Frustrated by the amount of time they spent on Facebook during workdays, two MIT doctoral candidates have created the Pavlov Poke, a keyboard palm rest that sends electric shocks whenever the user spends too much time on “email, social networking, or other online distractions”.

Robert R. Morris and Dan McDuff are both Ph.D. candidates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but like millions of other internet users out there, they are also social media addicts. After estimating they waste a combined 50 hours a week on Facebook, the two decided to take a new approach to fighting social media addiction by using electroshock therapy to keep users from wasting most of their days on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Named after the well-known Russian psychologist who performed behavioral experiments on dogs, the Pavlov Poke is a keyboard accessory programmed to send electrical shocks into users whenever they spend too much time scrolling through their Facebook news feed or browsing on distracting websites. The shocks are strong enough to make you react, but while they are unpleasant they are not dangerous.

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Most people would rather their bladder burst than walk into a public toilet to do their business, let alone to clean it, but the members of Tokyo social club Benjyo Soujer do it for free, with their bare hands, as a therapeutic hobby.

On Sunday mornings, a group of 35 adults and children gather at public lavatories around Tokyo, to clean them. They are members of Benjyo Soujer, a social club founded on Facebook, and their main mission is to clean themselves by cleaning cubicles. They start by mixing their own cocktails of cleaning agents, then huddle into the toilets spraying and scrubbing everything from the urinals and toilet bowls to the facility’s walls and floor. By the time they’re done, the place is as clean as the day it first opened its doors, maybe cleaner. The 35 members of the unique group don’t think of themselves as volunteers helping the local administration keep public restrooms sanitary, instead saying they do the work for themselves as a sort of spirit cleansing ritual similar to the ones practiced by Buddhist monks to find peace of heart. For some, it’s also also a fun way to blow off steam before the coming week.

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Hong Kong has one of the world’s most stunning skylines. The problem is it’s becoming barely visible behind the dense curtain of smog that has engulfed several of the city’s districts, and even harder to capture in vacation photos. Unable to fix the air pollution problem, tourism authorities have instead decided to install clear skyline banners where tourists can have their pictures taken.

This week, Hing Kong’s Air Pollution Index reached “very high” levels in Central and Western District, Causeway Bay and Mongkok, with very high concentrations of toxic ozone and nitrogen dioxide recorded by local monitoring stations. Apart from the obvious health-related issues, the heavy smoke covering the island city is also hurting the local tourism business. According to Chinese newspaper China Daily, the frequent air pollution has contributed greatly to the decline in tourist numbers, with a recent survey revealing a rise in “complaints focused on the environment at scenic spots” around China. After all, what good is a city’s magnificent skyline if you can barely see it? Luckily, Hong Kong authorities have come up with a novel solution to this problem – they installed a number of panoramic banners displaying a clear view of the city at various scenic spots. Here, people can take smog-free photos of the skyscraper-studded waterfront, to have as souvenirs.

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If love was measured in dresses, Paul Brockman would probably be the most loving husband in the world. Over the past 56 years, the German-born contractor from Lomita, California, has gifted his wife Margot with 55,000 dresses, all of which he picked out himself.

The first 10 dresses in Paul Brockman’s impressive collection were free. He got them while working at a seaport in Bremen, Germany, where workers could pick out anything they wanted when the merchandise bales were opened. He gave them all to his then-girlfriend, Margot. After going steady for a while, Paul asked the girl’s parents for her hand in marriage, and they agreed, on one condition – that they leave struggling Germany and move to America. They left for the Land of Opportunity during the 50’s and Paul was disowned by his own family for going against their wishes. The two arrived in Ohio and moved to Arizona before finally settling in California. Brockman started working in construction. No stranger to hard labor, he was soon able to build a construction company and pretty soon the money started coming in. He and Margot shared a passion for dance and went ballroom dancing every week, but Paul wanted her to have a different dress every time, so he kept buying her new ones. By the time they arrived in Los Angeles, in 1988, Margot Brockman already had between 25,000 and 26,000 dresses.

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There is a bar in Dawson City, Canada, where patrons can opt to have their liquor spiked with a very unusual ingredient – a severed human toe. Those brave enough to try the world-famous Sourtoe Cocktail are required to pay a $5 toe tax and touch the human digit with their lips without swallowing it. Last Saturday night, someone broke the rule…

The Yukon tradition of downing drinks containing a severed toe dates back to the early 1970s, when an eccentric river barge captain by the name of Dick Stevenson found a human digit in an old cabin, dropped it in a glass of champagne and created the Sourtoe Cocktail. In the last 40 years, the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City has served over 52,000 such bizarre drinks to customers from all around the world. Terry Lee, the bar’s “Toe Captain”, says toes have been ingested by mistake in the past,  but he never imagined someone would swallow the “gross looking thing on purpose”. To make sure that didn’t happen the bar also had a $500 fine policy for swallowing the toe, as a deterrent. The unthinkable happened last Saturday, when a man identified only as Josh from New Orleans walked into the place around closing time, and paid the usual $5 to have the toe added to a shot of whiskey. He was a card-carrying member of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club, which means he had tried the unique cocktail in the past. Terry told reporters he downed the drink fast, slurped the toe into his mouth, slammed $500 on the table and walked away. “I said, ‘Where’s the toe?’ and he said, ‘I swallowed it’ . . . I was shocked,” the bartender remembers. Read More »

Ever since they first met in 2007, Dr. David Matlock, a famous Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, has been using his body-sculpting skills to turn his wife Veronica into the perfect wife.

When Veronica first visited Dr. Matlock to ask about a vaginoplasty procedure after giving birth to her daughter, she had no idea she would soon become his wife. But he did. The beautiful brunette was 40lbs heavier and was so unhappy with the way she looked that she couldn’t even look him in the eye during their first conversation. But David didn’t see her extra pounds, he just saw her potential and asked her if she was willing to go through a “Wonder Woman Makeover” which included liposuction of the chin, arms and thighs as well as a “Brazilian Butt” lift. She opted for everything he suggested and put her body in his able hands. After he was done, Dr. Matlock asked Veronica out and proposed to her on their very first date. He has been helping her improve her physique ever since, also encouraging her to stick to a healthy diet and strict exercise program.

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For as long as he can remember, 57-year-old Jim Dunbar has never been able to make it to appointments on time. His friends and family always thought he was making excuses, but after a recent doctor’s appointment, for which he was a half-hour late, Jim was diagnosed with incurable lateness.

Jim Dunbar used to always tell people it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t make it on time for anything, but they never took him seriously. Even as a five-year-old he remembers constantly being late for school, football matches and holidays. As an adult he has left women waiting for him on first dates, lost several jobs, turned up to meals with his friends hours after the set meeting time and even showed up for funerals long after they had started. Recently, Jim tried to catch a movie at the local cinema, in Forfar, Scotland, and knowing his lateness might get in the way, he gave himself an 11-hour head start to make sure he got there on time. Dunbar knew the movie started at 7 pm, but despite his best efforts, he arrived 20 minutes late. After going through countless similar experiences, he finally decided to talk to a doctor about his problem. He was a half-hour late for his appointment at a Ninewells hospital, but he finally got an answer to the question that had been bugging him for a lifetime – “Why can’t I be on time?”

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Kyle Kandilian, a 20-year-old student from Dearborn, Michigan, has a very unusual hobby – he enjoys raising cockroaches as pets. His bedroom walls are decked with boxes and crates which hold around 200,000 roaches he breeds for fun and profit.

Kyle’s passion is probably going to bug a lot of people, seeing as most people tend to freak out if they so much as hear the word “cockroach”. But Kyle is not most people. Ever since he got to see and hold some Madagascar hissing roaches during a tech day exhibit at the University of Detroit Mercy, he has been fascinated with them. He came home that day and asked his mother if he could have one as a pet, but his mother looked him in the eye and said “Kyle? You are never bringing cockroaches into this house.” Today his bedroom is home to around 200,000 cockroaches from 130 varieties, and his parents are very supportive of his passion. Maybe “supportive” is pushing it a little, but Kyle agrees they are “very tolerant of his enthusiasm”. He is aware that cockroaches are usually a taboo topic, but says he has never tried to hide his hobby, instead talking openly and enthusiastically about bug passion in an attempt to change people’s perception of them. He claims only about a dozen of the 4,000 known species of roaches are actually pests, but they manage to give all of them a bad name.

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Architectural wonders erected on the rooftops of skyscrapers seems to be the latest constructions trend in China. Just days after the scandal involving a mountain villa built on the roof of a Beijing apartment building, a microblogger from Shenzen discovered a traditional private temple located atop a similar residential building.

According to several Chinese media reports, the mysterious temple constructed on the roof of a 21-storey luxury apartment building in the Nanfang district of Shenzen has been around for at least three years, yet nobody, not even the tenants know who it belongs to. The rooftop structure is surrounded by foliage, has glazed golden tiles and features traditional upturned eaves decorated with carvings of dragons and phoenixes. A fingerprint scanner, security cameras and dogs barking on the other side of a locked door prevent access to the temple, but neighbors say it’s often used for traditional Chinese religious practices, as indicated by the ashes of burned offerings that float down from the roof. The private temple, suspected to be yet another illegal rooftop structure, jeopardizes the structural integrity of the entire building, but tenants say their complaints have so far landed on dead ears.

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Sprayable Energy is a patent-pending invention that allows people to get all the energy benefits of caffeine without the dreaded coffee aftertaste. The spray is absorbed through the skin and distributed through the body over a period of several hours, giving the user a long-lasting caffeine buzz.

21-year-old Ben Yu and his partner Deven Soni have recently launched a campaign on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo for an innovative product called Sprayable Energy. The small plastic can contains an unscented, colorless formula that gives users that much needed boost of energy without the jitters and sudden caffeine crash. “Coffee didn’t work for me,” Yu told Inc.com. “When I ingest it, it’s like roller coaster ride of energy.” He decided to work on an alternative to the popular beverage in October 2012, while trying to get a degree in biochemistry. He started researching how nicotine patches worked, and like any young inventor, used himself as a test-subject for his experiments. His father, who holds a PhD in chemistry, also helped out, and after a lot of hard work, Ben came up with a special formula containing water, a derivative of the amino acid tyrosine, and caffeine that could be sprayed on the skin and offer the same energy buzz of coffee without the nasty taste and side-effects. Now all they needed was an extra $15,000 to develop the product line.

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A photo showing students of a renowned Bangkok university wearing strange headgear complete with side flaps to thwart cheating during a midterm exam caused quite a stir after it was uploaded to Facebook as a joke.

Teachers at Kasetsart University in Thailand have recently come under fire for making their students wear horse blinder-like devices made of paper to prevent them from cheating on their exams. A photo showing around 100 students wearing the rudimentary anti-cheating hats was recently posted on Facebook by the KU student board, where it got so many negative reactions that it was eventually removed. Unfortunately for the Thai learning institution the photo had already been picked up by the media and the negative responses just kept on coming. However, it appears the students were not pressured into wearing the paper blinders, in fact they were the one who suggested it. ‘‘It was an agreement between us. No student was forced to wear a hat. Instead, all were happy to do so and thought it was fun. They felt more relaxed during the test,’’ Nattadon Rungruangkitkrai, a lecturer at Kasetsart University, said during in a press conference.

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The things people will do to shed a few unwanted pounds. A woman from Iowa has reportedly swallowed a tapeworm she bought from the internet in order to drop a few pounds, thus proving the tapeworm diet is more than a myth.

You can buy a lot of crazy things online these days, and apparently the tapeworm is one of them. Back in 2009, reports surfaced that dieters in Hong Kong were ingesting giant intestinal roundworm eggs in a desperate attempt to lose weight, and according to a number of sources, tapeworm pills are legally available at a number of clinics in mexico. The tapeworm diet is officially banned in countries like the U.S. and Britain, but as a recent case revealed by Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, proves, that doesn’t mean it’s not still practiced by extreme dieters. According to Today.com, a woman from Iowa went to her doctor and told him she had bought a tapeworm pill from the internet and swallowed it to lose weight. Unsure of what to do in such a situation, the physician contacted the state’s public health department for advice. In her weekly email to state public health workers, Dr. Quinlisk provided a treatment option and talked about the dangers of this bizarre practice.

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Brent Sr. believes the apocalypse will be triggered by a strong electromagnetic pulse, or an EMP, that will take out the entire power grid, plunging mankind back into the Dark Ages. To prepare for the inevitable, he and his family are building a fortified castle complete with a drawbridge, portcullis and an underground bunker.

Atop a large foothill deep in the woods of North Carolina, a family of doomsday preppers are getting ready for the impending end of days. They are learning to use medieval weapons like crossbows and catapults, and building a fortified castle that will protect them from marauders and scavengers. Brent Sr., a retired infantry officer, got into doomsday prepping back in 1999, convinced that the predicted Y2K computer glitch would unleash chaos and bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Worried that the computers which controlled everything from electricity to natural gas would go down, he wanted to ensure his family’s safety if everything went dark. When that didn’t happen, Brent put the whole thing out of his mind for a couple of years because he didn’t want people to think he was crazy, but he eventually got back to the original plan. Only this time he has his whole family helping him.

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If you’ve ever wanted to drink your own face, now’s your chance. Taiwanese cafe chain, Let’s Cafe, uses a special latte printer that creates portraits of customers directly on their delicious caffeinated drinks.

Let’s Cafe is a chain of small kiosks offering “fast but good coffee” to shoppers on the go all around Taiwan. Faced with the challenge of competing with larger more established cafe chains, they had to come up with a truly original gimmick in order to attract customers. Let’s Cafe needed something not even big players like Starbucks could compete with, and they found it in the ridiculously accurate coffee printing machine. All users have to do is upload a photo from their mobile phone to the coffee dispenser machine and after the cup has been filled with the caffeinated beverage of their choice, the incorporated printer uses edible ink to sprinkle their photo on the milk foam. While talented latte artists do a great job of creating beautiful designs using rudimentary tools and a steady hand, there are certain limitations to their techniques, whereas this coffee printer is able to produce photo-realistic images.

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A Korean and American capital company in Honduras is being accused by union leaders and former employees of forcing its workers to wear diapers in order to increase their productivity. Company representatives have denied the allegations but an investigation is already under way.

Last Saturday, Daniel Duron, Secretary General of the General Confederation of Workers, denounced the violation of labor rights by Kyungshin-Lear Honduras Electrical Distribution Systems, accusing the company of forcing its employees to wear adult diapers to avoid going to the bathroom for their physiological needs. He added that the employer doesn’t actually supply the diapers for its workforce, but that the employees, especially the women, buy them themselves to avoid leaving their work posts and risk losing their jobs. Duron based his accusations on testimonies made by Kyungshin-Lear employees and urged authorities to investigate.

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