Category: Weird

Looking at a radish….

‘I do not have a favorite food. I like them all, both for eating and for making things. when I am working with them, different shapes are useful in different ways. I love the expressive faces you can find in a pepper. I love the different animals that can emerge from a banana. mushrooms, with their round bodies and long thick stalks, can be used to make tables, chairs, cars, people, almost anything.’

If you bottle the water outside of Fiji, is it still Fiji Water? While we Westerners think of Fiji as an idyllic tropical destination with pristine beaches and turquoise waters, the real story of the remote South Pacific island is a much different reality. As TIME reported in September, the tiny island has been under military rule since a coup in 2006, its press is muzzled and it’s economy has declined due in part to sanctions imposed by the European Union and its neighbors, Australia and New Zealand.

The latest twist in this saga involves the high-end water brand of the same name. Fiji Water announced Monday that it is shutting down operations in Fiji after the government proposed an “extraction tax” of 15 cents a liter (up from one-third of a cent). The proposed tax hike comes just one week after David Roth, Fiji Water director of external affairs, was deported for allegedly interfering in the domestic affairs and governance of Fiji.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I am just the same. For those of you that think this is a prank or Photoshop, I assure you…it isn’t.

The $96,824 price tag is a 10.8% jump from last year, according to PNC Wealth Management. One factor is the big rise in gold prices, which pushed the cost of five gold rings up 30% to $649.95.

The most expensive item: $6,294.03 for nine ladies dancing. But there was some good news: Four of the 12 gifts did not go up: The pear tree ($149, sans partridge), four calling birds ($599.96), six geese ($150) and the eight maids-a-milking ($58).

We recently rounded up the most nightmare-inducing creations of speculative zoologist Dougal Dixon. Here’s another one of Dixon’s futuristic Homo sapiens. This being is more or less a psychic raspberry strudel.