A California-based book club has recently finished its first reading of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’, a notoriously difficult book that it started reading 28 years ago.

James Joyce once said that the demand he makes of his reader is that he “should devote his entire life to reading my works,” and some people actually took those words to heart. For example, the members of a California book club have spent the last 28 years of their lives decyphering Finnegan’s Wake page by page, in an attempt to figure out its many mysteries. This is a book so difficult to read that no one person can truly say they ‘get it’, which makes it perfect for community reading. It’s apparently written in a convoluted mix of reinvented words, puns, and allusions, referencing about 80 languages, and people can’t even agree on where the book is set or who the characters are.

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A Japanese man planted three banana trees in the median strip of a major road in Kurume City and watered them daily for two years before anyone noticed their existence.

A 50-something man from Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, was recently ordered to remove three banana trees he had illegally planted and cared for in the median strip of a busy city road for a couple of years. It’s unclear why the man chose to plant the trees on public property, and in a median strip of all places, but they eventually got so big that they began affecting motorists’ field of view. It wasn’t difficult for authorities to identify the man responsible for the trees, as he had been watering the tropical plants at least twice a day for the last two years. He was ordered to remove the trees, or risk spending up to a year in jail or pay a fine of 500,000 yen ($3,350).

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Western Poland’s Notecka Forest is home to one of the country’s most controversial buildings, a medieval-style complex known as Stobnica Castle.

The construction of Stobnica Castle began in 2015, but it didn’t start attracting nationwide attention until 2018, when people started wondering what this gargantuan structure rising up at the edge of a well-known nature reserve, on what looked like a man-made island on Lake Stobnica, was. Aerial photos of a 15-storey medieval-like castle rising up in the middle of a pristine natural paradise about 50 km from the city of Poznan started going viral online and piqued people’s curiosity. What was this building, who was the owner and how had they obtained a building permit for it, considering its location at the edge of a Special Protection Area for Birds (20 species) within the Natura 2000 network?

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As part of a post-Diwali celebration in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhidavad village, brave men lie on the ground and allow themselves to be trampled by dozens of cattle in the name of religion.

The festival of Diwali is marked with various rituals and traditions across India, but none quite as bizarre as the custom of one village in Madhya Pradesh, where men lie on the ground and allow cows to walk all over them in the hopes that it will make all their wishes come true. According to tradition, the cows are worshipped in the village in the morning, and then daredevils lie down on the ground while the cows trample them. People believe that 33 crore (330 million) gods and goddesses reside in cows, and by allowing cows to walk over them, one receives the blessings of the gods.

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A Colombian mother is being accused of staging her own toddler son’s kidnapping along with several accomplices in order to get ransom money from the boy’s father.

On Sunday evening, November 12th, the news of a young boy kidnapped in Caribe Verde, south of Barranquilla, Colombia, started spreading like wildfire. The 2-year-old had apparently been snatched right out of the arms of his helpless mother as she was walking on the street. Two helmet-wearing assailants approached the woman on motorcycles, intimidated her, and then rode away with her child. When police arrived on the scene, they started questioning the woman about what had gone down, and locating the minor became the biggest priority. It didn’t take long before someone reported the presence of a child fitting the kidnapping victim’s description in a Caribe Verde apartment. A police team burst into the apartment, only instead of masked assailants, they found the boy in the care of a friend of his mother’s…

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A Romanian man was recently saved by doctors after cutting his wrist with an angle grinder because he was convinced he had colon cancer by simply reading about his symptoms online.

The bizarre incident took place on Saturday, in the Romanian city of Botosani. The unnamed man had been depressed about colon pain he had been experiencing for a while, but his wife didn’t suspect just how desperate he had become. At one point, he told his spouse that he was going into the outhouse to get some firewood for their boiler, but he had more sinister plans. A few minutes later, the woman received a text from her husband telling her that he was sorry and that she had been a good wife. Luckily, the woman immediately realized something was wrong and ran to the outhouse, where she found the man with an angle grinder in one hand and his other hand almost severed completely…

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An Italian man who was serving 30 years in prison for murdering his girlfriend was recently released from prison because judges ruled that prison food didn’t allow him to go on a diet behind bars.

In 2017, Dimitri Fricano was arrested for killing his girlfriend, Erika, during a heated argument, while they were vacationing in Sardinia. He originally told police that robbers had attacked and killed his partner, but as investigators found more and more holes in his story, he eventually admitted that he had been the one to stab her 57 times. Apparently, she had scolded him for leaving too many crumbs on the bed when eating, and he became so angry that he couldn’t control himself. Two years later, he was put on trial for murder, but he only got convicted to 30 years behind bars in 2022, due to pandemic-related delays, before being released this month for being dangerously obese and not being able to lose weight.

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A recently divorced woman denounced her husband’s obsession with running, claiming that he once left their 5-year-old daughter locked in a car for hours so he could run a marathon.

In an angry post on Chinese social media, Zhao, a woman living in southern China’s Hunan province, said that her former husband’s obsession with running ended up destroying their family. Although he never really admitted he was obsessed with running, Zhao claims that it was always his number one priority. At first, she had encouraged him to run in order to preserve his health, but soon it became the only thing he cared about. In the end, it caused a rift between the spouses and one of the husband’s desperate actions convinced the woman that she was better off on her own.

Photo: unitea/Pixabay

According to Toutiao News, Zhao wrote in her post that her ex-husband once left their 5-year-old daughter alone in a car for several hours, just so he could do what he loved most, run. The woman did not observe this herself, but her daughter later told her everything. Apparently, her ex-husband bought the 5-year-old girl breakfast, gave her his phone for entertainment, locked her in a car, and went to run in a marathon.

Confronted by Chinese media after Zhao’s post went viral all over the country, the father, Peng, admitted to leaving his daughter alone in the car so he could run in the marathon. However, he claimed that he only ran a short distance before returning to the girl.

“I only ran 1.5km then returned to the car to find her sleeping,” Peng said, before telling the mother that if she didn’t like the way he raised their daughter, she should take her away with her.

“His addiction to running destroyed our family,” Zhao said.

An offline business in China’s Shandong Province has been getting attention for offering divorcing couples the chance to destroy their wedding pictures in a cheap and effective way.

Tearing up wedding photos after a failed marriage isn’t as easy as it sounds in China, a country where it’s customary to immortalize wedding stills on tough acrylic canvases that also happen to be very resistant to flames. That leaves divorcing couples with few options, like simply throwing their wedding pictures in the trash, which many are reluctant to do for fear that they might get recognized by someone. That’s where a new business venture from Shandong Province comes in. Founded by a young man surnamed Liu, the new company specializes in shredding wedding photographs, helping clients put their past behind them while also protecting their privacy.

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The so-called ‘Guyiang White House’ is a gigantic structure located in the posh Huaguoyuan Wetland Park area of Guiyang City, in China’s Guizhou Province. It has gone viral as China’s largest mansion, but you can’t believe everything you read online…

Featuring an architectural style usually observed in European palaces and museums, the Guiyang White House has become one of the most iconic sights in the Chinese city of Guiyang. Although many have described it as ‘kitsch’, ‘over-the-top’, and overly opulent’, there is no denying the eye-catching appeal of this megalithic structure, both during the day and at night, when it is illuminated by countless light installations. The structure got its name because of its white exterior and Western architectural influences, but when it comes to size, it actually dwarfs its Washington namesake. The entire complex, including the artificial pond in front of the edifice, is said to cover an area of ​​18.3 million square meters.

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Every year, in late autumn, thousands of people flock to Bangye–ri, a village in Gyeongsang, South Korea, to witness the beauty of a majestic 860-year-old ginkgo biloba tree.

The secular Wonju Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is a national monument of South Korea famous for its impressive crown which currently covers a perimeter of around 17 meters. At around 32 meters tall (104ft), it is not even the Asian country’s tallest ginkgo tree, but the way its branches are spread out makes it one of the most visually impressive trees on Earth. In South Korea, the Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is often called the world’s most beautiful tree.

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The village of Baktawng, in India’s north-eastern state of Mizoram, is home to the world’s largest known family, 199 people who live under the same roof in a giant building.

Pu Ziona was the patriarch of what was generally regarded as the world’s largest family – 38 wives, 89 children, and 36 children. Ziona passed away in 2021, at the age of 76, due to health complications caused by hypertension and diabetes, but his family continues to live under the same roof in the impressive living complex Ziona built in the hills of Baktawng. Some of his children got wives of their own, some more than one, and the family member count now stands at 199. They all gather in the great hall of their home twice a day to eat, in a scene that looks more like a busy canteen than a family dining room. The members share everything, from the daily workload to the food and finances, and even though everyone wants to carry on the legacy of Pu Ziona, things are changing for the world’s largest family…

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Makeup artists on TikTok are busy freaking out their followers with a new style of makeup called “uncanny valley” and inspired by the human-like yet unnatural appearance of androids.

The term uncanny valley is used to describe the hypothesized uncomfortable feeling triggered by seeing an entity appearing almost human but not quite so. It is used mainly in relation to humanoid androids that try to mimic our look and mannerisms to perfection but don’t quite succeed. These days, the phrase is going viral on TikTok thanks to a new makeup trend used to transform fleshy humans into creepy cyborgs. The trend is believed to have been sparked by Zara (@alkiiwii), a TikTok user who transformed herself with layers of foundation, concealer, eyeliner, and mascara. Her viral video tagged with #uncannyvalleymakeup has been viewed and shared tens of millions of times, inspiring other makeup enthusiasts to post their own takes on the trend.

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A 63-year-old Chinese man who only started learning ballet a decade ago has gone viral on social media as a living example that you are never too old to follow your dreams.

Liu Ziqing has been a fan of ballet for as long as he can remember. He fell in love with it as a little boy, after watching The Red Detachment of Women ballet show in the early 1960s, more than 10 times, but he never really got the chance to practice it himself. Growing up in a poor family in a village near Baotou, the largest city in Northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, his main focus was always on helping his family and putting food on the table. Dancing was a luxury he could not afford. He ended up becoming a farmer but also worked as a street cleaner in order to make ends meet. But he never got over his love for ballet, and at age 53, he decided to become a ballet dancer.

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Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has over 110,000 followers and generates over $4,000 in monthly revenue. Not bad for someone who doesn’t exist.

Virtual models have been around for a few years now, and the advent of artificial intelligence has only made them more realistic and more popular. One standout representative of this new wave of AI-created digital influencers is Aitana, a cute, pink-haired female model from Barcelona who has managed to attract over 100k followers in just a few months. She only posts photos of her, since video is likely to make her digital form a bit too obvious, but every one of her photos garners tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. Her popularity has translated into a steady monthly income for her creators, who claim that she generates over 4,000 euros a month.

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