Mind Readings: Shipping Stuff to a Warzone

In this episode, let's talk about doing something a little bit different. Uh shipping a package to a war zone. So over the holidays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, uh, a friend of mine, a data scientist in Ukraine in Kiev, uh, was talking about how she didn't have electricity a good amount of the time. Now, there's not a whole lot that we individually can do uh for everyone. But in this instance, um, there was something I could do for one person.

The uh power banks, uh power generation stations, like uh the EcoFlow, Jackery, uh, Anchors, Power Station, the these are all large batteries, essentially, that you can take, charge them up, and then use them. And if you were to send one of these to somebody who didn't have reliable access to electricity but had electricity or access to it in some fashion, it would be a pretty big help. So what we coordinated on was well, what if I were to try and send one of these things to Kiev? Um, knowing that my colleague could use this to uh essentially let her do her job, right? Because as with all of our technology, we all require electricity.

And someone who's doing you know machine learning and AI and data science kind of needs a working laptop with electricity. So it turns out that uh Ukraine's postal service, Nova Pozta, has uh drops in most major nations. Um you go to their website, uh np ship uh npshopping.com. Um, and if you can navigate it, which is it's entirely in Ukrainian, uh, if you can navigate it, you can sign up for a mailbox. And what they will do is at their shipping depots, you can send stuff, mail stuff to their shipping depot in whatever country you're in, or the nearest country, and then with enough time logistics, they will manage to get your package to intended recipients somewhere in Ukraine.

There are obviously places within Ukraine itself where yeah, you're not shipping anything, like Kerason, for example. You're probably not shipping some of the stuff right there right now. Uh Bakhmut, we are probably not shipping stuff there. Um, but Lviv, uh Kiev, the the cities that are not under direct siege, yeah, you can you can send stuff there. So I coordinated by a friend and went to Amazon, but not Amazon US, because Amazon US, even though uh Nova Pota has shipping depots in the United States, all of our equipment in the USA is on USA electrical standards, which doesn't do you a bit of good uh outside you know North America essentially.

Uh the voltages are different, the plugs are different. Like if you've ever seen a travel adapter, travel adapters where it says EU, it's like this two-prong thing, and you know, the US has sort of a three-prong thing going on. So went to Amazon uh Deutschland, Amazon Germany, and found the same station there and shipped it from the Amazon Germany warehouse to the Nova Posta um depot in uh in Germany. I forget where in Germany it is, and then they sent that from there on to Ukraine. It worked.

You know, I was watching it very carefully. Uh, one of my neighbors here uh in the USA is from uh Cherkasy, so uh she's Ukrainian and can help translate and tell me what was going on, but it worked. We got a 268 watt hour uh essentially battery system to my colleague in in uh Kiev and now and she posted it on Instagram, now she can get her job done and she can get uh her work done, which obviously provides income and all those important things. The point of this story is twofold. One uh it is possible to do these things, right?

If you know people who are in Ukraine, uh or you know, uh this this process could be applied to many different countries, but in particular for Ukraine. If you know people in Ukraine and you want to send them stuff, it turns out you can. Uh you just have to set up an account with uh Novopošta and then buy the thing on the nearest e-commerce system and then ship it to the drop point. So logistically, that's uh that's a takeaway. If the if you are looking to help, um this is one avenue if you know somebody to send it to there.

If you don't know who sent it to there, then look to the major charities. Um go to United 24, uh, it's U24.gov.ua and just donate money there. It's probably a much better use of your resources. But if you know somebody who needs something and it can be shipped from an e-commerce system like Amazon or eBay or whatever, this is a way to do it. Uh it it works.

The second and broader lesson is you can't help everybody. You can't save the world, right? Even the richest people can't save the world, but you absolutely can help somebody. And that's a lesson that I think we all need to take to heart. You can't help everybody, but you can help somebody.

So if it is within your power to help one person, just that effort makes the world a better place. Right? It is it is you know, even if you had billions of dollars, you would still be struggling to fix the problem entirely. But you absolutely could help a person, a family, a village, depending on the level of resources you have available to you. So let that be something that you can take to heart and that you can apply in your life.

Find somebody to help and see what the world looks like when you're done. And again, it doesn't have to be in a far-off nation. It could be somebody in your town, your neighborhood, your city. There are no shortage of people who need help, and you can help one person. And if you do that, we all do that.

We make the world a better place. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you soon. If you like this video, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.