What about using Russian services? they suck but that’s how I kept in touch with people there

I have been using self hosted Gitea for a while now (few years) with 0 regrets.

cool, fuck half of the world

That was one of the biggest cultural shocks when I did my PhD. What do you mean I need a super expensive subscription (it was paid by university luckily) to access other publications? what do you also mean I have to pay a large fee to also publish? if I want others to access my publications for free I need to pay even more? oh and you don’t pay reviewers, they do it for free all? then where all this money of charging both ways goes? your block storage is probably costing you 0.01 usd per year for my paper…

The entire thing seemed like an aggressive business model making some people super rich at the expense of poor students for the most time who are required to publish.