German Art Collective Prints Fashionable Clothes Directly on Manhole Covers

A Berlin-based art collective known as Raubdruckerin – German for ‘pirate printers’ – has come up with a unique approach to creating textile patterns. They have been traveling around European cities turning utility hole covers into printing presses to decorate totes, t-shirts, hoodies, gym bags, and more.

Founder Emma France Raff began experimenting with the concept of ‘urban printing press’ in 2006 when she founded the project in partnership with her father, Johannes Kohlrusch. They started in Lisbon, but have since expanded to Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, the latter being their base of operations. The Raubdrucken team members find inspiration in the urban landscape and often overlooked surfaces of the city, such as utility hole covers and drains. Sustainability is a crucial component of the project, as they aim to offer an alternative perspective and approach to mass production.

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Twisted Mother Put Healthy Son through 323 Hospital Visits and 13 Surgeries for No Reason

We’re constantly told that parents know best and always act in the interests of their children. Except when they don’t, like Kaylene Bowen-Wright from Dallas, Texas, who subjected her son to 323 hospital visits and 13 major operations by convincing doctors that he was terminally ill. Now aged 8, Christopher has basically spent his whole life in doctors’ offices, and has undergone over a dozen surgeries that left him with several life-threatening blood infections.

The cycle began days after Christopher was born and continued until 2015, when physicians at the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston noticed that his mother’s accounts clashed with the test results and overall visible condition of the young patient. They alerted Child Protective Services (CPS) and Bowen was arrested on charges of causing injury to a child. The 34-year-old woman admitted she had lied to doctors that her son was gravely ill, which resulted in numerous medical interventions.

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You Can Win a $3 Million English Mansion and a Rolls Royce with Just $14 and a Lot of Luck

It may sound crazy, but a mere £10.50 ($14) could actually make you the owner of a swanky English mansion in Devon which also comes with a Rolls-Royce, £50,000 in cash and all sorts of extra goodies, including a fully stocked wine cellar, a 3-hole golf course, a tractor and the whole house staff for an entire year.

If you consider yourself a lucky person, and have a few bucks to spare why not enter the “Win a Millionaire Mansion Competition” launched by an actual English millionaire looking to make a profit and have some fun in the process. The owner, who prefers to remain anonymous, sees this offbeat lottery as a way to sell the property without too much hassle and make a lucky someone’s dreams come true.

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Tiny Birds Build Communal Nests So Large They Can Pull Down Trees

While most songbirds build small, discreet nests designed to shelter one clutch of eggs, the Social Weavers (Philetairus socius) of southern Africa build communal nests so large that they can pull down mature trees. Each structure can weigh over a ton, and range upwards of 20 feet wide and 10 feet tall, with over a hundred separate nesting chambers. Successive generations refurbish and reuse these compartments, often for more than a century.

Social Weavers utilize several different building materials, starting with a basic structure of woven twigs. They then line the interior with grasses and feathers and construct a 10-inch long, one-inch wide private entrance with downward pointing spiky straws to deter snakes. While a breeding pair will have a private apartment, most chambers house three or four of the birds at a time. The benefits of this lifestyle become clear in the context of the desert where temperatures vary dramatically.

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Darwin Award Candidate Cements His Head Inside a Microwave

It seems that these days people will go to any lengths for some attention on social media. Take YouTube, for example: it abounds in clips that will certainly make you go “Wow!” but also question the sanity of the uploaders. One guy enjoying his 15 minutes of fame right now is 22-year-old Jay Swingler from the UK, who made headlines for cementing his head inside a microwave oven for some YouTube views.

In hindsight, it looks funny and Jay certainly got the attention he craves. However, it may have gone horribly wrong: his friends couldn’t free him for an hour and a half, and emergency services had to be called. As relieved as Jay was to be rescued, he is absolutely unrepentant, saying the whole thing is hilarious and he is thrilled with the attention his video has garnered.

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Brazilian Tattoo Artist Specializes in Concealing Stretch Marks and Circles Under the Eyes with Ink

Although stretch marks are a typical, albeit annoying, part of life, most people wish that they could make them permanently disappear. There is an entire industry built around creams, lotions, and even surgery to help conceal these imperfections, but a Brazilian tattoo artist has developed a much simpler, more effective solution.

Rodolpho Torres, of São Paulo, uses flesh colored ink to hide stretch marks as well as circles under the eye. His exact method is a closely guarded secret, but we know that it involves creating an optical illusion via tattoo shading. Anvisa (National Agency of Sanitary Surveillance) has approved his ink, and he personalizes each mixture to achieve a tone similar to that of the client’s skin. The ink blends into the stretch marks and dark circles, giving them the color of the skin. Once the tattoos have healed, the client’s skin appears smoother, and after sixty days they can sunbathe without the risk of spots developing.

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Tokyo’s “Rescue Bus” Picks Up Drunk Train Passengers That Fall Asleep and Miss Their Stop

During the holiday season, the Nishi Tokyo Bus Company operates a rescue bus called the ‘Nesugoshi Kyusai’ bus (overslept rescue bus)  to pick up inebriated passengers who fell asleep and miss their stop. It meets passengers at the final station and delivers them back to their regular stop for the relatively small fee – when compared to a hotel room – of 880 yen (7.85 USD).

The rescue bus was the idea of a Nishi Tokyo Bus driver who pitched it to the company four years ago and they have been offering the service ever since. During the 2016 holiday season alone 75 passengers utilized the rescue bus, including 32 on the busiest night. This year, the rescue bus will operate every Friday evening throughout the month of December, as that is when the majority of company end-of-the-year drinking parties (called “bonenkai” in Japanese) take place.

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You Too Can Wear This Armless Giant Sock Dress for Just $280

Consider yourself a person of bold fashion choices AND have 210 pounds ($280) to spare? In that case, the tube scarf created by Bulgarian knitwear designer label Dukyana could be just the winter pick for you. Beware, though: this piece of woolen clothing has no arm holes and is really a beige mohair tube that covers the entire body from the neck down, folding over the shoulders. Lots of people have lots to say about this product, some declaring that it resembles a giant sock.

Dukyana is the trade name chosen by a Bulgarian woman called Milena Bunalova, who offers the clothes knitted by herself and her five-member team through third-party retailers and her own website. According to the label, the tube scarf (or sock dress or however you choose to describe it) is a fashion statement. Dukyana hopes the creation will become a hit this winter and sees it as an excellent solution for ladies who favor long walks out in the chilly air. The label also says that the fashion article does not stretch and hugs a woman’s body tightly.

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Turkish University Course to Prepare Students for Alien Encounters

If alien conspiracy theories are your thing or you simply believe in extraterrestrial life and eagerly await the first contact, you’ll feel right at home at Akdeniz University in Turkey. This educational establishment, based in the province of Antalya, has made a course called “Ufology and Exopolitics” part of its latest curriculum. Its aim is to get students ready to give a proper welcome to visitors from space, which tutor Erhan Kolbaşi believes to have already touched down multiple times.

Practical preparations and interstellar diplomacy are only part of the course focus. As Kolbaşi told the Dogan News Agency, students will also learn about alleged government cover-ups of alien activity on Earth. Kolbaşi, who serves as deputy chair of Istanbul-based Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Center, claims that fiber optic cable, microchips and night vision devices are technologies we have because of information collected at UFO crash sites.

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Designer Creates “Substitute Phone” to Help People Battle Smartphone Addiction

Austrian designer Klemens Schillinger has created a therapeutic replacement for smartphones called Substitute Phones. The Vienna-based designer made a series of five of these non-devices which feature a row of stone beads to imitate various motions typical to smartphone use, such as scrolling, zooming, and swiping.

By using stone beads to emulate interaction with a phone’s touchscreen, Schillinger aims to create therapeutic tools that can provide the physical simulation that frequent smartphone users crave, and help them cope with the withdrawal symptoms of being away from their phones for long periods of time

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Double Bionic Hands Aim to Prove That Four Hands Are Better Than Two

Bionic limbs used to be restricted to the realm of fiction, but the technology, first released in 1993, has been making massive leaps in the past few years. Now, one Italian Robotics company called Youbionic has taken the next significant leap forward by releasing a 3D printed and customizable bionic appendage consisting of two robotic hands.

The 3D printed device, designed by Federico Ciccarese, is made from nylon dust and consists of an Arduino micro-controller, actuators, and three electrodes that are activated by nerve impulses in the same way that muscles move when neurons send signals from our brains.

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Chinese App Allows Celebrities to Sell Their Time by the Second, Fans to Buy It and Investors to Trade It

A new Chinese app called Miao A or “Seconds” allows celebrities and socialites to sell their time to fans, by the second. The unusual service has recently come under scrutiny, however, as investors are also able to buy and trade celebrity time, causing the app to operate as an illegal stock exchange.

The Beijing-based app describes itself as the first time-trading platform that helps fans get access to their favorite celebs. The company buys time in bulk from stars or their agents and then sells it in one-second packets to the public. The platform charges a 3% service fee on all exchanges, and all transactions managed through the Chinese online payment platform NetEase. An average month sees an exchange of 300 to 400 million yuan ($45-60 million) worth of celebrities’ time.

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Man Buries 42 School Busses to Build the Largest Private Doomsday Bunker in North America

In the quiet Canadian village of Horning’s Mills, 100 km north of Toronto, lies the 12.5-acre homestead of Bruce and Jean Beach. On the surface, the land appears to be a typical rural property, but buried deep under those green fields is the largest private nuclear fallout shelter in North America- The Ark Two.

Bruce Beach’s famous nuclear shelter measures a staggering 10,000 square feet, and is primarily made up of 42 old school busses encased in concrete and buried under 14 feet into the ground. The Ark Two was designed to accommodate 500 people for several months and is equipped with everything you could possibly need to survive, from giant supplies of food, a private well, full plumbing, redundant fuel generators, to a dentist’s chair and even a daycare.

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Egyptian Bride Divorces Husband Two Weeks into Their Marriage Because He Does All the Housework

A 28-year-old Egyptian newlywed woman, is seeking a divorce after only two weeks of marriage because her husband does all of the household chores. Her husband, 31, also runs a successful clothing store, where he employs several staff members and is therefore able to spend most of his time at home. Samar claims that he spends all of that time cleaning and rearranging furniture and that she can no longer handle living with him.

The woman, known only as Samar M., claims that her husband, Mohammad S., is acting like a housewife, and she has grown bored of him. Not only does he do all of the chores, but he refuses to allow her to help at all. She eventually confronted her husband but said that he responded by saying that if she wanted to live in his house, she had to follow his rules.

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Young CEO Is Offering $10,000 to Whoever Can Find Him a Girlfriend That He Ends Up Dating for at Least 4 Months

Joe Cohen, the young CEO of a California based company called SelfHacked, is looking for a suitable girlfriend, and he is offering $10,000 to whoever points him in the right direction. He is also offering $2,000 to anyone who can introduce him to someone else who can connect him with a woman.

30-year-old Cohen has created a very complex dating advert on his blog, in which he explains why he opted for this unusual way of finding a romantic partner, what he looks for in a woman, as well as details about himself. He also mentions that he will only pay out the reward if he successfully dates the woman for at least four months. That is apparently the amount of time it takes Cohen to get to know someone, and will also protect him against women just looking to earn some money.

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