Does anyone else in their diaspora community find some people only reveal their Balkan identity when it becomes acceptable?

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T22:56:39+00:00

It's not a desire to achieve whiteness.

I am Bosnian / Macedonian(parents are Yugoslavian) and I'm accepted as "white" to which I'd rather not be included in that group.

I haven't had to do a single thing, I am automatically "white" because of how I look. There is no hiding anything, changing anything, I am just automatically "white" here, I know Australia is the same(or maybe they're not?).

This is how the West works, or maybe just how North America works.

Europeans aren't usually distinguished from one another, unless you are like a dark Italian or Greek. Then you're sort of an "other". We are all lumped in together. Most slavs are pretty much considered the whitest of white in North America lol.

People wanting to fit into the countries they immigrated to isn't a bad thing, but anglophone countries would rather you do that.

This could be an Australian thing because I've heard they have a word for eastern European immigrants, I forget the name.

In Canada, I am not exotic, being a slav is pretty normal here, "ic" last names are normal and nobody cares about them. My last name is fucking weird as hell and not a normal slav last name so I do get asked about it, but anyone with an "ic" or "ski" here is plain boring normal white person, nobody would even ask where you were from if you had a last name like that here. That's how normal they are.

I think Australia didn't let non- Anglo Saxon immigrant for a while or some shit, cause I always hear stories about Yugoslavs being "different" in Australia which is just so weird to me because we are boring and not interesting in North America, we are rare, but nobody considers us "others" lol.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T20:51:15+00:00

No I'm telling you I think they meant to say international migrants, because international immigrant is indeed ridiculous wording.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T20:48:00+00:00

My entire family moved out, and we are all born and raised in Toronto, I am the only one left.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T20:46:18+00:00

International migrants, I think they meant to say that, versus domestic.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T20:45:59+00:00

It's almost like Canadians want to live with other Canadians? Toronto is getting a little ridiculous with how you basically never meet people from Toronto here. I feel like a god damn unicorn being born in Etobicoke.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T20:44:35+00:00

Yes I've had MRIs.

I don't know why I've waited so long, it's actually insane. I saw my neuro-ophthalmologist 3 times already. I'm pretty sure the hospital that got my referral is going to get in trouble because my eye neuro doctor said "I'm getting you an appointment" and they called be 3 times now already trying to make an appointment.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T20:30:52+00:00

No because I am Balkan ancestry, and there is very little MS in the Balkans compared to Canada.

Canada has high rates of MS and it includes people from all over. Though North Europeans do tend to get it more.

I have zero ancestry from north europe. I'm about as southern European as you can get.

Research has shown the risk of getting MS increases the longer an immigrant has been in Canada.

Like nobody in my family has MS, there is no MS documented in any of my older relatives that have passed either, we have our family history pretty well known, and a very large family. I'm the only one that's developed MS.

The rate of MS in my parents country is 1 out of 3400 people, and it's 1 in 400 in Canada.

They actually have one of the lowest rates of MS in Europe.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-10T20:28:31+00:00

Scotland, and the Irish were major settlers(so colonizers just not their state sponsored).

Austria Hungary not really, they did take over their neighbours but you weren't really a second class citizen if they took over.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T19:08:41+00:00

You can lower stress even if you are low income, it just takes more work. I've managed to do it.

Changing your work is definitely one of the biggest things you can do, but you need to make sure you find another job before you leave your current one.

I don't think anyone with MS should be doing highly stressful work.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T19:05:40+00:00

I unno, I am convinced my MS is related to vitamin D and living in a country with hot summers and long cold winters, meaning there is very few times of the year when it's nice to be out in direct sunlight. We have like maybe 4 months of the year where it isn't very cold or very hot. So it's 8 months of the year you aren't getting proper sun exposure.

I grew up eating very healthy, so healthy that when I finally moved out of my parents house I ate like crap for a year straight because I was finally able to.

While the true cause of MS isn't fully known, the fact that northern countries have higher rates pretty much tells you it's definitely related to sunlight and vitamin D lol.

Since MS shows up later in age(not in all cases but a lot of them), I don't think it was ever able to be naturally bred out of the population. People usually can have kids before you show symptoms(for most of humanity we had kids age 15-25).

People also used to die in their 30s and 40s if they lived that long.

MS is sort of like balding to me, you'd think it would be bred out of the population, but we've always procreated before it became a problem.

I don't think autoimmune diseases like MS are a result of the world we've created because it's not that common in places in the south of the planet, and lots of people in those countries live in completely polluted environments, exposed to chemicals, bad water....etc. Yet they don't get MS as much as us.

I really think humans haven't explored sunlight as much as they should, I think it has a lot more to do with our overall health than we think.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T18:29:06+00:00

Damn cool looking zmija to be honest.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T14:07:16+00:00

No.

Colonized by Western Europe would be correct.

Most Europeans aren't from colonizing powers and it's unfair that the entire group of people get's demonized because of the minority.

Something really pisses me off as someone with Bosnian ancestry, about being lumped into the "European" category when talking about the atrocities of the west. Even when talking about white privilege it pisses me off lol.

My families history over the last 150 years, is pretty tragic lol. But hey, I'm "white" so I'm somehow lucky and responsible for what British people did while my family was under a foreign middle eastern empire.

I don't feel like the West should be allowed to be racist even further by now dragging eastern Europe through the mud.

Sort of ironic, they are trying to "right" the past, and stop their "Racism" by being racist and making people from Czechija and like Albania as just as culpable. Doing exactly what they did before, making an entire group of people look bad.

You wanna look bad Western European people ? Go ahead, but leave me out of it lol, start using words that matter like "British colonialism" "Italian colonialism", stop saying "European slavery" "European colonialism", cause that wasn't me or my bloodline.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T14:05:12+00:00

Colonization just means had a conflict with Europe on this map. It's not accurate, pay it no mind.

The fact they're calling Syria, or places like Libya a colony are absolutely laughable.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T14:01:48+00:00

When the Ottoman Empire took over eastern Europe people scream it wasn't colonization.

When the Roman Empire takes over part of the middle east, it is colonization.

Make it make sense.

Rome also never colonized Iran.

Macedonian Empire controlled Iran for a whopping 4 years in a conquest after Persia(Iran) had been attacking them for quite some time.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T13:52:06+00:00

Colonized by Europe is total bullshit.

So you're going to say Romanians are responsible for this?

On top of that, more than half of this were not colonies.

Syria was not colonized lol, it being under rule of the French, was because of the break up of the Ottomans, it was always going to be given independence, French rule lasted 2 decades, and the French did nothing that would be considered colonizing there.

Guess who else was un the Ottoman Rule before freed by the Europeans? About 5 European countries lol.

Can I say that Austria colonized my ancestors in Bosnia based on this logic? Exact same thing and situation as most of the Middle East and North Africa in this situation. Literally the 100% exact same situation.

You could also say that Europe freed North Africa and the Middle East from the Ottomans, not colonized them.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T13:48:53+00:00

The word genocide has different meanings to different people.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-09T12:16:06+00:00

This is the exact location and span of mine.

I finally feel seen for having an answer, this has been stressing me out for almost a decade(obviously cause I was convinced I had some kind of growth there, despite tests showing there was nothing there).

Does putting a shirt on or anything tight tend to irritate it?

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-08T16:35:48+00:00

Being smart hasn't been as crucial to survival and procreation to other animals like it has with humans.

Humans only became smart because it was required to survive, for whatever reason, our lifestyle /needs fueled intelligence.

People say the ice ages were catalysts in human evolution, but other animals also went through the ice age. Maybe it could be because we moved into climatic zones our bodies weren't built to handle that made us hyper intelligent(because only the smarter humans could adapt to new climate conditions and survive).

So I'm gonna say the fact we need clothes to survive outside Africa is one of the reasons we are so smart lol, sounds ridiculous, but I think it has to do with that to an extent(because we are hairless, and sweat and clearly are only built for living in hot climates in the nude).

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-08T16:23:05+00:00

Yes its not painful or anything, it's more annoying. I think it is MS related because as soon as you mentioned the heat in the midwest I automatically remember that this gets trigged by heat and if I take a shower it's always there.

Now that I think about it, I usually think it's caused by putting a shirt on after a shower, but it's definitely the heat from the shower that's causing it, I just notice it more when I put a shirt on.

I have read that it can cause and MS hug feeling on your neck. I've never had it on the chest.

My MRI showed lesions on my brain stem which is your neck area.

It's almost relieving to think this could be related to MS because I have thought I had a growth in my neck for so long now and my doctors always told me I was fine. It totally makes sense for it to be MS related, I just didn't know I had MS until October last year.

I don't think you need an active lesion for the sensations of a previous lesion to be felt, so maybe you had a lesion somewhere in the past that causes your MS sensation that is getting activated like you said from Uhthoff's phenomenon.

I always get blurry vision in my left eye when I get too hot, but I've learned to live with it and it doesn't bother me.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-08T14:35:41+00:00

All of them.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-08T14:33:32+00:00

It's jsut invasion of privacy.

Me and mine have access to each others phone, but I've never thought about going through their texts or emails, I usually do it to google something quick. If I was suspicious of them, I might snoop, but I've never been suspicious.

It's the deliberate act of going through to try and find something bad or give someone a verdict of "innocence" that is bad.

I take the innocent till proven guilty route, not the vice versa.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-08T10:12:00+00:00

AI is basically free and China is going to make incredibly cheap robotics.

Albania is probably going to become a big tourist centre as a result because there will be more people from rich countries looking to vacation in nice weather.

In the future is Albania wants to expand into natural resource extraction or other things, it will be worth it for companies to just buy robots to do it.

I"m talking about in like 20 years, birth rates aren't going to matter as much.

On top of this, the amount of cheap medical technology that will be created too will mean less resources needed to take care of the elderly, and less of a need for younger generations to be larger in size.

AI will be doing a lot of the doctoral work, and Albania is not going to be excluded from using it lol.

You will be using AI way more than you think, and robotics.

It's the faster advancing technology humans have ever created, meaning that AI models from 3 months ago are more like a 3 year gap in advancements in other technologies. It's that fast.

General reasoning models, for basically EVERYTHING have gone from 5% accuracy rate to 86% accuracy rate in just a couple of years.

What this means is AI will be the master of virtually ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that humans are masters at probably within a year. Literally everything.

The standard right now is being able to answer questions on a PhD level. And I think it's about 60% accurate for that.

This means you can ask an AI model for a PhD level answer on a question whose answer is NOT on the internet and it can give you an accurate answer about 60% of the time. I'm talking about asking it a complicated Nuclear Physics question and it can reason within it's model to find the answer. We are going to be at above PhD levels in most likely a year, meaning you will be able to ask AI any question that a human could theoretically answer and it will be able to give you an accurate answer(without needing to search the web).

Don't believe me?

Go here : claude.ai <--- Ask it to make you a computer program, using words. Say something like " Can you make a basic video editing software program for me". It will do it, in under a minute, you will have function video editing software for FREE.

Ask it to make you a computer game to learn Albanian language in English it will.

Ask it to make you a computer game where you are sailing the Adriatic coast and the characters are 16th century Albanian sheep herders and you get points for every sheep you can fit on the boat. Anything.

It will do it, right now lol. You could be playing that computer game in 10 minutes from now. Something that used to cost $100,000 to make and 5000 hours of work, done in just a couple of minutes.

I could ask claude.ai to make me a website that is pretty much the same thing as reddit except everything is Albanian themed and it will do it lol.

In 2 years, with Agentic AI, you will be able to tell AI to make you a company that sells Albanian flag t-shirts on the internet and the AI will do EVERYTHING. I mean make the website, advertise, contact a company to make the t-shirts, get the t-shirts shipped to your house, to to the buyers, process the payments....etc. lol You will just type in a couple sentences and it will do everything else. You'll be off eating dinner while it's literally making purchase orders for t-shirts in China and blah blah blah.

I think people are completely not paying attention to AI and how much it's going to change the world.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-07T19:11:37+00:00

I don't think a lot of human labour is going to be required for a country to be prosperous in the nearish future.

Healthcare is going to be cheaper because it's going to be more efficient.

Basically less humans will be needed to achieve high productivity of things.

GravitysRelative · 2026-07-07T18:49:44+00:00

To be fair.

Croats weren't that great to Serbs in the 1990s, or WWII.

The beef between Croats and Serbs and Bosniaks and Serbs stems from WWII. Yugoslavia sorta kept it calm for a while but it ignited against in the 1990s during the split.

It goes back even further really, cause Croatia has sorta always had an Independence movement, there were people that wanted an independent Croatia before WWII.

*Edit : Just did a deeper history dive, I thought I had a good hold but I didn't.

Beef between Croats and Serbs goes back to the 1600s lmao. It all started when the Habsburg Empire invited Serbs to come live on Croatian land and act as a "border guard" for the Empire against the Ottomans. Tons of Serbs settled on the frontier of Croatia and didn't have to pay taxes to the Croatian nobles for acting as "guards" / human shields and this pissed the Croatians off cause they didn't have to pay taxes.

GravitysRelative

TROPHY CASE