Adrien Bachi: The Lessons of Bluebeard
Adrien loves to run—down the entrepreneurial road and in real marathons, but above all against stereotypes. Adrien Bachi has lived in Sofia for 18 years, runs a successful video game company that employs Bulgarians, has adopted a Bulgarian girl and has gathered plenty of digital stories to tell us. Here they are!
02From The Floor to Quizza: Put Your Knowledge to the Test!
Let me introduce Quizza! A website we built as volunteers. Where you can challenge yourself by taking any of our many permanent quizzes on all sorts of topics. Where you can face off in a weekly contest against some of the heroes you know from online and offline competitions! And, last but not least, where you can discover causes that each of us stands behind with our own name! I have no doubt that last night you watched the first episode of The Floor, the new and innovative game show on NOVA, one of Bulgaria's main TV channels. If you didn't, it's not too late at all—there are still 12 whole episodes to come. It is a reason to celebrate in itself that a game about knowledge, not scandal, has made it to prime time, and I believe it will be the hit of the season. Rumor (and ChatGPT) has it that I'm in it too. But we're here for a slightly different digital story, one closely tied to the game. It comes to show us that when we are together, we are capable of miracles. That if people brought together supposedly to compete and beat one another can reach out a hand for something bigger, then our society can do it too. Do you like to provoke and test your knowledge? Are you looking for meaningful causes to help, knowing for sure that your help goes to the right place and supports something important and lasting? If your answer is “yes” to even one of these questions, then this Digital Story is just for you!
03Go: The Great Game
Two people stare stubbornly at rows of neatly arranged, round, flat stones. Just a game, you might say, but it is not that simple—not at all. This is not only one of the oldest games we know but also the most complex, and for a long time we considered it humanity’s last bastion, the place where technology could never overtake us. When it finally did, a remarkable new digital story was born.
04“Without a Little Madness, It Just Won't Work”
In this life you shouldn't, and can't, only take. If you don't give—in return or entirely for free—you have lived in vain, as the popular hit song goes. Even if we know it, it is worth reminding ourselves often. I hope this Digital Story reaches more people. I believe that if more people recognize its lessons, we are all capable of reclaiming the conversation and helping our country flourish. Of fulfilling the great dream of the protagonist and narrator here—that our children will WANT to stay in Bulgaria. Tenko Nikolov is not only one of Bulgaria's most successful tech entrepreneurs. He is a visionary who believes in the power of a close-knit team, shared values and a little “healthy” madness.
05Slipping Out of the Net
The internet keeps connecting us, and the internet keeps dividing us. But how many parts of our lives have we handed over to technology? This Christmas Digital Story follows a woman who found love online, built a family in England, and then decided to escape a society where everything happens on a screen.
06Borrowed Origami: What Is Copyright Worth Online?
Sometimes life online throws up cases we could never dream up, however loose we let our imagination run. Picture it, almost as in a Kafka novel: suddenly ads from Chinese stores start popping up for you… offering you something you know perfectly well you created yourself. Our hero today is not Gregor Samsa but Atanas Mihalchev, a Bulgarian photographer, artist and teacher in Canada, whose origami kits for children suddenly turn out not to be his.
07“Ask, People! Just Ask!” Five Important (and Awkward) Questions About Blind People
Viktor Asenov never stops running, always toward the next record to conquer. This time we pick up our conversation with the blind long-distance runner about the daily hardships of Bulgarians with visual (and other) impairments: how we should treat them, whether we are attentive enough, and whether Bulgaria looks after their rights. Together we came up with five concrete ideas, and each one, for me at least, is a reason to stop and think.
08The Not-So-Lonely Long-Distance Runner
To run until you beat yourself. Sixty kilometers on the steep slopes of Pirin, marathons, ultramarathons on several continents. To ride a bike 600 kilometers along the entire Bulgarian bank of the Danube. And to find the bike-and-run loop around Vitosha known as “Vitosha 100,” a favorite challenge of hardcore programmers, “a race for parquet-floor runners.” That is our hero today, Viktor Asenov, who loves to challenge himself, to run, to overtake and to show what is possible. He graduated in social pedagogy but never managed to build a career, disappointed by the way Bulgaria treats people with disabilities. We can learn a lot from today’s digital hero, so we meet him and ride around Sofia, to talk about the challenges life throws at us and the ones we have to set ourselves. Did I forget to mention that he is blind? But that doesn’t stop him from chasing records. Or from chasing his dreams…
09Merry Christm@s!
At last he managed to get himself a decent connection. The speed kept limping along until he finally figured out what to do, and on the eve of yet another Christmas he wrote a letter to a colleague. “I’m giving Santa Claus internet for Christmas,” read Elon Musk’s tweet, which was the plain truth, though the followers of the world’s richest oddball, for some reason, failed to grasp its meaning. But how to begin? He didn’t learn much from the elves: they all had their eyes glued to their phones, and while he questioned them, they scraped at the screens with their index fingers, trying with undisguised annoyance to dodge his questions. Still, it became clear to him that the road ran through the notorious social networks. And now he sat there, staring desperately at the monitor and smoking nervously…
10Love in the Time of AI
This is a story about a love that came not very early, but just in time. About the luck and happiness of finding your person. About the dreams we put off, though we shouldn't. About the strength not to give up, even in the hardest moments and in the face of the toughest challenges. At least as long as you have the strongest support of all, that of the person beside you. “In December I turn 63. I have seen a lot and lived through a lot. Instead of growing fewer, the problems keep multiplying. I've had two strokes, a malignant tumor and more. In those hard moments there was always one person beside me who, again and again, got me back on my feet and even gave me wings. That person is my wife, Toni. A few days ago I spontaneously wrote down my feelings for her in a few lines. Since I'm neither a musician nor a singer, I turned them into a song with the help of artificial intelligence.” Powerful stories keep happening in the digital world—because of it, thanks to it or in spite of it. And just as our relationships as people quietly change with the development of technology, there are also those universal plots that survive through time and are reborn with new shades, new details and new inspiration. More and more often, stories vanish into the feed, unnoticed in the rush of scrolling, of the news of the day. Do we have the time and the frame of mind to look for them? To settle in and read, to get carried away by them, while we hurry on, absorbed in the latest topic of the day?
11Rory and Grandma's Recipes
What is a tattooed American doing aboard a 40-year-old Lada, bound for yet another Bulgarian village? And what exactly goes into a cocktail called “Computer”? Why would a citizen of Washington State choose to hunt for old Bulgarian recipes in remote villages, where “Baba” lives—Grandma, the collective, the eternal in an endless, universal figure who touches all of us? Rory Miller is rediscovering, here and now, the magic of the Bulgarian village. The thing we abandon, though it holds so much of the meaning. A construction worker, an olive picker and an English teacher, Rory stopped in Bulgaria about 15 years ago, and his two children were born here. He caught people's eye on “Masterchef,” then went on his way through the remote Bulgarian villages. That is how the remarkable book Na oko (By Eye) was born, a surreal travelogue where you won't find precise recipes—for dishes or for the future, everything is “by eye,” both a unit of measurement and a way of life. But you will find the village itself, and its dishes, and the grandmothers, and the spirit, and well-measured spices. The American's next step is to bring the book out in English through a crowdfunding campaign. I will personally support him, because I think he has captured the priceless spirit of the Bulgarian village today. Which is different from that of Elin Pelin and Ivan Vazov. Which, I believe, will overturn the misguided fashion that life is in the big city. The world of technology lets us break stereotypes like never before. Colorful Rory's book reminds us of that too, and he has plenty to tell us in the lines that follow.
12Graduating at 88: The Lessons of Dr. Shoilev
At 80, today's hero went along to keep an acquaintance company while she enrolled to study journalism—and on the spur of the moment decided to go back to the lecture hall himself. It turned into an eight-year adventure full of knowledge and stubborn study, and a few months ago, at 88, Petar Shoilev received his doctorate in journalism! How can anyone be so motivated, and find the strength to take on an entirely new field at that age and finish a PhD with highest honors? Here's how!
13TrumpScript, or Coding in Song: 10 Wacky Programming Languages
Computer code that reads like a cooking recipe? Programs built out of colors or sounds? Here are 10 of the strangest programming languages, inspired by Shakespeare, Terry Pratchett and even Donald Trump.
14What's in Apple's Name? The Stories Behind the Web's Biggest Brands
Are Java and JavaScript cousins, and if they have nothing in common… why do they have such similar names? Why did Apple pick something as overused as the apple for its name and symbol? What on earth is… Adobe? Or Google? Does Lenovo have anything to do with Lenin? “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” says Juliet, as quoted by Shakespeare. And would what we call Apple or Amazon smell as sweet under another name? We can only guess. But behind the names of the online world's biggest players there are sometimes funny stories. In the lines that follow, we'll run quickly through some of the most instructive and unexpected ones.
15The Radium Girls: When Technology Turns to Horror
An incredibly powerful phenomenon has been discovered, one that creates a new substance! Not only does it cure even incurable cases of cancer, it will open the eyes of science in so many directions. For instance… lighting up the dark night! Marie Curie discovers radioactivity, wins not one but two Nobel Prizes and paves the way to the future. She opens the doors to a new technology that turns out to be unexpectedly successful… Until it becomes clear that we have badly underestimated its dangers. It will cost the lives of thousands of people who were simply trying to earn a living. Do we know the technologies we trust well enough? Could the much-hyped artificial intelligence, or some other fashionable field of today, prove more dangerous than it looks at first glance? The most important thing is to stop and think, to reflect, to discuss. To tell each other stories. Stories like that of the radium girls are worth reading more often. That is what stories are for—to make us question things, to keep us on our guard. Alas, not all that glitters is gold…
16Buying Eternal Youth
Forty-six-year-old Bryan Johnson has already spent more than $4 million to make his body work like an 18-year-old's. He claims it is working. He puts everything into it, going as far as infusing himself with blood plasma from his own son. He believes he is the most measured human being who has ever lived, and that his experiment will change the life of everyone who wants to live long. In other words, everyone. Dream or utopia? An obscene waste of money or an idea that could change our evolution? Genius or sheer madness?
17The Programmer Who Chose to Become a Babysitter
Programming, and a future in the much-vaunted IT sector, is as tempting as ever. Our guest today spent 20 years as a programmer, long before it became fashionable, until he realized he was tired of computers and happiest among children. So, defying every stereotype, Bogdan decided to earn his living as a babysitter.
18Tetris: The Human Who Never Stops Outdoing Himself
“I’m going to pass out, I can’t feel my hands…” Blue Scuti mutters, before he realizes he has fulfilled a dream that seemed impossible. Almost four decades on, he has beaten, one way or another, the game we have all played. Sitting in front of a retro cathode-ray-tube TV, found after countless difficulties, clicking the buttons of a retro controller for 42 minutes straight at more than 20 taps per second… the teenager reminded us that there is no limit to what a human can do. But how can you beat a game that has no end? And why are this success and the road to it such important news for humans as a species? News about our ability, through cooperation and talent, to keep moving forward… To create, to make things, to find meaning. To give birth to stories. Tetris is a legend that passes through the generations to give birth to new legends. A week ago we took a stroll through the history of the game that came out of a Soviet laboratory during the Cold War. Today we will look at a brand-new record that has so much to tell us about ourselves.
19The Unseen Code
“In the software world, people with visual impairments can find exceptionally good professional opportunities,” says today’s guest—and he proves it with his own example. For two decades Ismail Ismail has been building websites with open-source platforms and championing accessibility in the Bulgarian WordPress community, and now he has set out on the path of classical programming. Open your senses to a rather unexpected… point of view.
20The Little Bottle Cap and the Avalanche of Good Deeds
Twenty-two modern incubators and five ambulances, specially equipped to help premature babies. That is how big today's guest is. Thanks to him, premature babies in many regions of the country have a far better chance of surviving and avoiding complications.
