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?

My coworker opened edge when they added the new ai bullshit and thought the desktop was infected by a virus and started panicking.

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.

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.

Bulgaria has Pernik. A declining polluted mining town near Sofia which is infamous for people wearing (counterfeit) Adidas tracksuits, driving VW Golf, and settling their scores with long pieces of metal. Think Russian gopniks.

If you were cold then you would catch a cold.

There is a startling amount of people here (most people I know) that believe this. I work in healthcare and we constantly have arguments about the AC in summer for that exact reason. Yeah cold weather can make it easier to catch a cold but it's interesting to see how many people believe that you need to get warm to avoid catching a cold.

Carrots will allow me to see in the dark if I eat enough of them.

Partially true. If you're vitamin A deficient, your night vision worsens and carrots can help with that. But you won't get Minecraft night vision

Interesting read. While gardening isn't my passion (yet?) we're blessed to have enough space for a variety of flowers. We do have plenty of ornamentals that are non-native. The bees do like them but they literally go crazy over the native species. Lavender, rosemary, catmint, rosehip, marshmallow, you name it, the bees love it. It's fun looking at how many different species of bees and other insects visit them. We're slowly going for planting more native species in our yard and making a wildflower garden just for them.

Half of the people I regularly talk to are on WhatsApp. I don't like it but that's reality, it's hard to get them to migrate because this means that people THEY talk to would have to do the same. Also a good chunk of them use rakuten Viber. Now why do they use THAT? It's bloated, ad-ridden, and buggy. Almost nobody I know is on telegram. In fact most are still using Facebook messenger.

Might be talking out of my ass here but prog metal artists tend to have high education, usually in music. In fact I saw a bachelor's degree programme for progressive metal in the university of Gothenburg!

In my language that section of the leaflet always reads "Driving and working with heavy machinery". So forklifts and industrial machinery do indeed fit.

Not sure how much I agree on the dairy part. Apart from the inherent ethical problems associated with it, dairy is an all around promoter of cardiovascular disease. My anecdote is that while I was vegetarian, I suffered from high BP and had to be put on meds. Once I went vegan, my BP dropped to the same levels as with meds before. I'm also prone to gout due to genetics. This change in lifestyle had to be the best step I took for my body.

Now, I see why this study had great results. Eating a varied diet, especially rich in whole foods is a good thing, dairy or no dairy. People just want cheese in their diet and that's a compromise a lot of studies do to reduce dropout rate and make people stick to a diet. It also makes dairy companies happy.

Pro-EU parties make up the majority of our parlament (Bulgaria) but the vocal far-right party keeps growing election after election. Their whole sentiment is that we need to keep our neutrality and side with Russia(neutral innit?) and the ongoing war isn't our problem...except Bulgarians are dying over there too, we have a sizable minority living in Ukraine and Moldova.

Oh and we're the oldest people in Europe apparently and the Bulgarian spirit will soon be awoken to crush the euro-atlanic imperialists?

Yeah. Populism is one hell of a drug.