Exactly the reason I got a second hand iPhone coming from Android. All my androids would suddenly get a stroke after three years at best. My old boss would hold a funeral for his 10 year old iPhone which worked great but shattered after a bad drop.

Oh yes, I’m completely aware. I’m a pharmacist with allergies. I always try to talk my patients out of first-gen antihistamines. Bilastine is my go to these days for myself. Zyrtec and generics as OTCs.

Eh one every now and then is fine, I take it for motion sickness when going on long car rides. Half a pill is enough. Then again, taking enough to get nightshade-like poisoning is really not recommended.

Bulgaria: No need to sign anything, it’s already done. Everyone has the equal right to marry the opposite sex, and nobody can change (de facto) their legal gender. Everyone is already accepting of the LGBT people, as long as they don’t show it publicly.

Jokes aside, outside of Sofia the public opinion is that there are matters much more important than that. Homophobia is also widespread so it’s a political suicide to ratify something like this. The Istanbul convention was a huge “scandal” for just mentioning that it applies to trans women as well. There was a huge disinformation campaign and it worked. We ratified it anyways because it was integrated into an EU directive so yay?

You get used to it. You just write the sound, sh, j, ya(often weitten as q), ch, yu. ь we barely use unless when you write what you would spell as ë in Russian, we don’t use that letter at all! We use a lot of ъ (sounds like uuhh). It’s usually spelled as y or a.

It’s usually more annoying to switch keyboards all the time, but typing in Latin script feels wrong and I feel like it changes my “written voice”.

Country standards from the typewriter era. In Bulgaria we have a different layout from the Russian one, using the same Cyrillic letters (stuff like э and ы that we don’t use) but most people use the “phonetic” keyboard which is the one you describe. Also in casual conversations a lot of people don’t even bother to use Cyrillic and go with latin instead even if it’s not official or standardised in any way.

Oh, the patent expired? No problem, we’ll just methylate the structure, see that it makes no difference and put it out on the market as a new drug. Or maybe take the active part of a racemic mixture and half the dosage. Same drug double the patent. Semisynthetic insulin is even worse in that regard.

Our insurance system IS the government program. The government negotiates prices with the manufacturer. This is also the reason we have drug shortages. Cheaper drugs get re-exported legally by third parties to countries with higher prices. Abbvie straight up made a system where their new drugs would be delivered personally to the individual patient via a personal code to circumvent what happened to Humira.

Tresiba, Insulatard, Actrapid and a couple of other insulins, as well as antibiotics like Augmentin (which is in short supply to begin with) also suffered from re-export until the government issued a temporary ban.

The wholesale companies’ response? Stockpile and wait for the ban to expire.

1000$? It costs 80$ here. Insurance covers the 1mg injection completely. Drug prices on the US market are inflated as hell. Also it can be made for 5 bucks but the decades of research and billions poured into said research and testing is what raises the price.

Regardless corporate greed is corporate greed and big pharma is into some really shady stuff. Especially when we get to biologicals.

I have a 1L french press jug that I fill with 80g of coffee, coarse grind (34 on 1zpreszo JX) and top with cold water making sure all the grounds are wet and stirring lightly to make sure they’re all wet. I leave it in the fridge for 12-18 hours and filter through the mesh. I dillute with hot water or just microwave it after dillution if I’m too lazy to boil (blasphemy I know). I sometimes mix it with tonic water or ice and drink chilled.

Make sure to pop it in the fridge. Room temperature extracts the acids somewhat which isn’t to my preference.

Cold brew, followed by French press. With cold brew you want a coarse grind but it doesn’t really matter THAT much compared to pour over. You just dillute to taste. I do it in a french press so it’s easily filtered. The french press is also forgiving. I’ve oversteeped by 5 minutes and the coffee is still drinkable. Lately I’ve been mostly drinking supermarket generic Arabica bean brews since I’m on a tight budget but I wouldn’t do cold brew with specialty coffee anyway!

My cat is so food motivated he eats absolutely everything. Obviously has a preference for wet food with gravy so I buy a bunch of different flavours in bulk but he’s happy to eat the same thing every day. He also loves olives, bread (wholemeal more than white, sourdough has an advantage too. Local bakery bread is where things are really at. Supermarket bread is a mixed bag, he usually ignores it because it’s crap), seeds, nuts, potato chips, lentils, hummus, yogurt, and grass.

Also meal prep for work. Healthier and saves money (5% of my net income per month in my case)

As an eastern European nearing their 30s in a situation much less extreme than yours - do not fall for “patriotism”. I do not mean the “go and fight for your people” type. That takes guts and mentality I do not possess.

I mean the “doing X is unpatriotic” type. Usually comes from “patriotic” formations who follow a certain narrative and work for the interests of other countries. Look for buzzwords like traditional values, us vs them, targeting a group of people as a whole, claiming to get back “what is ours” (territory lost centuries ago, not currently occupied land). Big social media presence coupled with self-produced “reports” and “news articles” (bonus points if they have their own mass media channels) are also a giveaway.

Thank you but I won’t let your aggressor, through puppet parties, dictate what about my attitude and views is patriotic and what isn’t.

Lately when I’m looking for tutorials, my search results are overwhelmingly weird question and answer style “articles”, akin to chatgpt prompts, some of which are barely related to what I’m looking for. I’m having a hard time looking for articles written by a human. In fact oftentimes I question whether or not the article is written by a machine or a person who sucks at writing.

Bulgarian Folk Song - Ergen Deda metal version

Been stuck in my head all day.

Thanks, it was meant to be a birthday present for my partner and I did it in secret. Really fun project!

Rather not say but across the border south, about 4-5 hours from Bucharest.

It was fun having to go to work yesterday morning. Nothing was cleared up, no way for cars to get to my house so I had to make a trek by foot. This morning was worse because some of the snow had melted during the day yesterday and it refroze. Everything is slippery now.

One thing outside observers need to know is how incompetent the municipality services are. They knew in advance that this storm was coming. There were warnings all week. It came a day late here so they had extra time. The municipality website showed no information, just some cultural events and an article from two days ago that “the municipality is ready for the winter”. At this point we have a saying for poor organisation during winter time when everyone knows it’s coming in advance:

“The winter surprised us again!”

It’s been a rather productive year so far:

• I did a lot of cross stitching.
• Went vegan.
• Dabbled into gardening (my partner did most of the work sadly but I’m more interested now than I was before!).
• Got into birdwatching so I started exploring nature with a much more different perspective.
• Set up a bird feeding station that got really popular among the birds AND the neighbours.
• Learned how to crochet.
• A combination of the aforementioned things somehow taught me how to manage my depression and anxiety better. I’m in a much better spot now than when I was mostly playing video games.