A weekly digest - part serious, part not - in partnership with The Sofia Globe
Happy New Year to New York, London, Paris, Sofia!
I trust you’ve all entered Dry January with the grim determination of a man trying to explain a tax return to a goldfish.
2026 has started with a bang.
(Note: If your “bang” was a bureaucratic handover, you’re doing it wrong. A real bang involves more confetti and significantly less paperwork.)
The Lev Has Left the Building
Bulgaria has officially joined the Eurozone.
We knew it was coming, yet it still feels fundamentally strange - like waking up to discover your cat has been replaced by a slightly more efficient, multilingual cat that refuses to use the same litter box.
The Euro notes themselves, let’s be honest, possess all the character of a freshly bleached hospital waiting room in Brussels. When you try to design a currency that offends absolutely no one, you end up with something that looks like it was generated by a bored printer following very strict HR guidelines.
That said, if played correctly, this opens real business potential for Bulgarian SMEs and startups. Less currency risk, more access, fewer excuses.
Or, at the very least, we are now broke in the same language as everyone else.
And Now for Something Completely Digital: Denmark
In a move that screams “the future is here and it’s forgotten its password,” Denmark eliminated its postal service. PostNord delivered its final letter on December 30th and decided that from now on, parcels are the only form of communication worth respecting.
They are proud of this.
I, however, am terrified.
Putting all your eggs into one digital basket is fine - until the basket runs a system update for three days. No letters means no handwriting. No handwriting means no thinking. This is how you end up with fully upgraded Scandinavian robots who panic when Wi-Fi drops below three bars.
Fortunately, Bulgarian bureaucracy - with its stamps, carbon paper, and suspiciously thick folders - acts as a protected wildlife reserve for human skills. When the inevitable CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) wipes out digital services, I look forward to watching “advanced civilizations” attempt to communicate via interpretive dance while we calmly pull out a pen and a form.
Tech Giants and the Stolen Childhood
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has accused tech giants of stealing childhood for profit and wants them to start paying back their billions. A noble sentiment.
But here’s a wild idea: instead of just shouting at the clouds (which, incidentally, are also owned by Amazon), why not actually build EU infrastructure that allows European tech companies to scale from Europe and offer meaningful alternatives?
You can’t complain about monopolies while renting sovereignty by the gigabyte.
The Swiss Update
Guy Parmelin is the new President of Switzerland.
That is all I have to say about this matter.
It may also be the most Swiss sentence ever written.
The Bureaucracy of Air
The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is now fully operational. Importers of steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers, hydrogen, and electricity must purchase certificates covering their emissions.
India and Brazil are, predictably, thrilled - by which I mean they are currently drafting very angry letters that Denmark will no longer deliver.
Meanwhile, the European Commission activated its €14 billion work programme for 2026–2027, with €540 millionearmarked for the Clean Industrial Deal. This is essentially the EU saying:
“Please be green. We’ve run out of ways to ask politely.”
AI Keeps the Lights On
European energy grids in France and Spain reported record-high stability this January thanks to AI-driven grid management systems.
Apparently, the secret to surviving winter storms is letting computers manage wind turbines while humans hide under blankets and argue on television.
Geopolitical Expedited Delivery
Under the creatively named “Donroe Doctrine,” U.S. President Donald Trump ordered Operation Southern Spear - or Absolute Resolve, depending on which news ticker you trust.
U.S. airstrikes hit Caracas. Nicolás Maduro was captured and transported to New York to face drug and weapons charges. He was last seen looking deeply confused in a Nike Tech sweatsuit. Venezuela remains under a national state of emergency, proving once again that the Monroe Doctrine is less a doctrine and more a suggestion backed by Tomahawk missiles.
Global Madness: A Brief List
- Canada paused its Start-Up Visa while removing provincial attestation requirements for graduate students. They want you educated - just not entrepreneurial. Welcome to the “Get a Degree and Go Home” initiative.
- China imposed a 13% VAT on contraceptives to boost birth rates. Nothing encourages reproduction quite like making prevention a luxury item.
- The Vatican entered its American phase. In his first New Year’s Mass, Pope Leo XIV called for an end to “Autocracy Inc.” while pushing a more progressive stance on migration and social justice. Somewhere, a cardinal spilled his espresso.
- South Korea hit $700 billion in exports, driven almost entirely by global demand for AI semiconductors. Silicon is the new oil - just harder to spell.
- MTV died. No funeral. No tribute. It simply stopped, like a VCR finally surrendering to a tangled tape.
Everything Gets More Expensive (Especially Reality)
Google spent $4.75 billion to acquire an entire energy company to power its AI data centers.
NVIDIA is rumored to push CPU prices from $2,000 to $5,000.
Memory now costs more than gold.
Soon people will be implanting memory in their mouths - at least then, when you forget something, you can just chew on it.
Everything digital will be more expensive this year.
Buy a notebook.
Buy a pen.
History survives on paper.
Join the Bulgarian resistance.
Personal Note
(Because Someone Will Ask)
As you may have noticed, I’ve changed the style of the “It’s Monday” Digest.
The idea itself isn’t new. I was doing versions of this back in my corporate days, when I was officially labeled a futurologist - which mostly meant being paid to say uncomfortable things slightly earlier than everyone else.
But a new year has a way of exposing cosmetic change for what it is. New fonts, new resolutions, same thinking. And that doesn’t work anymore.
While everyone else was toasting midnight with champagne, I opted for rum - not out of rebellion, but out of principle. Champagne celebrates arrival. Rum acknowledges the journey, the storms, and the fact that progress is rarely elegant.
This digest is changing for the same reason.
If we want change to actually happen - not be announced, tweeted, or outsourced - then we have to change ourselves first. Not as a collective abstraction, but as individuals willing to think, decide, and take responsibility for the consequences.
That’s the part most people skip.
The future isn’t built by committees, slogans, or algorithms optimized for consensus. It’s built by people who are stubborn enough to trust their own reasoning, even when it’s inconvenient - especially when it’s inconvenient.
So this isn’t a redesign.
It’s a refusal.
A refusal to recycle safe opinions.
A refusal to confuse noise with progress.
And a refusal to pretend that waiting for permission is a strategy.
Same digest.
New spine.