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.
Zombies have wiped out humans, leaving scattered enclaves of survivors and rotting food supplies. A little girl is locked in a basement, protected from all the evils. It’s obvious that she’s extremely dangerous, and also maybe relatively ordinary. Like Pandora.
There’s a rule in nature—you can’t have your cake and eat it too. This rule is fundamentally broken in the book. What are the zombies doing to cause an apocalypse? Eating people or turning them into zombies? Pick one. Once a person is eaten, they cannot turn into a zombie because nothing is left. M.R. Carey doesn’t pick one and goes all-in, and then adds even more absurdity to the zombie mechanics. The final result looks like a movie script with scenes written to impress rather than to make sense.
The book is undeniably very engaging and interesting. Melanie is a highly likable main character. Easy 5*/5, and something you can read in one sitting. I’ve already bought the second part and plan to read it after a short break. The zombie mechanics, however, are so unconvincing that I took one star from the Goodreads review and ended with a fair 4*/5.
I visited a few iconic places today to celebrate the national holiday.
The Nevski Cathedral, St. Sofia with the eternal flame, and King Samuil’s statue.
This is King Samuil, watching if you click like.
The other cathedral, St. Nedelya (we have two), the Largo with the St. Sofia statue in the distance, and the president’s office with the guards.
Vitosha Boulevard, The Palace of Justice (The Court House), and The Parliament, with the Horse, an ancient TV truck, and the Cathedral in the background.
There will be fireworks in the evening. I hope we have a chance to go and watch them in person.
Veselin.blog 