The town of Kudrovo, in Russia’s Leningrad Region, is home to the country’s largest residential building, a giant oval-shaped monstrosity featuring 3708 apartments and 35 different entrances.

Completed in 2015 as part of the massive ‘Novyy Okkervil’ residential complex on the outskirts of Kudrovo, Russia’s largest residential building got its first international coverage in 2021 when aerial photos of it made it to the first page of Reddit, getting over 50,000 upvotes and thousands of comments. People were equally fascinated and freaked out by the enormous building, and many compared it to a human anthill. The comparison is not as farfetched as it might seem, because the concrete oval of Kudrovo is home to between 11,000 and 18,000 people (reports from Russian media vary) all technically living under the same roof.

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Italian fashion label Dolce & Gabbana is taking the canine perfume world by storm with Fefé, an “olfactory masterpiece” created by a master perfumer that will leave your pooch smelling like a million bucks.

Priced at an eye-watering €99 ($108) per 100 ml, Fefé comes in a “sleek green lacquered glass bottle, adorned with a vibrant red metal cap and a precious 24-carat gold-plated paw.” Smell-wise, it features “the cocooning and warm notes of Ylang, the clean and enveloping touch of Musk, and the woody creamy undertones of Sandalwood.” Inspired by D&G founder Domenico Dolce’s “unconditional love for his loyal dog Fefé,” the new designer perfume for canines is safe pet cosmetics certified, approved by vets, safety tested, and “enjoyed by dogs.”

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Polmard, a small farm in Saint Mihiel, France, produces the world’s most exclusive meat using a process called hibernation. It allows the meat to be stored and cured for up to 15 years with no loss of quality.

Alexandre Polmard is a sixth-generation farmer, breeder, and butcher in a family that has been producing beef cuts since 1846. However, the business rose to prominence in the 1990s, after Alexandre’s grandfather and father invented a new and revolutionary meat treatment they dubbed ‘hibernation’. Cold air is blown at speeds of up to 120 kilometers per hour over the meat in a -43 C environment at the farm’s state-of-the-art laboratory in Saint Mihiel and this allows the meat to be cured for over a decade, with no loss of quality. If anything, the longer the curing time, the higher the quality, and the price, with one kilogram of 15-year-old hibernated rib steak selling for an eye-watering $3,200.

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A Japanese man’s personal life has recently become the talk of the internet after he revealed that he is perfectly ok with his wife of three years having a boyfriend and even bringing him into the family home.

Prince Soy, a young Japanese chef and blogger who promotes and sells additive-free okara granola online, has recently been drawing a lot of attention for very different reasons. On July 8th, he took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that his wife Seira would be returning home after spending six months studying abroad and that she would be bringing her new boyfriend along. The controversial post quickly went viral, sparking a heated online debate about Prince Soy’s marriage and the three-way relationship. The controversy didn’t seem to bother the married man who actually documented the visit of his wife’s boyfriend through short clips and multiple social media posts.

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A Japanese man recently shocked the internet after announcing that he managed to save 132 million yen ($640,000) over the last two decades with the goal of retiring early from his stressful job.

The unnamed 45-year-old man took to social media to announce that he had finally achieved FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) after dedicating the last twenty years and ten months to this goal. In the early 2000s, he managed to secure a stable but very demanding job where he was constantly required to work overtime, sometimes past midnight. He had a decent salary of around five million yen ($32,000) per year, so instead of quitting his job and looking for something less stressful, he decided to push through all the hardships and save as much money as possible so he could retire early. However, the level of frugality he endured throughout the last two decades left a lot of people wondering if his efforts were worth it.

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Savor, a California-based startup backed by legendary businessman Bill Gates, has come up with a method of producing butter-like fat out of just carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Starting from the idea that all fats are composed of chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, Savor patented a thermochemical process to build fat molecules and then produce dairy-free alternatives to products like milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream that not only have the same texture as the real thing but also taste the same. This process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does, so this synthesized fat has a much lower carbon footprint than real animal fat. So far, taste tests have shown that Savor’s alternative to butter has an almost indistinguishable flavor from the real thing, but the company still has a lot of challenges to overcome before bringing it to market.

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Chinese prosecutors recently filed lawsuits against at least 16 companies accused of requiring female jobseekers to undergo pregnancy testing.

Chinese law explicitly prohibits employers from carrying out pregnancy tests as part of pre-employment examinations, but some companies are so worried about the costs of maternity leave and benefits that they prefer to make sure the women they hire are not pregnant. Earlier this month, prosecutors in the Tongzhou district of Nantong, China’s Jiangsu Province, announced that it had sued 16 companies for illegally testing female job applicants for pregnancy without even formally informing them about it. Their investigation revealed that companies violated women’s right to equal employment opportunities, as at least one candidate was rejected after it was revealed that she was pregnant.

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A 17-year-old Chinese student from a rural vocational school who shocked her country by ranking 12th among 802 participants in an elite math contest is now facing accusations of cheating.

Math contests are a big deal in China, but it’s very rare for such competitions to capture the attention of an entire country like this year’s Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition. Organized by Alibaba’s DAMO Academy and the Alibaba Foundation, the contest is free to enter for math enthusiasts from around the world, but it is usually dominated by math majors from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and MIT. However, this year, something extraordinary happened. Not only was 17-year-old Jiang Ping the only girl in the top 30 after the first round of the competition, but she was also the only one whose studies didn’t focus on math. The unlikely math genius studies fashion design at a rural vocational school in Jiangsu Province, and only studies advanced mathematics as a hobby.

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A Japanese couple known for uploading wholesome family videos on YouTube sparked controversy after filming their 2-year-old daughter crying inside a locked car on a hot day for about 30 minutes instead of getting her out.

At the end of May,  ラウなのファミリー (“Rau-nano Family), a YouTube channel that documents the daily life of a Japanese couple with their three children, uploaded a video titled 炎天下の中…2歳娘が車に閉じ込められました (“Under the blazing sun… my 2-year-old daughter was locked in the car,”).  The shocking title hints at the couple’s goal of grabbing attention and boosting viewership, but while the video managed to do just that, they didn’t anticipate the criticism coming with their new-found fame. That is surprising, to say the least, as the controversial video shows the father of the family casually filming his 2-year-old daughter as she cries desperately for about 30 minutes after accidentally getting stuck in the family car on a hot summer day with no windows open.

The disturbing video, which has since been removed from the Rau-nano Family YouTube channel, shows the head of the family placing the older daughter, two-year-old Nanoka, in the backseat of the family’s Toyota, and preparing to do the same with her younger sister. It is at this moment that Nanoka, who is holding the car keys as her father handles the little sister, accidentally locks herself in the car.

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Designed and built by eight Dutch engineers, the world’s longest rideable bicycle is 180 feet long (55.16 meters), roughly the same length as four double-decker buses.

39-year-old Ivan Schalk had been thinking about building the world’s longest bicycle since reading about it in a Guinness Book of Records when he was a child, but he only embarked upon this project in 2018, as a way to fill up his free time. He knew it wasn’t the kind of thing he could build himself, so he sought the help of like-minded people in his home village of Prinsenbeek, which is apparently well-known in the Netherlands for its tech-savvy residents. Together, they spent about four years –  not counting the two years of interruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – working on the world’s longest bicycle, a metal behemoth that needs at least two riders.

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VabsRider, the ‘world’s first virtual axis bicycle seat,’ is an innovative bicycle saddle featuring two sides that move independently as you pedal to distribute the load more evenly for a more comfortable ride.

Australian engineer Robin Macan had always wondered why no one had come up with a more comfortable bicycle seat. The flaw of the common saddle was obvious – “no amount of cushioning can compensate for the inherent pain points on the human body,” so he came up with a concept for an articulating bicycle seat that would dynamically distribute body weight as the rider pedaled. He took his prototype to the Inventors Association of Australia, a nonprofit offering support to inventors, and that was where he connected with industrial designer Philippe Guichard. The two set out to refine the design, and after two years of work, they combined forces with Whistle, an industrial design and engineering company, to develop a market-ready product. Now, the vabsRider split-seat bicycle saddle is ready to offer users the most comfortable bike ride of their lives.

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Spring onions and coffee definitely don’t sound made for each other, but spring onion-infused lattes are apparently all the rage in China these days.

A simple search for the #springonionlatte hashtag on TikTok or Instragram will yield dozens of photos and videos with scallion-topped latte cups. They first went viral last month, when multiple Asian publications covered the unusual drink, calling it one of the most surprising combinations ever attempted. Apparently, to make a good green onion latte, you first have to mash a few green onions in the cup, then add ice, milk, and coffee, before finally topping it off with lots of chopped green onions, because why not?

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A so-called blind dating cafe in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has come under fire for installing a one-way window that allows men to see the girls they are talking to, but not vice-versa.

On June 1st, a blind dating cafe in Ho Chi Minh’s District 1 went viral for a controversial reason. According to multiple reports, Mina Cafe features two different rooms for men and women, separated by a glass wall. The controversy lies in the fact that the wall is advertised as a mirror when in reality it is only a mirror from the women’s side. The men’s room is dark and they can clearly see the person on the other side. Basically, the blind date part is only valid for the women, as the men can freely admire their potential partners like items on display.

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An unknown person believed to be a scorned ex-boyfriend placed over 50 food orders at multiple restaurants in Izmir, Turkey, and sent them all to the same address.

The incident took place last week, at around 9:00 pm, when over two dozen couriers showed up in front of an apartment building on Çimen Street, in Izmir’s Balçova district. The unusual gathering was captured on video by passers-by and the clips shared on Turkish social media quickly went viral. It wasn’t long before the press got involved and started investigating the story. It turns out that a person took advantage of Turkish food delivery app Yemeksepeti‘s cash-on-delivery option to place several orders under fake names and send them all to the same address.

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A Quebec man suffering from body integrity identity disorder (BIID) asked a doctor to remove the fourth and fifth fingers on his left hand because he felt they didn’t belong on his body.

Dr. Nadia Nadeau from the Department of Psychiatry at Université Laval recently published a case report about an unnamed patient who had been experiencing traumatizing thoughts that the last two fingers on his left hand didn’t belong on his body since childhood. Throughout his life, these thoughts caused him pain, constant irritability, impaired dexterity, and vivid nightmares that the two fingers were rotting or burning. Although the patient did not share his distress about his fingers with his family out of embarrassment, he often fantasized about having them removed himself.

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