The ‘Chicken Orb” is a sphere made of metallic wire that allows chickens to move around and forage freely while preventing them from jumping onto flower beds and other places they’re not supposed to go into.

The Chicken Orb has been around for at least a couple of years, but it only recently started getting attention after photos and videos of it in action started going viral online. It all started from the misconception that the metallic wire orb was actually a sort of chicken armor designed to provide protection from predators while still allowing the domestic bird the freedom to forage and move around in peace. That got the debate going among chicken owners, many of whom criticized the device as useless, as it only acted as “to-go food packaging” for birds of prey, and did nothing to stop cunning predators like foxes or ferrets.

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A Chinese mountain climber recently sparked controversy after reportedly refusing to pay the $10,000 resue fee of the sherpa who found her unconscious on Mount Everest.

On May 18, while making the climb up Mount Everest, Chinese mountain climber Fan Jiangtao stumbled upon an unconscious woman in her 50s. An experienced mountain climber herself, the woman had reportedly reached the summit and was on her way back to base camp when she started experiencing health problems. Fan and the sherpa decided to abandon their goal of conquering Everest in order to take Luo back to the base camp safely. During their descent, they met Xie Ruxiang, a Hunan Provincial Mountain Climbing Association member, who also abandoned his climb in order to help. His sherpa, however, was reluctant to join them, but they needed the extra hands so Xie promised him a fee of $10,000, to which the man agreed. No one asked the person being rescued, though…

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A scandal known as ‘Rat Head Gate’ has been getting a lot of attention on Chinese social media after a student found what looks like a rat head in their cafeteria meal. The school claims it’s actually a duck head.

The incident reportedly occurred last week at the cafeteria of the Jiangxi Vocational Technical College of Industry Trade in Nanchang, China. While eating their lunch, a student found what looked like a rat’s head in their bowl of rice and pulled out their phone to record the discovery. They then confronted the cafeteria staff about it but were told that it wasn’t a rat’s head, but a duck’s head. The latter, along with duck necks are an important part of Chinese cuisine, but it wasn’t what the student had ordered, and it certainly didn’t look like a duck…

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An Indian IT company recently sparked outrage online after it was reported that one of its managers ordered the exit of the office building padlocked to prevent employees from leaving without his permission.

A video of a security worker using heavy chains and large padlocks to seal off the exit of the Coding Ninjas office building in Gurugram, India, recently went viral on Twitter. In it, the guard claims that he had been directed by one ‘Anurag sir’, later identified as a manager with the company, to lock the exit to ensure no one can leave without his express permission. The video sparked outrage and once again brought issues like employee exploitation and a degrading working environment into the spotlight. As for the company, it recently issued a statement acknowledging the incident, describing it as an ‘anomaly’ rectified ‘within minutes’ of its occurrence.

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A German tattoo artist has been criticized for charging a client hundreds of dollars for a back tattoo that many have compared to a childish doodle.

Mykhailo, a 21-year old tattoo artist from Berlin, Germany, recently posted a TikTok video of one of his latest projects, an abstract, scribble-like design that his client allegedly paid 900 euros ($960) for. The short clip quickly went viral, with nearly 2 million views at the time of this writing and hundreds of comments about the quality of the artwork. The tattoo consists of two shapes resembling hurriedly doodled flowers stemming out of a scribbled section surrounded by dozens of seemingly disconnected lines. While some people described the tattoo as a piece of art, others said that they wouldn’t have it inked on their bodies even if someone paid them $10,000.

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A Japanese YouTuber recently sparked controversy by posting a video of himself cooking and eating a broth made with dozens of man-o-war jellyfish for his over one million subscribers.

Popular Japanese YouTuber ‘homosapi’ (ホモサピ) has been criticized as irresponsible for trivializing the cooking and consumption of one of the most dangerous marine organisms in the world, the Portuguese man-o-war. Commonly referred to as a jellyfish, the man-o-war is actually a marine hydrozoan, an organism made up of smaller units called ‘zooids’ which are genetically identical but perform different functions. It has been known to deliver a painful sting powerful enough to kill many animals, and occasionally even humans. It’s one of the last things you’d want to come close to, let alone eat, but hey, anything for views, right?

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A Government official in India has been suspended after reportedly ordering an entire water reservoir to be drained just so he could recover the smartphone he had accidentally dropped into it.

Rajesh Vishwas, a 32-year-old food inspector in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district, has become the talk of Indian social media because of his involvement in an incident that highlighted the ignorance of government officials in the face of serious environmental issues, like water shortage. Vishwas allegedly abused his power to have roughly two million liters of water from a reservoir in the city of Pakhanjur just so he could recover the brand-new Samsung Galaxy S23 smartphone he had accidentally dropped into the water. The water drained into a nearby canal was reportedly enough to irrigate 6 square kilometers (600 hectares) of farmland.

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Hatenyan, a Japanese makeup expert and online influencer, has the power to completely transform his appearance to the point where he becomes completely unrecognizable.

22-year-old Hatenyan is very popular in his home country of Japan, with almost 700,000 followers on Twitter, and millions of fans on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, but his popularity recently transcended national borders after one of his tweets went viral. In it, the self-taught makeup wizard posted to photos of himself with and without makeup, and to say they are night and day would be a serious understatement. Apart from a piercing under his lower lip, there is literally no way to tell that it is the same person in both photos.

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A cafe in the Russian city of Perm has been getting a lot of attention after announcing plans to introduce a controversial breast milk-infused latte on its menu.

Perm-based cafe chain Coffee Smile has been the talk of the Russian internet over the past week after announcing intentions to use real human breast milk as an ingredient for coffee products like lattes and cappuccinos. The craziness started earlier this month, when Coffee Smile locations started plastering posters advertising the controversial new ingredient. People started sharing photos of the photos on social media, and before long, local businessman and Coffee Smile owner Maxim Kobelev released a promotional video claiming that his cafes will be using genuine breast milk stored in special, pharmacy-grade bags.

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A Taipei-based restaurant has been getting a lot of attention for its newest addition to the menu- a ramen dish topped with a steamed 14-legged isopod that looks like something out of an Alien movie.

The Ramen Boy restaurant recently took to Facebook to announce its latest dish, a bowl of ramen featuring a generous helping of giant isopod (Bathynomus giganteus), which it describes as a “dream ingredient”. Called “Giant isopod with creamy chicken broth ramen”, the dish consists of a large bowl of ramen and a large isopod steamed in its own shell. To prepare the deep-sea crustacean, the cooks remove the stomach viscera, keeping the creamy glands for consumption, and steam it. The white meat is said to taste like lobster and crab, while the yellow glands are “unexpectedly sweet”.

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A 40-year-old woman’s decision to quit her job and become a ‘full-time daughter’ in the employment of her own parents has sparked controversy in China.

Last year, after 15 years of working for a news agency, 40-year-old Nianan quit her job. She had to be on-call virtually 24 hours a day and was constantly under tremendous stress. Luckily, her parents came up with a better employment offer if she just quit the job that made her so miserable. “Why don’t you just quit your job? We’ll take care of you financially,” the woman’s parents said, promising to pay her 4,000 yuan ($570) per month if she just came and lived with them. That obviously meant no more housing costs, and saving massively on food and various household items, as the parents would take care of such expenses. So Nianan quit her job and became a ‘full-time daughter’.

After a year in her parents’ employment, Nianan describes her profession as one “filled with love”. She spends her days accompanying her mother and father when they go grocery shopping, she cooks dinner with them every evening, drives them around when they need to, and even has an hour to dance with them every day.

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The judges of the prestigious Gilbert et Gaillard international wine competition were duped into awarding this year’s gold medal to a €2.50 ($2.70) supermarket wine they deemed “exceptional”.

Ever wonder how the average person chooses wine at a supermarket? Well, it turns out that having one or more medals plastered on the bottle can increase sales by up to 15 percent, so it’s no wonder that wineries take wine-tasting competitions very seriously. But does winning such medals actually reflect the quality of the wine, or are these contests simple money-making events that charge winemakers hefty sums for participation and the chance to increase sales? Eric Boschman, once named Belgium’s best sommelier, and the team at On n’est pas des pigeons, a Belgian consumer magazine and television program, decided to find out by taking the worst supermarket wine they could find and registering it in a prestigious wine competition.

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A 29-year-old man who has been living in a tent in an abandoned parking lot for 200 days has become the newest symbol of China’s increasingly popular ‘lying down’ culture.

At the end of 2018, Li Shu quit his job in Sichuan Province and began spending most of his time chilling in his rented apartment. The 29-year-old quickly realized that, with no income whatsoever, he would quickly go through all his savings, so he cut his daily expenses to just 10 yuan ($1.5) per day. Even so, after years of having to pay rent, it became painfully obvious that he would either have to find a way to make money or move out. Since the first option wasn’t even considered, he sold most of his belongings, bought a 400 yuan ($57), and decided to continue his relaxed lifestyle in the great outdoors, among the debris of an abandoned parking lot. He has been living there for 200 days, and has no plans of joining the rat race of life anytime soon.

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A Colombian doctor has been ordered by a court of law to financially support a patient’s baby until it turns 18 after the patient ended up conceiving the baby despite undergoing a vasectomy.

Diego Naranjo, a doctor from Medellin, Colombia, will have to pay millions of pesos to support one of his patients’ baby after he assured the man that the vasectomy he had performed had been successful and he no longer needed to use other means of contraception. However, the man ended up leaving his wife pregnant and having an unplanned baby. Subsequent sperm tests showed that the vasectomy had in fact not been successful, and the parents of the baby sued the doctor, claiming that his mistake had had serious implications, both financial and emotional. A judge has now ruled that the doctor must support the baby until it turns 18 years old.

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A family in Sidney, Australia is being praised for resisting the urge to sell their property to developers who have bought all the land around it, despite being offered tens of millions of dollars for it.

The Zammit family home has become one of the most famous properties in Sydney both because of the way it stands out among the dozens of cookie-cutter homes surrounding it and the resilience of its owners. While every one of their old neighbors agreed to sell their land to housing developers, the Zammits have refused every offer so far, and have no plans of moving away anytime soon. The Australian family has been praised for refusing to sell out and continuing to live on their five acres of land despite the financial temptation and pressure from developers.

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