There's just something about rustic villages lined with cobblestone houses and surrounded by meadows and greenery. It gives you that feeling of being transported to a much simpler time, away from the stress that urban life heaps up on you.

And if ever you're traveling around the world, then you must check out the region of Provence in southeastern France where you can find some very beautiful villages to explore and maybe even fall in love.

(Image credit: Jimi magic/Wikimedia Commons)

After over 50 years, John Coltrane's largely unheard-of compositions which he created for the film "Le chat dans le sac" will be released by the National Film Board, Canada's public film producer and distributor. Listen to some of the tracks here.

(Image credit: Paolo Steffan; Wikimedia Commons)

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Monday which makes HIV-prevention drugs available with no prescription required. Thanks to this bill, pharmacists can now dispense both PrEP, or preexposure prophylaxis, and PEP, post-exposure prophylaxis.

The measure follows a 2015 California law that made it possible for women to walk into a pharmacy and get a prescription for birth control.

PrEP can reduce the risk of getting HIV from sex by about 99% when taken daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. PEP, meanwhile, is for emergency situations and must be started within 72 hours of possible exposure to HIV, the CDC says.

The bill also prohibits insurance companies from requiring patients to get prior authorization before they can use their benefits of obtaining the medications.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

History continues to lurch forward every day. We are all part of history, though much to some people's dismay, we don't all have the power to make or alter history. But historical forces continue to shape our world and as long as there are tensions and clashes between opposing sides, history will move forward.

In 1989, however, Francis Fukuyama declared that history has ended by which he meant that Western liberal democracy has conquered all other ideologies of the world.

Perhaps, it is the case that capitalism is the main mode of production today. However, looking at the situation of the world right now, there are factors that shape societies not just in economic terms but also in political and social aspects.

Fukuyama’s 1989 article contained notes of surprising melancholy. ‘The end of history will be a very sad time,’ he wrote. ‘The worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination and idealism will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.’

For all the subsequent ridicule, Fukuyama’s original idea resonantly captures our era of fragmenting grand narratives and dissolving cultural movements. ‘In the post-historical period,’ he went on, ‘there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed.’

(Image credit: Giammarco Boscaro/Unsplash)

Since Halloween is coming up, let's have some creepy but cool animated art that would give you a little bit of a spook in the night. Here's a collection of short animations from the blog Behind You which could make the hairs on your neck stand on end. -via Things Magazine

(Image credit: Behind You/Tumblr)

For anyone who has worked in an office setting whether it be in the corporate world, the government, or even as freelancers, there comes a point when the work you do becomes exhausting and you don't find any fulfillment in it any longer.

In the short film "The Future of Work" created by Studio BIEN in collaboration with freelance animator Reece Parker and Myriad Media for IBM, it shows the life of a typical worker, Jane who becomes swallowed up by the monotony of work life because of all the mundane, repetitive tasks she does. Until IMB automation comes in.

"Telling a compelling story without dialogue is challenging. To ensure maximum visual impact and cultural relevance for a global audience, we worked hand-in-hand with Myriad Media to shape the script and mould the story. It’s highly unusual for a studio to be involved from the very beginning but we were glad to collaborate from the jump."

(Image credit: Studio BIEN; screen cap)

A set of fossil bones discovered in 2017 in Australia has been named as a new species of pterosaur. The flying dino has been named Ferrodraco lentoni, or “Butch’s Iron Dragon” in honor of the late mayor of Winton, Graham “Butch” Lenton. It had a wingspan of 13 feet (four meters) and a skull that's two feet (60 centimeters) long. This species is quite a rare find.  

To remain in the air, these fancy fliers’ bones had to be extremely lightweight and hollow, which means their delicate remains readily collapsed and crumbled under pressure. Because of this, astonishingly few have ever been found, and Australia in particular has largely remained a blank slate.

“You could put all the fossil material in a handbag,” Unwin says.

In Ferrodraco’s case, its remains were found in an iron-rich rock, the source of its remarkable preservation—and of its genus name, a combination of the Latin words for “iron” and “dragon.” Iron-rich fluids likely permeated the animal’s carcass after it died, which later formed a tough mineral that bolstered the fragile bones and preserved them in 3D, Pentland says. Such exceptional preservation could help researchers better understand pterosaur mechanics, such as how pterosaurs flew, Unwin adds.

Butch's Iron Dragon lived approximately 96 million years ago. Read more about the fossil at National Geographic.  -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Travis R. Tischler)

Last October, people started noticing an inordinate number of teddy bears in Paris. Then they began to spread to other cities. They sprang up again this year, as soon as the weather allowed, and no one seems to know why.

They came quietly. Massive teddy bears, popping up along Paris’ boulevard des Gobelins to cozy up in a bookshop, or relax en terrasse. Week after week, they seemed to multiply as if by magic, inciting joy and mystery in the otherwise humdrum 13th arrondissement. A little over a year later, and the nounours des Gobelins (Teddies of Les Gobelins) have extended their paws throughout the city and beyond, from France to New York City; from the streets of Montmartre to those of Sri Lanka. “We’ve seen them on the beach, in the mountains, you name it,” says the man behind the magic, who has asked that we only refer to him as Philippe le papa des nounours (Philippe, Father of the Teddies), “of course, everyone wants to know: why?” We had a chat with Philippe to set the record straight, only to discover that the answer isn’t as clear cut as you’d think. Luckily, it is as cute.

No, it's not an art installation. It doesn't have a grand purpose. And it wasn't even planned to turn out this way. Philippe tells the story of how this teddy bear thing got off the ground at Messy Messy Chic.

See a gallery of the teddies at Instagram.

The Ohio State University Marching Band (TBDBITL), known for their elaborate and intricate formations, recreated the moon landing in a 50th anniversary tribute this past weekend. They depict scenes from the space race, the liftoff, the lunar lander, and even Neil Armstrong's famous quote. I, for one, am truly impressed. -via Boing Boing

Check out some of their previous routines.

Everyone has either owned a goldfish, used goldfish as bait, or admired goldfish in aquariums and ponds. They're everywhere, but how did they get there? Professor Anna Marie Roos of the University of Lincoln wrote the book Goldfish that answers that question and more. Roos sat down with National Geographic to talk about goldfish.

Where do goldfish fit into the animal kingdom?

Goldfish are basically carp. The Chinese originally bred them to eat. Carp, which are normally grey or green, breed like crazy, and you get variations of colors and shapes. Nature plays around. They have a smattering of pigment cells that are red or gold. A mutation would have suppressed the grey pigment cells, allowing the yellow and red ones to be expressed. Humans took a mutation and made a species of them.

In China, the golden fish takes on religious overtones.

In about the ninth century, goldfish mutants, when captured by fishermen, were not eaten and [instead] released into Buddhist ponds of mercy in an act of fang sheng, or mercy release. The monks fed and kept them, so the fish were protected by not being in the open waters. Releasing an animal into such a pond of mercy was an act of self-purification, a good deed in the Buddhist religion, which becomes even better if the animal is rare, like a goldfish versus a common carp.

You can see how they survived and reproduced with their gold color intact. Roos talks about goldfish as pets, as experimental subjects, as giveaways, and as invasive species, at NatGeo. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Daiju Azuma)

I have two daughters, so I know all about Lisa Frank. For those of you not so blessed: Lisa Frank is a person, a company, and a brand of rainbow-y psychedelic merchandise of all kinds aimed at young girls.

If you can think of it, there is Lisa Frank of it.

And now there's a Lisa Frank hotel suite in Los Angeles.

It's a wonderland of bright--very bright--colors in all of the rooms, along with appropriate accessories. All of this is available for $199 a night. You can see a photo slideshow here.

-via Ian Miles Cheong | Photos: Hotels.com

Sealed in millenniums is the Qesem Cave in Central Israel, and it has become a time capsule of the lives and diets of Paleolithic people 420,000 to 200,000 years ago. Inside this cave, early humans butchered fresh kills by using their stone blades, and cooked the meat on campfires.

“It was believed that early hominins were consuming everything they could put their hands on immediately, without storing or preserving or keeping things for later,” said Ran Barkai, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Not every meal, however, was scarfed down immediately after the hunt. Dr. Barkai and his team found out that the earliest inhabitants of the cave may have also stored animal bones. These animal bones had tasty marrow, which the inhabitants feasted on up to nine weeks after the kill, which can be likened to a Stone Age canned soup. This may be the earliest example of prehistoric humans storing food for later consumption.

Find out more about the story over at The New York Times.

(Image Credit: Dr. Ruth Blasco)

Every day, from the months of June to October, Héctor Campanur Sánchez goes out of his home in Cherán, in the central Mexican state of Michoacán, to hunt for wild mushrooms on the steep slope of an extinct volcano.

During the rainy season, the said mushrooms are laid up in geometric piles, among the wild greens and the varying colors of the stalks of blue and pink corn, and fills up the indigenous town of Purhépecha’s Saturday and Tuesday markets.

First come the yuntas, or yokes, which grow in pairs like hitched oxen, and the ghostly white lobes of ahuachikuas, the perfect filling for corn-husk-wrapped nacatamales. Later come pale gray ox stomachs, grilled on clay comals like slabs of beef; yellow tiripitis as rich and unctuous as egg yolks; coral-like birds feet to sweat into blood-red stews called atapakuas, thickened with masa and scented with yerba buena; and bright orange trumpet mushrooms, known here as pig snouts, which, ground to a mince and fried with garlic, onion and lard, bear an uncanny resemblance to a good pastor.

“In mushroom season,” Campanur, 32, says, “you can suffer a little less.”

Campanur’s family has collected and sold mushrooms for generations, yet as recently as a decade ago, the tradition was at risk of disappearing. Illegal logging began around the edges of Cherán’s expansive municipal territory, which covers nearly 52,000 acres, in the early 2000s. In 2008, loggers from a neighboring village formed an alliance with a local cell of the Knights Templar Cartel, which was eager to clear the land for lucrative avocado farms.

Over the next four years, the loggers poured over the volcanoes like termites as they cleared over 124 acres in just a week. According to the current president of the Council for Community Property, Miguel Macías Sánchez, trucks loaded with wood go through the town as many as 250 times a day. The trucks were also guarded with armed men who pointed their AK-47s at anyone who dared question them.

According to a study from the Universidad Michoacana, some 19,800 acres of woodlands were cleared by 2011, about 70% of Cherán’s total forested territory. Some in town call that number modest, saying the destruction came closer to 30,000 acres or more. Murders, disappearances, extortion and kidnapping became commonplace. Mushrooms couldn’t grow without the detritus of falling leaves, and families such as the Campanurs stopped going to collect them for fear they might not come back.

On April 15, 2011, the people of Cherán would rise up against these loggers.

Find out what happened next over at the Los Angeles Times.

(Image Credit: Felipe Luna / For The Times)

Compared to those of over 30 years ago, the young classical musicians of today now play at a higher standard, says one of the greatest pianists of Hong Kong, Gabriel Kwok. This, he says, is all thanks to the internet.

Kwok, a professor and head of keyboard studies at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, states that today’s youngsters can easily get hold of music recordings, either on YouTube or via downloading, compared to when he was young, where the youngsters back then had to buy long-playing vinyl records (LPs) and then CDs.

“It’s now much easier for them to get to know the great masters and understand more about how they play.

“This has improved the standard of classical music in general, especially at the technical level. Today’s youngsters have an amazing technical ability – particularly in China,” adds Kwok, who was awarded the Medal of Honour by Hong Kong’s government in 2014 for his contribution to piano education in the city.

Yet music is not only about technique, he says. “Music must also have a message and reach people’s hearts. So, while their technical side is very good and you could say they have more ability, one’s musical side develops with age.

(Image Credit: cocoparisienne/ Pixabay)

Holly Persic of Pittsburgh found that her car made an odd sound and smelled strange when she drove it. Opening the hood revealed a vast reserve of winter supplies left by enterprising squirrels. A cornucopia of more than 200 walnuts and lots of grass filled the engine compartment. Q13 FOX reports:

There were so many walnuts and so much grass under the hood of the car that it took almost a full hour to get the car clean enough to take it to a local auto repair shop.

Once they got the car to the shop, mechanics were able to put it up on a lift and remove the protective plate from under the car. Walnuts they couldn’t reach fell out and covered the floor. There were enough walnuts to fill half a trash can.

The car worked fine once it was cleaned. But given the destruction of their winter nest, the squirrels may be in for a rough time.

-via Geekologie | Photo: Chris Persic