Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) is considered the world’s slowest musical composition and the subject of the longest-lasting musical performance in recorded human history.

Written by the late American composer John Cage, As Slow as Possible has been playing at the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany since September 5, 2001. ‘Played’ is perhaps to strong a word to describe the sound coming out of the organ built specifically for this musical piece, as the performance began with a pause that lasted until February 2003, and has since continued with single notes played continuously for several months, sometimes years. For example, the latest note change occurred on September 5, 2020, and the next one is scheduled for February 5, 2022. I think it’s safe to say that none of us will hear the end of this epic performance, as it is meant to end in the year 2640…

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Chinese social media has been abuzz about the controversial story of a couple who took their own daughter to court in order to make her raise her toddler brother, because they couldn’t afford to.

According to several news reports in China, a couple who for several years had survived on their child’s monthly allowance alone decided to have a second child. They soon realized that they couldn’t actually afford to take care of the child, so they asked their 22-year-old daughter to raise the toddler on their behalf. The girl, referred to only as Le Le in the media, had managed to support herself through college and was dreaming about building a career for herself when she got the news of her new “job” from her parents. She flat out refused to bring up her brother by herself, so her parents sued her.

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A 17-year-old teenager from India’s Uttar Pradesh state is allegedly living in fear after being bitten by the same wild snake a whopping eight times in a single month.

Yashraj Mishra, from Rampur village in Basti district, reportedly lives in constant fear after being targeted by a snake for reasons that remain unknown. After learning of his plight, the 17-year-old’s family took him to the village doctor for treatment and also appealed to snake charmers, but nothing seemed to stop the snake. After he was bitten for the third time, the family even shipped the teen to a relative’s home in a neighboring village, but the slithering reptile allegedly tracked him down and bit him again…

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A 15-year-old Chinese girl and her youthful-looking father have been getting a lot of attention on Asian social media recently because they look more like a romantic couple than father and daughter.

Qi Bao and her 35-year-old father have always been very close, but their relationship has become a bit more complicated recently, because as she grew up, her father seemed to retain his ageless look to the point where her colleagues and teachers started asking her if she had started dating. 35-years-old is not exactly old, but there is still a 20 year difference between the two, although you honestly could not tell from the photos below.

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Amazon contract delivery drivers in Chicago are allegedly hanging their smartphones outside warehouses and delivery points to boost their chances of getting delivery orders.

Major news outlet Bloomberg last week reported on a strange new trend among Amazon and Whole foods contract drivers in Chicago – hanging their smartphones in trees close to the companies’ warehouses and parking their cars nearby to get first dibs on accepting new delivery orders. Amazon’s system allegedly chooses drivers based on who is closest to the pickup location, so even the slightest advantage over the stiff competition among drivers can boost chances of getting access to the offers first. The phones in the trees have the Amazon Flex app installed and are synched with other phones belonging to other drivers, to make it harder for Amazon to detect offenders.

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After struggling to stay open during the Covid-19 pandemic, a sushi restaurant in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, has found success with an ingenious “macho delivery” service that involves using buff bodybuilders as delivery boys.

Masanori Sugiura, a third-generation owner of the 60-year-old sushi restaurant Imazushi in the city of Anjo, started working out at the gym when he was in his 20s, but he never imagined that his hobby would one day help him keep his family business afloat. The trained chef had seen his profits plummet from the usual 100 million yen ($940,000) for the April-June quarter, to just 10 million yen, because of the coronavirus, and at one point had cut his staff from 50 to just four. But then he had a wacky idea to put his muscles to work as a way of attracting new business, and the “Delivery Macho” service was born.

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Jessica A Krug, a professor of African American history at George Washington University, spent years pretending to be of North African, then Caribbean descent despite actually being a white, Jewish woman from Kansas.

In a case oddly reminiscent of Rachel Dolezal’s story from a few years ago, and American academic and author whose worked focused on Africa and African American history spent years pretending to be of African descent. It’s not clear why she made the decision to oust herself after so long, but in an article allegedly published by Krug herself she admitted that her career was rooted in a “toxic soil of lies”.

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Akiko Obata has been fascinated by plastic food ever since she was a child, and 10 years ago she started collecting all sorts of plastic food items, amassing a collection of over 8,000 individual pieces.

“Sampuru”, the fake food displays used by most restaurants to showcase their dishes to potential diners, is an important part of Japanese food culture. They are considered superior to menus, as they give customers a much better idea of what they’ll be getting on their plates, and also help restaurant owners better showcase their dishes. Sampuru makers often go above and beyond to make their products as realistic as possible, and some do really look good enough to eat. Plastic foods are so popular in Japan that some people have actually started collecting them…

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MDZhB is the name of a mysterious radio station that has been broadcasting for nearly four decades, but that no one has ever claimed to operate.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week since 1982, MDZhB (pronounced ‘MJB’) has been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone followed by a second, foghorn-like sound every few seconds. But every once in a while, about once or twice a week, someone will also utter some random phrase in Russian, like “dinghy” or “farming specialist”, and the the droning sound returns. The mystery of MDZhB has fascinated radio enthusiasts around the world for centuries, and theories regarding its purpose range from nuclear war triggering device, to communicating with aliens. But, so far, no one has been able to crack the mystery of this radio station.

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A gaping, funnel-like hole estimated to be at least 50-meters-deep has been discovered in a remote area of the arctic, on the Yamal Peninsula, in Siberia.

Discovered accidentally from the air by a Vesti Yamal television crew en route from an unrelated assignment, the mysterious crater is the latest to be spotted in northern Siberia since the phenomenon was originally documented, in 2014. Chunks of soil and ice were thrown hundreds of metres around the funnel, which strengthens scientists’ theory that such craters are the result of methane gas buildups in pockets of thawing permafrost under the surface of the Earth. As pressure increases, the “lid” of the pocket is blown off and the methane gas is released.

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A 10-year-old Vietnamese boy has been turning heads on Asian social media after photos of his unusually muscular physique went viral.

Nguyen Hoang Nam’s parents claim that he was always more muscular than other kids his age. Even at birth, doctors noticed that he had more developed muscles than other babies, and by age 6, his body was so unusually toned that his parents took him to a hospital for a checkup. It’s here that Vietnamese media reports get blurry, as they mention “superman syndrome” as the cause of Hoang Nam’s impressive physique, but that is a chromosomal disorder with very different symptoms. The articles also claim that other than muscle stiffness and a general lack of flexibility, the 10-year-old boy is in perfect health.

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An artificial intelligence engineer has created an intriguing algorithm that learned human language from reading “the bible and nothing else” and is now churning out ominous prophecies based on the Holy Book.

George Davila Durendal, a childhood coding prodigy and current AI engineer and entrepreneur, recently unveiled his wackies creation yet, an A.I. algorithm trained solely on the King James Bible and dubbed “AI Jesus”. Described by Durendal himself as an “A.I. clone of Jesus”, the software is a Boltzmannian natural-language processing model that “tries to replicate the style of the King James Bible without quite copying it”. Designed to write about 3 different topics – ‘The Plague’, ‘Caesar’ and ‘The End of Days’ – using the language of the Bible, AI Jesus has so far come up with some pretty scary, if somewhat nonsensical, prophecies…

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The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing tourism businesses to think outside the box in order to stay afloat. Case in point, a Kerala hotel and spa that turned its pristine swimming pool into a fish farm.

The Aveda Resort and Spa in Kumarakom, Kerala had to shut down operations in March, as part of a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, and hasn’t been able to open since. To make sure that its employees have some activity and that the property generates some income to hopefully pay basic bills so it can survive until tourism opens again, management decided to repurpose a 7.5-million-litre swimming pool as a fish pond.

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Thirty-five young women were caught trying to cheat on their entrance exam into schools for teachers in the Mexican state of Michoacán; they allegedly had the correct answer pattern painted on their nails.

The entire admission process into teaching schools in Michoacán had been under suspicion of fraud since the first stage of exams, on the last day of July, when it was revealed that several of the students had bought the answers for 15,000 or 25,000 pesos. Although officially unproven, the claim was virtually confirmed by the astonishing test results in several Michoacán municipalities. According to Mexican media reports, 50 applicants who took the exam had answered all 100 question correctly, while another 300 had scores of 99 and 90 correct answers. This was unusual, as in other municipalities the highest score was 71 correct answers.

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Here’s another thing to add to your ‘weird things that happened in 2020’ list: a locked safe with a mysterious note attached to it was discovered in the middle of an agricultural field in New York state.

Kirk Mathes was out of town last Thursday, when he got a phone call about a large metal safe that had been found on one of his fields, near the town of Barre. Word spread so fast that deputies had to disperse a crowd that had gathered on the side of the road to see the oddity. The metal safe, which the farmer estimates weighs between 500-600 lbs., had to be transported to the field by heavy machinery, but no one appears to know who or when they put it there. But all everyone wants to know is what’s inside it, especially because of a mysterious note attached to it.

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