Not very friendly.

I’m starting to think the ideal number of books to own is almost zero. I feel like one should only keep books that are either signed, gifts, not yet read, or for some reason frequently re-read. Everything else tends serves very little to no purpose and only forms clutter. The individual books are pretty big units of kipple that reduces the living space of book worms like me. I keep an overflow shelf where books are prepared for donation but I seem to have been slow with getting rid of old books and very quick with buying new ones.

There's a wonderful feature by the local reading site Chitanka that offers you random books. I would click 10-15-20 times and find something new I've never seen before. A few days ago, it offered me the apocalyptic sci-fi Charity. Charity is an astronaut and a military captain during an active invasion. An alien ecosystem enters Earth through some kind of portals, brought here by a spaceship, and obliterates everything. The invading army is so powerful that humans do not stand a chance. However, there would be no book if there was no hope, right?

I found this nice article today that digs into the subject. Check it out. The article suggests that we’ve been measuring intelligence the wrong way, which leads to poor correlation with life success metrics. Most of our intelligence metrics (like IQ) focus on how well someone can solve clearly defined problems. Real life rarely works that way. Living well, building relationships, raising children, and so on, depend more on the ability to navigate poorly defined problems. As a result, you can have a chess champion who is also a miserable human.

A shy yard cat observing for danger.

Publishing books with covers that are all part of the same image is still a relatively uncommon practice in Bulgaria. There have been some nicely designed series over the years, but not many that build a consistent visual identity across multiple titles. This is the Nebula sci-fi series, featuring titles like Murderbot, Silo, and others. I'm curious to see how long this publisher plans to keep the style going. Something with the perspective feels limiting, as if it should end within 2-3 books. And here is my success with the books, green are those I already read, red are those I did not start or did not finish. Overall, very solid books so far, mostly 5/5 with a rare 4/5 here and there.

I had the opportunity to speak at the WordPress Sofia Meetup today. My first talk in a really long time. Happy that the organizers invited me. The event had food, beer, good folks, and a social part that was far more interesting than my talk. Just for the record, a speaker selfie, no-hat Tuesday.

In the second part of the Bobiverse series, the self-replicating Bob probes have now reached dozens of star systems, and their mission has grown far beyond exploration. With Earth in a nuclear winter, the Bobs take on the monumental task of coordinating humanity’s evacuation. In book 2, Earth isn’t the only place in trouble. In the nearby stars, two other civilizations face extinction, and the Bobs can’t help but get involved. Meanwhile, a new threat threatens to end humans - the aliens called “Others.” Although their presence remains mostly peripheral, it’s clear that they will have to be dealt with.

This fluffy ball is, I think, a restaurant cat. Lots of the restaurants here have semi-stray cats that would help the customers eat their meat, if they're having difficulties. Meow.

October was a busy month and I didn’t have much time for entertainment. I still managed to finish five books. Best Book The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin - my third book by this author and it might also be the best so far. An ancient Egypt-like world, where magic is collected from dreams, and dreaming is visiting the land of the dead. The priests gathering the magic are at risk of taking too much and losing humanity. The idea is not too novel but the whole story felt sufficiently different, alien, and better.

I saw a mystery bird today. I thought only have one big, long-legged frog-eating bird around, and it's the Stork. But we saw something like a grey stork, way out of season. Storks have already left the country for the year. So with some effort and the kind help of this website, I think I witnessed a bird we call Chapla. My photo quality is so good that it can as well be the Loch Ness monster. Happy Halloween! 🎃

There's a park close to our co-working space that's surrounded by a wall. Right in the middle of that wall, there's a patch of 10-ish meters of barbed wire. I've been to the other side a few times, nothing but trees. Makes me wonder why and how? And a local resident: Very friendly.

This is a photo from my neighborhood. This is the dark, northern side of the buildings. And this is a sidewalk, the legal way to cross the highway. Of course, there are other ways further away. I call this sidewalk "The middle path" because it's medium inconvenience, and in my opinion, holds the highest risk for the pedestrians. Zoom in and you'll see the leftovers of a flying car that somehow fell of the bridge without damaging the guard rails. Not an isolated accident. I've seen a flying car in the opposite part of the cloverleaf interchange.

Daily writing prompt You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for? View all responses This question has one simple answer, that's likely also wrong. "Infinite wishes" - you actually only need one, and you're good. However, if we dig deeper, we don't want anything to do with the genie. The genie has a way of twisting everything. So meeting that genie means you better run. "Hello, brave traveler! I will grant you three wishes" - the Genie said“I wish to live forever.” - the human responded…

Scary monster on the other side!

This is a nice statue from the socialist period. It's named Victory to be politically correct but we can rename it to Dancing in the Rain - after all, it rains and she looks like dancing. I’m not sure I encountered much today but I surely soaked wet. Didn’t want to walk with an umbrella. My thinking in the morning was that I will get wet anyway but without the umbrella, I will at least not hold my hand up for 2-3 hours. Water finds its way in and if you try keeping it out too hard, it starts building up from the inside as well. I think it was okay. The shoes held up.

I was lucky to have good weather this morning and saw all kinds of nice little things, more than I can squeeze in a single blog post. As long as one has the eyes to look and the curiosity to keep the look for longer than a second, all kinds of findings start coming up. Dogs with jackets, weird graffiti, animals, plants and who knows what. Here's a selection of photos. Friends These birds, a magpie and a rook flew together above me for quite awhile. I had the chance to see 3 of their landing sites and a couple of playfights.

For a few minutes this morning, the skies were magnificent. Just enough to make the little abandon his breakfast Ninja Turtles episode for about five seconds.

I forgot my office keys today, so I worked for a few hours from a nearby shop and had a cookie there. We have a traditional recipe for cookies called Cat's Tongue - essentially flower, sugar, butter, and vanilla, prepared in a shape that reminds a tongue. To celebrate that moment, here's a photo of one of the local cats, showing the real deal.

Most of the historical events I had a chance to live through were negative. Beginnings of wars, Chernobyl, 9/11, major protests, Covid-19. However, I choose to remember good things as well. Every person has at least a few personal holidays. Birthdays are important. I do my best to remember them and social media helps. My own, for example, I remember like it was yesterday 🤣

A cat family near St. Anna hospital. I think the big orange cat is the mom, which is an unusual sight. Two-color orange cats are usually male.

Caraval is a romantasy book by Stephanie Garber. I rarely give ratings under 3/5 because books I don't like I also DNF and rarely mention. However, there's an exception - trick me that a book is good by writing an awesome beginning and then a roasting on the blog becomes possible. So rather than a photo with the book cover, here's an augmented photo of soap, which I find appropriate to the following text. Donatella and Scarlett are two teenage sisters, daughters of the cruel Governor Dragna. They endure an eternity of their father’s beatings and psychological torture while waiting for arranged marriages to either secure their futures or end them.

A single baby shoe on the sidewalk. I've been the parent searching for the tiny shoe in the past. I think the best strategy when seeing a tiny shoe is to not touch it, it increases the chance that it's found compared to if you put it on a visible place. I've managed to find the lost shoe several hours after it was lost but this one time a Good Samaritan put it on top of an anti-parking bollard - I had to walk back and forth to the store two or three times because I didn't expect it to be there. While wondering what to do, a mom showed up and found it.

I have this strange goal to take a photo of ducks in a row. They've been refusing to do that for me. I saw maybe 20-ish young ducks grouped together, almost forming a row, but the combination of light, phone camera, and my photography skill level produced an image of Nessie.