Efecan Kultur, a Turkish Tiktoker who rose to prominence for his “mukbang” binge eating streams, tragically lost his life at the age of 24 due to obesity-related health complications.

The “mukbang” trend, in which people costume copious amounts of food on camera to the delight of their fans, originated in South Korea but quickly spread all over the world raising concerns about obesity and mindless food waste. With more than 156,000 TikTok followers and 12,000 Instagram followers, 24-year-old Efecan Kultur was one of Turkey’s most popular mukbang streamers, but his popularity came at a cost. As he continued ballooning in size, he started experiencing various health problems, including heart disease, and in October of last year, he announced that he would be going on a diet and avoiding extra salt to try and lose weight. Sadly, earlier this month, the 24-year-old died as a result of his obesity.

Read More »

Chinese people desperate to get rich by any means necessary are putting their faith in bags of “bank soil” sold online as wealth-bringing talismans.

Bank robberies usually involve cold harsh cash or gold ingots, but several Chinese banks have recently become the target of an unusual type of theft, that of soil from potted plants or from around the buildings housing them. Several online shops in the Asian country are selling small bags of ‘bank’ soil as get-rich-quick talismans that can cost as much as 888 yuan ($120), and demand for the unusual products is steadily increasing. Some sellers boast a “999.999 percent success rate in generating wealth,” while others record the harvesting process to guarantee the authenticity of their bank soil.

Read More »

The Murmansk branch of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia political party made the controversial decision of gifting meat grinders to mothers of soldiers killed in the war with Ukraine to celebrate International Women’s Day.

Over the past three years, the meat grinder has become a symbol of the Russian military’s high casualty rate in its assault on neighboring Ukraine, so the decision of the United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region to celebrate mothers whose sons died in the war by gifting them meat grinders on March 8 can be considered questionable, at best. Photos published on the party’s social media account last Wednesday show the executive secretary of the Polyarnye Zori United Russia branch, Anna Makhunova, alongside Maxim Chengaev, representative of the “Defenders of the Fatherland in the Murmansk Region Foundation” posing next to women who lost their sons in the war against Ukraine, smiling and holding meat grinders.

Read More »

A 19-year-old Chinese girl has gone viral after posting a video demonstrating her unusual ability to pop her kneecaps out and then back in painlessly because of a condition she was born with.

The unnamed girl from Jiangssi claims that she never even knew her kneecaps were special until schoolmates saw her popping them out of their sockets randomly and then casually popping them back in. Some of them freaked out and told her to see a doctor, but her knees had been like this for as long as she could remember. Nevertheless, she decided to follow her friends’ advice and see a doctor, who confirmed that she had congenital “patella dislocation”, which caused her patellas (kneecaps) to pop out randomly and pop back in just as easily. The physician said that the condition was rare in girls, but reassured the youth that, as long as it didn’t cause her pain or impede with day-to-day activities, it wasn’t a problem.

Read More »

Norwegian robotics company 1X recently announced the NEO Gamma, an AI-powered bipedal humanoid robot that can perform multiple household chores, such as carrying laundry, cleaning windows, and vacuuming.

We’ve seen some important breakthroughs in robotics over the last few months, including STAR1, the world’s fastest bipedal robot, or SE01, a bipedal robot famous for its smooth walking, but in terms of day-to-day utility, the offerings have been lacking. But that is all about to change according to Norwegian Robotics company 1X and its most advanced creation yet, the NEO Gamma, a humanoid butler capable of performing various household chores like cleaning vacuuming, and even serving tea. To make it seem more human, the company teamed up with Shima Seiki, a Japanese manufacturer of knitting machines, to create a soft and smooth suit that conceals the robot’s metallic body.

Read More »

A Chinese man reportedly needed emergency surgery after rupturing his facial artery by incessantly picking his nose.

The man’s bizarre case was shared online by his wife in the form of a short clip documenting his experience in the hope that it may dissuade other avid nose-pickers from indulging in their favorite pastime too much. Hailing from Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, the unnamed man had reportedly always loved picking his hose. Whether he was standing, sitting down, or lying in bed, he would always be exploring his nostrils with a finger. Only recently, his obsession with nose-picking came back to bite him. One day, while picking his nose as usual, the man triggered a serious nosebleed that simply couldn’t be stopped, despite his and his wife’s best efforts.

Read More »

The HR manager of a Shanghai technology company was imprisoned for defrauding his company of millions of dollars by “hiring” dozens of fake employees and collecting their salaries.

The People’s Procuratorate of Minhang District, Shanghai recently released a “White Paper on the Prosecution of Duty-Related Crimes by Company and Enterprise Personnel in Minhang District” featuring a list of duty-related crime cases involving enterprise personnel handled in 2024, one of which attracted the attention of newspapers all over the country. Back in 2022, employees in the finance department of an unnamed Shanghai technology company discovered something strange: Xiao Sun, an employee who had been with the company for half a year and had perfect attendance throughout that whole period, seemed to be a complete mystery to everyone. No one had ever seen them in person or knew anything about them for that matter. The investigation that followed uncovered a massive fraud orchestrated by a single HR manager.

Read More »

A textile worker in Brazil’s Goias state stands accused of poisoning a co-worker’s water bottle after quarreling with them over what the woman considered an unfair promotion.

The incident occurred last month at a textile factory in Abadia de Goias, a town in the Goiânia Metropolitan Region. Police claim that the 38-year-old suspect was caught by CCTV cameras tampering with another worker’s drink container before the latter drank from it and felt a burning sensation in her throat. Subsequent analysis of the container found a high concentration of a potent solvent in the water, which strongly suggests that the perpetrator wanted to poison their co-worker. Witnesses testified that the two women used to be friends, but their relationship went sour after the victim received a promotion that didn’t sit too well with the prime suspect in the poisoning case. They fought all the time and they had allegedly had an argument prior to the solvent poisoning.

Read More »

A Russian man has allegedly been trying to force his neighbors into selling their share of a communal apartment by playing the national anthem and other patriotic songs from early morning until late at night.

Several tenants and apartment owners in an apartment building in Volgograd, Russia, have been complaining of insufferable loud music playing on repeat in a communal apartment there, but so far, no one has been able to do anything about it. It all started on February 5, when Maxim (pseudonym), the owner of a room in a communal apartment in building No. 2A on Volgograd’s Engels Boulevard, installed a pair of powerful speakers and started playing the Russian national anthem, other patriotic songs like “I Am Russian”, and the sound of dogs barking. The entire building has been subjected to this musical torture every day since, and despite contacting the police, no one has been able to stop it.

Read More »

A 19-year-old Connecticut youth is taking legal action against her former public high school for failing her by allowing her to graduate “with honors” when she was basically illiterate.

Last June, Aleysha Ortiz graduated from Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut, with honors and even earned a college scholarship, but she is now suing her former school for negligent infliction of emotional distress. The 19-year-old is accusing the public learning institution of neglecting her education, claiming she can barely hold a pencil in her hand and her reading abilities are comparable to a first-grader. Born in Puerto Rico, Aleysha exhibited learning difficulties at a young age, and her roubles continued after she moved to the US at age 5. She claims her school and the special teacher appointed to her case were of little help until a month before graduation when they finally conducted the additional testing she had been asking for and realized she was virtually illiterate. School district officials told the youth that she could defer accepting the graduation diploma in exchange for intensive services. She refused.

Read More »

A video that has been doing the rounds on Chinese social media appears to show a humanoid robot malfunctioning and erratically “attacking” the crowd at a festival in Tianjin.

The footage, shot during the Tianjin Winter Gala Festival on February 9th, shows one of several Unitree H1 humanoid robots seemingly attacking a spectator who had extended their hand out for a handshake. Instead of responding to the gesture, the robot displays erratic arm movements and aggressively rushes toward the crowd before being pulled back by security guards and what looks to be a robot supervisor. The H1 robot appears to calm down before the video cuts off, but its violent outburst has raised concerns about the use of these autonomous machines around humans.

Read More »

Russian media outlets have been hailing a Russian soldier as a hero for allegedly continuing to fight in the Kursk region for a week after getting shot in the head.

The unnamed man, reportedly a member of the 155th Marine Brigade of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, was fighting Ukrainian troops in Kursk when he got shot. At the time, his helmet was blown off of his head, but he thought the bullet must have ricocheted from it. He developed a hematoma above his right eye which eventually caused his eye to swallow shut, but he just went about his business, thinking the swelling would heal on its own. It was only after suffering another shrapnel-related injury that the man ended up in the hospital and learned that the bullet that had knocked his helmet off had actually pierced his skull and was lodged in his brain.

Read More »

Doctors in Henan, China, were shocked by the case of a middle-aged man who suffered a pneumothorax after mild physical exercise – 20 pushups and a few minutes of skipping rope.

The unnamed man told physicians that he had decided to get in shape as part of a New Year’s resolution, but things didn’t really play out like he imagined. Last month, he started doing pushups and skipping rope as a way of losing weight, but he only managed to do two sets of pushups and skip ropes for a few minutes when he started feeling bad. He stopped and went about his day, but when he woke up the next day, he started experiencing severe chest pain and difficulty breathing, especially after minimal physical effort, like climbing stairs. At one point, the pain got so bad that he went to the hospital where doctors diagnosed him with pneumothorax.

Read More »

A young Chinese doctor has gone viral for his rapid weight loss, shedding 25 kilograms (55 pounds) in just 42 days and then entering and winning a professional bodybuilding contest.

At the end of 2024, Wu Tian Gen, a 31-year-old surgeon at Hubei’s Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, weighed 97.5 kg (215 lbs), the heaviest he had ever been, but by the end of January 2025, the 1.82m tall doctor had shed over 42 kilograms and was in such an amazing physical condition that he won a bodybuilding competition. How did he do it? Well, he didn’t share every detail, but it was a combination of personal ambition, physical training, and a carefully thought-out diet. Even so, losing so much weight in 42 days is nothing short of impressive.

Read More »

Developed by the American-Polish company Clone Robotics, Protoclone is a unique humanoid robot that features a skeleton based on 206 human bones, 1,000 artificial muscles, and a water-based cooling system.

Clone Robotics first attracted attention online back in 2021, when it released a series of videos showcasing its artificial muscle system based on the McKibben pneumatic muscle. Back then, the company only had a functional robotic arm capable of grabbing and handling various objects, but it recently released footage of its first humanoid robot, dubbed Protoclone. The twitching, human-like figure suspended in mid-air is a far cry from the uncanny valley, in fact, it doesn’t even look capable of standing on its own two feet, but its muscle and skeletal are certainly intriguing. The metallic skeleton replicates 206 human bones, and the so-called “Myofiber” muscle system features 1,000 artificial muscles.

Read More »