Another reason to be kind

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.

I found this nice 2012 article on r/psychology about how our experience and intuition fool us into making wrong predictions. The emphasis in the article is on underestimating others and overestimating ourselves. It says that there’s no amount of knowledge about the thinking errors and biases that will make our thinking quality better but it can make us slow down and invest more effort when we recognize that we would like good results.

Not sure if the article is worth a $6 subscription but is definitely worth the read, and so is the main source for it – the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

The biggest challenge over the next 6 months

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?

An easy answer would be some individual problem, like health, loss, or work. The hard answer is – dealing with uncertainty without dwelling on the endless negative outcomes. I need my imagination to be helpful.

People have come to many ways to calm their fortune-telling never-ending internal narrator:

  • Meditation. Whatever the future, focus on the present. Life is simple in the now. Ignore the past.
  • Religion. If God will take care of all of us after all, why worry about the future? Study the very distant past.
  • Psychology. Whatever the future, nobody can take away your past.
  • Capitalism. Imagine this fantastic new car, don’t bother with the other things. Go shopping for dopamine highs.
  • News. Be afraid, be very afraid. We will use your internal narrator to make you come back and buy things.

And so on. It is a long search.

Metro Station Musagenitsa

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Hard to imagine that this is a bridge but it is.

I’ve walked where the tracks are many times. It didn’t look like that though. Had no tracks, no blue plastic cover, or even guard rails. There were some ways for you to fall down, although I don’t think it ever happened. Getting in and out was clearly forbidden but there were no guards, just a broken wall and a muddy ramp.

Still, it was the fastest walk to the other side.

The view is good.

Vartopo park, Vitosha, and Darvenitsa.

White Sand vs White Sand Omnibus

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

These two books have the same name. Goodreads says the big one contains the small one and the small one is supposed to be volume 1. The beginning of Omnibus looked familiar (I just started reading it). However, the illustrations are not the same as before. The style is different, the table of contents is different, and it just doesn’t look like the same book at all. Looks like a rewrite rather than a combined edition. I’ll post an update once I read the new edition and get a better sense of what’s going on.

I liked the style of the previous one, it was very Dune-like. Hope the new one is also good. My first impression of the Omnibus is that it is heavy, I wish it was an e-book.

Swan

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Reusing old tires for gardening purposes is very common in Sofia, especially for protecting plants and small trees. The results are of varying quality. Here’s a tire swan.