The communities in question are !bulgariaeu and !sofia . The admin rarely shows up and I've been keeping them alive for years. I'm asking to be added as an admin along the founder, not replacing him.

The first one of these has a sentimental value, because it is the name of an important community on reddit that was dissolved.

The second one is for the capital of Bulgaria. Since, I've set up a dedicated Bulgarian instance and I've been avoiding to create a community on Sofia to avoid duplication.

As you could see from the votes, the Bulgarian community here is present, even if small and not very active in native language and on these topics. Yet, I firmly believe they are worth maintaining.

It does not claim to be a government in waiting, or a new political party. “We cannot claim from exile to return after 47 years and run a country which is by and large foreign to those that have not been there for 50 years,” said Youssefiani, who until 2018 was an adviser to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah. “The patronage or help must come to those inside Iran who are capable of moving the needle.”

He said the group had a “responsibility to break out of the classic pitfalls of exile politics by creating a pluralist movement to help the democratic forces inside the country”.

The bloody crackdown on anti-regime protests at the start of this year was the catalyst for many of its now members. “After the shock of thousands [being] slaughtered in January … the moment came when we said: ‘Enough is enough,’” Youssefiani said. “At the time the threat of war was looming. We just saw our boys and girls killed and we equally share the blame, or the shame of this. For too long there was a lack of imagination, there was only classic exile politics, an inability to get along. It was a terrible failure.”

“Arms will not bring democratic change, as we have seen, and we worry about what is the end goal of the war,” said Youssefian. “No one has defined what is peace, and this is where our problem is. Personally I am enormously concerned by the war, since the outcome was not thought through. There were those that thought they could chop off the head of the snake, and all would fall into place, but that misunderstands Iran.”

Will the regime crumble if the pressure continues? “The difficulty in Iran today is that those who own and control the guns also own and control the butter,” said Youssefian. “The IRGC own and control billion-dollar enterprises. If there is a defeat, these people are not going to go to Paris or London. Their wealth, power and assets and their ideology is deeply rooted in Iran’s ground.”

Това не и защото такива проекти не се реализират, а защото липсва координация. Резултатът е, че се губи стойност от иновацията.

Life would've been so much simpler if the major Italian payment provider was not an asshole. But it has always been, even if now US competitors have come down to the same level.

Over the past few months, our former payment provider Nexi S.p.A. (“Nexi”) requested access to private data, which we understood to be specifically the usernames and passwords of our supporters. We have refused this request. All our attempts to clarify Nexi’s request, or to understand how their need for such information was necessary and legal, were met with what we consider to be vague and unsatisfactory explanations relating to a general need for risk analysis.

Was intended to be about Kremlin propaganda, which is by far the strongest, but Trump and the rest of the world are getting so crappy that it's difficult to abstain from ridiculing them too.

I thought people here might be interested in another effort for a community that is not only about technology, but about any attempts to control us whatsoever. Naturally, a big topic there is politics. But it's not party politics. It's politics of everyday life.

cross-posted from: https://masto.bg/users/mapto/statuses/116066891383367726

Mass migration of US scientists to Europe

"According to data from the European Research Council (ERC), the European Union’s premier funding agency for basic research, applications from the United States for its starting, consolidator and advanced grants to individual researchers — worth up to €2.5 million apiece over five years — rose by 120% in its most recent round of calls, compared with an overall rise in applications of 17% (see ‘Choosing Europe’)."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00362-w
@science

Other than the title being the most meaningful comment in this matter, this article explains the broader context of starlink on the front and possible alternatives.

It doesn't answer the question, possibly because it does not have the evidence to confirm that it's because the Kremlin now can afford some other alternative. Time will tell.

За да подобрим живота в нашите градове, тези приоритети трябва да бъдат управлявани.