Taipei’s Songshan Airport recently launched a unique “fake flight” service that gives melancholic travelers the chance to go through the check-in and plane boarding procedures without actually taking off.

Ever since Taiwan closed off its borders in mid-March, travelers have been forced to dream and reminisce about their past adventures in foreign lands, but on July 2nd, the Songshan Airport in Taipei introduced an offbeat service that gives people the full airport experience without the actual takeoff. The new fake flight service includes airport security checks, passport verification, the full check-in procedure, as well the boarding of an Airbus A330 airplane. Cabin crew give passengers the usual instructions as well as some relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, and serve them snacks and coffee, before preparing them for the fake landing.

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A 31-year-old Instagram model from Ukraine recently made international news headlines because of her bizarre addiction to cosmetic fillers, which she apparently likes injecting into her cheeks.

Like many young women nowadays, Anastasiia Pokreshchuk decided that she needed cosmetic enhancements to achieve her desired looks. Only instead of seeking a professional to carry out the procedure, the 31-year-old took it upon herself to inject her own face with hyaluronic acid. The Instagram model seems to be particularly interested in increasing the size of her lips and cheekbones, and despite having already “achieved” a bizarre look, she says she is not going to stop injecting even more fillers into her face.

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On a list of worst yet most original ways to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex, slashing their tires just so you could then come and offer assistance has to rank pretty high…

A 32-year-old man from Aichi Prefecture, Japan, was recently arrested after allegedly slashing a woman’s tire just so he could follow her and offer assistance when she eventually pulled over to check the wheel. On June 11, an unnamed 43-year-old woman walked out of the supermarket in Higashiura, went to her car and drove away. She didn’t get very far before noticing that her driver’s side front tire was almost completely flat, so she pulled over to check it out. That’s when a friendly man stopped his car next to hers and offered to help fix her flat. It’s not every day that you get to meet such kind souls, the only problem was that the woman quickly realized that the same thing had happened to her just a year before, and the knight in shining armor looked suspiciously familiar too…

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A Pune man has been getting a lot of attention on Indian social media after photos of him wearing a solid gold face mask as protection against the coronavirus started doing the rounds online.

Shankar Kurade, a resident of Pimpri-Chinchwad, on the outskirts of Pune City, has been fond of gold for as long as he can remember. He never leaves the house without gold chains on his neck and large rings on most of his fingers, so when people started wearing medical face masks to prevent getting infected with the novel coronavirus, Shankar knew he had to find a way to make himself stand out. Then he saw a news report about a man who had commissioned a silver face mask, and realized that he could do the same, only he would get a mask out of his favorite precious metal.

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A video of 7-year-old fitness sensation Brodie Bowen dead-lifting a 43kg barbell with impressive determination has sparked a heated debate on social media, with some praising her dedication and other expressing worries about her health.

Brodie, who is the daughter of fitness instructor and Instagram influencer Jes Bowen, has been following in her mother’s footsteps from a very young age, and has been showing remarkable progress lately. In of the recent videos her mother posted on social media, Brodie can be seen dead-lifting a 94-pound (43kg) barbell under the watchful eye of her father, Jordan. The impressive video was picked up by the popular House of Highlights Instagram page which shared it with its 17.7 million followers, causing it to go viral. While some declared their admiration for the young fitness enthusiast, others expressed concern for her health.

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When it comes to promoting a book on mushrooms, I think it’s safe to say that no one will top biologist Merlin Sheldrake’s marketing campaign anytime soon.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Future is an intriguing book on the fascinating life of various fungi, written by biologist Merlin Sheldrake. But at the end of the day, it’s still just a book on mushrooms, and most people just aren’t drawn to that sort of literature. But Sheldrake came up with an ingenious PR campaign to promote his book that drew the attention of the art world and the general public, not just of fungi enthusiasts. He let his book on mushrooms be devoured by pleurotus mushrooms and then ate those mushrooms himself.

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In what can easily be regarded as a top contender for the 2020 Darwin Awards, Alabama students are allegedly throwing “Covid-19 parties” as part of a stupid game to intentionally infect each other with a disease that has so far killed hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone.

Tuscaloosa City Councilor Sonya McKinstry was the first to blow the whistle on this potentially deadly game that students in Alabama have been playing. She claims that organizers of so-called Covid-19 parties are intentionally inviting people infected with the disease to see who catches it from them first. As crazy and unfathomable as that sounds, this shocking behavior has been confirmed by the Chief of the Tuscaloosa Fire Department, who told the City Council that such parties had been held for weeks.

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A couple from Istinka, a small village located 12 kilometres outside St Petersburg, Russia, have built a concrete replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza right in their own backyard.

Measuring 9 meters above ground and 9 meters deep, and consisting of about 400 tonnes of concrete blocks, the pyramid of Istinka is 19 times smaller than the structure that inspired it – the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt. But, according to its owners, Andrey Vakhrushev and his wife Victoria, apart from the size difference, the two imposing structured are actually quite similar. The couple claim that attention to detail was crucial for this project, adding that they spent years studying the design of the Pyramid of Cheops and visited it many times just to get everything right.

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Manusia Silver, or “Silver Men” is a special type of beggar that has become a common sight on the streets of several Indonesian cities.

Beggars have been around for as long as anyone can remember, and Indonesia is no exception, but the South-East Asian country has recently seen the rise of a new type of beggar, the so-called Silver Men. Inspired by the street performers who used metallic paint to transform themselves into living statues and wow passers-by with their doll-like movements, the Silver Men or Manusia Silver, as they are called in Indonesian, simply adapted the look of these performers to their own skill – begging.

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Think of a toy store, only instead of toys you have every Covid-19 accessory imaginable, from hand sanitizers to no-touch door openers. That’s the COVID-19 Essentials pop-up store in a nutshell.

Located on the second floor of Miami’s Aventura shopping mall, COVID-19 Essentials is described as a one-stop shop for all your Covid-19 needs. From a plethora of hand sanitizers and disinfectants to really niche gadgets like portable UV light sterilizers and shoe cover dispensers, this specialized store really has it all. According to the entrepreneurs behind Miami’s currently most talked about business, the demand was there and all they had to do was give the people what they wanted, but the shop has been getting some criticism online, with people calling it an opportunistic cash-grab.

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An 84-year-old retired farmer from Melbourne, Australia, has been trying to get his own daughter evicted from his apartment for eight years, but despite spending a small fortune on legal fees, he has been unsuccessful.

Peter Grundy, a retired wheat farmer from the Australian state of Victoria, has been trying to sell his apartment so he can move into a retirement home. He isn’t entitled to a pension, so in order to secure his place there he needs to pay up front, but in order to do that he has to sell the apartment. The only problem is Peter has been trying to do just that for the last eight years, only his 49-year-old daughter, Katrina, has been doing everything in her power to stop him. Despite his best efforts to get her evicted from his property, including taking her to court, Katrina hasn’t budged and legal experts say the pensioner has exhausted all legal options.

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A Taiwanese pensioner who once made international headlines for strapping almost a dozen smartphones to his bicycle so he could catch multiple Pokemon in Pokemon GO! faster has now taken his passion for the mobile game to new heights, with a whopping 64 phones attached to his bike.

We originally featured Chen Sanyuan in August of 2018, shortly after photos of him taken by passers-by in Taipei City had gone viral. It was easy to see why photos of the then 70-year-old were getting so much attention – here was this old man riding his bicycle around town with multiple smartphones hooked on to the handlebars. After  reaching the front page of Reddit, Chen was approached by Taiwanese gaming website EXP.GG and he explained that he had come up with the bizarre setup so he could operate multiple Pokemon GO accounts at the same time. He had fallen in love with Niantic’s hit game after being introduced to it by his grandson, and now couldn’t get enough.

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Russian media recently reported the shocking case of a 42-year-old woman who had not set foot outside her family home for 26 years, despite being in perfect health, because he mother didn’t allow it.

Until this month, 42-year-old Nadezhda Bushueva hadn’t left her mother’s house in the village of Arefinsky, in western Russia, since she was 16. The only reason she decided to venture into the village was because her mother, Tatyana, had become ill and needed to be hospitalized. For the first time in 26 years she didn’t have to listen to her mother, who reportedly kept her isolated for all these years to “protect her from the dangers of the outside world”. Nadezhda had reportedly not washed her hair in 12 years, as evidenced by the giant clump on her head, and hadn’t had a change of clothes in even longer. Despite all this, she allegedly said she doesn’t need any help…

According to the women’s neighbors, Tayana had always been very protective of her daughter, but things really got out of control when the woman retired. Nadezhda was in 8th grade when her mother started forbidding her from going out with other teenagers in the village, and in a couple of years the two had become complete recluses. Nadezhda didn’t go to school anymore, and her mother rejected anyone who tried to interfere, telling them that they were fine and that they should mind their own business.

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If you thought creative jobs like acting would be among the last to be taken over by AI-powered robots, think again, as ‘b’, the world’s first film to feature an AI robot in the lead role was just announced.

The upcoming film, which reportedly revolves around “a scientist who discovers dangers associated with a program he created to perfect human DNA and helps the artificially intelligent woman he designed (Erica) escape,” stars Erica, a humanoid robot powered by artificial intelligence which is also conveniently immune to the highly contagious novel coronavirus.

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Father Sergei Romanov, a controversial, ultra-conservative Russian priest, has taken control of the Sredneuralsk convent outside the city of Yekaterinburg and challenged authorities to force him out.

Romanov,  a former policeman who reportedly spent 13 years in a prison colony for murder before repenting and dedicating his life to religion, has been very vocal about the social distancing measures taken in Russia in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, accusing church leaders of “working with the forerunners of the Antichrist” by closing churches. Because of his controversial rhetoric, the Russian Orthodox church suspended Romanov and prevented him from preaching, and in May he was forbidden to wear a cross, after he continued to encourage people to disobey public health orders. Last Tuesday, he entered the Sredneuralsk convent, which he helped found in the early 2000’s, and seized control with the help of several armed militiamen.

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