Its good in NYC for american standards. For european standards the NYC subway is abominable. The smells, the grime, the homeless, its honestly like visiting the 6th ring of hell. Source: I am a european living in NYC.
Have you tried SAD lamp light therapy? But not those lamps you get on amazon or other marketed SAD lamps, those are a scam. Just buy a 2 floodlights that are pretty powerful, say 100 watt each. Works like a charm. 15-30 mins a day its all it takes
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.
Braco! I come from Macedonia too and yeah I am quite familiar with the schemes and reasons people go and stay, I know a few folks who've immigrated that way as well. But I thought people in Serbia do that too, didnt know that its harder for them. In fact I've also met a few folks from Montenegro inside the US that clearly overstayed, but they were doing quite well, opened up a restaurant etc.
P.S. I go to Montenegro every summer I have a place there its amazing!
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.
Yep, I also know of some stories where they became truckers in the US and after a while opened a few business from Macedonia into the US trucking industry (insurance, dispatchers, etc), and theyre raking in millions every year. One of the companies here declared 20 mil in profits last year. Imagine the undeclared profits :D
Was that when Obama capitulated to Putin and permitted him to annex Crimea? Perhaps that was the "more flexibility" that he secretly promised Putin he would have after his election. I wonder what he got in return for it.
In the real world, NATO is a highly exclusive club, which is very reluctant to accept new members and extend its mutual defence clause to them. Ukraine and Georgia sought to join NATO after Russia had already begun violating their sovereign territory, but NATO allies caved to Russian pressure and denied membership to both Georgia and Ukraine. Russia then used this opportunity to invade them without triggering the full arsenal of NATO.
Russia is not a cornered cat, but a nuclear-armed colonial empire that has expanded through war and conquest for centuries, growing from a small city-state into the largest country in the world, exterminating countless native ethnicities in the process:
Yes it is, and Russia is increasingly being recognized by scholars as such.
This is especially visible in the war against Ukraine, which is colonial in nature. Russia has invaded another country on imperialistic justifications ("reunification of Russian lands" etc), is using domestic minorities as cannon fodder to alter the ethnic composition of Russia in favor of Russians, is committing genocide against Ukrainians to destroy them as an ethnicity, and is resettling ethnic Russians into occupied territories to permanently alter Ukraine's ethnic composition.
The whole "NATO expansion" narrative is complete bullshit when the initiative to join NATO has come from Russia's neighbors, who want to gain the protection of its mutual defense clause in the hope that this would deter Russia from invading them.
Russia has been the aggressor in this part of the world for centuries, and the rest is a reaction to that. Russia is the sole reason why Northern and Eastern Europe have militaries at all; if it weren't for Russia, they could be disbanded overnight.
This was all widely reported. The problem here is that people don’t read and they routinely dismiss stories based on source, not content.
The 9/11 attacks were incredibly bizarre from day one. Everyone with any knowledge of the world immediately started asking questions.
Also remember that the attacks were the largest terrorist incidents by death for non-American countries. NY is a world city. More British people died that day than in any other single terrorist event - and that’s a country dealing with the IRA. That meant immediate global press and government investigation.
Seriously, though, just being online and having a good memory for stuff like this. And watching people like Ben Swann, reading wikipedia etc. Literally two of the links are on wikipedia
I don’t just watch once source, I look at different viewpoints, especially because some of my friends wanted to debate stuff like 9/11. Like for example I looked at the Popular Mechanics issue that did an overview of physics. I wondered if Assad actually gassed his own people, or whoat happened with the Kakhovka dam, etc.
I guess I like to have a healthy skepticism of official narratives, but also try to stay away from conspiracy theories and thus enjoy collecting proven things that people have mostly forgotten because they were swept undee the rug.
Usually they point to extreme negligence and then coverups. I like to say “at least negligence”. But then again I am a libertarian who criticizes politicians and governments for theie failures, so…
If you like that, then I guess “the wiki” for this stuff is literally my own blogs…
There was coverage but there were too many scattered points to draw an arc and from memory… most journos quickly gave up and moved on to the next thing.
I'm not sure I agree with that totally, but for sure threat of force from the US is worse for the middle east stability than Iran getting nukes.
My point was that preventing countries from getting nukes used to be an acceptable, if not a majority opinion, and a lot of countries more or less accepted it. From now on, I feel that that opinion will become a minority opinion, even on the anti-nuke/hippie left. And if the hiipies start agreeing with the tankies on a point, you can be sure it's the majority opinion in the non-west world.
Another fun fact, from Wikipedia, the name Frisia "stems from Latin Frisii, an ethnonym used for a group of ancient tribes in modern-day Northwestern Germany, possibly being a loanword of Proto-Germanic *frisaz, meaning "curly, crisp", presumably referring to the hair of the tribesmen."
In German Frisur, and in south slavic languages Фризура, means hairstyle, which is also related to the english word Frizz
Its beyond minid-boggling how you spend 1300 a month on rent and gym and other stuff. Which neighbourhood are you in? How many roommates? I've usually paid around 3-4K for a studio...
I'm in Kensington with two roommates in an old house. It's definitely a great deal but if you are willing to live with roommates in a somewhat uncool area, similar deals are definitely possible: https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:3000-4000%7Carea:3...
I was curious too, and it seems feasible. Assuming at least 2 other roommates, you can find a 3 bed for less than 3600/mo. Here's a small 4 bd/1.5 ba for 3350/mo, so about 1120/mo.
actually i used to live in flatbush the first year i moved to nyc in a "coliving" space, and the rent was very low around 1.2K p/m, but never again going back to that area... Parkside ave station was disgusting honestly.
reply