An Ecuadorian man sparked controversy after legally changing his gender to ‘female’, because the legal system allegedly favors mothers in custody cases.

René Salinas Ramos, the father of two daughters, is facing legal proceedings for the custody of the girls who currently live with his biological mother. Convinced that the Ecuadorian legal system stigmatizes men while prioritizing the rights of the mothers regardless of circumstances, the man decided to legally change gender in order to even the playing field. Ramos claims that this has nothing to do with his sexuality or gender identity and that it was only a “test of his love for his daughters”.

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Eternity is an A.I.-generated virtual K-pop idol group consisting of 11 members created using advanced deep-fake technology.

K-pop has really taken the world by storm in recent years, with groups like BTS and Black Pink conquering market after market with their catchy songs and energetic dance routines. The genre has become one of South Korea’s main exports, generating tens of billions in revenue, but despite its massive international success, the massive corporations behind the K-pop wave aren’t resting on their laurels. Instead, they are constantly looking for ways to stay relevant in this constantly changing industry, and artificial intelligence is apparently the next big thing. So it’s not that big of a surprise that A.I.-generated virtual K-pop groups are already a thing.

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A Chinese woman recently sparked controversy online after claiming that she has spent the last 12 years of her life trying to raise enough money to ensure that her brother finds a bride.

It’s no secret that securing a bride in China is harder than in most other countries. One of the unexpected effects of the Asian country’s notorious one-child policy was gender inequality. For decades, many couples, especially in rural regions, aimed for boys, turning to sex-selective abortion and even infanticide to make sure that their only child was a boy. Males were strong enough to work and more likely to be successful enough to look after their elderly parents later on in life. Only that created a serious gender inequality in China, with more bachelors for every single woman, which makes it very difficult for men to secure a bride. So in some cases, their families offer them financial support, to increase their chances of finding a suitable bride.

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A French court recently ruled that a man fired from a consulting firm for not being fun enough at the workplace has the right to be as boring as he likes.

In 2015, Cubik Partners, a French management consultancy based in Paris, fired Mr. T, whose full name was not disclosed for privacy reasons, arguing that he was difficult to work with, a poor listener, and simply boring. What the company apparently meant, however, was that Mr. T didn’t go out with his colleagues enough after work, as part of the company’s “fun-based” approach to team building. The employee, on the other hand, clarified that he simply refused to forcibly partake in various excesses, such as consuming large quantities of alcohol and even sharing a bed with colleagues afterward.

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The Greek Island of Ikaria in the Aegean Sea is home to numerous camouflaged houses built under giant rocks to make them harder to spot by pirates.

Nowadays, Ikaria is a popular tourist destination famous for its sandy beaches, picturesque villages and pristine natural landscape. But it wasn’t always the slice of paradise it is today. Hundreds of years ago, Ikaria was a prime target for the pirates who called the Aegean their home, so to protect themselves from their raids, the locals started building ‘anti-pirate’ homes deep into the mountains, to make their island look uninhabited from the sea. At one point, the entire population of Ikaria concealed itself in rock houses that didn’t attract attention unless you literally walked past them.

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A 19-year-old man and a 56-year-old grandmother-of-three in Thailand have been making international news headlines after getting engaged to be married.

Wuthichai Chantaraj, 19, met his fiance, Janla Namuangrak, 56, almost 10 years ago, when the woman moved next to his family home in the Akat Amnuay district of Thailand’s Sakhon Nakhon province. Their first real interaction occurred when Janla asked the 10-year-old boy to help her move some potted plants, and from that day on Wuthichai would often drop by the divorced woman’s house to play and help her with chores. The two describe their early relationship as a friendship, but when Wuthichai turned 17, he started developing feelings for Janla, and they eventually became a couple. They only announced their romance to their families at the start of this year, and their love story has been making headlines in Thailand ever since.

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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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Cymothoa exigua, popularly known as the tongue-eating louse, is a parasitic isopod that attaches itself to the tongue of its fish host, severs circulation, causing the organ to necrose and fall off, and then becomes the new tongue.

We’ve covered a bunch of terrifying parasites on Oddity Central, but few can hold a candle to the tongue-eating louse in terms of creepiness. This critter is one of the few that actually does the phrase “what nightmares are made of” justice. It enters fish through the gills, attaching to them until it matures, at which point it changes sex from male to female. Once this process is complete, the parasite starts to make its way to the fish’s mouth, where it attaches itself to its tongue using its incredibly powerful legs. It then pierces the host’s tongue with its strong bite and begins to suck the blood out of it. The blood vessels can’t keep up with their appetite, and the tongue eventually withers and detaches from the fish.

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An Indonesian woman who recently learned that she was part of a same-sex marriage claims that she never realized her husband of 10 months was actually a woman.

A 22-year-old woman from Jambi City, known only by her initials, NA, met her deceitful husband on an online dating app. He was registered as Ahnaf Arrafif and claimed to be a successful doctor who had studied abroad. They hit it off, and after dating for a couple of weeks, Ahnaf came to stay with her for about a week, during which time he behaved impeccably. He even helped the young woman take care of her parents, who were sick at the time, so when he proposed to NA a few weeks later, the parents quickly gave them their blessing.

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A team of scientists recently announced that a giant meadow of seagrass covering an area three times the size of Manhattan consists of clones of the same exact plant, making it the world’s largest plant.

Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior research fellow at the School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia, and her team had been studying cool water seagrasses in southern Australia for a while, hoping to understand more about their genetic diversity. They took samples from 10 locations across a giant seagrass meadow in Shark Bay in 2012 and 2019, but when they sequenced DNA from the samples, they were shocked to find that it was the same plant.

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After losing her husband to a heart attack, an Indian woman spent 39 years pretending to be a man so she could raise her daughter alone in a patriarchal society.

S Petchiammal had only been married for 15 days when her husband succumbed to a massive heart attack. She was 20 years old at the time and pregnant with her daughter. Soon after giving birth, she started working various jobs to make ends meet, but raising a child as a single mother in Tamil Nadu’s Katunayakkanpatti village, a dominant patriarchal society, was tough. The young woman worked jobs at construction sites, hotels, and tea shops, but she faced harassment and sexual taunts every day, so one day she decided that she needed to make a big change.

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Ever wish you could earn money by turning your daily life into a reality show that anyone could tune in to watch from anywhere around the world? It turns out you actually can.

SpiedLife is a growing international docu-reality platform that essentially allows people to turn their lives into reality shows with the help of webcams. If you have no problem installing a few webcams in your home and broadcasting your life to total strangers 24 hours a day, your average life could become the next Big Brother. SpiedLife allows streamers to stay in touch with their audience through chat rooms, track their channel’s popularity, and pays them for sharing their lives on the platform. But in a time where privacy is being taken more seriously than ever, many think that SpiedLife could have a dark side.

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A ‘one of a kind’ 990-sq-ft apartment in Manchester, England has been getting a lot of attention for its all-black interior.

Apparently inspired by Batman’s Gotham City, every room in the two-bedroom apartment is painted black, with black furnishings, creating a controversial visual effect that some have described as ‘sexy’, and others consider bleak. Located in Piccadilly Basin in Manchester’s popular Northern Quarter, the unique apartment boasts two deluxe double bedrooms, a kitchen and living room space, and a custom-build bathroom complete with a walk-in rain shower. Except for the toilet, bathtub and sink, every surface in the 990-sq-ft pad, including the walls, floor and windows, is black.

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A Buffalo couple is suing a fertility clinic that had allegedly promised to determine the sex of the embryo before it was implanted into the client’s womb, only to deliver the wrong sex.

Heather and Robin Wilhelm-Routenberg had decided to only have a baby if they could guarantee it was a girl, because of emotional trauma Heather had experienced earlier in her life. To that end, the two women approached the CNY fertility clinic in Latham, New York, which, they claim, guaranteed them that it could determine the sex of an embryo created using an egg from Robbie and donor sperm. However, 15 weeks into Heather’s pregnancy, the couple was shocked to learn that they were having a boy, despite specifically asking for a girl. The two women are now suing the clinic for malpractice and breach of contract, among other things.

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Thanks to a new law, a Swiss man was able to change to officially change his gender so he could retire and receive his pension a year earlier.

On January 1st, 2022, a new law came into effect in Switzerland, one that allows any Swiss resident with the “intimate conviction” that they do not belong to the sex they are registered as in the civil status register to change their gender as well as their first name, for just 75 francs ($81.50). Technically, there are supposed to be regulations preventing individuals from taking advantage of the new rules for nefarious purposes, but in reality, civil servants have “no obligation to verify the intimate conviction of the persons concerned,” and usually assume that they are acting in good faith. Sadly, that’s not always the case…

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