I've had a very detailed memory of the surroundings of my childhood home, which changed when I was 3-4 (major construction in the neighborhood, rerouting a street).
We never had any family pics showing any of the stuff that I remembered, or remembered remembering... Well, some time ago I went searching for other people's pics and videos of the area from those years, and I actually found a couple, and they were exactly what I remembered.
But it all feels to me like I'm remembering reminiscing about these things at age 7-10, not really direct memories, a retelling. Surprisingly good one, too.
> There's also the phenomenon of having a memory of a memory. At age 10, I had a very solid recollection of my life at ages 5 to 6 (not so much of age 4). Now all I remember is that I used to remember a lot more than I do know.
I have exactly the same thing. It can get very detailed, too, but it really feels like remembering reminiscing about those memories at like 7-10.
It is a damn shame bordering conspiracy that metamizole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole, known as Analgin in eastern Europe and the Balkans, apparently also India) is not more widely available in the west. It's literally a wonder drug, the only non-narcotic (hence non-addictive) that actually relieves serious pain (including post-op) pain in my experience.
Since I've had a fair share of it in my life so far (more than 1kg of it so far, in total), and I investigated the disparaging studies and they are definitely not convincing at all; more recent ones somewhat absolve it (check the Wikipedia page).
I've never had any side effects from it, and I don't know anyone who did, unlike for any other painkiller (diclofenac, ketoprofen, ibuprofen, acetaminophen / paracetamol).
It is a medicine where I'm almost 100% sure the studies against it are intentional sabotage by pharma companies, and the vigor and persistence this is done with is really telling (lots of doctors and pharmacists in my extended family, including in regulatory bodies). The campaign against it never ends.
All of these studies are always performed by Finns (or SE / DK / NO + maybe Russia).
I'd love to see this (and other sauna studies) replicated by someone somewhere to the south or hotter climates in general (southern Europe, Africa, hotter parts of Asia and the Americas).
Don't attribute to ideals what is simple self-preservation.
No sane person wants to become a legitimate military target. They want to sleep in their own beds, at home, without risking their families lives. Just like the rest of us.
As I've said before, Matrix really is the only viable open source solution for in-company communication.
Every other solution (Zulip / Mattermost / whatever) is too risky, they could easily bait-and-switch you like Gitlab did, by moving important features to different tiers, or engage in other shenanigans afforded by the open core model.
Matrix has a bad reputation because it used to be downright terrible (first time I tried it, in like 2018-2019), but is a lot better now.
Yeah, a lot of people who went to the US illegaly now own businesses. A highschool buddy went to drive trucks in like 2014, now has his own trucking company, several trucks, bunch of employees (Montenegrin and otherwise).
When I say semi-legally, there are people who do kind of get the green card through marriage, but it's fake marriages. A lot of truckers do it and it seems to be tolerated.
BTW apparently (I searched online) now people from Serbia also go to the US to work illegaly, but it's a recent trend, in Montenegro it was commonplace since at least 2010 and in Albania since the 90s.
I think it's strictly for financial reasons. A different profile of people from Serbia comes to the US.
I'm from Montenegro, but also lived in Serbia for a sizeable portion of my life and have family there.
Many people from said countries work in the US illegaly. I can speak for Montenegro, but the exact same pattern plays out in Bosnia and Albania.
Sure, there are some people who go to the US to study for a bit, and there are short-term seasonal work arrangements for students like "Work and Travel", but those are short.
I know 20+ people from Montenegro who went to work in the US in the last decade, illegaly or semi-legally. Two things come to mind first: driving trucks and picking marijuana. Usually they go there for a seasonal job or simply as tourists and overstay their visa.
My schoolmate even has a company that facilitates such schemes and sends people to the US as seasonal workers, who then overstay their visas and do shitty jobs. He's a millionare now, not that you'd know. Of course, it's also the diaspora in the US who actually facilitate this scheme and exploit the workers. I've heard the same thing from Albanians.
Every person I know who went to work in the US from Serbia (10+ people) is either a (good) dev, or an expert of some other kind, engineer, maybe a doctor (even though that's a tough path), PhD or something similar. All the best serbian devs and PhDs are overwhelmingly in the US.
There are several reasons for that, main ones being that it seems to be somewhat harder for people from Serbia to go to US to work illegaly, so the US mostly gets the best ones who are a net benefit to the society and pay a surplus of taxes.
Because it's harder to get to the US from Serbia, fo less qualified workers it's much easier to go to Israel and Saudi Arabia (both hugely popular nowadays) and the Emirates. Western Europe used to be popular, but it barely pays off nowadays, you can go there to live an average life, not to make big bucks and come back to flex on your neighbors.
Serbia is also quite a desperate place, but still has enough people to produce a sizeable chunk of professionals and academics, who don't want to put up with the kleptocracy and leave.
This has certainly happened to someone if not the OP.
I did wait in a single spot for almost 10h, my 5-6h journey became a 15h one, in Serbia in the late 2000s. IIRC, a large part of the railway was down that day, couple hundred km, electricity issue or something. Some people walked off the train, which was in between cities but near the road. I was a student, didn't have an alternative, so I didn't. They didn't organize a replacement bus.
This kind of thing was (maybe not to that extent) common, like once every year or two. They rarely reported on it in media if the cause wasn't notable.
I thoroughly investigated every open-source (mostly open-core) self-hostable Slack alternative, and the conclusion was clear: only a self-hosted Matrix is a viable option.
There are no arbitrary limits for 'community editions', no risk of relicensing, no risk of being held hostage for features (like Gitlab did at some point).
You can work around all the missing features easily with self-built webhooks and other tools.
Starting with Mattermost or Zulip or similar is just way too risky.
We never had any family pics showing any of the stuff that I remembered, or remembered remembering... Well, some time ago I went searching for other people's pics and videos of the area from those years, and I actually found a couple, and they were exactly what I remembered.
But it all feels to me like I'm remembering reminiscing about these things at age 7-10, not really direct memories, a retelling. Surprisingly good one, too.