Modern technology doesn’t exactly go hand in hand with witchcraft, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping Silicon Valley companies from employing the services of a Wiccan witch to help them deal with hackers, computer viruses and demonic possessions.

Reverend Joey Talley is a witch of the Wicca faith with more than four decades of experience in dealing with the occult and three master’s degrees under her belt. Based in Marin County, just outside Silicone Valley, the Wiccan witch is the-go-to person for computer programmers, software designers, and engineers facing problems that they feel are supernatural in nature. The fact that Talley has absolutely no background in technology or IT, or that she often refers to the tech industry as the “techno industry” doesn’t bother them one bit.

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In an effort to brighten up the image of undertaking, a profession often regarded as joyless, a German online portal for burial price comparisons recently held a unique beauty contest for female undertakers. 36-year-old Rachel Merks got the most votes and was pronounced Miss Farewell.

Merks, who runs an undertaking firm with her husband, in Lachheim, Baden-Württemberg, said she first heard about the Miss Farewell beauty contest from her brother-in-law. Intrigued by the idea, she submitted a few photos of herself along with a short description. Little did Rachel know that she would actually beat 46 other female undertakers from all over Germany and win the coveted title of Germany’s most beautiful undertaker. “It is wonderful to show this depressing taboo theme in another light for once,” the proud winner said.

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When you think “kawaii” and “J-pop” the first image that comes into your head is probably not of a fit, hairy Caucasian dude wearing pony tails and tiny women’s clothes. Which is exactly what makes “Ladybeard” so unique and popular in Japan.

Richard Magarey hails from the Australian city of Adelaide, but moved to Hong Kong in 2006 to pursue a career in martial arts stunt career. Drama had been the only thing he was good at in school, and because he also practiced martial arts, he decided to pursue a career as a stunt actor. He worked as ‘Mirrorball Man’ for a while, a persona that required him to put on a giant mirror ball, go to clubs and get patrons grooving to dance music. As weird as that may sound, Magarey claims the gig changed his notion of what a performance could be. “I was in a costume and environment that stripped me of my usual physical, vocal and emotional expression,” he said, in an interview with Japan Today.

But it wasn’t until he got involved in wrestling and adopted a truly bizarre persona that the Australian entertainer discovered what destiny had in store for him. After training in a wrestling gym for over two months, Richard showed up for his first match wearing a skimpy Lolita dress and his hair tied in two childish ponytails. He still had his fuzzy beard and hadn’t bothered to shave his hairy body either. He remembers sitting backstage and thinking to himself “What am I doing? I’m wearing a dress, about to go do this thing that I’ve been doing for two months, in front of a bunch of people. What is wrong with me? Why did I make this decision?” But he eventually did it anyway, and everyone loved it. Ladybeard was born that night, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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A Russian woman is making headlines for her incredibly plastic life, modeled after the popular Barbie doll. Her bizarre life has earned her lots of nicknames on social media, including ‘Living Barbie’, ‘Real Doll’ and ‘Pink Lover’.

Looking at 28-year-old Tatiana Tuzova, it’s easy to see why people consider her to be a real-life Barbie – she’s as impossibly thin as the popular doll, has long blond hair and she’s always dressed in tiny pink frocks with puffed sleeves. Oh, and did I mention she drives a pink car with Barbie’s face plastered on it?

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Fed up of with being constantly groped by women, the waiters of Scottish pub ‘Hootananny’, in Inveness, have decided to stop wearing their kilts. That’s a pretty big deal, since Hootananny staff have been wearing tartan to match the traditional Scottish atmosphere, ever since the place opened. But now the guys say that they’re being sexually harassed by female revelers who lift up their kilts to check if they are true Scotsmen!

According to Hootananny assistant manager Iain Howie, the harassment usually occurs during the weekends when the pub is at its busiest. “You get large groups of drinking women circling around when you are collecting glasses and asking whether you are a true Scotsman,” he said. “And they find out for themselves.”

“The first few times it’s funny,” he added. “But when it is really busy and everyone has to work fast and hard, and your hands are full of glasses, you feel quite vulnerable. You are thinking, ‘are you going to get broken glasses, or is your kilt going to get lifted up again?’ They see it as a bit of fun, but it is a bit of an embarrassment.”

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Scottish singer James McElvar was recently in the news not for his vocal prowess, but for fainting on a flight! The teenager was so desperate to avoid paying excess baggage fee that he put on 12 layers of clothing. his overheated body didn’t really like the idea and he ended up passing out at 37,000 ft, on the way from London to Glasgow.

James, 19, is a member of a Scottish boyband called Rewind. When the band arrived at Stansted Airport last Wednesday, James was told by EasyJet staff that he would have to pay £45 for the excess weight he had packed into his suitcase and rucksack. “The woman told me either one of my bags went in the hold or we weren’t getting on,” he later told the media. “The rest of the band had gone through so I couldn’t give them any of my clothes.”

Unwilling to cough up the cash, James did the first thing that occurred to him – he unpacked his bag and started to put on all his clothes. He didn’t stop until he had about 12 layers of clothing on! “I felt it was the only option, to put everything on,” the singer explained. He ended up dressing himself in six t-shirts, four jumpers, three pairs of jeans, two pairs of jogging bottoms, a pair of jackets, and two hats.

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A Russian man has surprised the medical community by claiming that a liver transplant from an African-American donor has made his skin darker!

It all started when 65-year-old Semen Gendler, an inventor from Krasnodar, was diagnosed with hepatitis C and cancer. He was told that his only hope of survival was a liver transplant, so he decided to fly to the United States for the procedure. “Doctors made it quite clear to me that if I didn’t have a liver transplant I would not live,” Gendler revealed.

“I do a lot of business in the US with partners in New York, and I asked him to help me arrange for the operation where if you have enough money it is possible to do it more quickly than in Russia,” he added. “Fortunately, I was able to afford the cost of the $500,000 operation. In Russia, I would have had to wait too long for a donor.” During the course of the operation, Gendler received the liver of a 38-year-old African-American man. He says that the transplant has saved his life, but then his friends and family began to notice something odd. As he recovered from his illness, his skin was turning darker.

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29-year-old Ren Lu You is so fed up of trying to find his soul mate that he’s actually outsourcing the job. The young man from Alabama has created his own dating website which explicitly states: “Find me a girlfriend and I’ll pay you $10,000. Seriously.”

Ren, a Harvard Business School graduate, moved to Birmingham last year for work. He spent the last 12 months going on a lot of dates, “some interesting, some dull, and a few utterly bizarre” ones. But then he felt like he was wasting too much time, so he decided to cut to the chase by offering money in exchange for connections. “If you introduce me to a girl and I date her for more than 6 months, I’ll pay you $10,000,” his website states. There’s a catch, though: if a woman submits her own name, she isn’t eligible for the reward.

Ren’s dating strategy is unconventional, and also a bit weird, but he offers an explanation: “Look at it this way: if you work 12 hours/day, how would you want to spend the few waking hours you have left?” he writes. “Probably not standing around in a bar with your fingers crossed. This way is more fun for me.” And he told Business Insider that he thinks $10,000 is a pretty reasonable fee for such a service, given the importance of meeting someone you may end up marrying.

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Icelandic artist Snorri Asmundsson recently made news headlines for a very bizarre request – he’s asking dying people to donate their corpses for his latest art project. He apparently plans to use corpses in a dance video, promising to return them to their families once he’s done.

Snorri first came up with the idea in 2008 – he received media attention back then for putting up a Facebook ad asking for people on their deathbeds to get in touch with him. “Looking for dead bodies in the name of art,” his ad read. “I need a few corpses for a video installation. If you are dying I would like to borrow your remains after you die. The bodies will be returned to the undertaker in the same condition.”

Understandably, the ad caused quite the controversy in the Nordic island. “It was in all the media in Iceland and I had strange articles written about me,” Snorri said. “Some people contacted vicars asking their opinion. People had decided that I was going to do something really unethical with those corpses. It’s nothing like that.” Read More »

After plastic rice, concrete-filled walnuts, and beef flavored pork, the latest food scandal in China involves expired meat that’s at least 30 to 40 years old!

Chinese food safety officials have seized over 100,000 tons of meat, worth 3 billion Yuan ($484 million), including pig trotters from the 1970s and chicken wings from the 1980s. As the news went viral online, netizens coined the term ‘zombie meat’ to refer to the expired, oxidized meat.

800 tons of illegal meat were seized from Hunan province alone, worth an eye-watering 10 million yuan – one of the largest food safety hauls in recent years. 20 illegal gangs have been cracked down on and 22 people arrested, including two ring leaders.

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Pamela Jacobs, a dusky beauty from the UK, doesn’t look a day over 25. But you’ll be shocked to learn that the woman is actually 52, and has a 21 year old son! In fact, she appears so young that she is often offered student rail fares and no one believes her when she reveals her real age.

“Men do comment on my looks and say things like ‘I don’t believe you’ or ‘You must be lying,’” she said. “ I always say, what woman would actually add years on?” Her son is mortified with all the attention she receives though, because people often think she’s his girlfriend. “A while ago, someone my son knows thought I was his girlfriend,” Jacobs laughed. “And some people I know have thought the same in reverse.”

“It’s flattering, but I prefer men of a similar age to me,” she quickly added.

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Gary Ross Dahl, who died earlier this year at age 78, will always be remembered for inventing the ‘Pet Rock’, a 1970s novelty toy craze. The brilliant salesman essentially sold rocks for a living, and managed to make millions through his “ridiculously successful marketing scheme.”

Although he began his career as an advertising copywriter, Dahl quickly turned entrepreneur when his idea of selling rocks as pets took off. It all started one night in the mid-’70s, while having a drink at a local bar in Los Gatos, California. People around him were talking about pets, and about how difficult it was to feed, walk and clean up after them.

Struck by sudden inspiration, Dahl declared that he had no such trouble with his own pet. “I have a pet rock,” he told the crowd. And his response was so well received that he began to toy with the idea, eventually setting up a business around it.

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Rodrigo Duterte, the Mayor of Davao City, Philippines, is being hailed as ‘The Punisher’ for his controversial crime fighting strategies. Despite being a government official, Duterte allegedly uses vigilante methods that have elicited severe criticism across the world. But in Davao, he’s considered a hero. During his long mandate, he’s transformed the city once known as the murder capital of the Philippines into what many call “the most peaceful city in Southeast Asia”.

The Punisher is a comic book and movie character who will stop at nothing to keep criminals in check. He resorts to violence, torture and even murder in his war against wrongdoers. Some say Duterte isn’t very different. Although he has never openly admitted being involved in the kidnappings and executions of various crime lords in Davao, his controversial comments on crime and encouragement of vigilante activity have convinced a lot of people that he is indeed a real-life Punisher.

“If you are doing an illegal activity in my city, if you are a criminal or part of a syndicate that preys on the innocent people of the city, for as long as I am the mayor, you are a legitimate target of assassination,” Mr Duterte said in 2009. Three years later, during a press conference, he reportedly offered a $120,000 reward to whomever brought him the head of an alleged gang leader, and a $24,000 bonus if it was brought in a bag of ice, “so it won’t smell so bad”.

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With his online experiment, Reddit user Justin Foley is demonstrating the power exclusivity. He’s proving how people will fall for pretty much anything – or nothing – by merely tagging it ‘exclusive’.

Foley set up a portal called ‘mostexclusivewebsite.com’, consisting of just a few lines of text and a counter. Access is granted to only one person at a 60-second interval. With the click of a button, you will be added to a virtual line of over 2,500 people (at the time of this writing), waiting to gain access. If you close the website window, the ticket is lost.

“The internet was designed to be open and accessible; what if I made a design that was the antithesis of one of the defining qualities of the internet?” Foley told The Washington Post. He added that about one in nine people are making it inside the website – the rest leave before their number is called. And Wired.co.uk explaines why: “The website is simple, and the concept both alluring and incredibly frustrating.”

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This heartwarming tale from Hefei, in East China, proves that true friendship has the power to transcend death. For the past 11 years, Sheng Ru-zhi, a lonely mother who lost her son to leukemia, has been looked after by seven of his friends!

It all started in 2001, when Zhang Kai, a teenager, was diagnosed with the deadly disease. Seven of his closest friends from school constantly visited Zhang at his home, taking care of both mother and son. When Zhang passed away in 2004, the devastated Sheng thought she’d have to spend the rest of her life in solitude. But the seven friends had other plans. They continued to visit her as usual, caring for her as Zhang would have.

Sheng still remembers the moment she realised she wasn’t going to spend her life alone after all. “I was alone at the time,” she recalled. “They came into my house and filled it with life again.”

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