A young Los Angeles actor in need of a second job to pay his bills has come with a brilliant way to supplement his income – people walking.

Chuck McCarthy originally considered becoming a dog walker to earn some extra cash, but soon realized that the job required more than walking canines on a leash. “I didn’t want to pick up dog poop, and that’s kind of what you’really being paid for, for dog walking,” he said. But people don’t usually poop when they’return out on walks, so after taking dogs and leashes out of the equation, Chuck realized there was money to be made waking people around Los Angeles instead.

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Last year, a couple of Japanese digital artists shocked the world when they revealed that their daughter Saya, a young beautiful Japanese schoolgirl, wasn’t actually a real person, but an ultra-realistic computer generated model. The two have been working on making Saya look even more life-like ever since, and a recently revealed photo of their “daughter” has once again blown people’ minds.

Saya 2016 takes computer-generated realism to new heights. Everything about her, from the strands of her dark hair and the reflection in her eyes, to the life-like look of her skin is almost perfect, and I find it difficult to believe that most people could tell that she wasn’t a real person if they didn’t know her story beforehand.

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The name “Goat Yoga” can be a bit misleading, but no, it’s not yoga for goats, but yoga for humans on a picturesque farm in Oregon where practitioners can relax in the presence of adorable friendly goats.

Lainey Morse, who owns the No Regrets Farm, in Willamette Valley, Oregon, had worked as a photographer for 10 years, but last year, after dealing with some health problems, she decided to quit shooting portraiture and focus on starting a business around her farm. She has been hosting various outdoor events, and at a recent children’s birthday party, one of the parents, who happened to be a yoga instructor, asked if she could hold a class there. Morse agreed, and the class turned out to be a huge hit, with some people driving over 100 miles from Portland just so they could take part.

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Bruno, a 12-year-old brown Chesapeake-Labrador mix, has become the symbol of Longville, a small Minnesota community of just over 150 residents. Over the past 12 years, he has been taking daily 4-mile trips from his owners’ home to Longville, just so he can spend time with the locals.

To the people of Longville, Bruno is a legend, an ambassador of goodwill, the town mascot, and above all a free spirit. Every resident has either lived or heard a Bruno story, and he’s such a big part of the community that the town even commissioned a wooden statue in his honor. Even though he lives 4 miles away with his owners, Larry and Debbie LaVallee, the friendly brown dog walks to town every day to enjoy the company of his human friends, accept tasty handouts or simply bask in the attention he gets from both familiar locals and tourists. When the day is done, he just walks back home, only to return again the next day, regardless of weather conditions.

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A Japanese tombstone company is using the augmented reality technology made popular by Pokemon Go to allow mourners to “catch” pre-recorded video messages from their deceased loved ones in cemeteries.

Named “Spot Message”, the new Pokemon Go-inspired app is the brainchild of Yoshiyuki Katori, president of Ryoshin Sekizai, a tombstone company based in Katori, Japan’s Chiba prefecture. He claims that the new technology realizes his longtime dream of preserving realistic memories of the dearly departed for the living. “My uncle, who ran a paint store, died eight years ago after he fell from a tall structure at work,” 33-year-old Katori said. “His death was so sudden, and it shattered the lives of his family. I also respected him a lot, so I would often visit his grave, consulting with him in my mind whenever I had issues concerning my business. I wondered how comforting it would be if he could talk to me at his grave, with messages like ‘How are you doing?’ and ‘Hang in there.’ ”

His desire to hear his uncle’s words at his grave inspired the Japanese entrepreneur to use augmented reality to plant pre-recorded messages from the dead at their graves and other places dear to them, for their living friends and family to discover using their smartphones.

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In a bid to give their children a head start in life, wealthy Chinese parents are enrolling them in all kinds of early education programs, including CEO training courses.

Chinese state media reports that an early education institute in Guangzhou, China’s Guangdong province, is offering a ‘CEO training course’ for kids aged between 3 and 12, at a price of 50,000 yuan ($7,500) per year. Kids attend two classes per week, during which they engage in activities such as filing in missing words in sentences and stacking up toy bricks. That doesn’t sound like anything special, but according to a promotional brochure released by the institute, the course “enables young children to become a powerful, competitive leader”.

There’s no denying that China probably has the most competitive educational environment in the world, which means parents would do almost anything to make sure their children don’t get left behind, but experts believe such extravagant courses ultimately benefit the parents rather than the children. They regard their kids’ attendance to such classes as evidence of the family’s social status, completely disregarding the fact that the syllabus they offer is of no real value.

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Inspired by the 2004 Tom Hanks film The Terminal, a homeless army veteran looking for a place to sleep recently decided to move into Heathrow Airport. He originally planned on staying for a couple of nights, but he’s been living there for almost a month.

A former member of the Parachute Regiment who served in Northern Ireland before working in private security, Simon Jones – fake name to protect his identity – fell on hard times after his business collapsed and his romantic relationship ended. Penniless and with no place to sleep, he remembered watching The Terminal, in which the main character is forced to live in an airport after war breaks out in his country leaving him stateless, and decided to crash at Heathrow Airport – the busiest in Europe – for a couple of nights.

“I suddenly lost everything when my business, which provided high-risk assignments and the training of personnel, collapsed. The business put an enormous strain on my relationship and we separated. I was suddenly homeless and, because all the bank accounts were in joint names, penniless,” Jones told English newspaper The Sunday Express. “I was mulling over what to do. I don’t want to be a burden on anybody, so felt I couldn’t stay on friends’ floors for more than a night or two, especially since I can’t pay my way. Then I remembered the Tom Hanks film about the bloke living at an airport. I realized there would be washing facilities and even free wi-fi.”

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There’s a good reason people call Sister Madonna Buder the “Iron Nun”. She competed in her first triathlon at age 52 and went on to complete over 340 of them since then, including 46 Ironman triathlons. At age 86, she is still participating in the grueling endurance events and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

Born in July 1930, in St. Louis, Missouri, Marie Dorthy Buder was never really into running as a child. She was an active girl and even recalls winning a national championship in equestrian events as a 16-year-old, but sport was always just a hobby. At 14, Buder had already decided to become a nun, under the influence of the Visitation Sisters at the all-girls Visitation Academy in St. Louis, Missouri, that her parents put her in after sixth grade. At 23-years-old, Marie Dorothy fulfilled her calling in life and became Sister Madonna. In 1970, she left her congregation to join 38 other nuns from different backgrounds to found new and non-traditional community of Religious Sisters, independent from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. This move gave her the freedom to choose her own ministry and lifestyle and would later lead her to discover her second calling – running.

Sister Madonna Buder only started running for fun at age 48, at the suggestion of a priest, who told her it was good for her body and mind. Before running her first official race, she consulted with Father John about whether it was a good idea, since people weren’t used to seeing a nun competing in running events. She told him she wanted to run for a good cause – Multiple Sclerosis (MS) – but wasn’t sure how the world would react to a nun running a race. The priest told her “Sister, I wish some of my priests would do what you’re doing,” and gave her his blessing.

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Germany is widely regarded as one of the most democratic countries in the world, but for Carola Griesbach and her family it is nothing more that a dictatorship that they just had to escape from. So they hopped in their Volkswagen van and drove 1,400 miles to Moscow’s red Square where they are now asking for political asylum.

51-year-old Carola, her husband Andre, their two daughters – Julia and Dominique – and four grandchildren arrived in Moscow on New Year’s Eve in 2015, hoping to start a new life. They have since been living in a small motel in a forest on the outskirts of the Russian capital, as they wait for their asylum request to be accepted by the Government. Only that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, as authorities consider Germany a “safe” country, so the Griesbachs’ request is unfounded.

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A group of political activists known as The Satanic Temple has announced its intention to establish After School Satan Club programs in public elementary schools in the United States, in an effort to compete with after school religious programs supported by various Christian evangelical groups.

And before you flip out, Satanic Temple leader and co-founder Doug Mesner assures parents that the already controversial after-school program will involve no demon summonings, Satan worshiping or any kind of satanic rituals. After School Satan Club meetings will include a healthy snack, literature lesson, creative learning activities, a science lesson, puzzle solving and an art project. Sounds pretty tame, and Mesner explains that the whole point of the program is to offer young kids an alternative. “It’s critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think,” said Mesner, a.k.a Lucian Greaves.

Despite its name, The Satanic Temple doesn’t encourage the worshiping of the fallen angel, in fact it doesn’t even believe in the existence of a supernatural being that other religions refer to as Satan, or Lucifer, or Beelzebub. The group rejects all forms of supernaturalism and instead promotes scientific rationality. So why use Satan? Simply as a metaphor, a symbol against all forms of tyranny over the human mind. Yes, that obviously includes organized religion.

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The California pipevine swallowtail is considered by many experts to be one of the most magnificent butterflies in North America, but the massive development around San Francisco has caused it to slowly disappear. However, one man’s DIY conservation efforts are bringing this beautiful creature back.

Tim Wong, a young aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, spends his free time raising butterflies, a hobby he fell in love with as a young boy. “I first was inspired to raise butterflies when I was in elementary school,” Wong told VOX.com. “We raised painted lady butterflies in the classroom, and I was amazed at the complete metamorphosis from caterpillar to adult.” Tim used to spend his days in the open meadows outside his home catching, raising and breeding any butterflies he found.

When he got older and learned about the pipevine swallowtail becoming increasingly rare in the San Francisco are, Wong made it his goal to do something about it. Researching the species, he found that while in caterpillar form, it feeds only on a single plant – the California pipevine – which, he realized, had become equally rare around San Francisco.

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If you’re too busy or squeamish to pick up after your dog, you’re going to love this new smartphone app that connects you to someone willing to do it for you, for a fee.

A service that allows you to call someone to pick up your dog’s poop sounds unreal, which is probably why the announcement of Pooper has been met with skepticism. Articles claiming that the app is most likely fake have prompted the creators of Pooper to issue a statement saying that their service is real, but they are fine with all the doubts as long as it spreads the word and attracts more investors.

Here’s how Pooper works: after installing the app on a smartphone and opting for one of the monthly payment plans, a dog owner (referred to as “pooper”) can take a photo of the dog’s excrement, pinpoint its location on a digital map and call on a nearby “scooper” to come pick it up. They are then free to leave knowing that the dog’s business will be taken care of. You can opt to pay $15 a months for two scoops a day in 15-mile scoop radius, $25 for three scoops a day in a 30-mile radius, or $35 for unlimited scoops in an unlimited radius.

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In his most insane stunt yet, professional skydiver Luke Aikins will jump out of an airplane flying at 25,000 feet without a parachute or wingsuit in an attempt to land on a special net designed to break his fall. No one has ever attempted anything like this. If he makes, it, Aikins will become a living legend, if he doesn’t…

Aikins, who has spent much of his life in the air and has over 18,000 parachute jumps under his belt, was approached about doing this extreme jump a couple of years ago by a couple of Hollywood guys looking to produce the all-time-greatest reality TV stunt. “You won’t believe these guys, they want me to jump out without a parachute,” he remembers telling his wife at the time. She said “Oh, with a wingsuit,” to which he replied “No, they want me to do it with nothing.” They had a good laugh about the preposterous proposition, but in the weeks that followed, Luke just could stop thinking about it. Could anybody actually perform such a stunt and live to tell the tale?

If anyone could, it would have to be Aikins. He made his first tandem jump when he was 12, followed by his first solo jump four years later. he’s never really stopped since, performing about 800 leaps a year. He has taught skydiving, performed all kinds of complex stunts and routines, but even when his parachute got tangled with that of another diver, he could always rely on his backup chute. That only happened about 30 times out of 18,000, but this time he would have no backup to turn to. “If I wasn’t nervous I would be stupid,” he says. “We’re talking about jumping without a parachute, and I take that very seriously. It’s not a joke.”

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A group of high-school students from Italy have invented an awesome vending machine that grinds used plastic bottles into pellets which are then turned into smartphone cases by a built-in 3D printer.

Saving the planet, making the world cleaner for future generations or just doing the right thing are powerful arguments for recycling, but the truth is some people require more materialistic incentives to actually give a damn about the environment. It’s a sad reality, but a group of kids have come up with an ingenious invention that may just get more young people involved in waste recycling – a vending machine that eats up plastic trash and turns it into stylish cases for a variety of popular smartphone models.

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Yu Jianchun, A Chinese migrant worker from Henan province with no former mathematical training and no college degree, is being hailed as a real-life version of Will Hunting, the character played by Matt Damon in the 1997 Oscar-winning film “Good Will Hunting”, after finding an alternative method to verify Carmichael numbers.

Carmichael numbers, also known as “pseudo primes”, are large numbers that only appear to be prime numbers, which are only divisible by one and themselves. They are used for credit card encryption and online payments, among other things. There are examinations that can be done to find out which numbers are prime and which are Carmichael numbers, but it’s tricky work. Apparently, a young mailman with no studies in advanced mathematics has just come up with a simpler way to verify Carmichael numbers.

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