Shanghai-based artist Yang Yexin has been getting a lot of criticism for throwing away 1,000 grains of rice made of pure gold as part of a performance artwork to highlight current food waste.

If you’re planning on visiting Shanghai soon, you may want to keep your eyes peeled as you walk through the city streets, as you may stumble on small precious nuggets worth a pretty penny. Local artist Yang Yexin recently released a video of himself throwing 1,000 gold grains in trashcans, in drains, in the grass, and in the Huangpu River, as a way of drawing attention to food waste in modern society. The rice grains  showed in the video were made from 500 grams of gold worth over 200,000 yuan ($31,000), by a jewelry store that made them “in accordance with the actual size of each real rice grain.”

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A bank manager in the U.A.E. was conned into authorizing a $35 million transfer after receiving vocal confirmation from the account holder. Only that wasn’t who the manager thought they were…

Early last year, the manager of an undisclosed bank in the United Arab Emirates received a call from a longtime client – the director of a company with whom he had spoken before. The man was excited that his company was about to make an important acquisition, so he needed the bank to authorize a transfer of $35 million as soon as possible. The client added that a lawyer named Martin Zelner had been contracted to handle the acquisition, and the manager could see emails from the lawyer in his inbox. He had spoken to the client before, he recognized his voice, and everything he said checked out. So he proceeded to make the most expensive mistake of his career…

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This week, the people of Plounéventer, a town in France’s Brittany region, woke up to a very bizarre sight – a white van perched on top of a bus station.

Imagine waking up early in the morning to take the bus to work and finding a car on top of the bus station? It’s still night out, there’s hardly anyone around, and there’s a car in the last place you’d expect to see one. No, it’s not a lost episode of the Twilight Zone, but something that commuters in the French town of Plounéventer experienced on Monday morning. Some clicked a few photos of the white van perched on top of the Place de l’Eglise bus station and posted them on social media, where they quickly went viral.

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If you’re looking for an unusual and extremely expensive way of dealing with small pests, like cockroaches, may we recommend the world’s smallest working revolver?

The Swiss Mini Gun holds the Guinness World Record for the smallest functioning revolver in the world. It measures 5.5 cm long, 3.5 cm tall and 1 cm wide, weighing only 19.8g. It’s so easy to conceal that countries like the United States and the United Kingdom have made the Swiss Mini Gun illegal to import. But while its reduced size may be unusual, this tiny firearm has all the same features as a normal-sized double-action revolver. Its manufacturing was only possible by employing techniques used in the Swiss watchmaking and jewelry industries.

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An Indian man was found guilty of murdering his wife by renting a cobra to bite her and make it look like an accident, so he could take her jewelry and marry another woman.

In what has been described as a modern murder mystery, a young man from the Kollam District of the Indian state of Kerala was convicted of arranging and carrying out his wife’s murder with the help of a venomous snake. The heinous crime took place in May of 2020, but investigators needed over a year to collect the necessary evidence to charge the husband. In fact, the 32-year-old man might have gotten away with murder if not for the wife’s parents, who suspected foul play and filed a complaint against him.

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Rocket Road is a unique clothing brand aimed not at humans, but at robots of all shapes and sizes. It aims to offer customization options and seamlessly bridge the gap between humans and machines.

Last month, Japanese company Rocket Road announced the launch of its first lineup of functional protective cover wear for robotic arms. These decorative and functional covers are available in over 40 different colors, can be made out of dustproof, anti-bacterial, water repellent or heat-resistant material, and are meant to brighten up the otherwise bland working environment and provide the robotic arms with a bit of personality. But this is only the company’s latest project. Rocket Road has been creating robot clothing for a long time now and has quite an impressive portfolio.

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Viral photos of a leopard and a cow cuddling somewhere in rural India tell the unique love story between two very unlikely friends.

Cows and leopards are usually not the best of friends, with the latter sometimes preying on bovines to survive. However, you wouldn’t even be tempted to think that looking at a set of viral photos that have been doing the rounds on social media for nearly two decades now. They show an adult leopard cuddling and playing with a cow, which, if the accompanying caption is to be believed, adopted and breastfed the feline as a cub. The story behind the photos has been exaggerated over the years to attract even more attention, but the photos are real and the relationship between the two animals is a testament to the fact that miracles can happen.

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A Chinese mother recently walked into a police station asking for help to remove a bicycle from around her neck after her 4-year-old boy put it on her and forgot the unlock code.

On October 7th, a young mother walked into a police station in Huai’an, China’s Jiangsu Province, with a bizarre “choker” around her neck – a grey and yellow bicycle locking device similar to a U-lock. She told the staff there that her son was playing with the lock next to her as she was cleaning the bathroom when he suddenly put it around her neck and locked it. She thought it funny at first, as it was her lock and she knew the unlock code, but it turned out that the boy had somehow changed it and now neither of them knew the combination to unlock it.

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A woman who had exhausted all other options of treating her depression claims her life has become infinitely better since having a matchbox-sized implanted into her skull.

Having holes drilled into your skull and electrical wires connected directly to your brain sounds like a daunting proposition for most people, but for Sarah, a 36-year-old woman who had been battling depression for years, it was a desperate attempt to get back to a normal life. For years, she had been battling severe depression, and all other treatments, including anti-depressants and electroconvulsive therapy, had failed. Anything was better than the darkness she had been experiencing, and getting a brain implant proved a winning bet, as she has now been depression-free for over a year.

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Taiwanese food is very popular all over the world, but some of the dishes it proposes are hard to swallow even for natives. Take for example milkfish intestines, a delicacy that’s difficult to look at, let alone swallow.

Milkfish is farmed on a large scale in Taiwan, not only for its meat but also its intestines, which are apparently the base of several dishes, including black fried intestines and milkfish intestine soup. Both are reportedly delicious, but you first have to get over the fact that they look like cooked worms, and even then, the idea of eating fish guts doesn’t appeal to everyone. Southern Taiwan, which hosts the most milkfish farms, is reportedly more familiar with milkfish intestine dishes which have become somewhat of a local challenge for visitors.

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Flexibility is not a trait usually associated with rocks, but there is one notable exception to the rule – itacolumite, a porous sandstone that becomes flexible when cut into thin strips.

Itacolumite is named after the place where it was originally discovered, the Pico do Itacolomi rock formation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, but it can also be found in other places around the world, such as Georgia and North Carolina in the US, and Kaliana village in India. This rock is commonly used as a construction stone; because of its good partition, it can be shaped into plates about 1 cm thick and up to 20 cm long that are then used mostly as a floor or wall revetment. However, when cut into thin strips of only a few centimeters, it displays extreme flexibility that has fascinated geologists for decades.

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A 28-year-old nurse from the Russian city of Irkutsk has been dubbed the “Russian Rapunzel” after it was revealed that her ankle-long hair hasn’t been cut for 23 years.

Anzhelika Baranova was only five when her hair was last trimmed. Neither she nor her parents planned to let her hair grow for over two decades, it just sort of happened, as if it was meant to be. She was always very proud of her hair, and taking care of it was never much of a chore. She claims she doesn’t do anything special to maintain her locks, she just washes it twice a week with regular shampoo and conditioner and gently brushes it with a comb to ensure she doesn’t break knotted strands.

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Jala, a small town in the Mexican state of Nayarit, is famous as the home of the world’s largest ears of corn. The same species can be cultivated in other parts of the country, but it just doesn’t grow as big.

In 2019, the grower of the world’s largest ea of corn, a farmer named Jesús Nazario Elías Moctezuma, won the annual corn cob competition in Jala, Nayarit with a cob that measured 39.5 centimeters long. The runner-up lost by only half a centimeter, and most of the other participants weren’t far off either. They all compete with ears of corn from the Jala landrace, a “giant” species known for producing some truly humongous ears of corn. Unfortunately, as impressive as its cobs are in terms of size, the Jala landrace has been losing out against more mainstream species and is in danger of being lost forever.

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An Ohio man tried to sue his wife for leaving her shoes in an inappropriate place and causing him to trip and tumble down a flight of stairs, suffering multiple bone fractures.

An appeals court recently rejected John Walworth’s lawsuit against his wife, Judy Khoury, over an incident that occurred in February of 2018. Walworth was helping his then-fiancee by carrying some jugs of vinegar to her basement when he tripped over a pair of her shoes and fell down the basement stairs, breaking bones in his leg, arm, and hand. He later sued Judy, claiming that it was her carelessness that cost him $80,000 in medical bills and another $18,000 in lost income because his injuries caused him to miss work.

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Raizel Calago is only 16-years-old, but you would never guess just by looking at her. She suffers from a rare condition called progeria which makes her look four times her age.

In only two years, Raizel Calago went from a beautiful young girl who attended beauty pageants, to an old-looking woman that many people mistake for a grandmother. The young Filipina says that she started noticing wrinkles in her skin just days after rashes erupted all over her body. Red, itchy patches that were painful to the touch appeared on her body, and when she went for a checkup, she was told that they had been caused by an insect. She was given medication, but that didn’t help, and soon she started noticing physical changes to her appearance. Now, it’s hard to believe she is just 16-years-old…

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