Ahuautle – The Edible Insect Eggs Known as Mexican Caviar

For thousands of years, the eggs of a species of water insect have been consumed as a ‘food of the Gods’ which has come to be known as Mexican caviar.

Lake Texcoco, a shallow body of water on the outskirts of Mexico City, is home to an aquatic insect of the corixidae family, which is technically a water fly that most locals refer to as a mosquito. That confusion is less important, though, as it’s the insect’s eggs that people are interested in. Known as ahuautle – loosely translated as ‘seeds of joy’ – the tiny delicacies are about the size of quinoa seeds and have a pale golden color. They have been consumed since the days of the Aztec Empire, but today only a handful of fishermen are known to still be harvesting the eggs, and few young people even know about the existence of this unusual ‘caviar’.

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Man Allergic to His Own Orgasm Actively Avoids Sleeping With Girlfriend

A 27-year-old man dubbed the “unluckiest man alive” suffers from a rare disease that causes him to experience flu-like symptoms whenever he orgasms.

The unnamed man’s case was recently reported in the medical journal Urology Case Reports by a team of doctors who successfully managed to treat the condition with antihistamine. Scientists described the man’s rare illness as an allergic, or autoimmune, response to his own sperm, which caused flu-like symptoms like fever, a cough, sneezing, muscle weakness, as well as concentration, memory, and even speech issues. Because of these debilitating symptoms associated with his own orgasm, the man had actively been avoiding sleeping with his girlfriend for a long time.

As bizarre as the case described above may sound, it is certainly not unique. Scientists have so far uncovered almost 60 cases of people affected by this rare and serious condition known as Post-Orgasmic Illness Syndrome (POIS). In fact, it is increasingly being recognized as a debilitating cause of sexual dysfunction in males, but because it’s so rare and unusual, it is often misdiagnosed.

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Artist Uses Hundreds of Dead Insect Body Parts to Create ‘Frankenstein’ Warriors

A young biology graduate and former taxidermist from Ghent, Belgium, creates warrior figurines out of hundreds of dead insect body parts.

28-year-old Joos Habraken typically spends between 20 and 30 hours working on each of his ‘Frankenstein bugs’, fantastic creatures born out of his imagination and featuring intimidating names and impressive backstories. He uses body parts sourced from his own impressive collection or from a network of people he has collaborated with over the years. He only uses body parts from already dead bugs and would never even consider killing insects simply to fuel his hobby.

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Doctor Removes 23 Forgotten Contact Lenses From Patient’s Eye

A California ophthalmologist recently shocked the internet by posting a video of herself extracting 23 forgotten contact lenses from a patient’s eye.

Last month, Katerina Kurteeva, an eye doctor out of Newport Beach, California, posted an Instagram video of herself carefully removing a few contact lenses from a patient’s eye. ‘A few’ maybe isn’t the right word to use in this context, seeing as Kurteeva claims to have removed no less than 23 old contact lenses that her patient, an elderly woman, had forgotten in her eye for months, maybe even years. The video went viral a few days ago, leaving millions scratching their heads about someone could simply forget that many contact lenses in their eye.

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Gadget Funeral – The Lucrative Service of Preserving Old and Broken Gadgets

A unique “gadget funeral” service allows people to preserve outdated and broken devices that they have become attached to.

They say you shouldn’t get attached to material things, but most of us can’t really help it. Whether it’s our first car, the house we grew up in, or even an old phone, we tend to get attached to our worldly possessions. And since mobile phones and tablets have become almost an extension of ourselves, it makes sense that some of us have trouble upgrading even when it is obvious that our old gadgets are struggling. That’s where China’s gadget funeral service businesses come in, allowing users to preserve their obsolete devices as framed, deconstructed works of art that can be hung around and admired forever.

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Student Tries to Cheat on Law School Exam with Intricately Etched BIC Pens

A Spanish law school teacher recently shared one of the ingenious methods that one of her students used to cheat on an exam –  a dozen of artistically etched BIC pens.

Yolanda de Lucchi, a teacher at the University of Malaga, in Spain, recently shared a couple of very interesting photos on her Twitter account. She was apparently cleaning up her drawers when she came across one of the more ingenious cheating methods she and her colleagues had confiscated. A few years back, one of her students tried to cheat on an exam by finely etching the Criminal Procedural Law onto eleven BIC pens. A close-up of the pens really showcases the skill of the student, who obviously put a lot of time and effort into his intriguing cheating technique.

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Gullible Woman Scammed Into Paying $30,000 to Help ‘Astronaut’ Return to Earth

A Japanese woman was somehow fooled into paying 4.4 million yen ($30,000) to help a “Russian astronaut” she had met online return to Earth from the International Space Station.

It’s not often that we feature news stories worthy of an “Idiocracy” sequel, but this is definitely one such rare occasion. To be honest, had it not been reported by two of Japan’s largest news outlets – Mainichi and Kyodo News – we would have dismissed it as a satirical piece by The Onion. But, it turns out that a 65-year-old woman from Japan’s Shiga Prefecture really did fall in love with a man claiming to be a Russian astronaut and sent him $30,000 to help him hitch a ride back to Earth from the International Space Station. Really makes the “Nigerian prince” scam sound believable, doesn’t it?

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60-Year-Old Grandpa Undergoes Impressive Body Transformation in Only One Year

A 60-year-old grandfather from Leeds, in the UK, has become an inspiration for people less than half his age after going from ‘dad bod’ to ‘ripped’ in just one year.

Looking at Steve Ramsden today, it’s hard to believe that only a year ago he was an overweight borderline diabetic struggling with high cholesterol. But it just goes to show you what hard work and dedication, corroborated with a balanced diet and proper exercise plan can do for a person. Ramsden, a paramedic for Yorkshire Ambulance Service, weighed 221 pounds (100 kilograms) last Christmas and was taking pills to manage his high cholesterol. Today, he weighs 159 pounds (72 kg) and looks like he has been hitting the gym every day for at least a few decades.

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The World’s Highest ATM Sits Atop a 4,693-Meter-Tall Mountaintop

The highest-altitude cash machine in the world is located at the Khunjerab Pass border between China and Pakistan, at an elevation of 4,693 meters.

Over the past few decades, the ATM has become one of the world’s most ubiquitous pieces of technology, but you wouldn’t expect to see one while trekking through the snow-covered mountains of Pakistan, now would you? And yet, the Khunjerab Pass border pass in Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan province is home to the world’s highest fully-functional ATM. Installed by the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) in 2016, the solar- and wind-powered cash machine is a truly unusual sight to behold in such an isolated place as Khunjerab Pass, the highest paved border crossing in the world.

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Crocodile Crawling – Bizarre Back Relief Exercise Takes China by Storm

Thousands of people in China are taking up “crocodile crawling” classes, a weird type of back relief exercise inspired by the movement of a crocodile.

Multiple news outlets in China have been reporting on a new health trend with dozens of people joining large groups and moving around on all fours. Viral videos shot in large cities like Xiangshan and Changsha show long lines of people all dressed the same and wearing industrial gloves to protect their hands as they slowly move around on their hands and feet. The movement is supposed to strengthen back muscles and relieve back pain if practiced regularly, for a long enough period of time.

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The Gresham Lumberjack – Oregon’s Mysterious ‘Tree Serial Killer’

Authorities in Gresham, a suburb of Portland, Oregon, are trying to catch the infamous “Gresham Lumberjack”, a person who is suspected to have cut down around 700 trees in the area for no apparent reason.

A special task force put together by Gresham Police and the Parks & Recreations has been scouring thousands of photos of a forest in Gresham, looking for clues that could help them identify and finally catch the Gresham Lumberjack. The elusive ‘tree serial killer’ has been felling trees for over a year now, and seems to be getting bolder. Unfortunately, so far, all they know is that the culprit seems to prefer trees along a segment of the trail between the Seventh Street Bridge and Towle Avenue, and cutting them with a hand saw or a bow saw.

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Japanese “Plastic Surgery Twins” Stun the Internet With Their Transformation

Twin sisters Chie and Chika Yoshikawa are famous in their home country of Japan for turning to plastic surgery repeatedly to attain their desired looks.

Comparing photos of Chie and Chika Yoshikawa from their early twenties and now – at age 34 – you could swear they were completely different people. It’s fair to say that makeup plays a big part in their transformation for Instagram and Twitter pics, but there is no question that the shape of their eyes, their nose, and even their faces are noticeably different. The two sisters have reportedly invested around 40 million yen ($275,000) in cosmetic procedures, ranging from filler injections and face lifts to multiple nose jobs and double eyelid surgery. Nut despite putting up with pain and long recovery times, the two sisters have no regrets and have embraced their roles as plastic surgery ambassadors.

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Crossed Letters – A Vintage Way to Save Money and Paper

Back when paper and postage charges were prohibitively expensive, people developed a technique to convey as much information as possible on as little paper as possible.

We’re privileged to live in an age when paper, writing supplies and postage fees are generally affordable, so much so that most of us take them for granted. But things weren’t always like this. Back in the Civil War era and up until the 1900s, the paper that letters were written on and the postage charges were so expensive that people had to write on a piece of paper in multiple directions in order to save money. The technique was called cross-writing, or cross-hatching, and despite seeming unreadable, back in the day everyone was used to it and could read every word with ease.

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Tarzan of Barcelona Teaches Monkey Climbing Classes in Public Park

A man known as Tarzan of Barcelona has been drawing a lot of attention with his monkey-inspired tree-climbing classes taught in the Spanish city’s Parque de la Ciudadela.

Ever wish you could climb trees and leap from branch to branch like Tarzan, the protagonist of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous novel and the many big-screen adaptations it inspired? Well, you’re in luck, because all you need to do is travel to the beautiful city of Barcelona and pay 10 euros (~$10) for a “Tarzan Movement” class with the city’s very own Tarzan. You’ll likely need more than one class to master all of Tarzan’s skills, but you’ll become part of a community of like-minded people who love monkeying around just as much.

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Man Who Has Never Been on a Date Tries to Find Love With Billboard Ad

A 23-year-old English man who has never been on a date in his life is trying to find a girlfriend by advertising himself on a large highway-side billboard near his home city.

Ed Chapman claims to have spent his teenage years and his early 20s trying to find a girlfriend using more conventional means, like socializing and using dating apps, but with no success. So the 23-year-old man from Leeds, in the UK, decided that it was time for desperate measures. He put up some serious money to rent a large advertising banner next to the M621 motorway that goes into Leeds and crossed his fingers. He has already had more success with it than he did in his entire life, as he claims to have been overwhelmed by the number of messages from potential girlfriends.

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