An android waitress working at a restaurant in Chongqing, China, went viral last month, mesmerizing viewers with its precise robotic movements, but she turned out to be nothing more than a choreographed illusion.

With the threat of AI-powered robots stealing humans’ jobs looming over the world these days, the sight of a humanoid robot seemingly working as a waitress at a restaurant in China scandalized a lot of people when videos of it started circulating on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok). Some viewers were in awe of the android’s human-like appearance and its ability to interact with real people, greeting them as they entered the Chongqing restaurant, taking their orders, and bringing them to their tables, but others declared themselves a little creeped out by it, a relatively common reaction to the uncanny valley effect. But it turned out that the android waitress was more lifelike than people thought…

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Northern US states are preparing for an invasion of incredibly intelligent and highly adaptable ‘super pigs’ that threaten to spill over the border from Canada.

Feral pigs have been the bane of North America’s flora and fauna for many years now, but a new breed of ‘super pigs’ is threatening to take the problems they cause to a whole new level. The result of cross-breeding domestic pigs with wild boars, these new feral pigs combine the survival skills of the wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine, a combination that is apparently nigh impossible to control. Not only are they capable of surviving cold climates by tunneling under snow, but they also devastate crops, feed on animals of all sizes, from quails and wild turkeys to deer and elk, and spread deadly diseases like the African swine flu and strains of influenza that can affect humans.

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The winner of the second-biggest prize in the history of the Mega Millions lottery has taken the mother of his daughter to court for telling his parents about the win despite signing an NDA.

The unidentified man, who chose to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons, claims that his daughter’s mother was one of the few people who knew about his lottery win in January 2023. She was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) preventing her from spilling the beans to anyone for a period of almost a decade, as the lottery winner considered “the best uses of the life-changing prize,” but she broke that legally-binding agreement by allegedly telling his parents and sister. Now, the man wants her to pay compensation of “no less than $100,000 per unauthorized disclosure”.

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A 75-year-old Vietnamese woman claims she has not eaten any solid food in 50 years, instead surviving only on water and sugary soft drinks.

Ms. Bui Thi Loi, from Loc Ninh commune, in Vietnam’s Quang Binh Province, looks in great shape for her age, which only makes her diet that much more surprising. The elderly woman insists that she has lived on water and soft drinks for half a century and that she never craves solid foods. It all started in 1963 when she was struck by lightning while she and other women were climbing up a mountain to treat injured soldiers during the war. She was knocked unconscious and although she survived, she was never the same after that. She didn’t eat anything for days after coming to her senses, so her friends started giving her sweetened water.

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A Chinese man barely managed to get off his smart toilet with his bum intact after smoke started coming out of the toilet bowl and the whole thing burst into flames.

The Yangtze Evening News newspaper recently reported the story of a man from Xiamen, Fujian Province, who recorded his smart toilet burning after a suspected short-circuit. The incident occurred on November 10, while the man was using the toilet. At first, there was the smell of smoke, then plumes of white smoke started billowing from the toilet bowl, and finally, just as the man got up from the toilet, the smart toilet burst into flames. Photos taken by the shocked man show that he didn’t even have time to put his shorts on before the toilet started burning.

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A Japanese precision part manufacturing factory recently went viral for its bizarre new product – a line of hammers shaped like realistic bananas.

Hiroshima-based Iron Factory Ikeda is not your typical precision metal manufacturing plant. They specialize in precision metal processing for creating original products with the potential to go viral online. Over the years, they created all sorts of geeky products, from anime-inspired robot masks, figurines, and realistic metallic replicas of various fruits and vegetables, from pineapple to broccoli, but their most popular product so far has to be the banana hammer. It has been around for a while but the company recently launched a new variant and it went viral on social media again.

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A Vietnamese man who had been suffering from severe headaches and even loss of vision over the last five months recently learned that he had a pair of chopsticks stuck in his skull.

The unnamed man was recently admitted to the Cuba Friendship Hospital in the city of Dong Hoi, Vietnam’s Quang Binh province, after complaining of constant headaches, vision loss, and fluid discharge from his nose. When asked, the man revealed no possible cause for these symptoms, but a CT scan showed a tension pneumocephalus, the intracranial equivalent of a pneumothorax, as well as two foreign objects protruding from his nose into his brain. Upon thorough examination, the objects were identified as broken chopsticks…

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A young mother who went viral for recording herself impersonating her 13-year-old daughter at her school in order to prove a point was recently found guilty of criminal trespassing.

On November 15, a jury sentenced Casey Garcia to six months of probation and ordered her to pay a fine of $700 in connection to a 2021 incident where she attended classes at San Elizario Middle School disguised as her teenage daughter, in order to show how easy it was for an adult to enter the school. The mother, who was 30 years old at the time, dyed her hair, put on skin tanner, and wore a hoodie and a face mask in order to pass for her 13-year-old daughter and gain access to the school. She recorded the controversial experiment and posted the video on social media where it got a lot of attention but ultimately led to her arrest.

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Himenii (ひめにぃ様) is a Japanese male influencer who rose to fame by cosplaying as a young, cute girl and then giving himself away by speaking in a deep voice.

Japan is home to many male cosplayers who choose to wear female clothes and fool everyone with their appearance, but Himenii is one of the few who uses this talent to create funny content for his online fans. Himenii’s cosplaying talent is superb, but he is actually famous for his funny videos, in which he either interacts with random people, speaking in a loud voice while disguised as a girl, or stages sketches while filmed by a friend.

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A new water fountain in the Austrian city of Vienna has been described as the ugliest in Europe, possibly the world, despite costing 1.8 million euros ($2 million).

Created by the avantgarde Viennese art group Gelitin, the Austrian capital’s newest water fountain was commissioned by local authorities to commemorate 150 years of Vienna’s modern water system which provided the city with fresh water from streams in the green forests of the Alps and helped eradicate plagues like cholera. The new landmark’s design apparently symbolizes the “communal responsibility for water” and while it did win over the jury that selected Gelitin as the winner, it hasn’t done so well with the general public, especially considering its astronomical price, $2 million.

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The blue-tongued skink, a lizard native to the Australian continent, has a rather bizarre defense mechanism – it sticks its bright-blue tongue out to predators and they actually run away, sometimes.

A subspecies of Tiliqua scincoides, the blue-tongued skink is one of only five animals known to have blue tongues, the other being the chow chow dog breed, the giraffe, the Impala, and the Okapi. However, it is the only one known for using this distinct physical feature to intimidate predators. When a blue-tongued skink feels threatened, it will start sticking out its blue tongue rapidly, and the contrasting blue tongue against the pink background of its mouth will actually make some animals think twice before attacking it. It sounds weird, but there is a logical explanation behind this unique defense strategy.

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Inishmore, the largest of Ireland’s Aran Islands, is home to a remarkable natural wonder, a rectangular pool cut so straight into limestone that it looks man-made.

Also known as “The Wormhole” or “The Serpent’s Lair”, Poll na bPéist is a natural water basin with an edge length of approx. 10 by 25 meters within a stone formation. It can only be accessed by walking along the cliffs south of the ancient site Dún Aonghasa, but in recent years it has become famous for hosting the renowned Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. The most fascinating thing about Poll na bPéist is its remarkable rectangular shape, which has led many to question its natural origins and sparked several theories, including that it is the work of an ancient civilization.

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Doctors in Missouri got the shock of their lives during a routine colonoscopy when they came across a fully developed fly living in the patient’s traverse colon.

The American Journal of Gastroenterology recently published the bizarre case of a 63-year-old man who had a fly living inside his intestines. The man had shown up for a routine colon cancer screening earlier this year, and doctors at a Missouri hospital conducted a colonoscopy – a procedure where a camera is inserted into the intestines to check for any abnormalities. And that is exactly what the physicians found while exploring the patient’s traverse colon – the area at the top of the large intestine. – an intact fly that had somehow survived the gastric acid and was chilling inside the man’s body.

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China’s hospitality sector routinely holds bed-making competitions that both showcase the skill and dedication of hotel employees and motivate others to achieve the same level.

In order to provide guests with the best hospitality services, Chinese luxury hotels require their staff to undergo intensive bed-making training, and the very best of them get to participate in bed-making competitions hosted by the hotel chain, or held at a regional or national level. And these contests are no joke! Participants need to be masters of their trade to stand a chance of convincing the jury that they deserve to win. Apart from speed – the first contestant to finish gets bonus points – competitors have to abide by certain rules and make sure that they pay great attention to detail.

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The people of Omagh, a small town in Northern Ireland, have been complaining about a mysterious humming sound that can be heard at night and disrupts their sleep.

In recent weeks, the Omagh District Council has actively been trying to identify the source of a nighttime noise that several residents from all over the small Northern Ireland town have been complaining about. Unfortunately, all their efforts so far have ended in failure, leaving them with no other choice than to call in sound experts to solve the mystery. People “usually characterize it as a persistent buzz or hum” that differs from the sound of passing vehicles and that can only heard late at night, usually around 12:00 am – 01:00 am. While some have gotten used to it, others claim that it is interfering with their night sleep and demand that something be done about it.

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