A small town in western France has gone viral for marking a busy intersection with overlapping white lines in order to confuse motorists and make them slow down.

The town of Bauné, near Angers, is home to only about 1,700 people, but it has to deal with heavy traffic on a daily basis, because of its location at the crossroads between two departmental roads – D74 and D82. Some of the roughly 2,300 that pass through Bauné every day can have speeds of over 100 km/h (60mph), even though the town’s intersection is clearly marked with signs limiting the speed at 30 km/h. In order to get drivers to slow down, local authorities came up with the idea of using confusing road markings in the form of overlapping continuous lines. Interestingly enough, the strategy worked like a charm!

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The hottest cosmetic trend on TikTok these days is ‘Barbie Botox’, a procedure in which botox is injected into the trapezius muscles in order to make the neck look longer and more slender.

The Barbie Botox procedure was originally devised as a way to relax the severely overworked trapezius muscles which could cause painful neck tension and even migraines, but one of its side effects was purely cosmetic. When the neurotoxin is injected into each trapezius muscle at the bottom of the neck, it cuts the connection to the nerve, temporarily paralyzing the muscle. Over time, this causes the trapezius to shrink, which makes the person’s neck look longer, and more slender, kind of like that of a plastic doll, hence the name…

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Bored during the last stages of the Covid-19 lockdown, a Japanese man spent a whole month catching dung beetles and creating a mesmerizing color gradient collection.

On August 17, Japanese Twitter (X) user bochimushi posted a photo of hundreds of shiny dung beetles arranged by color – from deep blue to purple – forming an impressive gradient. Apparently, the eye-catching collection of beetles was created in August of last year, as a way to pass the time during the end of the Covid-19 lockdown. Bored out of his mind, the man started hunting dung beetles and then arranging them neatly in this gradient style for a stunning visual effect. Bochimushi’s collection consists of a whopping 450 dung beetles.

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The Dutch Headwind Time Trial Championship is only 8.5 kilometers long, but it is considered one of the hardest cycling challenges in the world.

If you’ve ever ridden a bike against a reasonably strong wind, you know just how difficult dealing with the extra drag can be. Now imagine doing it in winds of well over 100km (60mph), over a distance of nearly kilometers, using a single-gear bicycle. Some people say that the Tour de France is the hardest bicycle race in the world, while others think that the title should go to Race Across America, but in terms of difficulty per kilometer, the Dutch Headwind Championship could definitely throw its hat in for the title as well. It only takes place during storms, when the wind force is expected to be at least 7, on the Oosterscheldekering storm barrier, which faces the North Sea.

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The ARCHAX is a real-life 4.5-meter-tall mecha robot created by Japanese company Tsubame Industry that can be yours for the low price of 400 million yen ($2.75 million).

If, like me, you grew up watching Gundam anime and playing video games like Armored Core or Titanfall, you probably imagined yourself piloting a giant mecha at least once in your life. Well, thanks to a company called Tsubame Industry, that dream is about to become reality. Well, if you can afford it, of course. The small Japanese startup recently showcased its newest product, dubbed ‘ARCHAX’, a pilotable robot inspired by Japanese mecha culture. Standing a whopping 4.5 meters tall and weighing around 3.5 tons, this real-life mecha is powered by a 300V battery and can switch from a standing mode to drivable mode, attaining a top speed of 10 kilometers per hour. However, in order to experience the thrill of piloting the ARCHAX, you’ll have to pay an estimated 400 million yen ($2.75 million) for one.

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A HaiDiLao restaurant in Wuxi, China, has gone viral for launching a shampooing service for loyal customers who want to get the smell of food out of their hair after a meal.

Enjoying a bowl of tasty hotpot is usually an enjoyable experience, but carrying the smell of the food with you in your hair for hours or even days, not so much. Luckily, if the pilot program of one popular hotpot restaurant chain proves successful, hotpot enjoyers across China won’t have to worry about their hair smelling like a kitchen anymore. HaiDiLao, China’s largest hotpot restaurant chain, recently launched a shampooing service at one of its restaurants in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. The hair salon-like experience is only available to loyal customers who accumulate enough loyalty points, called ‘Lao coins’, by spending enough money at HaiDiLao locations.

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Catia Lattouf de Arída has been using her apartment in Mexico City as a hospital and sanctuary for injured and abandoned hummingbirds for the last 11 years.

As pollinating agents, hummingbirds are a very important part of Mexico’s ecosystem, but because of the ever-expanding urban landscape, they face all sorts of serious threats. That’s where 73-year-old Catia Lattouf de Arída comes in. As a self-taught hummingbird caretaker, she dedicates most of her free time and resources to nursing the tiny birds back to health or at least providing the necessary palliative care to ensure an easy, dignified passing. She has been doing it for over a decade and her home in Mexico City has become known as a hummingbird hospital.

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Arthur, a 7-year-old boy from Brazil’s Paraná region tragically lost his life after playing in limestone dust and posing for an innocent family photo.

The deadly incident occurred on Aust 3, in the town of Ipriranga, southern Brazil. 7-year-old Arthur was playing on the side of the road under the watchful eye of his family when he noticed a pile of fine white dust. The boy apparently thought it would be fun to roll and play in it and even cover himself in the white dust like kids usually do with sand, at the beach. His parents apparently didn’t see anything wrong with it either, and they even took a photo of the boy playing and posing with two thumbs up. They had no idea that this would be the last photo of the young boy alive. Moments after getting up from the pile of white dust, Arthur started feeling bad and he was taken to a local hospital, but doctors could do nothing to save his life.

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A Mexican man can consider himself lucky to be alive after being shot in the head at least two times only to have the bullets ricochet off of his skull.

On August 2nd, the man, referred to only as Francisco by Mexican media, was strolling through the streets of the Gustavo A. Madero neighborhood of Mexico City when he was approached by a man identified as Carlos N. who shot him in the head at close range two times. The reasons for the attack have not yet been revealed, but what most headlines have been focusing on is the miraculous outcome of the gunshots. Instead of growing through Francisco’s head, the point-blank shots ricocheted off of his skull, leaving the victim with minor flesh wounds.

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The removal of two prominent Chinese female track runners from the IAAF world rankings has reignited the debate surrounding their gender following previous accusations that they were actually men.

Liao Mengxue and Tong Zenghuan first made international news headlines during the 2019 National Athletics Championships, when they won the 4x400m relay race as part of a team representing Hunan Province. However, people didn’t focus on their athletic prowess as much as on their appearance. People didn’t think they looked feminine enough and accused them of being men posing as women to gain an unfair advantage in women’s athletic competitions. Some claimed they had Adam’s apples or that they had too much ‘junk’ in the groin area to be women, but the controversy eventually died out. Until recently anyway, because now the debate has been reignited by Liao and Tong’s exclusion from the new IAAF (International Association of Athletic Federations) world rankings.

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A woman allergic to peanuts claims to have had no choice but to buy all the peanut packets on board a plane so staff couldn’t offer them to other passengers, thus putting her life at risk.

Leah Williams was on a Eurowings flight from London to Dusseldorf, in Germany, when she noticed the cabin crew getting ready to serve snacks to the passengers. Because she suffers from a severe nut allergy, she felt it necessary to let the flight attendants know as well so they could inform the other passengers about it and refrain from serving peanuts during the flight. Only she claims that the cabin crew was less than empathetic to her health problems, leaving her no choice but to buy all the packets of peanuts available, just so they couldn’t serve them to other people. She ended up spending £144 ($184) on 48 packets of peanuts, almost three times the price of the ticket of the plane ticket. She is now requesting a refund.

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After arguing with his mother about overdue homework, a 10-year-old boy in China ran away from home and straight to the local police station to complain and beg to be put into an orphanage.

Chinese media recently reported a bizarre incident that took place in Chongqing. CCTV footage shows a young boy storming into the Huixing Police Station in Yubei and being approached by two policemen. They start chatting and the 10-year-old boy tells them that he had been reprimanded by his mother for not completing his homework, so he left the family home to join an orphanage. After a bit of convincing work by the officers, the boy gave them his parents’ contact information, so the police contacted his mother who confirmed their argument about the overdue homework. However, she never imagined that her son would run away from home to join an orphanage because of it.

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In the foothills of Shenyang, an industrial city in northeastern China lies the mysterious State Guest Mansions project, a real-estate complex of more than 250 luxury mansions, all of which are abandoned.

The story of State Guest Mansions began in 2010, when business in the Chinese real estate sector was booming. Property giant Greenland Group bought up hectares of land in the foothills around Shenyang and began work on what was supposed to be a retreat for the region’s rich and powerful. 260 European-style villas began rising out of the ground, complete with marble floors and gilded chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, but for some strange reason that has yet to be revealed, development stopped in 2018 and the place has been a ghost town ever since.

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Tucked away on the sixth floor of a Nanjing shopping mall is one of the fanciest, most impressive public bathrooms in the world. To some, it is the world’s most beautiful public bathroom.

Designed by X+Living, a Shanghai-based architecture firm, the bathroom on the sixth floor of the Deji Plaza shopping mall in Nanjing, China makes you feel like you accidentally walked into a whimsical palace. That’s not usually the feeling you get from most public bathrooms… It starts out with a long corridor lined with plants coming out of the walls. This part of the bathroom was designed as “an immersive walk-through-a-garden experience”, but it’s hard to focus on the green decor with dozens of giant lamps shining on you from above, and with the light reflecting on the glossy floor.

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The Giraffenap is a new style of sleeping pod that encourages power naps during the day as a way of improving concentration and work efficiency.

Japan is a notoriously hardworking country that emphasizes extreme dedication to one’s work even at the cost of that person’s health or general wellbeing. Working conditions can get so bad that the Japanese language actually has a term for ‘death by overwork’ (karoshi). In order to put up with this kind of grueling schedule and stress, some Japanese workers turn to short power naps. These are known to boost energy levels and concentration, as long as the person doesn’t go into deep sleep. In order to make it easier for people to get power naps pretty much anywhere, one company has begun installing vertical sleeping pods called ‘Gireaffenap’ in cafes all over the country.

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