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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The Quarnot QC-1 is advertised as the world’s first crypto-heater, allowing consumers to mine cryptocurrencies and utilize the heat generated by two on-board graphics cards for heating their homes.

Heat generation is one of the biggest challenges cryptocurrency miners have to deal with. Large crypto farms have to invest in expensive venting and cooling solutions to make sure that all the heat produced by their mining rigs dissipates properly, but usually all that heat is just wasted. Now, French company Quarnot Computing claims to have come up with a solution that effectively turns the heat generated by a mining device from an expense into a usable resource.

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44-year-old Yang Dan has been a weather girl at China’s state broadcaster CCTV for over 22 years, but what’s most remarkable about her long career is that she doesn’t seem to have aged a day during that time.

Yang’s incredibly youthful looks have always fascinated her fans, but after the producers of her weather program released a compilation video of her 22-year career for International Woman’s Day, everyone started calling her an “ageless goddess”. Watching the video, it’s easy to see how people came up with that pompous nickname – at 44-years-old, Yang Dan looks as young as she did when she was 22.

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The story of a nameless mongrel that has been patiently waiting outside a hospital in Sao Paolo Brazil four months after his owner was admitted there following a stabbing has been making headlines around the world.

The dog first showed up at the Santa Casa de Novo Horizonte hospital in Sao Paolo on the same night that the ambulance brought in his owner, a 59-year-old homeless person who had been stabbed during an altercation. Ambulance staff would later tell their colleagues that the dog ran after their car all the way to the hospital, stopping at the entrance and patiently waiting for his master to return.

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Spanish YouTuber Sonia Sae, who uses her channel to share advice on how to live on a plant-based diet, has come under fire for putting her pet fennec fox on a vegan diet, after photos of the shockingly thin animal were shared online.

Animal activists and some of Sonia Sae’s own followers have accused her of animal cruelty after the youtuber admitted that she has been raising Jumanji, her pet fennec fox, on a vegan diet, ever since she rescued him from a breeder in 2014. Photos of the seemingly-malnourished fox have been circulating online, along with some of Sae’s own posts in which she admits that Jumanji suffers from “spontaneous convulsions”, “half blindness” and has exhibited weight loss. A petition demanding that the youtuber either feed Jumanji a “proper” diet or hand him over to a sanctuary that can meet its complex needs.

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Ashley Maxwell-Lam, a project manager for a major bank in Sydney, Australia, has been wearing six-inch stilettos to work for about a year and claims they make him feel empowered.

30-year-old Ashley has always loved women in high-heels and the power they exude, so he decided to adopt the same footwear in order to feel empowered as well. The trick worked, and now he wears one of his nine pairs of six-inch stilettos to his financial services job in Sydney’s CBD several times a week, especially when meeting with new clients. Apparently, the combination of dapper suit, tie and high-heel shoes makes for a great ice-breaker.

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A middle-aged woman from Harbin, China, was recently diagnosed with chemical cirrhosis that seemed to have been caused by her long-time habit of dyeing her hair every month.

Referred to only as Mrs. Chen by Chinese media, the 50-something woman allegedly started spotting white hairs on her scalp when she was in her 30s. There were only a few of them back then, so she could easily pluck them out, but after she turned 40-year-old, the white strands really started to show, particularly around her temples. Like many other women do around that age, Chen started dyeing her hair to conceal the sign of ageing. However, she claims that her white hair grew really fast, so in order o keep it from showing, she had her hair dyed at a salon every month for the last decade. She recently learned that her habit has taken a heavy toll on her liver.

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You may want to check the expiration date the next time you’re out shopping for groceries. One Colorado family failed to do just that and ended up eating cereal from 1997.

On Monday, March 5th, the Carlese family, from Littleton, Colorado, bought a box of Quaker granola cereal, without knowing that they had actually picked up an edible relic that had expired way back in February of 1997. It wasn’t until Josiah and Anthea Carelse sat down for a serving of cereal that they realized something wasn’t right about it.

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Yuya Yamada, a hula hoop street performer from Tokyo, Japan, recently managed to set a new Guinness record after successfully spinning a 5.14 m (16 ft 10 in) aluminium hoop using only his torso.

Also known as “Hoop Man Yu-Ya” in his native country, Yamada is famous for his hula hoop tricks. He can spin a hula hoop while running, spin it vertically using both his head and his backside and can also spin dozens of them at the same time. The guy has incredible coordination, which basically allows him to keep the hoops spinning with virtually every part of his body, but for his latest world record attempt, he needed a completely different approach.

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Sam Ballard, an aspiring rugby player from Sydney, Australia, never imagined that a silly thing like swallowing a garden snail at a party would end up ruining his life and leave him quadriplegic.

Sam’s life took a devastating turn in 2010. He was at a friend’s party drinking red wine, when someone brought out a seemingly harmless garden snail and dared him to eat it. “Eat it, I dare you,” his friend said, and never one to back off from a challenge, Sam just swallowed it whole and, after having a good laugh with his mates, went back to the party. The teen didn’t give this silly dare a second thought, but he soon fell ill and had to be taken to the hospital, where doctors discovered that he had become infected with rat lungworm.

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The Thunder Child is a revolutionary search and rescue boat that is virtually impossible to capsize. Even when flipped upside down in the water, the vessel is able to right itself almost instantly.

Developed by Irish company Safehaven Marine for use by the Irish Navy in high-pressure situations, the XSV-17 ’Thunder Child’ can reach speeds of up to 54 knots (62 mph), fits a crew of up to 10 people, and is designed to absorb shocks from rough seas. But its most impressive feature is the ability to bounce back into an upright position in any situation, which makes it impossible to capsize.

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Life in the slums of Manila can be incredibly difficult, and putting food on the table every day is a big challenge. That’s what makes “pagpag” so popular. This Tarong term usually refers to the dust one shakes out of clothing or carpets, but in the slums it means meat picked out of the landfill, cleaned and recooked into cheap meals.

Pagpag has long been a staple of Filipino slum cuisine, but in recent years it has also become a lucrative business both for landfill scavengers and small restaurant owners who buy the discarded meat at cheap prices and recycle it into various dishes. Scavengers who were previously only interested in recyclable metal and plastic now focus on leftover and expired food coming in from fast-food chains and supermarkets, scouring for it alongside feral cats and rats, packaging it in plastic bags and selling it for a small profit.

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Scientists at Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, in Tel Aviv, Israel, claim to have created some truly revolutionary eye-drops that can heal damaged corneas and improve vision.

Described as “a new concept for correcting refractory problems”, the nanodrops developed by ophthalmologist  Dr. David Smadja and a team of scientists from Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Bar-Ilan University have so far been tested on pigs with damaged corneas. During a recent presentation, Smadja said that the eye-drops repaired the pigs’ corneas, producing improvements in both short-sightedness and long-sightedness.

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Russian senator Valentina Petrenko’s political career stretches back to the days of the former Soviet Union, and she’s since held various senior official jobs, but the thing she is most known for is her hair. Already the subject of countless memes on Russian social media, Petrenko’s glorious hairdo recently went viral internationally, and people just can’t stop talking about it.

Speculation regarding Valentina Petrenko’s bizarre hairstyle has been running rampant on Twitter ever since Alex Bruce-Smith, an associate news editor at Pedestrian Daily, shared some photos of the Russian senator representing the Republic of Khakassia. There’s just so much people want to know about her hair. Is it real or a wig? How does she make it stay up like that? Is that where all the Russian top-secret information is hidden? Unfortunately, all anyone can do at this point is speculate, as the Russian politician doesn’t seem very eager to talk about it.

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