Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
Erica carnea, also known as Winter Heath, is already in bloom days after the snow melted. Bees were flying around. Feels like it’s time for the sun to show up and for the spring to come.
We also have the next generation of cats already growing up and refusing to pose for a photo.
For me, the most hated question is any opener that leads to someone asking for money. For example:
“Do you have a watch?”
“It’s three fifty.”
“Lots of good things will happen to you—I can see it. Let me read your palm.”
Whenever strangers ask questions like that, I instinctively pick up my pace and don’t respond. For some reason, the most common one I hear is about the time—or, more specifically, whether I have a watch.
It’s trickier when people ask for directions. That one still fools me sometimes.
“Hey, how do I get to the National Theater?”
“Right this way,” I say, pointing in the right direction.
“Do you want a flower for health?”
I don’t mind when people ask for change—it’s their job. But using trivial questions as an opener makes me a worse person because I might end up walking past someone who genuinely needs help.
Since I aim for 10,000 steps a day, I have plenty of encounters with strangers—maybe once or twice a week. Most of the time, it’s just people struggling to find something that’s supposed to be there according to Google Maps but isn’t.
I miss the idea of IRC.
IRC is a technology that gives us a decentralized networks of chat servers, allowing people to meet like-minded strangers. It used to be (maybe) the most popular way to chat online before ICQ and Skype changed everything. I spent years of my life there as a teenager and young adult.
Unlike email, IRC didn’t age well. The whole thing started falling apart due to limitations of how big channels could be while remaining usable. Also, spam, hacks, profanity, botnets, and ToS violations invaded. IRC is still alive but with a low number of daily active users.
We now have Discord and Slack but they suffer one little flaw. They’re for-profit companies.
Good luck!
Patriotism is a complex quality with both positive and negative aspects. Some people express it by putting a flag on their car, while others hate the rival countries. Maybe wear a tattoo with a national hero. Very few will join the army or the police out of a desire to serve the country, wearing a tattoo or putting a sticker is much easier.
My form of patriotism is that I live in my country, respect the laws, pay my taxes, recycle my plastic & paper, and do small acts of kindness that improve the quality of life in the community. I did my mandatory military service. I think the sum of all of that adds up to at least one tattoo per month. Add that I don’t smoke and litter, and I think I would be an extremely patriotic Bulgarian.
I feel like patriotism shouldn’t come with any sort of pride or feeling of superiority. We can be proud with our efforts and accomplishments but it’s completely pointless to be proud of my area of birth. Being proud that I’m born in Sofia is like being proud that I’m Aquarius.
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