Also Sprach Zamo.ca NG

If you were wondering why did hotel prices jump to 3-5000 RON/night yesterday, it was obviously because of the Metallica concert.

I recently overheard Calin Georgescu quoting an old proverb that was also spelled out in Lorax, and although he doesn’t quite disclose his sources, it’s worthy of a discussion.

I’ve had some issues with mailing an envelope by courier in Romania and I look at the alternatives to the market leader.

A comment to someone's Facebook reel made me think about existentialism in movies and more specifically American Beauty and Fight Club.

One particularity about Europe is that people enjoy all kinds of brands of water, and it is often carbonated or sparkling (in North America it’s "still" water). I don't care much about brands, I just want sparkling water and I want it at the lowest price.

I’m not a oenologist, I’m not even a “connoisseur” and I drink next to never. But when I buy wine and especially when I’m in Romania, I’ll buy some Romanian wines and I’ll tell you about it.

I’ve discovered a list of 25 best Romanian movies, songs and festivals and I am quick to build upon them, before they disappear.

I woke up to a homeless person in the staircase, so I started looking into this phenomenon as it appears in Bucharest.

Given the recent surge in interest in Hidroelectrica (and Romanians trying to save money now that energy subsidies for everyone are ending), I took a deeper dive into Hidroelectrica, a publicly traded company on BVB under the symbol H2O.

Recently, a friend sent me “spring greetings” on WhatsApp consisting of a photo of flowering trees. Immediately, to my mind sprung two Romanian songs consisting a “tree flowers”.

I want to help Cola addicts with a translation of an anti-commercial, and I also look at a poor translation of the “new Rasputins” article.

I didn't write much about the Romanian elections, and given the significant disruptions, I thought I share my thoughts. Let me start by asking a few LLMs about Calin Georgescu and the odds of Russian meddling as well as the odds of his campaign having broken the law.

I felt that merely listing the Dacian toponyms isn’t doing anybody any favours. Much like most people didn’t know about the Dacian treasures until they were stolen, I suspect that most Romanians don’t know where the rivers are unless they see them on a map.

I’ve taken that prompt and fed it to Claude AI with amazing results. Here it is, and the Romanian translation will be more refined.

Having heard of the magic of the new kid in town (DeepSeek), I put it through the paces of that “novel prompt” with quite impressing results and ask it for an illustration as well.

We’ve discussed in the recent past how the VERY sparse information we have about Dacians has allowed very little “certain” knowledge about our ancestors. And I just learned about a theft that happened on the last day of a travelling expo at the Drents museum: it’s catastrophic.

A more recent, newer list of likely Dacian words is an opportunity to look back at a few issues with Meta Marioara.

Someone asked for my help in finding occupational therapists in Bucharest who speak English and can work with someone in Toronto online.

Not long ago, a controversy that’s still somewhat alive erupted over Olympic swimming champion David Popovici decision to “live the dream” and buy himself a Porsche Spyder. While I have no right to criticize him, I summarize a few opinions in the mass-media and add my own.

First, Happy New Year, then let me disclose a project I've been carrying on my mind for quite a while and made a plan to make it real . It's a novel taking place in the Dacian era .