Japan has some of the world’s longest working hours, but some companies are starting to realize that their workers also need to sleep in order to be productive. One such company is actually encouraging employees to sleep more by rewarding them with points that can be spent at cafes and cafeterias. CRAZY, a Tokyo-based wedding planning company, recently announced the implementation of a “sleep remuneration system” to encourage its workforce to get more sleep. It has teamed up with Airweave, a startup specializing in sleep analysis technology and will be monitoring its employees sleep patterns. Workers who install the Sleep Analysis app on their smartphones and share their data with the company are eligible to receive points according to how many hours of sleep they get ever night. CRAZY hopes that the new reward system will improve the lifestyle habits and overall health of its employees, as well as boost their productivity. Read More »

Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, yesterday told members of the press that Israel has been stealing Iran’s clouds while also working to ensure that whatever clouds do make it into Iranian air space are unable to release rain. Relations between Iran and Israel have always been tense, but I doubt anyone imagined one side would go as far as to accuse the other of stealing their clouds. Well, that’s exactly what happened yesterday, when, during a press conference, Iranian General Gholam Reza Jalali said that his country’s prolonged drought has been caused by foreign interference, more specifically by Israel and “another country”. Jalali tried to back up his claims by citing a survey showing that all mountainous areas above 2,200 meters between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean are covered in snow, except those in Iran. Read More »

A 40-year-old man allegedly traveled almost 10,000 miles from England to an art gallery in Aspen, Colorado, where he used a sharp object to slash a $3 million dollar painting by New York artist Christopher Wool, before storming out. It was later revealed that the painting was owned by his father. The bizarre incident occurred last year, on May 2, when a man wearing sunglasses, black jeans, a black jacket, a hat, gloves and a full beard entered the Opera Gallery in Aspen and walked directly up to a painting called “Untitled 2004”. He then took a knife or other cutting object out of his jacket pocket and slashed the painting twice before running out of the gallery. A one-year investigation recently revealed that the man who carried out the slashing was none other than Nicholas Morley, son of the painting’s owner, one Harold Morley. Read More »

Ever felt so tired at work that you needed to rest your head on your arm for a little while? We’ve all done it at some point, but doing it every day for long periods of time can apparently have negative consequences, as one woman in China recently learned. Surnamed Zhang, 28-year-old  office worker from Harbin, China, used to nap at her desk during her hour-long lunch break, using her left arm as a pillow. Zhang’s fingers would often feel sore and numb when she woke up, but she didn’t pay much attention to that until three months ago, when, upon waking up from her daily nap, she couldn’t feel her left arm at all. She had experienced a similar sensation before, but it usually went away after a couple of minutes. This time the numbness wouldn’t go away, and she started having trouble with menial tasks like picking up objects, so she went to see a doctor about it. Read More »

Sally Dawly is a woman on a mission. Over the last three and a half years, the anti-littering activist has spent most of her free time picking up cigarette butts from the streets of her home city of Auburn, in California, and on this year’s Valentine’s Day she picked up her millionth butt. Dubbed the “Butt Lady” by her local community, Dawly began her quest to rid the streets of Auburn of cigarette butts in October 2014. Armed with a broom, dustpan and a pair of tongs, the woman started scouring the streets of her town in search of discarded cigarette butts, picking them up and throwing them in the trash, where they belong. To keep a tab on how many butts she picks up, the Butt Lady has been using a clicker, and earlier this month, she hit a historic milestone – one million cigarette butts. Read More »

Kirill Tereshin, a 21-year-old bodybuilding enthusiast from Russia, decided that getting huge arms the old fashioned way – weightlifting and a protein-rich diet – was too hard and time-consuming, so he cut a few corners by injecting his arms with liters of synthetic oil known as “synthol”. Like most synthol users, Tereshin started by injecting small quantities of oil directly into his muscles, but quickly realized that in order to keep his biceps and triceps looking huge, he needed to increase the quantity significantly and inject it regularly. He first injected 250 ml of synthol into his arms, but that only made his muscles grow by 1 inch. He wasn’t too happy with that, so now he claims to inject liters of the stuff to keep his arms looking massive. The problem is that the rest of his body is having trouble keeping up. Read More »

UK Designer Debbie Wingham has unveiled the world’s most expensive pair of shoes. The stiletto heels are encrusted with precious metals and rare stones — and feature a whopping $15.1 million (USD) price tag. Wingham is famous for her opulent creations and has worked for many celebrities, royals, and wealthy elite over the course of her career. She is known for crafting the world’s most expensive dress, a Red Diamond Abaya gown, which was encrusted with over 2000 diamonds, including the world’s most expensive red diamond, and priced at $15.45 million (USD). Wingham also owns a baking company, Couture to Cakes, and is known for having also crafted a $64 million (USD) diamond-encrusted cake for a UAE client. Read More »

If you’re looking to get a tattoo, but don’t have a specific design in mind, or if you’re just looking to get a classic tattoo at a discount, the Get What You Want tattoo gumball machine may be just what you’ve been looking for. Located at the Elm Street Tattoo shop, in Dallas, Texas, the Get What You Get gumball machine is filled with random tattoo designs packed in plastic balls. Interested customers must pay $100 to turn the little knob and have the machine release a random tattoo design which they can then have inked for free at the shop. While there are no bad designs in the bunch, the owner of the Elm Street Tattoo shop anticipated that some people may not be satisfied with their first design, so for an extra $20, they get another turn. You don’t have to get the design tattooed, but the shop does state that the fee for using the Get What You Get machine is not refundable. Read More »

The vast majority of nutritionists claim that, if you want to lose weight, fast food is among the first things you should cut from your diet, but one man recently proved that you can actually eat pizza every single day and still maintain a healthy figure. Brian Northrup, aka “Lord of Pizza” set out to prove that you can still lose weight while eating your favorite foods, by eating one medium Domino’s pizza every day for a 367 consecutive days. The New Jersey native documented the whole project on his Instagram page, posting photos of every pizza he ordered, and on YouTube where he posted videos of himself eating them. At the end of the year-long experiment, Northrup had lost about five pounds and was in tip-top shape. How did he do it? Well, the pizza fan claims that he just burned the extra calories by working out. Read More »

Harsukh Bhai Dobariya, of Gujarat, India, is very popular with birds. Every day, between 2,500 and 3,000 parrots and sparrows visit his 4-acre farm to feed on tasty millet cobs and build their nests away from predators. Nicknamed “The Birdman”, Dobariya has spent the last 17 years of his life looking out for the birds and transforming his land into a safe ecosystem for them. It all started in the year 2000, when Harsukh Bhai Dobariya suffered a leg fracture on his property in the Junagadh district of Gujarat, and had to spend most of his time in bed. After a neighbor came to buy some pearl millet from him, he had the idea to hang a millet cob on his balcony, which soon caught the attention of a parrot. The next day, two parrots came to feast on the delicious treat, then three, four, and within a month, there were already 100-150 parrots and sparrows visiting him every day. Read More »

Sharing E Umbrella, a new umbrella sharing company based in Shenzen, China, recently announced that it had lost most of the 300,000 umbrellas it made available since it launched, in April. China’s sharing economy has been booming, with companies offering anything from bicycles and basketballs to smartphone battery banks on a rental basis. Customers make a small deposit and get to use the item for a set period of time for a daily fee, with penalty fees put in place for every day that they fail to return the product after the deadline. It’s a simple business model, and market data shows that consumers see sharing as a cheap and convenient way to reduce waste and avoid clutter. However, it doesn’t always work out as well as entrepreneurs hope. Read More »

Thai women looking to date a walking ATM machine, but with no clue on how to catch one, can now rely on the services of “Madam Raya”, a seduction expert who claims to have dated 5,000 wealthy men. She is offering online course to help like-minded women bag the rich foreigner of their dreams. 24-year-old Praiya Suriya has been advising other Thai women in the art of seduction for four years now, via her popular Facebook page. She specializes in rich foreigners, and claims to have dated 5,000 of them, which, at her age is definitely an impressive achievement. Suriya recently made news headlines in Thailand after announcing a series of paid online courses that are 100% guaranteed to help takers find the perfect sugar daddy and teach them how to deal with them in order to get their hands on huge sums of money and expensive presents. Read More »

What started out as a simple job turned into an amazing friendship between a man and one of the most efficient predators on Earth. 10 years ago, Abdullah Sholeh became a “nanny” for a 3-month-old tiger cub, but they eventually became so close that even after the tiger matured, they spend almost every minute of the day together, and sometimes even sleep in the same enclosure. Mulan Jamillah, a beautiful Bengal tigress, was donated to the Islamic school in Malang, Indonesia, when she was just 3-months-old, and then 25-year-old Abdullah Sholeh became her full-time caretaker. Her previous owner was unable to take care of her, but the young student was more than happy to dedicate most of his time to the adorable cub. The only problem is that what started out as a temporary job eventually turned into a full-time friendship, with Abdullah having to spend almost 24-hours with the tiger, which earned him the nickname “The Nanny”.

 

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With millions of Chinese visiting the country’s sacred mountains every year, keeping them trash-free is incredibly difficult. Luckily, that’s where the Spiderman cleaners come in. These dedicated men an women risk their lives on a daily basis, rappelling down steep cliffs to reach plastic bottles, bags and various other garbage thrown there by uncivilized tourists. Spiderman cleaners get their name from the dangerous nature of their job. Photos released in the media show them dangling thousands of feet above ground on the side of steep mountain cliffs, supported only by ropes or cables, as they attempt to collect hard-to-reach trash. In an attempt to highlight the danger of their work and make tourists think twice before littering, some of the cleaners actually exchanged their regular uniforms for Spiderman costumes. This has made them a hit with visitors, who often stop to watch these real-life versions of their favorite superhero descend into the abyss to pick up a piece of trash, rewarding them with applause and cheers when they complete their mission. Read More »

Imagine a sport much like equestrian show jumping, but where the horse is replaced by a wooden stick with a plush toy at one and the rider actually does all the jumping over increasingly difficult hurdles. That’s the popular sport of Competitive Hobbyhorsing in a nutshell. The hobby horse is one of the oldest children’s toys still used today. Many of us remember prancing around in the yard on a stick imagining that it was a noble steed, but for the tens of thousands of members of the hobbyhorsing community in Finland, riding a toy horse is more than just a game. Many of them train for hours and hours on a daily basis and regularly take part in large-scale show jumping competitions where they try to impress judges with their posture, footwork and jumping.

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