According to the girl’s mother, at one point, she was “bleeding from everywhere”, from her nose, eyes, ears, chest, uterus, and even her belly button. Her parents took her to the emergency room several times, and she underwent several checkups, ultrasounds, endoscopies, and colonoscopies, but they all came out fine. At one point, doctors even tested the girl for cancer markers, but the test came back negative.

Photo: Jonathan Cooper/Unsplash

After a year and a half of visiting hospitals in search of answers, the 14-year-old’s family noticed a peculiar pattern in the girl’s symptoms. She would always get sick around the beginning of the school year in September, then her bleeding would subside around school holidays, and disappear completely during the summer. Putting two and two together, the parents realized that their daughter was faking her condition to avoid going to school.

According to Mash, the girl’s mother still refuses to believe that her child would harm herself and then smear blood all over to make it look like she was bleeding from all orifices. She continues to visit doctors, hoping to find an alternative answer.

Some experts suspect that the teen could be suffering from Munchausen syndrome, a condition in which people deliberately induce symptoms of illness to gain care and attention from others.

Despite having missed most classes for the last year and a half, the girl hasn’t been expelled from school yet.

Featured image: Syarafina Yusof/Unsplash

Colossal Biosciences’s artificial egg looks like a simple plastic cup, but it’s a small 3D-printed miracle that allows chicken embryos to develop into living chicks. The true innovation lies in the silicone membrane coating the inside of the lattice structure, which allows sufficient oxygen to pass through, just like that of a natural egg.

To test their artificial eggs, Colossal Biosciences carefully poured the contents of a biological egg into one of their own, leaving a small window on top so they could peek inside. The company has already used it to hatch chicks, and claims its system is “fully scalable and biologically accurate” and could be used to hatch extinct species, like the 500-pound giant moa.

Colossal Biosciences has already created a giant version of its lattice artificial egg to replace the egg of a moa bird, which could reach the size of a football, but as the MIT Technology Review explains, the company is still a long way from bringing back the moa. They still need to study the extinct bird’s DNA from old bones and make thousands of genetic changes into the genome of an existing bird, which is no small feat. This innovative artificial egg is definitely an important step towards achieving the company’s declared goal, but it’s just a step.

Interestingly, Japanese scientists successfully hatched quail chicks from artificial eggs in 1998, and others have done so with other bird species since, but their system required oxygen supplementation, which caused some chicks to suffer genetic defects or fail to hatch altogether. The membrane created by Colossal Biosciences allows enough oxygen to permeate naturally.

“It could be really important, it could be fantabulous,” Paul Mozdziak, a stem-cell biologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, said about the artificial egg. “Without data, it’s really impossible to judge what the true impact is.”

Horizontal skyscrapers or skybridges are nothing new. The iconic Marina Bay Sands is a symbol of Singapore, and Beijing’s Link Hybrid is one of the most impressive buildings in the Chinese capital, but The Crystal is in a league of its own! It is the highest horizontal skyscraper and the one that connects the most vertical towers simultaneously.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Junyi Lou

Developed by CapitaLand , one of Asia’s largest real estate companies, The Crystal had an estimated budget of $1.1 billion. The exterior cladding required approximately 3,000 glass panels and around 5,000 aluminum pieces, but putting them all together was the real challenge.

The 300-meter-long horizontal skyscraper consists of seven large segments, some of which were prefabricated at ground level before being lifted 250 meters into the air and assembled using high-precision hydraulics. The rest were mounted directly onto the towers supporting The Crystal.

Knowing that only the steel frame of the world’s highest horizontal skyscraper weighs 12,000 tons, a figure comparable to the weight of the Eiffel Tower, you can truly appreciate the ingenuity of the architects and engineers who made this project a reality.

Apart from acting as a connection between the four conventional skyscrapers supporting it, The Crystal also functions as a habitable and recreational space. One of its main attractions is the Exploration Deck, a 1,500-square-meter glass floor observation deck offering breathtaking views of Chongqing. The skybridge also features rooftop gardens, bars, restaurants, event spaces, and a private club, as well as two 50-meter-long infinity pools.

The Crystal has been praised as an architectural and engineering marvel that offers a novel solution for increasingly dense urban centers. It proves that skyscrapers can “grow” not only upwards, but also outwards.

Ever wonder why NASA never displays ads on its rockets? How about private companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin? At first glance, it seems like a no-brainer, right? After all, rocket launches are exciting events that millions of people from around the world tune in to watch. And with rocket launches being extremely expensive affairs, it seems like an easy way to cut costs.

In reality, there are several reasons for not plastering rockets with logos and commercial slogans. In NASA’s case, it’s a U.S. government agency and is not allowed to generate funds, but in the case of private companies, the risk of rockets exploding during launch is still pretty significant. The last thing companies want is to have their names or logos associated with a disastrous rocket launch, and rocket operators just cannot guarantee that it won’t happen.

However, just because it’s not a common practice in the West doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Since January of this year, Russia’s Roscosmos has been displaying ads on its space rockets, reportedly generating hundreds of millions of rubles from private companies. The cost is calculated using a special formula that takes into account the advertising area, the rocket’s surface size, and the campaign duration.

It is believed that the effect of these marketing efforts is not direct sales, but rather high-profile PR. The format is particularly attractive to major brands, as its exclusivity allows them to grab the attention of millions without worrying about the competition.

Russian media reports that Roscosmos has launched four rocket launches with advertising placements from the Baikonur space base since the beginning of the year, with RU.TV, PSB Bank and Kofemaniya being the largest clients.

Interestingly, in 2001, Pizza Hut paid for an advertising campaign to have a pizza delivered to the ISS via a Progress rocket with the company’s logo painted on it. It reportedly paid over a million dollars for the stunt, but it was a one-off event.

Xiao Lu started running his family’s street food stall when he was 17. His father prepared the ingredients while he handled the cooking, but Lu quickly realized he needed something to set himself apart from the many other similar stalls in the market. One day, he put on a vest to add a touch of class to his attire, but the feedback was so positive that he eventually ended up donning a full business suit.

Chinese media report that Xiao Lu starts work at his night market stall at 5 pm every day and cooks around 200 servings until around 11:30 at night. His family assists him by cutting the ingredients and preparing the different sauces and broths, but he definitely steals the show with his unusual attire and CEO-like demeanor.

Lu’s dapper look has attracted comparisons to Sanji, the stylish fictional cook in the Japanese anime One Piece, created by Eiichiro Oda. He became so popular after he started streaming his stir-fry routine on sites like Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) that people started traveling from all over the country just to see him in action.

“People may come to buy out of curiosity, but what really keeps customers coming back is the taste,” Lu said in a recent interview. “I’m just doing what I love. If it can bring some positive energy, I’m very happy.”

The young ‘Stir Fry CEO’ said that business has been so good since going viral online that he works virtually non-stop from 5 pm until 11:30 at night, preparing a portion about every three minutes and sometimes handling multiple woks at once to keep up with demand.

For more unusual street foods, check out China’s unique stir-fried river rocks, and grilled ice.

In a series of videos documenting the build of the world’s largest RC A380, Ramy RC revealed that the ever-growing weight of the aircraft was always the biggest issue. He managed to solve it by using a lot of light but strong materials, like carbon fibre with a honeycomb core, but it still took a lot of trial and error to make it work.

Interestingly, Ramy RC’s creation is long and wide enough to actually fit a person inside, horizontally, and is about the size of some Cesna light planes. Although specific flight speeds have not yet been revealed, the fact that this enormous RC model can actually take off and land like an actual jet (with servo-powered landing train and everything) is impressive enough.

Ramy RC spent months working on the world’s largest RC Airbus A380, making countless adjustments along the way, but the end result is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

According to Chinese media sources, Hou Xiang was born prematurely after his mother suffered from malnutrition during her pregnancy. He was always smaller than the other kids his age, but around the age of nine, his physical development stopped, and he was left looking like a young boy for the rest of his life.

For most of his adult life, Hou Xiang has been confused with a pre-teen and asked questions like ‘where do you study?,’ but he didn’t let that affect his ambition and his desire to make it in life. Supported by his family, he pursued acting and landed his breakout role in 2005, playing a primary school student in the hit sitcom Home with Kids. He was 19 at the time.

Over the years, Hou appeared in popular dramas including Stepfather, Chuang Guandong, and Tunnel Warfare, where he played a variety of youthful characters. Directors praised his acting skills and his capacity to follow instructions to the letter, something that kids can struggle with.

The 40-year-old actor admitted that his boyish appearance and child-like voice severely limit the kind of roles he can take on, but added that he always strives to perfect the roles offered to him.

“For me, it is not easy to come across a script and a role that I truly like,” Hou said. “I hope I can fully master every role within this range. That, too, counts as a kind of success for an actor.”

Hou has always lived a quiet, stable life with his wife, preferring to focus on his family and acting, instead of clinging to the spotlight and the attention that comes with it.

As a millennial, I still remember growing up in Eastern Europe during the final years of communism, before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Virtually the only thing we had for breakfast and as snacks were plain white bread sandwiches with baloney, butter or cheese. There just wasn’t anything else available. Many people from my generation still remember those simple but hearty meals fondly, but I never imagined a business model built around them.

Buterbrodik 66 (Russian for ‘Sandwich 66’) is a unique eatery in Sankt Petersburg, Russia, that only sells basic sandwiches with baloney, butter, cheese, or egg, for as little as 100 rubles ($1.36). There is nothing fancy about them; in fact, they look like they were made by some student in their dorm room, but that’s the appeal.

Owner Alexey Petrachev told PDM News that he and a friend started the business as a simple stand selling dirt-cheap sandwiches to cheer people up, but the whole thing evolved into something more, and now they have their own place. Like the sandwiches, it’s nothing fancy; it’s in a building no one else wants to operate in, on the outskirts of Sankt Petersburg, but it’s cheap, so they can stay in business.

“At first, the prices were 50 rubles—people would come in and say, ‘Oh, what a rip-off,’ and leave. Then we raised the price to 100 rubles—everyone immediately felt OK,” Petrachev said. “Considering our location—we’re on the outskirts, in a building and a place no one wants—we have enough to cover the cost of this space.”

A slab of butter between two slices of cheap, white bread might seem like a lot, but judging by the online reviews, a lot of people are more than willing to shell out 100 rubles for a sandwich, either out of melancholy or because they simply don’t want to do it themselves. After all, you need to buy a whole loaf of bread, a stick of butter, not to mention the time required to make the sandwich.

“Sin entered into the world through food, and Satan doesn’t stop there. Food, for me, is really like a weapon of how I can fight back,” 27-year-old biblical eating influencer Kayla Bundy recently told the New York Times, adding that she got into it after looking at the Holy Book from “that lens of noticing what they are eating”.

Bundy, who has been a biblical eater for the last eight years, is a popular content creator on platforms like TikTok, where she shares tips and recipes with over 500,000 followers. She also managed to turn her unique diet into a lucrative business, selling a $28 digital guide to biblical superfoods and booking coaching sessions for $700 per month.

Kayla Bundy may be one of the most popular promoters of biblical eating, but she is definitely not the only one. Abbie Stasior, a Christian dietitian who lives in Nashville, likes to reference Bible verses, such as a scene in the Book of John in which Jesus eats a balanced breakfast of bread and fish with his disciples, pointing out that they get both carbs and protein.

Then there is Annalies Xaviera, a stay-at-home mom, whose online following has surpassed 300,000 on Facebook alone. She focuses mostly on eating locally-sourced, unprocessed foods, but also incorporates prayer and Bible verses in her videos.

The idea of biblical eating has been around for years, but it has probably never been as popular as it is today, mainly thanks to social media.

Did you know that wasps have the highest protein content of any edible insect? That probably doesn’t mean much to most people, as it’s not like you’re eating Jibachi Senbei for protein, but it’s the only selling point we could find, apart from the snack’s weirdness.

I can think of few things less appetizing than crackers filled with dozens of black, dried wasps, but then again, I’ve never been much of a wasp guy. Something about biting into the dried carcass of an insect never really appealed to me for some reason, but Jibachi Senbei are reportedly quite the novelty snack in Japan, especially among seniors.

To create the world-famous wasp crackers, the elderly wasp hunters of Omachi Jibachi Aikokai set traps in the forest, boil and dry the wasps, and then give them to a local baker who incorporates them into crackers. The dough is said to be mildly sweet, while the dried insects taste similar to burned raisins, which certainly doesn’t sound very appetizing.

The wasp species used to make Jibachi Senbei (Vespula flaviceps or Kurosuzume bachi) are digger wasps safe for human consumption, but that doesn’t necessarily make them delicacies. The smell you’re hit by when opening a pack of these unique treats can allegedly be compared to that of fish food, which makes a lot of sense, but itsn’t the best selling point for the crackers.

Invented in Omachi, Jibachi Senbei wasp crackers can be found at local markets and select gourmet stores in the Japanese city, with some tourists traveling her specifically to give them a try.