Weed and fitness apparently go well together, and the Power Plant Fitness gym, in San Francisco, wants to prove that once and for all by allowing clients to consume cannabis in various forms, while they work out. Power Plant Fitness advertises itself as the world’s first cannabis-friendly gym.

Before you get the wrong idea about this place, it’s important to mention that Power Plant Fitness “won’t be a place to get high and just screw around,” quite the opposite. Co-founders Jim McAlpine and Ricky Williams claim that they are “focused on the athletic side, not the cannabis side,” and that they want to tackle the stereotype that pot users are lazy. The new gym will use cannabis as a tool to improve members’ concentration and speed up their post-workout recovery. McAlpine says he experienced the positive effects of weed while skiing, and that gave him the idea to try it in a gym environment.

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86-year-old Riccardo Bertani is an exceptional man. Born to a family of farmers in Caprara, a small settlement in Reggio Emilia, Italy, he abandoned his study right after elementary school and dedicated his life to translating and documenting over 100 extinct and rare languages from all around the world.

“It was castrating, I quit,” Bertani says about his decision to leave school right after completing his elementary studies. “I was interested in other things, and I have to say that only one teacher understood my decision.” Claiming to be “allergic to math”, the young boy started working in the fields, like most of the men in his village, but soon realized he wasn’t much of a farmer, either. That’s when he started focusing more on the things he was most passionate about, reading and learning languages.

Since Riccardo’s father was a member of the Communist party and former mayor of the village, most of the books in his house growing up were Russian tomes. Even though he didn’t understand the language, he was fascinated by them. He started looking up authors like Lev Tolstoy, reading their works in Italian, and then using a Russian grammar book to learn the original language they had been written in. For some reason, he was attracted to Eastern countries like Russia and the Ukraine and for the next 18 years he did nothing but translate whatever books he could find from those countries. And after diving deeper into their culture, he discovered all these different Siberian people, Mongolians, Eskimos, and developed a taste for rare and extinct languages.

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A 54 year old man from Kasugai city, in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, was recently arrested after he confessed to stabbing himself in the hip area as an excuse to skip work. He had previously told police that a stranger had attacked him with a knife.

It happens to the best of us, we wake up one morning and at least think about emailing or calling the boss to tell him we’re too sick to come to work, and spend the rest of the day binge watching our favorite TV series. But some people really go all-out in order to make their excuses seem more legit. Case in point, 54-year-old Masaru Miura who wanted to skip work on February 22 so badly that he stabbed himself with a kitchen knife in the bathroom at Nagoya Municipal Subway station, Kasugai. He then proceeded to call the police and tell them that he had been attacked by a total stranger while he was relieving himself.

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What if your smartphones could send data about themselves to your iPhone? It sounds absurd, but Swiss sock manufacturer BlackSocks has been producing “Smarter Socks” that actually communicate with the owner’s smartphone ever since 2012. And yes, you can still buy them, but they’re definitely not cheap.

BlackSocks believes mankind is made for greater things than sorting socks, so in order to save their clients some valuable time, they came up with a high-tech way of helping them figure out which two socks go together. They might have overdone it a little bit, though, as this system involves Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips on the socks, a handheld device that decodes the info on these chips, as well as a dedicated app for your smartphone. It sounds like a pretty complicated system for such a simple task as sorting out socks, but if you’re the kind of guy who likes to keep his socks paired, you’re going to love it.

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It is very dry in Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, and the animals there are struggling to find vital water water sources. The bad news is that rain isn’t expected to fall again until November, but the good news is that there are people willing to bring water to the animals by the truckload until that happens.

Patrick Kilonzo Mwalua is the founder of Tsavo Volunteers, a group of animal lovers who look after the vulnerable wildlife of Tsavo National Park. Poachers are generally their biggest problem, but these days, the drought is threatening to kill even more animals . The prolonged drought has made water “a very precious commodity”, and thirsty animals sometimes have to walk long distances to find the few watering holes that haven’t dried up. Due to their scarcity, elephants often fight each other for the right to drink, which leaves the smaller, weaker ones at risk of dying. But Patrick and his team are not about to let that happen.

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He calls himself “Black Widow”, but his homemade spandex costume makes him look like a cross between Spiderman and Deadpool. He has been patrolling the streets of Norfolk, in Hampton Roads for the past two years, although not many people even know he exists. That may have something to do with the fact that he hasn’t done much crime busting so far.

Black Widow refuses to reveal his face and his real name, but goes by the alias Matsuda Yuuma, and claims to be 20 years old. He says he is a first Dan black belt, and has also tried karate and Muay-Thai, but he hasn’t had the chance to test out his fighting skills in a clash with wrong-doers. In fact, he spends most of his days helping out the homeless, performing first aid in case of accidents, and the little crime fighting that he does mainly resumes to preventing car break-ins and de-escalating potentially violent situations. Still, he always carries a trusty can of pepper spray and a retractable police baton, in case things get hairy.

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Do companies need a strong leader to make it in today’s highly competitive environment? Many would say “yes, definitely”, but the employees of one Swedish software consultancy company would tell them otherwise. They don’t have a CEO. Nobody tells anyone what to do, instead all the 40 employees have meetings and decide together.

Crisp, the software consultancy firm that has become world famous for not having a boss, has in fact gone through a number of organisational structures, including the classic formula of having a single person running things. Hoping to get its employees more involved, it moved on to changing its chief executive officer annually, but ultimately, the 40-strong staff decided there was actually no need for a single leader, so they scrapped the position altogether.

“We said, ‘what if we had nobody as our next CEO – what would that look like?’ And then we went through an exercise and listed down the things that the CEO does,” said Yassal Sundman, a developer at Crisp. He and his colleagues quickly realized that many of the CEO’s responsibilities overlapped with their own, with the few roles that didn’t easily shareable among other employees. SO they decided to give the boss-less experiment a try.

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The life of one garden snail may not mean very much in the grand scheme of things, but for one Israeli woman who accidentally stepped on one, cracking its brittle shell, it was enough to warrant a visit to the local vet clinic.

It’s quite in rainy in Tel Aviv this time of year, and moisture-loving garden snails are very active. They sometimes venture outside their natural habitat, and, unfortunately, some of them get stepped on by careless humans. Most of the time the snail get squashed, but, in the most fortunate cases, only their shells get damaged. If they don’t suffer major injuries to their bodies, snails will usually fix their mobile homes by drawing in calcium, but one lady in the Israeli capital didn’t want to leave anything to chance after accidentally stepping on a slow-crawling snail.

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Labs To Go, a paternity testing laboratory in Virginia Beach, has come under fire for its use of a couple of controversial billboards that they claim were just intended to be funny. People didn’t see them that way, though, and it’s easy to see why.

The billboard that got the most attention in the media is located off Armistead Ave. near Downtown Hampton, and shows a male U.S. soldier standing next to a smiling postman, with the catchphrase “Who’s the Daddy” taking up most of the advertising space. While the fact that they chose an African-American man as the postman and a Caucasian soldier makes the joke extremely obvious, that didn’t prevent folks from expressing their disapproval of the advert.

The second Labs To Go Billboard is on display in Norfolk, and shows a blonde woman with a Pinocchio-like nose next to the catchphrase “Is the Mother a Liar?” and phone number of the paternity testing lab. This one didn’t sit too well with the local community either.

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Designed to help frequent flyers bypass airport baggage queues, reduce baggage fees and virtually eliminate the risk of lost luggage, this modular Airport Jacket features 14 pockets and two detachable “pocket panels” that fit around 15 kilograms of luggage.

“With airlines beginning to charge for overhead carry-on baggage as well as severely restricting baggage allowances for the low fare economy traveler, my partner and I have designed a modular jacket that allows you to wear your laptop, tablet, two pairs of shoes, a pair of jeans, five t-shirts, a jumper and an SLR camera,” designer Claire Murphy explains. “It totals 14 deep pockets, including eight pockets at hip length, 11 pockets at three-quarter length and 14 pockets at full length. It includes two detachable pocket panels, and a carry-on size duffle bag.”

Claire and Benke Murphy came up with the idea for the Airport Jacket while traveling home with their newborn child. They had so much extra carry-on luggage, because of the baby, that the airline tried to charge them $140 for it, more than the cost of their tickets. So they had to clothes, gadget chargers, diapers and toys into their pockets, until they were just over the weight limit. They dodged the tax, but everything was sticking out of their pockets and it was a pretty uncomfortable plane ride. That’s when they decided that there was a massive need for a solution to this problem, and the idea for the Airport Jacket was born.

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It’s no secret that Louis Vuitton is one of the most expensive luxury brands in the world, but what you probably didn’t know is that they also make rulers. Yes, the kind kids carry in their pencil cases, only cooler looking and way more expensive.

There’s no point beating around the bush, the Louis Vuitton ruler costs a whopping $175. It’s a small 15-centimeter ruler, so that’s over $11 per centimeter, and even taking into consideration the brand, and the fact that it’s lined with high-quality leather for comfort, I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that anyone could pay so much for a stationery item. Maybe the trademark four petal flowers in the form of stencils will sweeten the deal for fans of the brand, but still, that’s almost $200 for a freaking kids’ ruler!

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For most of us, swinging 360 degrees around the spindle of a swing set is a distant childhood dream, but for a group of adrenaline seekers in Estonia, it’s a passion they never grew out of. Not only do they still love defying gravity, but they actually created a competitive sport around their favorite pastime. That sport is known as “kiiiking”.

Swings are deeply embedded in Estonian culture, and you can still find various types of swings in villages and towns all around the country. They are used by children and adults alike, either for simple fun, or as a way for communities to bond during celebrations. So maybe it doesn’t come as a big surprise that Estonia has an extreme sport based on swinging. Some people see it as dull, others as pointless, but to those who practice it, kiiking is the coolest thing in the world.

As you might remember, swinging around the spindle of some playground swings was possible, but at the same time dangerous. From simple bruises to broken bones and concussions, there were a lot of things that could go wrong during such an attempt, which is why in 1993, an Estonian man by the name of Ado Kosk created a pair of wooden swings designed specifically for going all the way around the spindle. They were rudimentary contraptions made up of simple levers with a pair of wooden rods attached to a flat seat on one end and the rotating spindle on the other. Nobody knew it at the time, but that was when kiiking was born.

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In an effort to make his Buddhist temple more accessible to the wider public and draw younger generations to religion, a former DJ turned Buddhist priest has been holding “techno memorial services” at his temple in Fukui City, Japan.

Attending one of the unconventional memorial services organized at the Shō-onji Buddhist temple by 49-year-old Gyōsen Asakura feels more like a warehouse rave than a traditional religious experience. A kaleidoscope of psychedelic lights bathes the golden decorations of the temple, and electronic music ranging from IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) to breakbeats blends with chantings of Buddhist scripture.

The sight of a Buddhist priest wearing his traditional garb, but also sporting a pair of large headphones while operating a DJ station during his sermon only adds to the psychedelic feel of attending a techno memorial service at Shō-onji. It’s definitely a strange experience, but one that it is fulfilling its purpose of bringing people, especially youths, back to religion.

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Ever wonder what it would feel like to be thrown around in a giant metal bowl with only a few metal bars keeping you from literally flying out of the bowl or bumping face first into other people? If so, all you have to do is take a ride on a Tagada, one of the most dangerous amusement park rides ever invented.

The Tagada may not be as fast or as steep as a roller-coaster, but it is certainly more dangerous. You may scream in terror when riding on a roller-coaster, but deep in your mind you know that you are safely harnessed to your seat and the chances of something going wrong are very small. With the Tagada, on the other hand, the total lack of restraints makes the danger of physical injury very real, but that’s exactly what makes it so popular with thrill seekers.

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Taiwan recently banned euthanizing abandoned animals in shelters, a law believed to have been prompted by the shocking suicide of a young veterinarian, in May 2016. 31-year-old Chien Chih-cheng injected herself with euthanasia drugs, after becoming extremely disturbed by the large number of animals she had to put down.

Chien Chih-cheng was the director of of an animal shelter in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District. She had chosen to work at the shelter because of her love for animals, and her colleagues remember that she “often worked overtime, rarely took a proper lunch break, and sacrificed her holidays to give the dogs more attention and make their lives better.” After graduating from one of Taiwan’s top university with the highest score in a civil service examination, Chien could have opted for a number of desk jobs, but she chose to dedicate her life to helping abandoned animals and getting them adopted by new families. But her job also required her to euthanize the animals that didn’t get adopted after a certain period of time, and this took a heavy toll on the young animal lover, especially after animal rights activists accused her of killing hundreds of abandoned dogs.

“Some animal welfare activists have unleashed relentless attacks on the Sinwu shelter and Chien was a target of those attacks,” Taoyuan City Councilor Wang Hao-yu wrote on Facebook last year. “She was even described as a ‘butcher.’ For a young woman who chose to work at the shelter because of her love for animals and whose duties involved euthanizing stray animals every day, those abuses were like stabs to the heart.”

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