Planking, Police Play Squid Game, and "Plus-Sized" Models

In this week's Odder News, the police's viral "Squid Game," planking record smashed by 11-year-old, and Russia's first "plus-sized" model.

• A network of kindergartens (detskie sady) in Moscow gave up regular milk and claims to have eliminated common childhood diseases that keep the kiddos home. (Does anyone else think this is a kind of weird and overly optimistic story during a global pandemic?) Attendance hovers around 100% at My Sadik. It probably does not hurt that this is a private network of expensive childcare centers. The centers cut out sausages, other processed foods, and started serving kasha without milk. Sugar and wheat are also among the "white products" that My Sadik has cut out to achieve an almost perfectly healthy army of kids.
• Netflix's grotesquely popular Squid Game has been parodied all over the internet, and the police in Krasnoyarsk have joined in on the "game." In their version of Squid Game, a rather dashing officer shows pedestrians that green means "go" and red means "stop!" His head swivels, showing that nothing escapes his notice. By employing the trope-of-the-moment, the police department is elevating the importance of jaywalking to a matter of life and death – which it is!
• An 11-year-old from Ingushetia holds the world record for planking – for as many hours as he is years old. Abdul-Rahim Getagazov managed to hold the plank position for a strangely perfect 11 hours, 11 minutes, and 11 seconds. The previous record, held by an Australian adult, was nine hours and 30 minutes. A representative of the Russian Book of Records was on hand to verify Getagazov's achievement. (Check out the video; are you as surprised as we are that the official records man uses a simple cell phone timer to verify records the way the rest of us do?)
• An Omsk "resident," who lived in a metal barrel for 35 years, just got the keys to her first apartment. She was supported by "caring people from all over the world" who donated money through a famous Moscow blogger for the 64-year-old practically homeless woman to purchase an apartment, including appliances and furniture. The woman worked as a crane operator until her company went bankrupt. The barrel was provided as "temporary housing" and has been her residence for 35 years. She was the last one left in a small village of barrels before this delightful windfall.
• A Russian fashion magazine just published its first-ever cover featuring a "plus-sized" model. Jill Kortleve of the Netherlands appears on the November Russian edition of Vogue. Although, frankly, Kortleve doesn't even look "plus-sized," but more normal-sized.