If you sometimes feel the need to stroke a pet, but don’t actually want the responsibilities that come with owning a pet, this tail-wagging robot pillow is probably just what you’ve been waiting for.

Developed by Japanese company Yukai Engineering Co, Qoobo is a two-pound robotic pillow that sits on your lap and wags its fluffy tail when you pet it. That’s all it does, but then again, that’s all the interaction some people want. Whether they are allergic to cats and dogs, live in an apartment that doesn’t allow real pets, or just hate things like meowing, barking and having their furniture scratched, some people just want to stroke their pet and see them wagging their tail. And that’s where Qoobo comes in.

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A family in Forest Hill, Toronto, has taken their neighbors to court for copying the design of their multi-million dollar house when renovating their property, thus decreasing the value of their own home. They are asking for $2.5 million in damages.

It turns out you can’t just copy design elements of a house you like without suffering the consequences. Barbara Ann and Eric Kirshenblatt learned that the hard way three years ago, when they were taken to court by their neighbors, Jason and Jodi Chapnick, whose home they had allegedly used as inspiration when renovating their own property. The Chapnicks claimed that the defendants had fixed up their house to look “strikingly similar” to theirs, including using matching stonework the same shade of blue. They were asking for $1.5 million in damages, $20,000 in statutory copyright damages, $1 million in punitive damages, and for the defendants to change the look of their house.

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Treepex is a portable barrel-like device that allegedly uses living tree cells compressed in replaceable cartridges to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, emulating a tree’s ability to transform polluted air into mineral-enriched air. It sounds like a game-changer for sure, but nobody knows if it actually works, plus, it looks kind of funny.

Developed by a Georgian, Tbilisi-based, startup with the same name, Treepex claims to provide a real solution to the world’s growing air pollution problem. Using a new technology called CRISPR, the company was apparently able “to extract the DNA of actual trees to recreate the living cells that are responsible for photosynthesis”, and compress them into cartridges that absorb polluted air and release clean fresh air for the user. All you have to do is plug a cartridge into the tubular Treepex, stick it into your mouth, and breathe.

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Adam Rolston, a retired rugby player from Northern Ireland, recently completed the longest hole of golf in history, a feat that saw him hitting a golf ball a whopping 20,093 times over a distance of around 2,000 kilometers, across the deserts and mountain ranges of Mongolia.

28-year-old Rolston came up with the idea for this unique challenge while talking to former rugby colleague, Ron Rutland, in Kenya. Rutland had completed an epic 26,000-kilometer cycling adventure through every country in Africa, before arriving in South Africa to see his national rugby team compete against Japan in the 2015 World Cup. The incredible story got Adam thinking about a similar adventure, only golf-related. He started talking to his friends about it, but they all said that it couldn’t be done, which only made him want to try it even more.

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If you ever decide to visit the medieval village of Obidos, in Portugal, you needn’t bother bringing a book to pass the time. Just book a stay at The Literary Man hotel and you can choose from its collection of over 50,000 books.

Established in 2015, The Literary Man has already become famous as the world’s best hotel for book lovers. It features a constantly growing collection of literary works, most of which are written in English. Books can be found virtually everywhere inside The Literary Man, lining the walls of its massive lounge, on the bed stands of its 30 bedrooms, at the in-house gin bar, and even in its old wine cellar. The over 50,000 literary works cover a variety of genres, from novels and poetry to cookbooks.

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If you’re planning to go on a diet, or if you suffer from serious conditions like diabetes, knowing exactly what and how much you’re eating is essential. In this day and age, we have calorie and nutritional calculators even on our smartphones, but they act only as guides, whereas Panasonic’s revolutionary new device, CaloRieco, actually analyzes the food on your plate and provides accurate information about in just a few seconds.

You’ve probably used calorie calculators before, and you know that they only offer general information. For example, a calculator will tell you the average number of calories in a burger, but it can’t tell you exactly how many calories are in the burger at your favorite fast food joint. The same goes for nutrients like protein, carbohydrates or fats. And this is what makes the new Panasonic CaloRieco so special, it can actually give you accurate information on exactly what is on your plate.

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Inal Bersekov is an incredibly talented tattoo artist from Belgium whose black and white, photo-realistic tattoos look printed on the skin of his clients.

There are plenty of celebrated tattoo artists in the world today, each with their own unique styles, but when it comes to inking detailed portraits, you probably won’t find anyone better than Inal Bersekov. The quality of his works is so insane that it’s nearly impossible to tell that you’re looking at someone’s tattoo, and not a black and white photo, or a really good hyper-realistic drawing.

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The Carolina Reaper has been the undisputed world’s hottest pepper for over 4 years now, but its days at the top are numbered. There’s a new kid on the block and it’s apparently twice as hot as the Reaper. This is “Pepper X”.

Pepper X is the brainchild of Smokin’ Ed Currie, “founder, president, mad scientist & chef of PuckerButt Pepper Company”, and the same man who created the now world famous Carolina Reaper. Apparently, he started working on this scorching hot chilli some 10 years ago, crossing various pepper variety and constantly upping the Scoville rating, to the point where it now scores a mouth burning 3.18 million Scoville units. To put that into perspective, Jalapenos are rated at between 10,000 – 20,000 units, while the current Guinness record holder for world’s hottest pepper, the Carolina Reaper, scores an average of 1.6 million units on the Scoville scale. So it’s safe to say that Pepper X is pretty hot.

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A 45-year-old actress from Germany has been injecting herself with Bacillus F, a 3.5 million-year-old bacteria from the Siberian permafrost, to stop the effects of aging.

The woman, who goes by the moniker Manoush, describes herself as a “human lab rat” for being the first person in the world to inject herself with Bacillus F, an ancient bacteria whose cells apparently show no signs of aging. She has been doing it for the past three months and claims it is already making her look and feel younger than her age.

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Feel free to add mosquito-repellent to the already huge list of useful of smartphone features. South-Korean manufacturer LG has recently released the world’s first mosquito repellent smartphone, which uses ultrasonic sound waves to keep the pesky bloodsuckers at bay.

Called the LG K7i, the innovative handheld was unveiled at the  India Mobile Congress last week, and judging by early feedback, it’s set to become a best-seller in mosquito-infested countries. While advertised as a budget smartphone with relatively unimpressive technical specs, the K7i has a very unique advantage – it features LG’s “Mosquito Away” technology which can allegedly repel mosquitoes with the help of ultrasonic sound waves.

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After realizing that many of the men using online dating services were trying to find extra wives, an Indonesian software developer decided to make it easier for them by creating a dedicated polygamy dating app.

A year ago, while browsing through various Indonesian dating websites, Lindu Pranayama noticed that many of the visitors were actually married men searching for a second or third wives. Unfortunately for them, the vast majority of online dating services don’t offer any options for polygamists, so he decided to create “AyoPoligami” – which translated as “Let’s Do Polygamy – a new smartphone app that caters specifically to their needs.

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Photos of extremely muscular pigs bred by a farm in Cambodia have been doing the rounds online, sparking controversy about genetically modified animals.

The Hulk-like pigs are apparently bred by Duroc Cambodia, a pig farm in the Asian country’s Banteay Meanchey province. The company’s Facebook page is littered with photos and videos of these freakishly muscular animals that appear to be the result of some extreme genetic tampering. Some have accused the breeder of using hormones and steroids to turn the pigs into nightmarish monsters, but seeing as Duroc Cambodia is also selling insemination kits to people wanting to grow their own, their unnatural physique is most likely caused by genetic modifications.

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Ever wonder what you would sound like if you had a party hooter stuck in your trachea? Well, thanks to a viral video posted by a doctor in Argentina, you don’t have to try it yourself to find out.

Dr Santiago Gomez Zuviria, of Tucuman, Argentina, recently had to operate on an 8-year-old boy who had accidentally swallowed a small party hooter. It had got stuck in his trachea, so surgery was the only way to remove it, but before carrying out the procedure, the Argentinian doctor decided to film the poor kid as he inhaled, and posted it on his Facebook page as a warning to parents. Little did he know that it would end up going viral, with more than 9 million views, at the time of this writing.

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53-year-old Juana Escudero is alive and well, but she’s been struggling to prove it for the last seven years. Following an administrative error, she was registered as deceased, and has been unable to accomplish simple tasks, like renewing her driver’s license or scheduling a doctor’s appointment, ever since. Escudero has become so desperate to fix things that she now wants to dig up her own grave to prove that she’s not the one buried there.

It all started seven years ago, when a woman whose name and date of birth matched Juana Escudero’s perfectly died in Malaga, Spain. Even though the protagonist of this story was alive and well in Alcalá de Guadaíra, a town near Seville, the strange coincidence caused their Social Security data to clash, and the living Escudero has been dead to the Government ever since. She and her family thought it was funny at first, but they’ve stopped laughing at it for a long time now.

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