Subway Construction Causes Holes, Cracks, and Structural Threats in Sofia

A hole opened on the road in my neighborhood as a result of the underground subway construction. The road is severely damaged, and it looks like the buildings nearby may start cracking as well. There were some attempts to fill the hole, but more holes opened. The sidewalk separated from the road, and there are large cracks over a long distance.

Makes me wonder why is it still permitted for busses to drive near the holes and if the nearby building will need to be evacuated.

UPDATE: the road is fully closed today, all the buses (TM3, TM5, and 73) have alternative routes. Multiple bus stops have been closed. I’m glad the engineers took this seriously.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, Book Review

Gideon is a young and charming young woman, master swordsman. She happens to be raised in a world ruled by necromancers with many terrible risks associated with this craft. Death being a relatively small risk given that the necromancers around can imprison your soul, use your bones, or both.

The book has a logical magical system, and a grimdark atmosphere, horror-ish, which is in a stark contrast with Gideon’s positive and bubbly attitude. I loved both and have no objections.

However, there’s lots of death in the book and it’s sad, very sad. I didn’t like that part.

Overall, 5/5 but I do not recommend it because of the overall sadness.

The Cost of Inaction

Daily writing prompt
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

The one time I wanted to buy Bitcoin at $1 and didn’t. I made a mistake.

I believe it’s usually better to make a wrong decision than to not make any decision.

For example, I didn’t have access to a PC until I was about 17. As a result, I made an uninformed decision when choosing a university and ended up studying accounting. I got my first computer for my first year there. By the third year, it became painfully obvious that I had made a mistake because my entire life revolved around Internet but it felt too late to switch because I was close to graduation (it was 4.5 years in total). Do I regret it? Not really. I took a wide range of courses in accounting, finance, financial control, math, statistics, marketing. Years later, I applied again to another university and studied the right thing. Looking back, that bachelor’s in accounting turned out to be surprisingly valuable in my software engineering career.

But the post is about the cost of inaction. Here are some points:

  • Both in personal and professional life, if there’s a problem and you don’t address it, it gets worse
  • We’re more likely to regret the things we didn’t do than the mistakes we made trying
  • If you don’t do that thing, the competition may do it first, and better
  • Fear rots our brains. We rarely fear inaction. We fear action and change

Rather than a summary, have this encouraging look by the little Song thrush.