@gol_d_berg @VaxxSabbath @Underscore @PraxisOfEvil >hopefully my kids or grandkids get to see the other side of this path we're all carving.

ive said it before and i'll keep saying it: the balkan peoples, like the bulgarians, could have just all given up and roped once they fell under the ottoman yoke. nobody wants to live under crushing taxation, be conscripted to fight imperial wars, and see their best and brightest children sold into sex slavery or castrated and recruited into the cosmopolitan ruling class. this is what the bulgarians and the other balkan peoples had to deal with for almost 400 years. they didn't give up and they came out of it on the other side when the ottomans collapsed.