A popular Chinese clothing store sparked controversy by showcasing its products on female models walking on treadmills rather than old-fashioned mannequins.

You could say the marketing team at Chinese designer brand store ITIB was thinking outside the box when it decided to replace plastic mannequins with live models walking on small treadmills. The official explanation was that the new way of displaying garments really allowed customers to see how they fit when moving rather than in a stationary position, but few doubted that it was just an ingenious gimmick meant to draw attention. The plan worked perfectly, as videos of the young models mounted on small pedestals outside ITIB flagship store in Hangzhou spread like wildfire on social media, while crowds of people gathered to watch them walk on their little treadmills. However, what the designer collective brand probably didn’t anticipate was the wave of criticism regarding the “dehumanization” and exploitation of the young models.

Read More »

An elderly Thai woman desperate to keep her drug and gambling-addicted son away from temptation installed an iron jail cell inside her home.

After more than 20 years of living in constant fear of her drug-addicted son, a 64-year-old woman from Thailand’s Buriram Province took extraordinary measures to protect herself and her neighbors. She recently had contractors build a jail cell inside her home where she could confine the 42-year-old man when he became violent. She told police that she had tried everything to save her son over the years, including several rehabilitation attempts in over 10 different centers across the country, but nothing worked and he became increasingly violent as time went by. To make matters worse, at one point, the son became addicted to gambling as well, which only made things worse.

Read More »

American start-up Heliospect Genomics is charging wealthy parents-to-be up to $50,000 to screen their embryos for IQ and other desirable traits.

Wish you could ensure your unborn child has a higher-than-average IQ? Well, apparently now you can, with the help of genetic enhancement technology. This is controversial territory, as it tends to normalize the idea of superior” and “inferior” humans,, but according to undercover video footage obtained by the campaign group Hope Not Hate, at least one genomic prediction company has begun selling its services to parents who can afford them. Heliospect Genomics has apparently already offered its services to over a dozen parents undergoing in-vitro fertilization, charging them up to $50,000 to screen 100 embryos for IQ and other traits and boasting that their technology could help select children with IQ scores six points higher than those conceived naturally.

Read More »

A Chinese man known only by his online moniker, Sudden Fantasy, has been receiving a lot of attention online for documenting his life as a jobless man financially supported by his loving wife.

Sudden Fantasy began posting videos on Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) roughly a month ago, but he already has over 1.4 million followers on the popular social network, mainly because of the unique topic he covers. The Chinese young man posts about his life as a kept man in Japan relying exclusively on his wife for financial support. He reportedly moved to the neighboring country about eight years ago and went to date his wife, whose Chinese name is Fenghua, after falling down on hard times. She was there for him when he needed help putting food on the table and covering his tuition, and she eventually became his wife. Despite being well-educated and coming from a wealthy family, Fenghua has no problem providing for her husband who loves sitting around playing video games.

Read More »

An Argentinian woman filed a case in family court to be allowed to stop supporting her 22-year-old daughter financially because she neglected her university studies and didn’t have a job.

The unnamed woman told family court judge María Laura Dumple that her 22-year-old daughter had been enrolled at the National University of Río Negro since 2020 but had only completed 11% of her studies and had no intention of getting a job. She explained that cutting her child off financially was the best way not to allow her to continue doing nothing with her life. Argentina’s Civil Code establishes the obligation of parents to provide resources to their child until the age of 25, provided that the child cannot support himself due to studies or work.

Read More »

A Japanese acupuncture clinic has gone viral for the large number of needles it sticks into patients to help cure them of physical and spiritual ailments.

Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, but practitioners often develop their own techniques in order to stand out from the competition. One such example is the Shirakawa acupuncture clinic in Tokyo, Japan, which relies on a large number of needles inserted in various parts of the body including the face, to relieve patients of all sorts of ailments, from muscle stiffness to bad luck and even possession by evil spirits. The clinic reportedly charges upwards of 200,000 yen ($1,400) per session and is very popular with Japanese celebrities and athletes.

Read More »

A Chinese company is being accused of tricking hundreds of employees into conducting illegal activities so it could then fire them without severance pay.

Wuhan CITIC Design Institute, a company based in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, recently found itself at the center of a huge scandal, after several prominent news outlets reported that it had allegedly fired around 200 senior employees after accusing them of crimes one of its managers had lured them into committing. Apparently, the company had been looking for ways of getting rid of senior employees with high salaries without having to offer any financial compensation packages, so it had one of the senior managers lure such employees to various bars and clubs under the pretext of “after-work relaxation” where they were tricked into engaging in illegal activities.

Photo: Mohammed Hassan/Pixabay

According to some of the tricked employees, the manager set them up with sex workers and encouraged them to interact with them, while others claim that they engaged in gambling and even intentionally lost some money to their superior to maintain a good relationship with him, only to later realize that they had been lured into a trap.

After gathering dirty evidence on the employees, the manager would report everything to the company, and their contracts would be terminated without any compensation. Some Chinese sources claim that as many as 200 employees lost their jobs this way.

The company’s tactic was fiercely criticized online, with some social media users pointing out that the terminated employees would have a very difficult time trying to find other jobs because of their record of illegal activities. So not only did the employer fire its senior employees without severance pay, but it also compromised their chances of getting a job someplace else.

Although this level of trickery is rare among Chinese employers, finding ways to fire employees without financial compensation is definitely not! Companies are known to dig through their staff’s criminal records hoping to find any illegalities committed in the last five or ten years to use as an excuse to fire them. Some go as far as faking tempting job offers from other companies to trick ‘problematic’ employees into quitting.

Goon Ten, or Dancing Shrimp, is a popular Thai street food made with live freshwater shrimp that jumps off the plate when marinated alive.

A bunch of small, translucent shrimp trying to wiggle their way out of being eaten alive doesn’t sound like the most appetizing meal, but in Northern Thailand, it’s actually all the rage. Usually sold from double-basket carts, goon ten consists of live freshwater shrimp wriggling in a spicy marinade of ground chili, lime juice, fish sauce, mint, sliced shallots, and lemongrass. It is most often served with a variety of sticky rice. Often described as one of the freshest foods money can buy, dancing shrimp salad will literally jump off the plate, as the live critters try to escape the spicy marinade. It sounds barbaric to eat such a dish in this day and age, but most of those who have tried it were blown away by its texture and complex flavor combination.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

A young Chinese woman who weighs only 25 kilograms (55 lbs) has been getting a lot of attention after showcasing her shockingly thin body online and claiming she wants to be even skinnier.

The young woman who goes by ‘Baby Tingzi’ (婷子宝宝) is 160 cm tall but weighs only about 25 kg and apparently aims to lose even more weight. She has more than 42,000 fans on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, most of whom constantly express concern about her health. Baby Tingzi always brushes off such concerns, claiming that she prefers to be super skinny and adding that her skeleton-like silhouette has no negative impact on her life. The up-and-coming social media influencer, who reportedly hails from Guangzhou, China’s Guangdong Province, constantly posts clips of herself in skimpy outfits to show off her slender physique and apparently doesn’t care about criticism.

Read More »

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.

  Read More »

A French woman is taking telecom giant Orange to court for “moral harassment and discrimination at work,” accusing the company of paying her for 20 years without giving her any tasks.

Laurence Van Wassenhove was recruited as a civil servant by France Telecom in 1993 before the company was taken over by Orange. Her original employer knew that she was hemiplegic – partial paralysis of the face and limbs – from birth and suffered from epilepsy, and offered her a position adapted to her medical conditions. She worked as a secretary and in the HR department until 2002 when she asked to be transferred to another region of France. Her request was approved, but her new workplace was not adapted to her needs, and an occupational medicine report confirmed that the position was not suited for her. Despite this, Orange allegedly failed to make any adjustments to her job, preferring to pay her full salary for the next 20 years, without giving her anything to do.

Read More »

A football referee has been suspended for life for allegedly celebrating with a club he helped win by eliminating 3 players from the opposing side and granting 15 minutes of extra time, enough for the winners to score a necessary goal.

Earlier this month, Dutch football clubs St. George and SV De Valken met in a final match of the country’s fourth division to decide which of the two teams would be promoted to the third division. It may not seem like very high stakes, but they take football very seriously in the Netherlands and passions ride high, so this particular match was very important to both clubs. It was supposed to be a close game between the two most dominant team in the division, but the match played out very differently than expected because of the one person responsible of fair play, the referee. Jan Smit stands accused of not only rigging the game in one team’s favor, but also celebrating with its members after the win.

Read More »

A Chinese man recently lost his life while performing a controversial type of exercise that requires practitioners to hang only by their chins to relieve neck and spine pain by reducing pressure on nerves.

Over the past decade or so, a bizarre form of exercise has been getting traction throughout China. It basically involves swinging one’s body while hanging in the air supported only by a leather chin strap. Reportedly invented around 2017 by Shenyang native Sun Rongchun as a way to relieve back pain, neck swings quickly became a familiar sight in parks and outdoor gyms all over the country. Although hanging in the air by one’s chin doesn’t sound like the safest thing in the world, paractiotioners swear by it, claiming it does wonder for neck and back pain. Still, doctors have been warning about the dangers of neck hanging for years and a recent tragedy suggests that when performed incorrectly, this type of exercise can be lethal.

  Read More »