A homeless Michigan woman was found living in the rooftop sign of a Family Fare supermarket in Midland. She had been staying there for about a year without anyone noticing her.

The 34-year-old unnamed woman was found living inside the business sign when contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of the Family Fare supermarket in Midland decided to follow the wire. It led them inside the rooftop advertising sign where the clandestine guest had set up a cozy nest complete with flooring, a computer, and a coffee maker. Police officers were called, and the woman told them that she had a job elsewhere but had no home and had been living there for about a year.

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Topi Amma, the mysterious ‘Hat Mother’ of Tiruvannamalai, a Hindu pilgrimage city in Tamil Nadu, is a controversial religious figure that has divided Indian society.

India has no shortage of mystics and real-life incarnations of Hindu deities that people flock to worship, but even in this context, Topi Amma is an unlikely religious figure. The hat-wearing woman is often referred to as a ‘siddha’, an enlightened being who has attained perfection, but to those with a more secular view of the world, she is just a mentally disabled woman in need of medical help. Where believers see a mystic walking through the streets of Tiruvannamalai and speaking in an ancient Tamil dialect that no one understands, others see a homeless woman wandering aimlessly and mumbling jibberish. It’s all a matter of perception, but considering Topi Amma doesn’t even seem to realize the religious craze she has inspired, the latter is probably true.

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Blonde chocolate has yet to reach the popularity of milk, dark, and white chocolate, but it is already recognized as one of the most ingenious variations of white chocolate ever created.

The history of blonde chocolate can be traced back to the year 2004 when French pastry chef Frederic Bau was busy showing off his skills during an exhibition in Japan. He apparently got so carried away during the show that he left his white chocolate melting in a bain-marie for four days. When he finally got back to it, the chocolate had become a pale brown and had a very distinct smell and flavor. Apart from its caramel-like color, this new confection had the milky smoothness of white chocolate, but also butterscotch, toffee, and shortbread-tasting notes, as well as a distinct aftertaste of roasted coffee. Frederic Bau quickly recognized the potential of his discovery, and blonde chocolate was born.

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A Chinese woman is being accused of trying to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by poisoning her water to prevent her from taking maternity leave and thus avoiding a higher workload.

In one of the most shocking cases of work-related incidents reported in China, a worker at a government-affiliated institution in Hubei Province allegedly tried to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by repeatedly poisoning her water in order to avoid the higher workload caused by her maternity leave. The nefarious plan reportedly came to light when the victim noticed that her water kept tasting strange, regardless of its source. At first, she was convinced that it was the office’s water supply, but the taste persisted even after she switched to bottled water. That’s when she decided to investigate further.

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A Quebec art teacher is being accused of selling his high school students’ artworks on his website without their consent for personal profit.

An art teacher at the Westwood Junior High School in Saint Lazare has landed in hot water with the parents of several of his students for allegedly selling their drawings and paintings online without their knowledge and permission. The discovery was made by accident when one of the students searched his name on Google only to discover one of his art class drawings listed for sale on his teacher’s website. Word spread around the school, and before long, other students reported their own artworks had been listed online by the teacher. Some of the kids told their parents about the bizarre practice, and they appealed to the high school board for clarification. Now, some parents are asking for moral and punitive damages from both the art teacher and the high school.

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A coffee shop in Ganzhou, China’s Jianxi Province, has found success with a bizarre but innovative drink that combines the traditional ice latte with dried chilies and chili powder.

Jingshi Coffee launched its now-famous ‘hot ice latte’ back in December, as a tribute to Jianxi Province’s famously fiery cuisine, but the drink proved a big hit and the café is now selling it at a rate of 300 cups per day. Viral videos doing the rounds on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok), show café pouring the lattes in plastic cups before infusing them with dried chili and topping off the drink with chili powder. Those brave enough to have tried it claim that the drink is a bit more spicy than regular lattes, but definitely not unpleasant.

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Mark Boyle, aka The Moneyless Man, gave up on using money in 2008 and has been living a money-free lifestyle ever since. Along the way, he also shunned technology and adopted a more ‘natural’ life.

Having graduated college with a degree in business and economics, Mark Boyle quickly found a good-paying job at an organic food company in Bristol, UK. That had been his plan for years – get a good job and buy all the material things that society (himself included) associated with success. But everything changed one night in 2007, during a friendly philosophizing session with a friend over a glass of Merlot on his houseboat. They were discussing world problems and how to best tackle them to actually make a difference. That’s when he realized that money was at the root of most problems, and remembered Gandhi’s famous quote: ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’.

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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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An American woman recently set a new world record for the world’s loudest burp by a woman after belching at a measured 107.3 decibels.

The previous Guinness record for the loudest burp by a woman dated back to 2009 when Elisa Cagnoni of Italy managed a 107-decibel belch. It was an impressive achievement, but now her record is history. Kimberly “Kimycola” Winter, a young woman from Maryland who has mastered the art of burping, recently visited a “dead room” at iHeartRadio where she managed to release a monstrously-loud burp that beat Cagnoni’s record by 0.3 decibels. Before her historic attempt, Kimycola prepared her body by eating breakfast and drinking coffee and beer. The tried and true combination apparently played a pretty big part in breaking the 14-year-old record.

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A cafe in the Russian city of Perm has been getting a lot of attention after announcing plans to introduce a controversial breast milk-infused latte on its menu.

Perm-based cafe chain Coffee Smile has been the talk of the Russian internet over the past week after announcing intentions to use real human breast milk as an ingredient for coffee products like lattes and cappuccinos. The craziness started earlier this month, when Coffee Smile locations started plastering posters advertising the controversial new ingredient. People started sharing photos of the photos on social media, and before long, local businessman and Coffee Smile owner Maxim Kobelev released a promotional video claiming that his cafes will be using genuine breast milk stored in special, pharmacy-grade bags.

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Police in Russia recently arrested a woman who reportedly dressed a cat in thick baby clothing in order to look like an innocent young mother and traffic dangerous drugs.

It’s a well-documented fact that drug traffickers come up with all sorts of ingenious techniques to move their products undisturbed. We’ve written about drugs diluted in women’s breast implants, or concealed in hollowed-out coffee beans, but these methods pale in comparison to that used by a young Russian woman trying to conceal packets of methamphetamines in the city of Nizhny Tagil. According to police spokeswoman Irina Volk, the unnamed woman was spotted walking hand in hand with a little girl and pushing a stroller with what looked like a baby inside. It’s unclear whether police were tipped off about the woman, or they simply noticed something off about her, but neither she nor her baby were what they seemed.

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A male professional powerlifter recently entered a women’s competition by simply stating that he identified as a woman and easily won first place by smashing the regional record for bench pressing by almost 100 pounds.

Avi Silverberg, the head coach for Team Canada Powerlifting, entered the Heroes Classic women’s tournament in Lethbridge, Alberta on Saturday by identifying as a woman, despite being fully bearded and having undergone no hormone therapy. The tournament rules stated that participants “should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify and not be subject to requirements for disclosure of personal information beyond those required of cisgender athletes,” so Silverberg decided to prove a point. He casually walked on stage and bench-pressed nearly 370 pounds, beating the Alberta women’s record (275 pounds) by almost 100 pounds.

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Danish startup Autofuel has developed a robotic arm capable of refueling a variety of vehicles at gas stations without any kind of human assistance.

A Neste fuel station in Finland is currently the only place in the world where you can have your car refueled by a robot. It’s the pilot site chosen by Autofuel to test its futuristic refueling system – a robotic arm that can locate a car’s fuel tank door, select the right type of fuel, and operate the pump without any kind of human assistance. The third-generation Autofuel robotic arm has been in testing for over a year, and the Danish company is planning to start public testing later this year. Although it may be a while before refueling robots become mainstream, Autofuel believes they will become invaluable when truly autonomous vehicles finally hit the roads.

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Chu-hi-cha is the name of a new type of tea discovered by a Japanese researcher at Kyoto University. It involves brewing the droppings of caterpillars that have feasted on various plants.

Tsuyoshi Maruoka came up with the idea of caterpillar tea during graduate studies at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Agriculture, while researching the mysterious relationship between insects and plants. One day, a senior brought 50 gypsy moth larvae into the lab and told Maruoka that they were a souvenir. He didn’t really know what to do with them at first, but he eventually decided to at least keep them alive until he could decide, so he picked some leaves from a nearby cherry tree and fed them to the caterpillars. When cleaning the droppings left by the critters, he noticed that they had a pleasantly fragrant smell and was almost instantly inspired to brew them into tea.

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A Chinese man recently went viral on social media after he was photographed lighting up and smoking several tobacco cigarettes while running a marathon.

At this point, I think everyone can agree that smoking tobacco isn’t the healthiest thing you can do. But it’s one thing to light up in the comfort of your own home while enjoying a cup of coffee, or on a cigarette break at work, and quite another while running a 42-kilometer marathon. So when photos of a man in his 50’s casually smoking while taking part in the Xin’anjiang Marathon last week went viral, everyone was curious to know his story.

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