Latvian performance artist Arturs Bērziņš has managed to spark a heated debate about the ethics of his latest project, where he sliced bits of flesh from two people’s bodies, cooked them in a frying pan and fed it back to them.

Bērziņš’ controversial performance, named Eschatology, was staged on March 6th, at the Museum LV un Grata JJ, in Riga. As promised, those in attendance were treated to something they had most likely never seen before. The artist, wearing a white forensic suit, practiced his surgical skills on two models – a man and a woman – slicing bits of flesh from their backs, then frying them in a hot pan and feeding the meat back to them.

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From cat cafes to toilet cafes and even cafes dedicated to female thighs, themed cafes are all the rage these days. Usually, entrepreneurs go for funny or exciting themes to attract as many people as possible, but one cafe in Thailand is based on the most morbid theme of all – death.

The Kid-Mai Death Cafe looks more like the scene of a funeral than a place you’d want to hang out with your friends. Black is the dominant color, but that’s probably the least morbid thing about this establishment. Funeral wreaths are used as floral decorations, items on the menu have names like “ageing”, “painful”, “illness”, and “death” and are displayed as funeral photos at the bar, and there’s even a coffin that visitors can lie down in to get a small discount.

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Evidence Immobilier, a real-estate agency in Montpelier, France, has become the first in the world to revolutionize the apartment viewing experience by turning it into an exciting “Escape Room” game where potential buyers have to look for clues and solve puzzles, while at the same time discovering the layout of the place.

Whether you’re looking to rent or buy a new apartment, the initial viewing is a very important part of the process. However, for most people – youths in particular – it’s just another chore that has to be completed, not something they are overly excited about.  One real-estate agency in France wants to change that, and their first attempt has been attracting a lot of attention from French media. They’ve teamed up with an Escape Room game designer in Montpelier to turn one of their available apartments into an interactive experience for potential buyers.

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When Sayed Asadullah Poya, a 28-year-old teacher from Kabul, Afghanistan, decided to name his son ‘Donald Trump’, he hoped it would bring him good fortune. So far, it has only made life a lot harder for the whole family, and the future doesn’t look too bright.

Sayed’s wife, Jamila, gave birth to their son in August of 2016, when American millionaire Donald Trump was involved in a campaign for president of the United States. But it wasn’t the tumultuous political career of Trump that fascinated the young teacher; it was his business acumen and his go-getter attitude. He had just finished reading a translation of “Trump: How to Get Rich”, a 2004 book by the ex-star of The Apprentice, and after seeing his son’s unusual shock of blond hair, he just knew he wanted to name the boy ‘Donald Trump’. Time would prove that he should have given that decision a bit more thought.

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Here’s something you don’t read about every day: an Indian man who had only been married for six days helped his new wife marry her lover so that the three of them could be happy together.

On March 4, 28-year-old Basudep Tappo, a native of Palmara village, in the Indian state of Odisha, married a 24-year-old woman from a village in Jharsuguda, as per the arrangement made by their two families. Their wedding followed the traditions of the farmer community to which Tappo belonged, and even though no legal papers were signed, the two received the community’s blessings, so they became husband and wife. All was well for the first six days, but then three men from the bride’s home village came to visit and things took a bizarre turn.

The three men, one of whom claimed to be the woman’s cousin, were welcomed by Basudep’s family into the couple’s home. At one point, two of the men left the house to visit the village, while the two cousins remained home alone. Unfortunately for them, the neighbors didn’t approve of a strange man being alone with a newlywed woman, so they descended upon the house and beat up the audacious ‘cousin’.

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Just because your body will eventually wither away and die doesn’t mean your brain and all the memories stored in it have to. At least that’s the pitch made California-based company Nectome, which claims to perfectly preserve clients brains for use in the future when technology will allow all the information stored in them to be transferred to a computer.

Nectome claims that we will one day be able to survey the brain’s connectome – the neural connections within the brain – so thoroughly as to reconstruct a person’s memories long after they have died. That day is still a long way away, but Nectome is offering to preserve people’s brain in such a way that when the aforementioned technology becomes available, they can be among the first to resume their lives as computer programs, or even something more.

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Zayd Menk, a very patient artist from Zimbabwe, spent three months building a 0.0635:100 scale model of Midtown Manhattan out of discarded computer components.

The 17-year-old artist, who made the model for a school project, used 263 sticks of hot glue, 27 motherboards, 11 CPUs, 10 CRT monitor motherboards, 18 sticks of RAM, 15 batteries, 12 Nokia E-series phones, 7 power supplies, 4 watches, 4 audio cards, 3 hard drives, 2 telephones and various other electronic components to create mathematically sound versions of Manhattan skyscrapers and buildings. To do this he spent much of his time collecting data from sites like Google Maps, Wikipedia and Reddit, and then making calculations to ensure that all miniatures were to scale.

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Ever wonder what walking on two hooves must be like? Well, you don’t have to be a faun to try it out, as one Japanese shop is more than happy to sell you a pair of realistic wooden hoof sandals.

Walpurgis, an online shop that seems to specialize in fantastic garments and accessories, recently started selling wooden sandals that closely resemble cow hooves. They are made up of a hoof-shaped platform and a wooden sole, but feature no heel support, which must make walking in them really difficult. But no one ever said being a satyr was easy.

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The Beer Wall, a popular bar in Bruges, Belgium, has recently installed alarm sensors on all of its beer glasses as well as a scanner at the entrance, in order to deter patrons from stealing them.

All of the roughly 1,600 Belgian beers sold at The Beer Wall are served in their own specially designed glasses, some of which are apparently very interesting. From goblet-like glasses that usually accompany abbey-made beers, to glasses shaped like hourglasses or even sliced coconut shells, the famous Bruges bar has plenty of attractive glass artworks. The problem is that many visitors, tourists in particular, don’t settle for feasting their eyes on these unique glasses while sipping a cold one. Instead they steal them as souvenirs, ignoring the warnings in four languages on the bar’s beer mats, which state state that the glasses are not free, and that they can be bought from the souvenir shop next door.

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The bathroom was one of the few places that technology had not been very successful in infiltrating, but with Japanese smart toilets gaining in popularity around the world, this last bastion is about to fall. And if you’re wondering what makes smart toilets so special, just check out the smartest of them all, the Toto Neorest NX2.

Quite frankly, there’s not a lot this toilet can’t do. It automatically lifts the seat as you approach it, and if you program it too, it can even heat up the toilet seat instantly, so that you don’t get those harmless but annoying goose-bumps on your legs when you sit on it. Once you’ve finished your “business”, you don’t need to use toilet paper to clean yourself, as the Neorest is more than happy to do it for you with gentle beams of purified water. And since leaving you with a wet behind just isn’t very practical, the smart toilet also features a built-in dryer.

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How much do you really love your pet dog? Enough to buy it the world’s first 24K gold jacket encrusted with Swarovski crystals and black diamonds? It’s “only” 137,000 and it’s armored, meaning it will protect your pooch from bites and even knife slashes.

The world’s most expensive dog jacket is the result of a collaboration between Doggy Armour and VeryFirstTo, the same company that brought us the ultimate holiday for James Bond fans and the world’s most luxurious coloring book. The lavish canine garment is made of “Golden Textile” 24K gold Nano coated fabrics, which apparently “has the authentic values of gold itself and embraces 99.99% gold that is nono-structured”. Clients also have the option to have the jacket decorated with either 20 Swarovski crystals, or 20 black diamonds.

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An 11-year-old girl from Belthangady, India, recently made news headlines for having around 60 dead ants pulled from her eyes. As for how the insects got there, some doctors suggest they entered her body through the ears.

Last week, the girl, known only as Ashwini, started complaining of severe pain in her eyes. She told her parents that she felt there was something stuck in her eyes sockets, and when they checked, they did find a small ant in one of her eyes. They didn’t pay much importance to it, as they assumed the insect had gotten in there by accident, but it wasn’t long before the girl again started complaining about pain in her eyes. They discovered more dead ants, and this time, they took her to the hospital.

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A 70-year-old woman from Salt Lake City, Utah, was recently found guilty of conspiring to have her ex-husband killed two years ago. But what’s really interesting about this case is that on the day of her trial she was also charged with repeatedly trying to have the hitman who ratted her out killed, while she was in prison.

In December of 2016 Linda Gillman was arrested and accused of trying to hire someone to murder her ex-husband and make it look like an accident or a break-in gone wrong. She had hired a man named Christian Olsen to do some work on her property, and at one point asked him to arrange the murder of her ex-husband and his new wife. She gave him a $5,000 down-payment, but also promised him a $7,000 diamond ring and $18,000 from the victim’s life insurance policy, which she would collect after his death.

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These lovely portraits may look like high-definition artistic photographs, or even the product of CGI, but they are actually oil paintings created by Japanese artist Yasutomo Oka

At just 34-years-old, Yasutomo Oka is quite obviously already a master when it comes to hyperrealistic paintings. The artist, who hails from Komaki, in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, spends up to a month working on one of these masterpieces, making sure that they turn out as realistic as possible, and the result is almost always awe-inspiring.

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Yogi, a one-year-old brown Shih Tzu- poodle mix, has become a social media sensation due to his uncanny, almost human-like facial expression.

Photos of this ‘dog with a man’s face’ have been doing the rounds online, and people can’t stop talking about him. It all started when Chantal Desjardins, from Massachusetts, posted a photo of her freshly groomed pooch Yogi, on Facebook. It wasn’t long before her friends started pointing out that his face looked uncannily human-like, and some even asked her if she used editing software like Photoshop or one of those popular ‘face swap’ apps to create the eerie effect. Chantal insisted that she had not manipulated the photo at all, but after examining the photo again, she understood why people were asking her that.

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