This business would collect captured and destroyed Russian equipment of little to no military value in Ukraine. (And now from Kursk!) Things like canteens, shell casings, bits of vehicles (optionally melted into tokens or bars and stamped with information about the place of origin) anything with a unit patch, etc. These items would be paired with a small, colorful booklet or pamphlet describing the item, where it came from, and the unit that captured it and a certificate of authenticity. Some items would even have a picture of the last frame of the drone that hit, for example, the truck that the chunk of metal came from. They would be sold and all edit:profits, not all collected money would be donated back to the Ukrainian military or to civilian relief efforts in Ukraine. Some Ukrainian groups are offering such items in very small quantity for comparatively large donations and/or as raffle items, but this would do it as a regular business moving tens of thousands of items from the war zone.-- Voice, Sep 05 2024 Swag from WWIII https://www.redbubb...om/shop/world+war+3 [sanman, Sep 07 2024] self-inflicted chemical warfare https://soviethisto...i-alcohol-campaign/ [pertinax, Sep 07 2024] These are the people I donate to. https://savelife.in.ua/en/They were recommended to me by a family member who has worked and studied in Ukraine, and knows people there. I see they have recently translated their site into English. [pertinax, Sep 07 2024] If I lived here I'd be a drunk too. https://en.wikipedi...%B3%D0%BB%D0%B8.jpgNo, I'm not kidding. I'm supposed to stay sober living here? Not a chance. [doctorremulac3, Sep 07 2024] Would I have obediently gotten on this train if told to at gunpoint? https://www.indepen...trains-9247056.htmlWould you? That's why I'm a bit unfriendly when it comes to people telling me what government entity I need to bow down to. [doctorremulac3, Sep 07 2024] The great words of Mike Tyson https://medium.com/...-mouth-11ed43a705d9 [doctorremulac3, Sep 07 2024] I'd invest in something. Really would need to proof it was real though. Although I suppose if I got a canteen with a hole obviously drilled in it complete with drill shavings left inside where they left the "Made In China Last Week" sticker on it, as long as the money went to my people in the Ukraine it would be okay I guess.
But the good guys getting the money would have to be verified too, so not sure how that would work. [+] for the thought anyway.
I'm half Ukrainian by the way. Grandparents escaped to America during the Holdomor genocide that "Uncle" Joe Stalin perpetrated. Grandpa sat me down and told me all about bloodthirsty, totalitarian fascist, genocidal communists and said my job as a man when I grew up was to be on the lookout for that in this country. "And don't ever be foolish enough to say it can't happen here." he said.
I personally think Russian society is historically fucked because of alcoholism. And no, I'm not kidding.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 05 2024 We have a Ukranian American at my office. He's pleased as punch to be finally sending whatever of our products our govt will allow over there.
Do you speak any of it? I studied Russian and the way he tells it it's close enough to understand the gist of it.
I predict after Putin whatever's left of Russia will become a vasal for Chinese and central Asian crime syndicates.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 06 2024 >whatever's left of Russia will become a vasal for Chinese and central Asian crime syndicates.And I predict the sun will rise yesterday.-- Voice, Sep 06 2024 You can already buy bits of melted down Russian weapon crap as souvenirs which have been stamped as remnants from Putin's failed war.-- xenzag, Sep 06 2024 @[a1], the ghost of [8th of 7] is displeased; the text of your linked article refers to a Mark IV, while the photograph clearly shows a Mark VI. Just as soon as he can rise from the grave, he is going to be updating his lists.-- pertinax, Sep 07 2024 //fucked because of alcoholism//
You're not the first to have that thought, [dr3]; it was one of things that Gorbachov tried to fix: it turned out, though, that going double-cold-turkey on both alcohol and a command economy was too hard: they fell off one wagon almost immediately, and are just toppling off the other one now.-- pertinax, Sep 07 2024 //good guys getting the money//
See link.-- pertinax, Sep 07 2024 Good link PT, thanks. One insight into the lifestyle is in Michael Palin's "Pole To Pole" travel log where he documents a trip from the north to the south pole. First stop is one of my favorite places on Earth, the Nordic countries and it's all fun and games. Then they get into Russia where they engage in the number one national pastime: sitting in the kitchen getting drunk. Kitchens because living rooms were sometimes considered a waste of space. Why have a living room when you can get just as drunk in the kitchen? Anyway, the whole mood took on this weird everybody's drunk feel, like maybe even the camera crew were being polite guests and accepting their host's offers of the only thing in life worth living for there. That always reliable liquid meaning of life: vodka.
Now when criticizing a large group of people like I have, calling Russians a bunch of drunks, I want to be clear. If I lived in Soviet Russia with no freedom of speech, no chance of advancement unless I turned in enough of my fellow countrymen to the KGB and lived in that "worker's paradise" housing, (link) my entire goal in life would be to get home at the end of a day of pretending to work while they pretended to pay me to a kitchen table with a bottle of vodka on it.
I'd be a drunk too.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 07 2024 Well, I hope you're right, and thank you for the vote of confidence a1, appreciate the kind words. That is what my grandparents did after all.
But who knows? Easy for me to assume I'd be strong sitting here in my free society, but I've often asked myself what I'd do during various historical challenges to humanity.
If people in scary uniforms and guns came to my door in Germany in 1939 and told me I needed to wear an armband, would I have told them to fuck off? Doesn't matter if it were a Star of David or a swastika, would I say no under threat of death? That's the question that keeps me up at night and created my often times unpleasant view of powerful goverment entities "that just need to be run by us good guys". If the current bunch of "good guys who just needed to break a few eggs to make an omlet" told me to get on train because I needed to be "relocated" would I?
So with that in mind, what if a new and improved brand of fascism comes to my door and tells me to wear an armband with a smily face, a unicorn or a rainbow? What if they tell me I have to wear it or else? What if they've got great branding, like the "Kuddly Kittens Klub"? Would I be as strong as my forbearers?
I hope I would, but we all get tested by reality don't we? Remember the great words of Mike Tyson. (link)-- doctorremulac3, Sep 07 2024 // If people in scary uniforms and guns came to my door in Germany in 1939 and told me I needed to wear an armband, would I have told them to fuck off? Doesn't matter if it were a Star of David or a swastika, would I say no under threat of death?//
It doesn't keep me up at night. I know I would wear it. I don't pretend to be better than those people. What keeps me up at night is the fascism creeping into American politics via each party and the people who own them. The left and their controlled and compelled speech and the right and their nationalism. And of course the corporatism pushed by both.-- Voice, Sep 07 2024 We’re basically on the same page. I think the left / right thing might have an element of being a “big power” control construct. If I’m obediently hating the guys who over there who “all think the same”, that might be fine, but after a little probing I do see that there are areas where the people have some Venn diagram overlap that might not be in the best interest of the guys pulling the strings behind the curtain.
(Let me put my tinfoil hat on for a sec.) I also think “UFOs” are a ruse to do the same thing. Distract and extract. (Money and freedoms) The chances that a life form from another planet would be so close to us in evolutionary terms that they'd fly around in little boxes exactly the way we do now would be a pretty unlikely conincidence. I doubt in ten million years we'll still be basically driving cars in space like we do now.
Maybe technology will hit a brick wall, but seems unlikely. We've only had technology for a few nanoseconds in evolutionary timeline terms and we went from riding horses to driving on the Moon in a couple of generations. Ten million years from now darting around in little flying Volkswagon Beetles that even have blinking lights for some reason? Mmmmm, yea. I doubt it. And the chances that some other life form evolved so close to us that they just happen to fly around in little pods and use iPhones like us is pretty mathematically out there in terms of probability.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 07 2024 Hmm.. I just (two minutes or so ago) saw a YouTube add for exactly this "made in Russia recycled in Ukraine" or some-such blurb in the add for a small pencil case style wooden box with a sliding lid holding an oblong metal plaque with details such as you describe engraved on it, presumably supposedly made from a piece of tank or gun mental, I can't believe someone will have taken this idea and turned it into a reality so quickly (4 days from your post to now) so I'm going to have to call "Baked!" on you, and potentially plagiaristic idea rip-off? .. did you just see this add or something similar before we did? ;)-- Skewed, Sep 09 2024 It's such a good idea that they are doing it already. Russian unit patches, ID booklets, shell casings made into whatever. More power to them. Individual units are raising funds for IR gear, vehicles, meds, etc and offering bits of what they have retrieved. Check them out on Telegram. Send money! Get merch! Heroim Slava!-- minoradjustments, Sep 13 2024 Individual units selling stuff on Telegram is good to hear about, but there's no storefront for it. There's no single place I can go to online and see 10.000 different items from shell casings all the way up to the shattered corpse of a KA-52, that buys the stuff in bulk from Ukrainian units and sells it online. If I had the dosh I would build it myself. Actually I wouldn't need to buy the stuff directly, would I? hmm.. I would need the store front, the web site, hosting, secure transfer of funds, images of the items, and per-item brochures and layout... Nope. Not starting from 0 money I can't. But someone should.-- Voice, Sep 13 2024 I'd assume by now this is 'baked' literally - as Ukraine somehow is still exporting wheat from the battlefields. Everyone should be holding a magnet over their cereal these days to pull out the tank fragments. Once your buns start to snap to your cafe speakers you know this thing has gone on too long.-- mylodon, Sep 23 2024 //create an account to read the full story//No.-- Voice, Sep 23 2024 random, halfbakery