News You Can Use: Ewwwwww!
Creme de la Weird
In China, the highly competitive practice of mukbang -eating large quantities of food for viewers’ enjoyment -is a wildly popular streaming subject, Oddity Central reported. Successful mukbang streamers make good money and are showered with gifts from their followers. The trend took a sad turn on July 14, however, when 24-year-old Pan Xiaoting, a former waitress, lost her life during her mukbang livestream. As Pan’s following grew, she took her overeating to greater extremes, pushing her weight to around 650 pounds. An autopsy reportedly showed that her stomach was full of undigested food and her abdomen was severely deformed.
Great Art
The Welsh town of Ruthin, Denbighshire, is struggling to embrace a 43-foot-tall inflatable figure of a laughing man in an odd squatting position, resting on a ball. Wales Online reported that the installation is related to the Ruthin International Arts Festival and was created by Chinese artist Yue Minjun, known for his self-portraits. Locals aren’t impressed; some say the “sickly pink color of the piece” is frightening children, and one woman said, “Oh please. He looks constipated. Monstrosity!”
Eyewitness News
Remarkably, two brothers out fishing off the coast of Rye, New Hampshire, on July 23 caught a once-in-a-lifetime experience on video: A 30-foot-long humpback whale breached nearby, throwing itself onto the back of a boat where Ryland Kenney, 44, and Greg Paquette, 54, were fishing. As the front of the boat rose into the air, Kenney and Paquette were thrown into the water. “As it collapsed onto the boat, the mouth closed and smashed the top of the motor and I heard a big crunch,” Kenney told The New York Times. “I had three seconds to act. I wasn’t scared, I didn’t have time to be scared.” Colin Yager, 16, who took the video, and his brother, Wyatt, rushed over to pull the men, who were unhurt, out of the water. Kenney said he’ll take some time away from the water to work on his boat, which will include a radar system that can detect nearby whales.
Ewwwwww!
Gizmodo reported on July 19 that a few days before in Portoviejo, Ecuador, doctors removed an obstruction from a 24-year-old woman’s stomach that had caused her pain, vomiting and difficulty eating. The object was a 16-inch-long hairball that weighed 2 pounds, Verdi Cevallos Balda General Hospital announced. The mass was so large it could be detected “by touch from the outside,” said lead surgeon Pedro Lovato. It had started to move into her intestines, but doctors said it had not caused serious injury to her stomach and she would recover. The hairball was likely caused by trichophagia, a form of disordered eating where people swallow their hair. The patient is receiving comprehensive treatment.