Oddity Central

Brazilian Drug Lord Turns Prison Cell into Luxurious Suite
SymGym – A Video Game Controller That Offers a Full-Body Workout
Mistress Dispellers – The Controversial Services Keeping Chinese Families Together

Brazilian Drug Lord Turns Prison Cell into Luxurious Suite

Posted: 01 Aug 2016 07:54 AM PDT

Jarvis Chimenes Pavao, considered one of the most dangerous drug traffickers in South America, was serving an 8-year sentence in Tacumbu Prison, when police raided his cell to find it was actually a luxury suite.

Pavao was due to complete his sentence for money laundering next year, at which point he was likely to face extradition to his home country of Brazil, but Paraguayan police recently learned that he planned to escape by blowing a hole in the prison wall. To prevent Pavao from pulling an “El Chapo”, they raided his cell only to find that instead of an austere room, he was living in a luxurious three-room suite complete with air-conditioning, private bathroom, conference room, kitchen, library and multiple flat-screen TVs.

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Posted: 01 Aug 2016 06:35 AM PDT

The SymGym may look like a combination between a rowing machine and a stair stepper, but it’s actually a revolutionary video game controller that allows gamers to get a full body workout while doing what they love most.

Chicago-based startup SymGym describes its innovative device as “a resistance-based game controller and gaming platform” that adjusts the level of resistance according to gameplay. The joysticks and buttons are replaced with levers and pedals that you have to either push or pull to play the game. For example, if you have to walk uphill in a video game, pushing the pedals is going to be significantly harder than when walking on flat terrain. Picking heavy objects in the game is also going to require more strength when operating the levers than say pushing a door open.

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Posted: 01 Aug 2016 05:05 AM PDT

In the Western world, when a wife finds out her husband is having an affair she they either confronts him directly about it asking him to stop, or just gets a divorce. But things are a bit more complicated in China, due to the social stigma and financial burden associated with divorce, so an increasing number of women are turning to companies specializing in driving away mistresses. Introducing the “mistress dispellers”.

It’s not uncommon for Chinese businessmen and high ranking officials to signal their status by maintaining a mistress, and with the country’s economy growing at a rapid pace, it’s no wonder that “mistress dispeller” services that combat cheating are becoming very popular. For a considerable fee – typically starting in the tens of thousands of dollars – these companies will coach scorned wives how to strengthen their marriage while employing a variety of tactics to drive away the problematic mistress.

While it may sound like a scam to cheat the poor wives out of serious sums of money, mistress dispellers, or “xiaoshan quantui”, are apparently very good at what they do. Shu Xin, director of Weiqing International Marriage Hospital Emotion Clinic Group, a mistress dispeller company based in Shanghai, says that every case starts with thorough research on the mistress. An investigation team will analyze her family, friends, education, job and daily habits looking for any information that could help them meet their goal.

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