The Daily Talk is a unique news medium published on a blackboard in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city. As most Liberians lack the money and means to access conventional mass media, this chalk-written daily “newspaper” is the most widely read report in Monrovia.

In the Western world, many are already talking about the death of written media, and the coming age of online information, but in some countries, access to old-fashion newspapers is still a thing of the future. Many Monrovians can’t afford to buy real newspapers or electricity to access the internet, so Alfred J. Sirleaf, the founder of this blackboard newspaper had to come up with a way to bring information to the people in an inexpensive way. He believes a well-informed people is the key to Liberia’s rebirth so ever since he started his unique venture  on Tubman Boulevard, in 2000, in central Monrovia, he’s been providing valuable news every single day. For local news, he relies on a team of volunteer reporters who come to him with stories, while for international events he goes to an internet cafe to access sites like the BBC, because he doesn’t own a computer. Then, in the newsroom, a small wooden shed attached to the back of his blackboard, he updates The Daily Talk with chalk. He’s the editor, the designer and sole employee of the unique newspaper, yet he manages to get his message across.

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In an effort to help people cope with the loss of their loved ones, a South Korean tech company is developing an app that lets them take photos and converse with digitally-rendered models of deceased friends and family.

Called “With Me”, the controversial app was developed by ELROIS, a Korean firm that specializes in creating realistic 3D avatars, and requires the featured person to sign up for an avatar while they are still alive. Currently, they have to visit a special booth where their bodies are scanned using special technology, but ELROIS hopes that smartphones will soon come with built-in 3D-scanning technology to streamline the process. The company then proceeds to create a “realistic” 3D avatar based on the scanned images, followed by reshaping and auto-rigging to make it animated.

Not only can users of the With Me app take selfies with these digital avatars of their loved ones, but thanks to artificial intelligence, they can also converse with them, or have them react to certain commands or information uploaded to the app. “When a user puts personal information in the app, the avatars remember the user from that time and recognize if there’s some changes in the of users as well,” an ELROIS spokesperson said. “For example, if there is a change in appearance or an emotional change and the avatar will mention something about it, such as ‘you look younger today, what is your secret?'”

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Do you remember how you always had to be quiet at the dinner table when you were young but never understood why? Now that you’re all grown up, with children of your own, you probably wish you could have just one more of those quiet dinners. If quiet is what you seek, you’re in luck, as now you can enjoy a four-course meal in complete silence at the Eat restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn where you have to be quiet and enjoy the food, whether you like it or not.

Nicholas Nauman, head chef and curator of the silent-dinner experience, got the idea for the event during a trip to India where he admired the Buddhist monks having their breakfast every morning without uttering a word. In a competing market where restaurant owners are coming up with the most unusual concepts to attract customers – such as dining in pitch-dark, the 28-year-old thought this idea would gain popularity. “It’s just an opportunity to enjoy food in a way you might not have otherwise,” he says. This way, he hopes to “reconfigure the relationship between a space and food” by forcing customers to focus on their plates rather than on the countless distractions that occur while sitting at the dinner table.

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One of the most popular tourist attractions in the Swedish city of Malmö, the giant lamp of Lilla Torg square seems like something taken out of Alice in Wonderland.

First installed in 2006, the 5.8 meters high lamp quickly became a favorite spot for both locals and tourists. Featuring a foot that also acts as a bench, this installation was created with the idea of giving passers-by a chance to sit down, relax and forget about daily stress, if only just for a few minutes. Throughout the year, the enormous lamp tours the various squares of Malmö, but on December 15, just before Christmas, it always returns to Lilla Torg.

It looks cool enough as it is, but it would be even better if someone would build a giant nightstand, and maybe a glass of water, to go with the lamp. And if it wasn’t bizarre enough, the giant lamp of Lilla Torg actually talks, as well. Check it out in the video at the bottom.

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K. Padmarajan has been dubbed the “Election King” and the “World’s Biggest Election Loser” after participating in 238 political elections and losing every single time.

K. Padmarajan’s story is one of perseverance. The 65-year-old repairman from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has participated in hundreds of elections over the past three decades and spent thousands of dollars on registration fees. The closest he has ever come to winning an election was in 2011 when he ran for the general assembly in the town of Mettur and got 6,273 votes. He was way behind the winner – he got over 75,000 votes – but it gave him hope that he could one day win. That day is yet to come, but Padmarajan recently pointed out that winning is the secondary goal. Resilience and accepting defeat are key and no one is better at it than him.

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Tish, the oldest goldfish in recorded history, lived to the ripe old age of 43. In his later years, his scales actually started changing from gold to silver.

The average lifespan of a common goldfish (Carassius auratus), is 10-15 years, but the current Guinness Record for the oldest goldfish ever was set by a male goldfish named Tish that remarkably reached the age of 43. He spent his life in a fish bowl in North Yorkshire, UK, under the care of Hilda Hand and her son Peter. The latter won Tish as a prize at a fairground roll-a-penny stall in 1956, when he was only 7 years old, and after he left the family home, his mother continued looking after the aging goldfish. No one really expected Tish to reach his 40s, considering that most goldfish barely make it past a decade, but somehow he did, and, 24 years after his death, he still holds the record for the oldest goldfish ever.

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23-year-old Luiz Augusto Márcio Marques stopped growing after undergoing a surgical procedure to remove a very rare and aggressive tumor. Today he looks like a 13-year-old boy.

Luiz, who is better known as Guto in his native city of Passo Fundo, in Southern Brazil, had a perfectly normal life until the age of 7, when he started experiencing excruciating headaches that began manifesting more frequently as time passed. None of the doctors his parents took him to could diagnose his condition correctly, and the headaches started affecting his school activity and his daily life. Some claimed that it was just a virus, while others said that it was a psychological condition, or that he was just making everything up because he was lazy. It was only after the boy suffered a seizure that he was taken to the city hospital where the real cause of his headaches was finally revealed…

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A Vietnamese man has become famous in his home province of An Giang for taking care of thousands of wild river fish who visit his house every day for food.

Muoi Phuc’s house in Long Kien, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, is a popular attraction for both locals and tourists. People routinely stop by to watch the man feed a school of wild fish that visits him daily. When the 52-year-old man started feeding the fish, it was just a handful of pangasius, but over the last two years, their number grew at a steady pace, and now thousands of fish stop by his riverside home every day for a bite to eat. The fish are free to come and go as they please, and others have tried attracting them by throwing food into the river, but for some reason, they only stop at Muoi Phuc’s house.

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Rutin chicken, a domestic hybrid dubbed ‘the world’s smallest chicken’ has become incredibly popular in China lately, fueling a veritable pet craze.

Technically, the rutin in chicken is not a chicken. It is a cross between a quail and a partridge, but people have dubbed it the “world’s smallest chicken” and the nickname stuck. To be fair, it fits too, as the birds are about the size of an average human fist and weigh only about 50 grams. They are super cute as well, and their size makes them suitable for relatively small enclosures that come with lights, plants, stairs, and even dollhouse-like sleeping quarters.

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A 65-year-old man from Saudi Arabia recently became the talk of the town after it was revealed that he married no less than 53 different women in his search for emotional “stability”.

Abu Abdullah married his first wife when he was only 20 years old. She was six years his senior, and for a time, she was all he needed. They had children together and everything was going well, but then problems started appearing in his life and he decided to marry again. At the age of 23, he informed his wife that he planned to take a second wife and became a polygamist. Then, as problems started arising before his two spouses, he took on a third wife, and then a fourth. However, things only got worse, so he divorced his first and second wives, and then did the same with the third and fourth, as they had also started arguing. But his quest for stability continued…

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An elderly couple in Germany has taken their next-door neighbors to court over a very active rooster that allegedly crows about 200 times a day, making it impossible for them to rest.

76-year-old Friedrich-Wilhelm and his wife Jutta, a couple from Bad Salzuflen, in Western Germany, claim that they haven’t had a quiet day at home in a long time, all because of Magda, their neighbors’ rooster. The domestic bird allegedly starts crowing every day at around 8 am, and doesn’t stop until sundown, when the owners lock it up with their other chicken. After years of trying to reason with their neighbors about Magda, Friedrich and Jutta have taken them to court in order to resolve the matter.

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Chrysina limbata is a species of beetle native to the tropical rainforests of Central America known for its metallic reflective silver color which makes specimens look like living pieces of jewelry.

Chrysina limbata is regarded as one of the most beautiful insect species on Earth, and for good reason. These beetles have a reflective silver metallic appearance that is so clear one can actually see their reflection in them. According to Wikipedia, this stunning visual effect “is achieved through thin film interference within layers of chitin. These layers of the chitin coating are chirped (in layers of differing thicknesses), forming a complex multilayer as each layer decreases in depth; as the thickness changes, so too does the optical path-length. Each chirped layer is tuned to a different wavelength of light”.

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A Chinese premium ice-cream company has sparked controversy on social media because its products allegedly don’t melt even when kept at high temperatures for long periods of time.

Last week, Zhongxuegao, a Chinese ice cream company known for its high-quality products, went viral on social media, after someone posted photos and videos of a Zhongxuegao ice cream next to a thermometer that showed 31 degrees Celsius. The original poster claimed that the frozen treat had been kept at that temperature for around an hour and a half, but it had clearly not melted one bit. The post got a lot of attention and inspired other people to conduct their own experiments, including taking an open flame to the ice cream to see if it melts. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

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A number of people in Bangkok, Thailand were shocked to find that an old man they saw floating in a dirty water canal turned out not to be a corpse, but a meditating person.

Imagine walking by an urban water canal and spotting a stiff body floating in the dirty, garbage-filled water. You most likely expect the worst, so no one can really blame the people who witnessed this scene at the end of last month for calling the police. But before authorities could get there, some of the people on the banks of the canal tried shouting at the floating body to make sure it was truly dead. One brave young man even went down into the dirty water, navigating through the garbage and the mud on the bottom, and when he touched the body, it sprung to life…

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Designer brand Balenciaga recently unveiled a new limited-edition line of footwear so damaged and dirty that most people wouldn’t be caught wearing it in public.

There’s such a thing as “distressed clothing” and it can actually look pretty nice, but sometimes designers go too far and we end up with some really weird products. Now, when it comes to pushing the envelope, Balenciaga is right up there with some of the most daring fashion brands, but being cutting edge comes with a high risk of looking ridiculous. Remember that Balenciaga skirt designed to look like a car mat? Not the fashion house’s best garment, but even that pales in comparison with its line of $1,450 destroyed sweaters. But if you happen to have bought one such extremely distressed sweater, at least you now have some banged-up sneakers to pair them with.

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