What is more important- to be productive, or to have a good life? The people of Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria, emphasize the philosophy of “aylyak,” which translates to idleness or dawdling, but in reality embodies the idea that taking your time and savoring the moment is a valid and desirable way of life.

In the downtown Kapana district, people spill out of bars and cafes into the pedestrian streets. Under brightly painted murals on the walls, groups of young people hang out, flirt and check their phones. In the cafe by the Dzhumaya Mosque in the town centre, people sit for hours and sip cups of Turkish coffee. Even the cats in the cobbled streets of the old town seem more languid than elsewhere. They stretch and purr, then they roll over and go back to sleep. If you ask the people here why the city is so relaxed, they will tell you: Plovdiv, they will say, is “aylyak”.

Plovdiv's culture of a laid-back, social lifestyle owes its origins to history, but is also fed by its reputation, which draws new residents from around the world. Read about the city that takes its time at BBC Travel. -via Digg

(Image credit: Envoy_to_the_Stars)

All you're trying to do is clean the house, and things just go from bad to worse. It's happened to all of us. Sometimes it's funny enough to take a picture and share, like the Roomba suicide above that occurred when its vision interfered with finding the steps. And that's far from the worst Roomba incident. But it doesn't have to be a robot vacuum- this is what immediately happened when someone at an animal shelter tried to clean up with a large canister vac:

(Image credit: Ski_ND)

See 43 more vacuum cleaner adventures gone wrong at Bored Panda.

With the second season in full swing, everyone's going nuts for The Mandalorian! The Merkins are into the swing of things with a Mandalorian version of the Guns ’n’ Roses song “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” It just makes so much sense. -via Geeks Are Sexy

For Remington Robinson, an artist in Boulder, Colorado, the palette is part of the work, so he leaves it in place as part of each finished painting. The final work is a beautiful landscape painted inside an Altoid mints tin.The image rests on a wood panel that he has attached to the lid with velcro. You can see more of Robinson's works on his Instagram page.

Did you know that 40 percent of the Universe’s matter was missing? Well, it’s actually an assumption made by the scientists, since this ‘missing’ matter was never detected. Until now, of course. Researchers from France’s National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) claimed that they found the missing 40 percent hidden away in a galaxy-connecting cosmic web, as Futurism details: 

The filaments of gas that make up the cosmic web are thought to connect networks of galaxies across vast voids of nothingness in the universe, according to a CNRS press release. Sometimes they also serve as a source of fresh material for nearby galaxies or black holes, making the web itself even more threadbare and faint.

The French researchers suggest that it’s because these cosmic web filaments are so diffuse, and the signals they give off are so weak, that they went undetected for 20 years even though all the data was in plain sight.

Image via Futurism 

The Gladstone Library is a Victorian Gothic style building that houses 150,000 works, including the books, papers, and letters of its founder, William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstone was a four-time British prime minister who died in 1898. The library is also a registered charity that provides bed and breakfast  for those seeking time and space to write, or merely rest, in its unique atmosphere, as the Daily Beast details: 

“We provide a place to think, resources to help you think and people to share your thoughts with,” the library’s director and warden, Peter Francis, said. “Our main group of visitors are writers and academics but the three subject areas also entice individuals, so students, clergy, historians and politicians.”

It also has offered residential courses with titles like “Welsh in a Week” or “Jane Austen in a Week” and its website has a helpful A-to-Z guide that includes directions from train stations and tips for local walks including a Hawarden Characters and Customs tour.

Image via the Daily Beast 

The toddler phase is the phase in which a child develops his or her food preferences. To put it simply, it is the phase in which a child becomes picky with what he or she likes to eat. With that in mind, how will you, the parent, get your child to eat food that he/she doesn’t want? How To Dad gives us some tips through this funny video.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: How To DAD/ YouTube)

This is the way the skin communicates with the person: it tells the person, in a visual manner, which area of the body is damaged, by changing the said area’s color. Seeing how useful this ability would be to objects, scientists are trying to replicate this ability.

There’s a practical side to the fancy. When an object suffers an impact that is expected to cause damage, it is necessary to examine every centimetre of its surface to understand the extent of the damage, which takes time and money. Think of cars and planes in particular.

And the idea isn’t fanciful. Researchers already are experimenting with spiropyran, a molecule that changes colour, due to a change in its chemical structure, when it is physically stimulated.

Learn more details about this over at Cosmos Magazine.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: KIST/ Cosmos Magazine)

We usually take small talk for granted, but it turns out that it's also an important part of our lives. Scientists say that small talk can be good for our mental health and well-being.

“From a scientific perspective, we know that close relationships are the most important ones,” says Timon Elmer, a psychologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "It's good to focus on those. But there is merit in talking to strangers, if that is in your personality.”

[...]

Building rapport with strangers can leave people feeling heard, respected, and emotionally validated. These random opportunities to engage in small talk can help boost moods and erode loneliness. Researchers who study relationships sometimes define loneliness as feeling as though the quantity and quality of social interactions you participate in don’t live up to what you’d like them to be.

And so, scientists encourage us to find ways to engage in small talk in these trying times.

More details about this over at Discover Magazine.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

No, you don’t have to be a spy or a criminal on the run (which I hope you’re not) to get one. Burner phones can come in handy for one’s privacy and safety. These cheap prepaid mobiles for temporary use can help you stay safe while chatting with strangers online. Popular Science lists the benefits of getting one: 

Think about any one-time occasion when people might have to text you or call you, but you don't really want to give out your main number. If you're organizing a wedding, going to a festival, or helping arrange any kind of local event, you'll need to get in touch with lots of new contacts, but you might not want them to contact you outside of that particular context.

Another example—many online dating services let you chat anonymously through their apps, but if things go well, most people decide to swap numbers and take the conversation elsewhere. If you reach this point but you're still not sure you can trust a potential partner, a burner will let you keep your distance. Ghosting is rude, but giving out an alternative number can be a lifesaver if a person you're dating doesn't respect your desire to break off a relationship.

Online dating isn't the only occasion when you have to share contact information with strangers you meet on the internet. Sites such as Craigslist also require that you get in touch with unknown buyers or sellers, and a burner number can act as an extra buffer. People might use your real phone number to look you up online, but a burner doesn't give them the same power—if the person becomes intrusive, you can cut them off immediately by eliminating your second number.

Image via William Iven via Unsplash

Long distance relationships are hard to maintain, alright. After long months of no contact with Voyager 2, NASA has finally reestablished communications with the spacecraft. The reason behind the lack of communication for eight months was less of a run-in with space shenanigans, but more of a case of routine maintenance, as Live Science details: 

In March, NASA announced that Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43) in Australia, the only antenna on Earth that can send commands to Voyager 2, required critical upgrades and would need to shut down for approximately 11 months for the work to be completed.

During this window, Voyager 2, which is currently over 18.7 billion kilometers (11.6 billion miles) away from Earth and getting farther all the time, wouldn't be able to receive any communications from Earth, although its own broadcasts back to us would still be received As part of the refurb, DSS-43 is getting two new antennas, upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supply equipment, and other electronics to support the new transmitters. When the work is complete, the upgrades will provide longevity to a cornerstone of a facility that's already legendary.

"What makes this task unique is that we're doing work at all levels of the antenna, from the pedestal at ground level all the way up to the feedcones at the centrer of the dish that extend above the rim," says NASA Deep Space Network project manager Brad Arnold.

"This test communication with Voyager 2 definitely tells us that things are on track with the work we're doing."

Image via Live Science 

The largest penguin species, the Palaeeudyptes klekowskii stood at  around 6 foot 8 inches. Wow, the penguin, should it have survived until today, would have rivaled basketball players’ heights! The mountainous bird’s 37-million-year-old fossilized remains were uncovered in Antarctica. The "colossus penguin" was truly the Godzilla of aquatic birds, as Tree Hugger details: 

Scientists calculated the penguin's dimensions by scaling the sizes of its bones against those of modern penguin species. They estimate that the bird probably would have weighed about 250 pounds — again, roughly comparable to LeBron James. By comparison, the largest species of penguin alive today, the emperor penguin, is "only" about 4 feet tall and can weigh as much as 100 pounds.

The fossil was found at the La Meseta formation on Seymour Island, an island in a chain of 16 major islands around the tip of the Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula. (It's the region that is the closest part of Antarctica to South America.) The area is known for its abundance of penguin bones, though in prehistoric times it would have been much warmer than it is today.

P. klekowskii towers over the next largest penguin ever discovered, a 5-foot-tall bird that lived about 36 million years ago in Peru. Since these two species were near contemporaries, it's fun to imagine a time between 35 and 40 million years ago when giant penguins walked the Earth, and perhaps swam alongside the ancestors of whales.

Image via Tree Hugger 

It’s not just us who want to feel warm this winter. Our pets want the same, too. And because we love our pets, it is only fitting that we buy them something that will make them feel warm this season, like this crochet chicken sweater.

This crochet chicken sweater is available at the Etsy shop AnimalFunandFashion. It comes in a variety of colors and buttons up to fit comfortably around your feathered fashionista. You can even get yours with a white feather trim.

[...]

AnimalFunandFashion warns that while their sweaters do make for cute holiday outfits, they shouldn't be worn constantly, as they can interfere with the molting process. You can order yours from their Etsy shop today. Prices range from $15.90 to $19.60.

Cute!

(Image Credit: AnimalFunandFashion/ Etsy/ Mental Floss)

As an infant grows into a toddler, he not only learns to walk, but also learns the elements of communication, such as listening, speaking, and observing. As a child grows, he gets more and more exposed to words and sentences, and then he becomes able to say some words and construct some sentences.

It is an exciting and wonderful time for children to learn about their world and share their discoveries. It can also be a time of anxiety, if a child is not showing the communication signs the parent expects them to at a particular age.

The question is, how can parents help their children communicate? The answer, according to Olivia Karaolis, may be found in puppets.

In 2019 as part of my yet unpublished research (that draws on previous work in the United States), I went to three different preschools to work with three to four year olds using puppets. I observed all the children — including kids with a disability, those learning English as an additional language or those who are very shy — communicated more often and more effectively when talking to a puppet.

Research with school-aged children shows puppets, like a favourite doll or teddy bear, can encourage learning and improve communication and behaviour. Talking to a puppet, as opposed to a person, makes the conversation feel less personal and more pretend. It is a play-based technique sometimes used in therapy to help the child feel less self-conscious, and open up.

Learn more on how puppets can help improve communication in children over at The Conversation.

What are your thoughts about this one?

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Because if there’s one thing that we all love, it’s buying high-quality stuff at a low price. The Verge provides us a list of high-quality products that are less than $50, such as earbuds which cost $15, a $43 wireless router, a $22 rice cooker, and a 10-foot-long USB-C cable, which costs only $13.

Check out the list over at the site.

(Image Credit: andibreit/ Pixabay)