Japanese Knotweed – An Invasive Plant That Is Proving Impossible to Control

With weedkillers more advanced than we’ve ever had and significant technological progress, it seems unlikely that any plant could cause major socioeconomic problems, at least in developed countries. That’s what makes the Japanese Knotweed so fascinating. Despite humanity’s best efforts to eradicate or at least control this resilient invasive plant, it continues to spread across Europe and North America, causing some serious damage.

When renowned Bavarian plant importer Phillip von Siebold brought a Japanese knotweed plant to the Utrecht plant fair in the Netherlands in the 1840s, no one imagined it would end up becoming a global threat. It was prized for its beautiful flowers and advertised as an ornament, medicine, wind shelter, soil retainer, dune stabilizer, cattle feed, and insect pollinator. Despite records of gardeners expressing their concerns about the plant’s invasiveness, it was sold across Europe for almost a century, and by the time everyone realized the monster we had released, it was too late to do anything about it.

The manner in which Japanese knotweed virtually took over most of the United Kingdom is a testament to its invasive potential. Von Siebold sent a single plant to Kew Gardens in London in 1850, and it was the descendants of that one plant that managed to colonize most of the British Isles. In 2000, tho biologists analyzed 150 samples from across the U.K. and concluded that they were all clones of the same plant Von Siebold sent over a century ago. The DNA was identical, which technically meant that the UK had been conquered not by a species, but by a single plant.

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You Can Now Hire a Total Stranger to Argue on Your Behalf

If you’re not a confrontational person, having to argue with someone can be a daunting task. Luckily, Chinese online marketplace Taobao now offers people the chance to hire a “professional quarreler” to argue on their behalf.

There’s a good reason why Taobao is considered the world’s largest e-commerce platform. You can find virtually anything there, from popular products like smartphones to homework-writing robots and even bizarre services like hiring people to eat your favorite treats so you don’t have to. The latest addition to Taobao’s seemingly infinite list of goods and services is ‘quarreling by proxy’, which gives people the chance to hire strangers to argue or simply harass someone on their behalf, for a small fee.

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Crazy “Cockroach Challenge” Has People Taking Selfies with Roaches on Their Faces

We’ve seen some crazy internet challenges go viral in recent years, but this latest one takes the cake as the most disgusting of all. The Cockroach Challenge has people putting live cockroaches on their faces, taking a selfie and sharing it on social media.

It’s hard to say for sure how and when the Cockroach Challenge came to be, but according to several sources, the craziness began last month, when Alex Aung, a young man from Myanmar, posted a photo of himself with a large cockroach on his face to his Facebook account, captioning it “new challenge, Can you do this?”. The photo quickly went viral, and at the time of this writing, it has over 5,600 reactions and 18,000 shares. But most importantly, people in Myanmar, the Philippines and Indonesia started sharing their own selfies with creepy crawlies on their faces, and the Cockroach Challenge was born.

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Rare Condition Causes Teen’s Short Term Memory to Reset Every Day

A year and a half ago, Caitlin Little, a sophomore at Southeast Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, suffered a concussion during a cross-country practice which left her with a rare form of amnesia. All of her new memories are erased each night, so every morning she wakes up thinking it’s October 2017.

Caitlin’s case sounds a lot like the plot of hit romantic comedy 50 First Dates, in which Drew Barrymore’s character was involved in a serious car accident which left her unable to create new memories after that terrible event, causing her to wake up every morning thinking it was the day of of the accident. In 2004, when 50 First Dates Came Out, the amnesia Barrymore’s character was suffering from was nothing more than a fictional condition called ‘Goldberg’s Syndrome’, and one clinical neuropsychologist even wrote an article about it, claiming that it “bears no relation to any known neurological or psychiatric condition”.  However, several real-life cases of short-term memory resetting have been reported since then, and today that once fictional condition is a medically-recognized disorder known as anterograde amnesia.

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Filipino Town Bans Gossip in Bid to Stop Rumors from Spreading

Authorities in Binalonan, a small Filipino town about 200 kilometres north of Manila, have made gossiping illegal under a new local law aimed at preventing rumors from spreading within the community.

Trash talking someone in Binalonan could see offenders literally picking up trash under a new local law designed to make people take responsibility for the things they say. First-time gossipers risk a fine of 200 pesos ($3.8) and three hours of collecting garbage in the streets, while repeat offenders would have to pay up to $20 and put in eight hours of community service. The law isn’t very clear on what qualifies as gossip, but mayor Ramon Guico cited peddling rumours of residents’ relationships or financial situations as examples of punishable offences.

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Online Service Allows You to Hire Someone to Attend a Protest in Your Place

Ever wish you could attend a protest, but couldn’t do so because of location, timing or other constraints? Well, thanks to Wistand, an online platform that allows people to hire proxies to protest on their behalf anytime, anywhere, you can get involved and support the causes you care about.

Before you get too excited about the idea of proxy protesters, you should know that Wistand is currently only available in France, a country that has seen weekly “yellow vests” protests for nearly six months now. But while the idea for this online service may have been inspired by the Yellow Vests anti-government protesters, it is not affiliated with the movement in any way, and can be used for any type of protests. All you have to do is go on the Wistand website, start a “cause” or find one that you care about, and then donate a set fee that will go toward funding a “messenger”, a person to attend that protest on your behalf.

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Neck Stretching Causes 28-Year-Old Man to Suffer Major Stroke

Everyone feels the need to stretch their neck every once in a while, but in rare cases it can cause more than a satisfying pop. A 28-year-old Oklahoma man ended up in the hospital after tearing his vertebral artery by stretching his neck to alleviate neck soreness.

Josh Hader was working from his home in Guthrie, Oklahoma when he felt a familiar soreness in his neck and tried to alleviate as he had done many times before, by stretching his neck a bit. Only this time, as he used his hand to apply a bit more pressure, he heard a loud pop and instantly knew something was wrong. His left side went numb almost immediately, so he quickly checked to see if his face was drooping, one of the most common signs of a stroke. His face looked fine though, so he assumed he must have just pinched a nerve and went to get some ice packs. That’s when he noticed he couldn’t walk straight.

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World’s Most Depressing Sports Competition Has Coffins for Prizes

Copa Ataúdes or Coffin Cup, a yearly futsal tournament hosted by the Peruvian city of Juliaca, has been dubbed the world’s most depressing sports competition for offering coffins as prizes to the three best teams.

The Juliaca Coffin Cup is not your usual futsal tournament. It’s a competition between teams representing the twelve largest funeral houses in the  Puno Region of southeastern Peru, so it kind of makes sense that the main prizes be something representative of the funeral business. Still, fighting your heart out on the pitch for an expensive casket you have to share with five other teammates doesn’t exactly sound worthwhile. That didn’t stop the winning team from parading their $1,300 luxury coffin on their shoulders and singing “Olé, olé, campeon!” at the end of the final match, though.

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“Sleep Writer” Creates Bedtime Stories That Put Grown-Ups to Sleep

Chris Advansun is a Toronto-based sleep writer that creates his stories with one thing in mind – to make them interesting enough to get adults’ attention, but dull enough to put them to sleep.

39-year-old Advansun is a screenplay writer who sort of just got into sleep writing and fell in love with it. He just adores the challenge of balancing his grown-up bedtime stories in such a way that they gently pull the listener away from the thoughts that usually keep them up at night and then gently allow them to drift off to sleep. He has to stay away from anything attention-gripping to keep the listeners from becoming too involved in the story, but also make it interesting enough to keep them listening. For Advansun success means never reaching the end of his stories.

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Man Claims Cheap Dog Deworming Medicine Cured His Terminal Cancer

An Oklahoma man who was once diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer and told hat he only had three months live claims he is now tumor-free thanks to a $5 deworming drug usually meant for dogs.

Joe Tippens was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer in 2016. Despite undergoing treatment for the disease, by January of 2017, the cancer had spread to other organs, including his stomach, neck, pancreas and even his bones. The cancer was everywhere and doctors advised him to go home and say his goodbyes because he only had three months to live. When small-cell cancer spreads as wide as it had in his case, the chances of survival are around one percent. Tippens thought he was going to die, and with nothing left to lose, he was willing to try anything in hopes of a miracle, even a dog dewormer called fenbendazole.

The desperate cancer sufferer stumbled upon the bizarre treatment while browsing a forum of his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. The post that caught his eye read “If you have cancer or know someone who does, give me a shout”. Joe had already signed up for an experimental treatment that doctors said wouldn’t save him but might extend his life expectancy from three months to a year, enough to at least meet his grandson. But he decided that contacting that forum poster couldn’t hurt either. To his surprise, that person was a veterinarian who had a very interesting story to tell.

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Indian Army Claims to Have Found Yeti Footprints

The Indian Army is being mocked after recently tweeting that one of its mountaineering teams spotted mysterious footprints of the mythical Yeti in an isolated mountainous area between Nepal and Tibet.

“For the first time, an #IndianArmy Mountaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast ‘Yeti’ measuring 32×15 inches close to Makalu Base Camp on 09 April 2019,” the official Twitter account of the Indian Army tweeted a couple of days ago. “This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past.” Humans have been searching for proof of Yeti’s existence for centuries, but so far it’s all been debunked by science. So why is the Indian Army tweeting about Yeti, and more importantly, why does its tweet imply that it actually exists?

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Chinese Boot Camp Turns Boys into “Alpha Males” to Fight Rise of K-Pop Culture

K-pop culture has been gaining popularity across the globe, but in China it is considered a decadent trend that threatens to destroy the nation’s future. To combat this menace, a former schoolteacher has founded the Real Man Training Club, a children’s boot camp that promises to turn boys into alpha males.

The Beijing-based Real Man Training Club offers members a variety of activities meant to boost their masculinity, such as American football, wrestling and boxing, as well as character-building treks through deserts and mountains. Founder Tang Haiyan leads the boys in chest beating and slogan shouting to build up their confidence, and makes them wear headbands with the words ‘Real Man’. Even their shirts and tracksuits feature English phrases like ‘Anything is Possible’ or ‘Power Leader’. All this is meant to develop the boys’ macho character to fit Tang’s perception of manliness, and make them immune to the taint of K-pop culture.

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This Thai Hospital Gives You Instant Six-Pack Abs

The aptly-named Masterpiece Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, recently went viral for offering a plastic surgery procedure that gives patients instant six-pack abs.

Despite what many gym-addicts will tell you, getting defined six-pack abs is really hard, and for some of us downright impossible. No matter how much we work out, we just can’t seem to get that layer of fat on our abdomen to go away, so those well-developed ab muscles remain concealed underneath. That’s where the plastic surgeons at Masterpiece Hospital come in. By performing a procedure called abdominal etching, they remove some of the fat on your abdomen to make that hidden six-pack visible. There are no plastic or silicone implants involved, just some abs-focused liposuction.

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The True Story of a Man Who Survived Without Eating for 382 Days

Fasting for over a year sounds like the stuff of legends and many actually consider it an urban legend, but an old medical journal offers scientific proof that there once was a man who didn’t eat anything for 382 days and lived to tell the tale.

A case study published in the 1973 edition of the Postgraduate Medical Journal documents the unbelievable story of a 27-year-old “grossly obese” Scottish man who stopped eating for a total of 382 days in a desperate attempt to lose weight. He not survived the extreme challenge, but remained in good health and managed to go from 456 to 180 pounds (81 kilograms from 206 kilograms). According to doctors at the University of Dundee School of Medicine, the man’s weight remained stable at 196 pound (88 kilograms) five years after undergoing the unusually long fast.

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Man Sues Supermarket Chain After Being Cheated Out of $0.008

A Chinese man recently took a supermarket chain to court after allegedly being cheated out of 0.04 yuan ($0.008) because the checkout clerk rounded down the change he was owed.

The plaintiff, named only as Xiao, claimed that after shopping at a branch of Yonghui Superstores and offering 55 yuan ($8.16) for groceries worth 54.76 yuan ($8.12), he was given only 0.20 yuan as change instead of the 0.24 yuan he was owed. He didn’t really need the 0.04 yuan, but he considered the supermarket’s rounding off system to be cheating, so he decided to sue them and draw attention to the practice, hoping it would get fixed.

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