The Wolf Has Been Catching Eggs for 45 Years. Who Dreamed Him Up?
Why on earth is the wolf from Nu, Pogodi! collecting eggs instead of chasing the hare? How did that same wolf help Nintendo turn from a playing-card company into an electronics one? And why is this story the exact opposite of the other cult game of the same generation, Tetris, which came out of the USSR? And finally, the game itself, written by Claude in minutes.
0215 Predictions About the Future We Can Laugh At
Trying to peer into the future is a doomed challenge, yet reading tech predictions that never came true turns out to be unexpectedly entertaining, especially when… they are your own. In more than five years, I have published just over 500 Digital Stories. I will invite an impartial observer to assess them and pull out specific passages that have not aged well at all.
03Five Years of Digital Stories! Can You Crack the Prize Quiz?
Exactly five years ago, the first piece appeared on the Digital Stories site! My modest gift is a fun and unexpected quiz with prizes. Take on 30 questions and you'll enter the draw for 10 books connected, one way or another, with the story of this venture. The quiz takes no more than 10 minutes, so give it a go! And afterward, its remarkably curious backstory awaits you…
04From 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!
05TrumpScript, 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.
06Slavs of the World, Smile!
The page Squatting Slavs in Tracksuits is one of the most delightfully funny things you can inflict on yourself online, a place where anyone with ties to the Balkans, Eastern Europe or the Slavic world cannot help but smile. Who is behind it, and why do 1990s gangsters, doting “babushkas,” reverence for Adidas and wacky low-budget fixes to everyday problems turn into viral memes? And how on earth do you explain all this to someone from the West?
07“Laugh, ’Cause the Universe Is Endless, but Life Ain’t”
This piece was the April Fools’ greeting from Digital Stories, an unconventional interview with a beloved, out-of-the-box writer, and today it reads very differently and is even more worth reading: Stoyan Nikolov (Torlaka) passed away just days ago, at only 42, leaving behind distinctive, meaningful books that will be read for a long time, and three boys who will grow up as brave and defiant as he was, and as his Northwest is. “Laugh, ’cause the universe is endless, but life ain’t. It’s just energy, changin’ from one form to another in this endless universe; long as you’re in this here shell of yours, enjoy it. After that, who knows.”
08The Meme: The Next Step in Evolution
Technology has exploded and we have access to an unthinkable ocean of information, yet what makes us laugh most often these days is… the same dozen pictures. Is there any logic to this phenomenon at all… or is it the art of our time? What is a meme? A descendant of the joke, anonymous online folklore? Or… a phenomenon that marks a new stage in the evolution of humankind? We'll look into the philosophy behind it and try to explain how it came about, and to have some fun along the way, we'll tell the stories of some of the most recognizable meme heroes.
09When Not!News Makes the News
Few pages on the Bulgarian web offer original, unadulterated content that makes you laugh… even if the smile is a sour one, born of the irony of Bulgarian reality. Since 2009, Samuil Petkanov, the creator of Not!News, has been serving up his version of “the news as it could have been.” What does he think of the way we get our information? Does he manage to predict the future? How is it that we are all experts on influencers’ nose jobs and cryptocurrency fluctuations, and where is this taking us? The answers are in this interview, garnished with a small helping of Not!News inspired by Digital Stories.
10Rumen the Cat: The Internet Egzists to Give Peepl Akses to More Katz
The time has come for Digital Stories to give the floor to influencers. Today's guest rarely gives interviews, and it is safe to say that without our digital present he would never have given a single one. That would be the reader's loss, because his thoughts are sincere, colorful and delivered in a rather peculiar way.
11The Earth Is Flat!
For more than two millennia we have been lied to that we live on a ball. It is time for the truth to come out! Today, when anyone online can say whatever they like, when access to information is unprecedented and general knowledge is shrinking in proportion, it is time to question the sixth-grade physics textbook. While you read… be careful not to fall off.
