53 million amphorae, which would make it the largest trash heap in the ancient world.

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