A popular televangelist was recently issued a cease and desist order by the New York attorney general to stop promoting his cure-all product as a cure for the highly-contagious Covid-19 coronavirus strain.

The last thing you would expect a holy man to do is promote a fake cure against a potentially deadly disease to desperate people for profit, and yet, that’s allegedly exactly what Rev. Jim Bakker has been doing. To be fair, Bakker had long been peddling his “Silver Solution” – a scientifically unproven medication made from the precious metal – as a cure for all sorts of ailments, but when he included the rapidly-spreading Covid-19 coronavirus strain to the list of curable diseases, authorities stepped in.

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I don’t know what it is about Japanese men and bicycle seats, but for some reason some men can never have enough of these seats. Just a few months after writing about a man who stole 159 bike seats in a year, we now have the story of another Japanese man who claims to have stolen over 5,800 seats over the lasts 25 years.

Hiroaki Suda, a 57-year-old truck driver, was arrested on Feb. 13 after surveillance cameras caught him stealing two bicycle seats worth about ¥8,000 ($75) on Nov. 29 and 30, 2019, at a train station and a parking lot for bicycles in Higashiosaka, Japan’s Osaka prefecture. Suda admitted to the charges, and for some reason confessed to police that he had started stealing bicycle seats about a quarter century before, and had since put together quite and impressive collection.

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Chef Ben Churchill calls himself a “food illusionist” and while the title may seem a bit pompous, it’s actually quite fitting, as Churchill specializes in disguising delicious desserts as the most unappetizing things imaginable.

Most chefs try their best to make desserts look as yummy as possible, but Ben Churchill does the exact opposite. He goes out of his ways to make his sweet confections look completely inedible; he does this by disguising them as ashtrays full of cigarette butts, dish washing sponges complete with detergent foam, and even rotten fruit with disgusting-looking green mold. Most people wouldn’t touch his desserts if someone paid them, but they’d be missing out, as they are actually delicious.

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The coronavirus wreaking havoc in China right now has really turned things upside down for a lot of people, but not even it can come between a marathon runner and their training.

Like many of his countrymen, Pan Shancu, an amateur marathon runner from Hangzhou, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, is trapped in his apartment because of the coronavirus epidemic, but he didn’t let that small detail stop him from keeping in shape for his next race, whenever it may be. He has been using the small space in his apartment as a miniature track, jogging around two tables and the short length of a small hallway, and recently posted on social media that he had covered a distance of 50 kilometers (31 miles).

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Most yoga practitioners struggle to pull off the Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana contortion just once in their lives, but one 11-year-old girl recently managed to do it a whopping 21 time in one minute, setting a new world record.

On January 20, Riya Paladia, a gymnastics and yoga practitioner from the village of Gaulapar, in India’s Uttarakhand state, stunned a local crowd with her amazing flexibility and speed, performing the tough Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana yoga position 21 times in one minute. Described as one of the very hardest yoga contortions, the move didn’t seem to pose any problem to the 11-year-old girl who slid on her back with ease before rising up on her feet again, without using her hands as support. It almost looks like she is being pulled up by invisible strings.

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Most people think that cats are nature’s ultimate rat catchers, but they’re actually a lot less efficient in catching and killing rodents than dogs.

Rats are known to breed at an alarming rate, and in the English countryside it’s easy for farms to be overrun by disease-spreading rodents. When rats become too much for farmers to handle, it’s up to small companies like Suffolk and Norfolk Rat Pack to come in and clean up with the help of some small but exceptionally skilled rodent hunters. Suffolk and Norfolk Rat Pack specialises in training dog breeds that genetically designed to catch rats; they travel all around the UK helping farmers clean up their rat infested properties in a matter of hours. Their most successful endeavour yet occurred earlier this month, when a pack of eight dogs managed to kill no less than 730 rats in only seven hours.

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A Ukrainian man nearly lost his genitals after his wife put him in a painful DIY chastity belt for being unfaithful.

The unnamed man in his 40’s, from the city of Zaporizhia, in southern Ukraine, told doctors that he woke up one morning earlier this week to find a big metal nut screwed onto his wiener. It had been “installed” by his wife, as a way to stop him from being unfaithful, but the man claimed that it was strangulating his  organ. He tried removing it himself, but the nut didn’t budge, so he had no choice but to call an ambulance.

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While most 11-year-olds are mostly concerned with school, video games, and surfing the web, Timofey Klevakin, a boy from rural Russia, is busy training in the gym and breaking weightlifting records.

Ever since he was five years old, Timofey was interested in weightlifting, watching his father train at a makeshift gym in their home village of Shalya, in the Ural mountains. Noticing his boy’s interest, Arseny Klevakin started training him, despite his wife’s protests over concerns that he was too young. At the age of six, during a regional weightlifting competition, Timofey managed to amaze attendants and judges by deadlifting a 55-kilogram barbell. He’s been working hard ever since, and the now 11-year-old is getting ready to break the national deadlift record for his weight class by lifting a 105-kilogram barbell.

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Long, relaxing bathroom breaks that allow people to read the news or get up to date with their social media feed may be coming to an end due to a new and controversial toilet seat design that is supposed to make sitting on the toilet for more than seven minutes becomes uncomfortable.

Called the Standard Toilet, the new design thought up by English consulting engineer Mahabir Gill slopes at a downwards angle of 13 degrees forcing the person who is sitting on it to use their leg muscles in order to keep from sliding off. According to its creator, the longest someone can comfortably sit on such a toilet seat is 5 to 7 minutes. Gill  said that the 13 angle slant is ideal, as it’s enough to cause some feelings of strain in the users legs, making them want to get up faster than they would from a horizontal toilet seat, but not enough to cause serious health problems. While the designer said that the Standard Toilet was inspired by his personal experience, he also added that it would be a great asset for businesses wanting to maximize employee work hours.

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Just a week after Brooklyn-based startup Air Co. unveiled its carbon-negative, air-based vodka, a California start-up announced a new type of “meatless meat” made from air.

Appropriately named Air Protein, the Bay Area company allegedly used technology developed by NASA, to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) into protein, the same way plants do. During the 1960’s, the U.S. space agency started looking for a way to feed astronauts on a year-long mission by relying on the one resource its crew produced in abundance – CO2. During their research, scientists discovered a class of microbes called hydrogenotrophs able to convert carbon dioxide into protein. The resulting powder could be used to create pastas and shakes, but Air Protein now wants to use it to create a meat alternative.

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From actual snake oil to music therapy, over the years humanity has come up with all sort of bizarre treatments for chronic pain. One of the strangest ones you might have never heard of before is gold thread acupuncture, where tiny gold threads are implanted in the human body.

Gold thread acupuncture has long been used in Asian countries to treat various types of pain. The procedure is usually performed by a person with no medical training and involves the permanent implantation of tiny threads of gold in painful areas of the body, using acupuncture needles. Apparently, the insertion of these sterile pieces of gold is believed to result in continuous stimulation inside the body, and pain relief. There is no evidence that this alternative pain relief treatment actually works, but doctors have reported several complications related to the procedure.

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Wuxia (martial arts and chivalry) novels and films are very popular in China, but while most people are content just reading or watching the exploits of fictional heroes, some go to extremes in order to experience these adventures themselves.

Jin Yong is considered one of the greatest and most popular wuxia writers in history, and his novels have enjoyed massive success among both Chinese communities around the world and have been translated in several foreign languages. His works have inspired dozens of martial arts movies and TV series, and if news reports in Chinese media are to be believed, they’ve even pushed some die-hard fans to live their lives behind, venture into the mountains, and train like Yong’s fictional characters.

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A team of researchers from the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University recently unveiled an innovative display that is thin and flexible enough to be worn on skin, like a type of temporary tattoo.

Having to check a stopwatch to see your time while running, or looking at your smartphone screen to see who is calling may soon be things of the past thanks to a new and revolutionary human-machine interface that allows information to be displayed directly on human skin. Called alternating-current electroluminescent (ACEL) display, this new invention consists of an electroluminescent layer made of light-emitting microparticles sandwiched between two flexible silver nanowire electrodes. The ceramic nanoparticles embedded in stretchable polymer make this ACEL display brighter than any other, allowing it be clearly visible even in a well-lit room.

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A North Carolina woman who got a power washer for her birthday is using it to turn her concrete driveway into a canvas for ephemeral art, and draw a lot of attention online in the process.

Dianna Wood, a retired office worker from Burlington, North Carolina, had been wanting her own power washer ever since she used one to help one of her friend’s mother to get her hose ready for sale. She loved it so much that when her birthday came around, her husband knew exactly what to get her as a present. For over a month, she used it clan the patio, the dirty shutters, the fence around her home, and even the garbage cans. It was great, but by the time she got started on her concrete driveway, Dianna was already looking for way to spice things up. So instead of just cleaning the concrete, she decided to use the power washer to exercise her artistic talents.

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Nuria Salcedo is a self-taught artist who uses coffee to paint incredibly detailed illustrations and portraits of celebrities. While she also uses brown pencils for the most intricate parts of her artworks, her characters are always painted with various tones of coffee.

A trained architect, Nuria Salcedo never took art classes. She always liked drawing, but her skills are only the result of many hours of practice, her studying Architecture in school, and whatever tips she picked off online. the young Spanish artist was inspired to use coffee as a medium for her art after coming across the works of Maria A. Aristidou, another artist famous for her beautiful coffee paintings. She had been experimenting with many styles and mediums until then, but somehow coffee just seem to suit her best and she’s been painting with it ever since.

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