Raku Inoue is a talented Canadian artist who specializes in carefully arranging flower petals, leaves, and other plant parts to recreate pop culture characters, animals, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Inoue’s journey into painstaking floral art began one windy day in 2017. He was in his Montreal home watching the strong wind shake dozens of pink petals from a rose bush in his backyard. Seeing these beautiful, delicate petals on the ground, he thought to himself “What a waste!” and went to pick them up. Looking at his ephemeral haul, the Japanese-born artist came up with the idea to actually use the petals to create art. He arranged them in the shape of a beetle with small twigs for legs, and his little project turned out so well that he kept at it. Today, Raku Inoue is famous for his impressive portfolio of plant art, which includes original recreations of popular characters like Super Mario or Godzilla, various insects and animals, and even brand logos.

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A dramatic surveillance camera video released by the Tulsa Fire Department shows the moment an unsupervised dog started a house fire by chewing on a lithium battery pack.

Reportedly captured in May of this year, the shocking footage shows a dog casually chewing on a portable lithium-ion battery power bank left within reach by their owner. At one point, the pierced battery starts sparking and then bursts into flames, causing the canine perpetrator as well as another dog and a cat that were napping nearby to run for their lives. Luckily, all the pets escaped through a dog door and were not harmed, but the fire caused significant fire to the house. Firefighters are now using the video as a warning against leaving lithium batteries within reach of children and pets.

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A Chinese furniture company has begun producing gorilla-shaped sofas to meet customer demand after AI-generated photos of gorilla sofas started going viral on social media.

Back in April, a design-centered blog called Inspiring Designs published a post featuring dozens of AI-generated images of gorilla-shaped sofas. It’s unclear whether they used Midjourney or some other digital creation tool, but some of the results were indeed fascinating. One could tell from the onset that they were made using AI, but that didn’t make them any less impressive. The problem, as evident from the 8 user comments on the post, was that most people couldn’t make the distinction between AI-generated content and a real product, so they kept asking where they could get a gorilla sofa. Well, a company in China was more than happy to meet the demand.

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A 24-year-old Chinese man who spent the last five months of his life living in the mountains after a painful breakup now looks at least twice his age and is called “uncle” by people older than him.

Remember Brandon Miles May, the 35-year-old man who looks half his age? Well, today we’re featuring his exact opposite, a young man who looks twice his age, not because of some rare genetic disorder, but simply because he has been exposed to the elements in the mountains of northern and western China. The unidentified man rose to fame in his native country after a video in which he showed his ID to the camera to prove he was in his early 20s went viral on social media. When referred to as ‘uncle’ by the person shooting the video, the balding, rugged-looking trekker says that he is only 24, and proceeds to hold up his ID card to the camera to show that he was born in December of 2000.

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Savor, a California-based startup backed by legendary businessman Bill Gates, has come up with a method of producing butter-like fat out of just carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Starting from the idea that all fats are composed of chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, Savor patented a thermochemical process to build fat molecules and then produce dairy-free alternatives to products like milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream that not only have the same texture as the real thing but also taste the same. This process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does, so this synthesized fat has a much lower carbon footprint than real animal fat. So far, taste tests have shown that Savor’s alternative to butter has an almost indistinguishable flavor from the real thing, but the company still has a lot of challenges to overcome before bringing it to market.

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Chinese makeup artist @sakuralusi has been getting a lot of attention for her transformation videos where she turns her elderly grandpa into youthful, anime-inspired characters.

Looking at the photos below, you’re probably having a hard time believing that the guy on the left and the one on the right are the exact same person, especially knowing that they are 66 years old. But that is the power of makeup in the hands of a gifted master like @sakuralusi, a young Chinese makeup artist who has been showcasing her skills on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. She has been posting makeup-related videos on the popular social network for a while now, but she really started getting attention when she began using her grandfather as a model, turning the 66-year-old man into anime-inspired idols that look at least 3 decades younger than his actual age.

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A Turkish university candidate was recently arrested after being caught using an AI-powered system to obtain answers to the entrance exam in real-time.

On June 8th, thousands of high school graduates took the Basic Proficiency Test (TYT), the first session of the Higher Education Institutions Examination (YKS) in Isparta, but one incident made international news headlines. One candidate, referred to only by the initials M.E.E. by Turkish media, was reportedly caught cheating using an ingenious system involving an internet connection, a concealed camera, and an AI-powered software that could read the questions on the test and provide answers in real-time. Unfortunately, the man’s behavior during the test attracted the supervisors’ attention and upon closer inspection, his cheating method was discovered.

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China’s Yuntai Waterfall is generally regarded as Asia’s most impressive waterfall and is often described as a natural wonder. However, it turns out that its spectacular water show is artificially enhanced.

Yuntai Waterfall is the most popular scenic spot in the Yuntai Mountains, drawing millions of tourists annually. The tallest waterfall in Asia (a sheer drop of 314 meters) offers stunning vistas and a breathtaking spectacle that was recently revealed to be the result of modern technology. A Chinese vlogger managed to make their way to the top of Yuntai Waterfall where they spotted large metal pipes feeding water into the waterfall for an enhanced video effect. At first, the viral video of the discovery was criticized as fake, but sources from the Yuntai Mountain Scenic Area acknowledged that the waterfall is slightly enhanced to ensure a pleasant experience for tourists, regardless of natural factors.

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Japanese tech company Kirin Holdings recently unveiled the commercial version of its taste-enhancing spoon, dubbed Elecispoon, which improves taste buds’ perception of salt, thus making food taste better.

We originally covered Kirin’s taste-enhancing technology a couple of years ago. The company’s researchers had teamed up with scientists at Meiji University to develop a line of smart kitchenware that used electricity to make food taste saltier and tastier than it actually was. Back then, they were testing a smart spoon and bowl which worked in tandem to make foods about 1.5 times saltier than they were, but it seems that only the spoon made it to market. Kirin Technology recently announced its newest product, Elecispoon, a smart spoon designed to improve people’s health by helping them cut salt from their food.

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Devoney Scarfe is a talented food artist from Auckland, Australia, whose portfolio of edible masterpieces includes celebrity and animal portraits, whimsical scenes, and hilarious quotes.

A part-time creative director at her husband’s advertising agency, Devoney Scarfe started tinkering with food art as a hobby, while also doing her best as a full-time mom. Her early work wasn’t the most impressive, but as she kept practicing, experimenting, and coming up with new techniques and designs, her artistic pies drastically improved. One of her breakthrough moments as a food artist was a tribute to Britain’s Queen Elisabeth, in 2022, which took several days to complete. It turned out so well that photos of the too-cool-to-eat pie went viral online, earning Devoney thousands of social media followers.

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An employee of the Pinakothek der Moderne art museum in Munich, Germany, reportedly hung up his own paintings next to works by Pablo Picasso or Franz Marc without asking anyone for permission.

The 51-year-old unnamed man was reportedly working in the museum technical department, which gave him access to the premises outside of visiting hours. He was thus able to casually drill holes into an empty wall and hang up his own paintings next to those of acclaimed painters from all over the world. It is unclear how long the paintings were up for between someone noticed that they weren’t supposed to be there, but according to a museum spokesperson, they couldn’t have been up for too long because “supervisors usually notice something like that immediately”. As for the man’s motivation, one can only assume that he believed showing his work in the museum would lead to future opportunities.

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A 68-year-old French woman diagnosed with Noah’s Syndrome has been given a one-year suspended sentence for keeping 159 cats and 7 dogs in her 80sqm (861sqft) apartment.

The unnamed woman and her 52-year-old male partner got into a dispute with neighbors in their Nice apartment building because of the mess and filth caused by their dozens of pets. Police were eventually called and the state of the woman’s apartment shocked them. There was animal excrement everywhere, over 150 cats and seven dogs, as well as at least two dead cats and two dogs in the bathroom. Many of the animals were dehydrated, suffering from malnutrition, or infected with parasites, and some of them subsequently died because of their health problems. The elderly woman admitted that she had “screwed up” while trying to take care of her many pets, but described the animals as “the love of her life”.

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K. Padmarajan has been dubbed the “Election King” and the “World’s Biggest Election Loser” after participating in 238 political elections and losing every single time.

K. Padmarajan’s story is one of perseverance. The 65-year-old repairman from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has participated in hundreds of elections over the past three decades and spent thousands of dollars on registration fees. The closest he has ever come to winning an election was in 2011 when he ran for the general assembly in the town of Mettur and got 6,273 votes. He was way behind the winner – he got over 75,000 votes – but it gave him hope that he could one day win. That day is yet to come, but Padmarajan recently pointed out that winning is the secondary goal. Resilience and accepting defeat are key and no one is better at it than him.

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Four-year-old Fedya, a gray rescued cat from Russia, has become a social media sensation thanks to his funny permanently startled look.

When Fedya’s owner, Natalya Zhdanova, found him in her backyard in 2020, she had no idea he would one day become an Instagram star with over 300,000 followers. At the time, she wasn’t even sure he would survive. He had been born with a coordination issue and struggled to move around, but as he grew, his condition improved, and before long he was behaving like a normal cat, although he didn’t really look like one. Natalya claims she didn’t really notice his unusual looks, but her friends always seemed amused by Fedya’s constantly startled appearance, and she reluctantly started posting photos of him on social media. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Stressed Chinese parents are reportedly suffering heart attacks and strokes while helping their children with homework, especially math.

One evening in January, Ms. Dong, a 40-year-old mother-of-two from Hangzhou, was helping one of her sons with his math homework when she lost her cool because the child didn’t understand a problem. Soon after this outburst, the woman felt a splitting headache, followed by vomiting. She tried laying down for a few hours, but her condition didn’t improve at all, so she went to the hospital. After a thorough examination and a CT scan, Ms. Dong was diagnosed with spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage, a minor stroke most likely caused by constant long-term stress. The sudden outburst while tutoring her son was just the final nail in the coffin, but this is a scenario that is becoming worryingly frequent in Chinese society.

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