I had the same exact approach back in the late 90's. My friends had several band projects and when they were mixing their demos, I insisted that if the mixes sound good in a standard car stereo, they'll sound good anywhere.

Yes, I can nearly feel my European mind shambling.

Ukraine's long range strike capability has become truly impressive. Let's hope it will continue improving.

Slava Ukraini!

Winning?

No magic tricks or diet fads.

Eat less, move more.

Eat more vegetables and salad, cut down bread and meat.

Stop drinking sodas and juices with extra sugar in them and learn to quench your thirst with water.

Limit eating candy or cookies to one day per a week, if you can't let them go entirely.

No, not really. The stolen Karelia is lost and we've made our peace with that fact.

There are a few idiots who nowadays mainly screech on the Internet and want to take it back, but about 99,9% of our population is content with the current borders

As is common to them, the Russians have not developed the infrastructure of the region and the old Finnish cities are in in pretty downbeat shape. The roads are in terrible condition (except the ones that lead to oligarch's summer villas) and they've dumped their garbage everywhere. I've visited the fabled land of my ancestors and what I saw just made me sad.

Restoring Karelia even to a pre-WWII-level would take decades and probably cost tens of billions or even more. The population is almost purely ethnic Russians - what would we do with them?

If by some magic the land would be offered back to us, free of charge and without the current population, we would still be wary to take it. The old border basically went through the suburbs of St.Petersburg, that would eventually cause severe problems due to the unchanging nature of Russia. So no, let them keep it as long as they stay on their side of the border.

The last time they attacked we were unprepared and still they paid a heavy price. Now we've had almost 80 years to prepare our defenses, and we have oh so many glorious surprises ready if the need ever arises.

I did this once. My class was on a booze cruise, I had lost the keycard to my cabin, was gloriously drunk and all my buddies were somewhere. I ended up chatting with a group of girls in the cabin next door and I had had a crush on one of them for years.

Suddenly the other girls had to leave for some reason and there were just the two of us. I complained that I had nowhere to sleep since I lost my keycard, my crush looked me in the eyes for a long time and said "There is this bed, you know. You could sleep here."

"I couldn't possibly bother you with this, I'll go and try find my friends. Thanks for the chat!" was my only response. I remember clearly how dumbfounded she looked as I left and waved goodbye.

I realized later what I had done. I have never forgiven myself.

Go eat some Krokodil.

Discovery had actual god damn flamethrowers in the bridge walls. Missing circuit breakers are nothing compared to that horror.

The swamps of Dagobah.

No, it's very real. They even sell rank badges, which are apparently sold out at the moment:

https://www.varusteleka.com/en/product/sarma-cottage-rank-insignia/74244

When we met, we were both pretty broken from past experiences. She had had a line of bad relationships and I had my own issues. She was creative, smart and very beautiful, way out of my league.

With her I was happy for the first time in my adult life and I loved her just as she was. We enjoyed the same things and our friends talked of us as a "perfect couple". And for a time everything truly was pretty perfect.

Then one day she called me and said: "I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore."

After the initial shock I managed to say: "I love you and want you to be happy. If this makes you happy, so be it."

And that was it. I was emotionally devastated.

I never saw her again. Nine months later a common friend told me she had a baby coming in the next month. Apparently she had switched me for a better candidate and gotten herself pregnant almost instantly.

Realizing this broke me even more. I guess our time together had fixed her to a point where she was ready to start a family, just not with me. According to my friend she got three kids with the same guy and is very happy with her life.

It took me years to recover from this and I don't think that I'll ever really get "over it".