Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
Something makes my name difficult to say and hear. English speakers tend to confuse it with a random Russian last name, the Greek Vasilij, or Vaseline. Bulgarians improvise around it, surprised when they hear it.
On the photo – Vasilen, actually not a bad interpretation because it’s close to a real name. 4/7
Fear makes you click. But does it end with clicking and reading? Found this gem on the Reader today:
French surgeon and neurobiologist, Henri Laborit (1914-1995) drew a clear connection between learning and emotion, showing that without the latter the former was impossible. The stronger the emotion, the more clearly an experience is learned.
Nescafé Japan and Imprint Theory
Triggered productive emotions also help you learn the wrong things because learning is associated with emotion. Previously wrote about this in 2018.
The challenge to blog daily got me motivated to read more and shorter books. I read 15 last month, which I’ve not done since the day(s) I read The Chronicles of Amber. I didn’t blog about most of them, though. Didn’t feel right.
The best books for the month were Five and Six by Janet Evanovich and the two Thraxas. Number Seven is already lined up in my phone, and the next two Thraxas arrived as a paperback from a second-hand shop.
The worst by a wide margin was David Baldacci’s Memory Man. I awarded it 3* but it doesn’t sit well in my memory. The way I remember it, it’s already a hard 1*.
We celebrate the 1st of March in Bulgaria and give away wristbands called Martenitsa. Then we wear the received Martenitsa until the storks arrive or the trees blossom. Once that happens, we can put the Martenitsa on a branch or under a stone.
We won’t let ourselves be set back by some already blossoming branches. We’ll wait for the storks this year.
Veselin.blog 