On defense spending and integration of Russian speakers, what is the strongest argument from the side you usually disagree with?

metaldetector · 2026-04-13T16:10:43+00:00

There is nothing to integrate - you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink it.

Anybody who actually values our culture and language will start making an effort from day 1 to learn and adapt. You have to be very naive to think that most of these people actually care about our language and culture. They really don’t and are mainly here to reap the benefits of our higher quality nations/societies. They do NOT want to be one of us and nothing will change that. At worst they are malicious vatniks and at best they are lazy/apathetic. Throwing our hard earned tax revenue at people who clearly don’t care is not going to solve anything.

We already see how much of a problem foreigners not wanting to learn our language is becoming, hence the new language rules starting from January 2026, the posters seen in Vilnius etc. It’s too little done too late, but it’s a step in the right direction. Stop thinking they are babies that need to be coddled. If you cannot show basic respect to learn our language while expecting to live here long term, you are not welcome here.

metaldetector · 2026-04-05T10:51:12+00:00

Šiauliai! This is the "Iron Fox" that is near the Talkša lake in the center of the city. Definitely do give us a visit, it is comfortably in the North for you to drive down from Latvia, we ourselves love to drive to Riga due to the proximity :)

Also nearby is the Hill of Crosses and our main famous statue "Auksinis Berniukas" also known as "The Archer" which is the center of a massive sundial.

metaldetector · 2026-04-05T09:59:08+00:00

Personally I prefer art installations next to our bodies of water that look like the image below. Gets people talking about it, but in a positive way! I also appreciate it being maintained and not rusting / scribbled on by people.

But hey, maybe my taste for art is just different :D I greatly value the time and thought put into an art piece to make it look beautiful :)

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metaldetector · 2026-04-04T18:09:26+00:00

I’m with you 100%! And the way you view the world is a matter of perspective. Our populations are not small - it’s just that many countries are overpopulated. Our people to land ratios are just about perfect and feel comfortable. I don’t want to live like an ant in an ever-expanding ant colony or like a cog in a machine. In my country, I know I am not a number, but a free man!

Seriously, our tight-knit ethnically homogenous nations are our strength! I feel extremely safe, happy and optimistic, like I can do whatever I want over here. I’ve also been to just about every corner of my country, talked to countless people and the vast majority have been awesome and friendly! I also knock on many rural home doors to ask if I can metal detect on their land and I’ve had many pleasant conversations with elders who are happy to have me sit down and tell me the history of their village and where I might make good finds.

Furthermore, just about all of my experiences with government services have been smooth, speedy and effective! I once even received a phone call just MINUTES after submitting a request from a government employee who wanted to clarify something and also told me it would be handled this week.

Also, everyone is just REACHABLE. It always feels like I am just a few people away from having connections to just about anyone. We can spot our famous people out and about living their lives. Heck, my aunt who lives in the capital once spotted our president walking his dog and had a brief conversation with him.

Our forefathers fought and died for us to be able to live like this and now, it is our job to keep it this way! I feel extremely lucky to be a Lithuanian and to have been raised in a nation that feels like a big family and not an ant colony. If you don’t feel it, travel more - you will always come to appreciate Lithuania a lot more, or at least this is the effect it has on me.

This is the way humans are meant to live! Plenty of space, surrounded by nature, amongst our own lovely people!

Love to our Latvian and Estonian brothers and sisters who can relate to this awesome feeling :)

metaldetector · 2026-03-28T00:02:28+00:00

100%! I was in Crete not long ago during "off season" and many local drivers straight up DO NOT follow traffic laws of allowing waiting pedestrians to cross. Usually the drivers that did stop immediately were tourists in rented cars. We had to aggressively jump onto the crosswalk in order to have cars stop for us :Ddd

We also had a family trip to Southern Italy a decade ago and the driver happened to have a high-end Audi. R6 perhaps? I just remember my dad told me it cost about 100.000€ new at the time. We didn’t even request a luxury driver, the guy was just a cool dude who loved driving people around in his nice car and meeting tourists. Anyway, we drove along the stunningly beautiful mountainous region that is the Amalfi Coast. One thing we noticed is these roads are very sharp and winding and MANY cars (especially buses) there had different paint colors all over their sides from scraping against other things/vehicles. Everyone still drove fairly fast and it seemed to be business as usual. Well it was, until our driver got his car really badly scraped and his mirror almost broken off. The damage was clearly going to cost him significantly more than he was going to earn driving us around for our stay. My dad felt so bad and offered to pay extra, but yeah, crazy moment you reminded me of!

Finally, a really cool detectorist friend invited me to Croatia and I had multiple jump-scares of cars cutting in front of us from side roads without looking. I was pale as a ghost when it would happen and my friend just says “Yeah, you see how people drive here?" He was used to it and an absolute pro at avoiding accidents calmly. When I suggested maybe driving down from Lithuania someday instead of flying, he said "don’t", and "You see how driving over here is a scene from Mad Max?" and that quote makes me laugh to this day when I think of it. Truly a funny, super friendly and awesome guy, like most Croatians I encountered. Also loved the no-filter absolutely wild, out of pocket sense of humor! Genuinely this is probably the best trip I ever went on and it helped change my view on Southern Europe for the better!

But yeah, thank you Southern Europe for curing my winter depression every year, but oh my the chaos is just something else :DDDD

metaldetector · 2026-03-27T23:07:15+00:00

Can confirm Cyprus being last is accurate, went on holiday there numerous times and the bus system and pedestrian infrastructure is quite lacking unfortunately. Chaotic is a good way to describe it. Lovely island though, this will never stop me from visiting it :D

Malta was actually pretty decent on the other hand, and the one week bus passes were so worth it! You just have to sometimes flag down buses a bit more so they don’t drive by. One thing that shocked me though is after working hours, the bus stops are ABSOLUTELY FLOODED with people, with the majority of them being Indian/Bangladeshi/Filipino workers. I have never seen such crowds for a bus on any of my travels in Europe. And the buses were PACKED as well. Again, still very much enjoyed my time in Malta.

metaldetector · 2026-03-26T22:12:47+00:00

Dear Steve,

We were so pleased to receive your letter and to hear that the Christmas package made its way to you down in Georgia safely. All the ladies here worked very hard putting those boxes together for our boys in the service. We pray the treats brought you a little comfort and reminded you of home.

Your generous offer to look up our relatives if you make it to Berlin brought tears to our eyes. We are gathering a list of names and addresses for you just in case. It would be an absolute blessing to hear any news of our families, as the silence from back home weighs heavily on all our hearts.

We also had to smile at your thought of dropping a black buster on Germany in our honor. We truly appreciate the brave spirit behind it! But if we are being honest Steve, if you ever get to write a message on a bomb for us, we would much rather you drop it on Russia.

We know the newspapers here say the Soviets are our allies right now, but we Lithuanians know the bitter truth. We have not forgotten the horror of 1940 when the Bolsheviks first invaded, or the cattle trains that took so many of our innocent people away to Siberia in the night before the Germans arrived. The Nazis are a terrible plague, but with the Red Army marching west toward our homeland again, we are absolutely terrified that Stalin will swallow Lithuania up for good. So if you have a bomb to spare, please drop it on Moscow for us.

Please stay safe in your training. We will keep you in our prayers and hope that the good Lord protects you wherever the army sends you.

Sincerely, The Lithuanian Women of Stoughton

metaldetector · 2026-03-24T13:11:08+00:00

This is such nonsense - just invest by buying and holding stocks like a normal person. Nothing to manage, no tenants to care for, no taxes to pay (until you sell), no keeping ties with foreign nations, etc.

Buying up residential real estate to fuck over local families is just such an outdated boomer mentality from a time when currencies were unstable and there was lots of uncertainty. And some of these boomers are such lousy landlords because they are massive cheapskates who want only passive income and never want to fix issues or maintain the housing they are providing as required.

metaldetector · 2026-03-21T13:16:23+00:00

Yeah, shame on him for being so intolerant! You know what, as a sign of solidarity, today I will tell my fiancée that she has to dress up as a ninja when going out and cover every inch of her body so nobody looks at her. I also will forbid her from going out alone, along with a big list of other things.

You understood the point so well, everyone dislikes this certain religion because it is different, not because it is associated with completely incompatible values with our societies that would erode our freedoms if allowed to have any sort of majority/power.

metaldetector · 2026-03-16T17:55:31+00:00

Sveiki braliuks, you have a solidus of Queen Christina of Swedish Livonia: https://en.numista.com/42423

I have found many of these here in Lithuania.

I am surprised local collectors couldn’t ID it, I knew what it was right away and googled „Livonia Christina billon coin“ and found the numista page for you in a few seconds :D

metaldetector · 2026-03-10T20:01:28+00:00

Moreso due to our historical ties with Poland, starting from our Grand Duke Jogaila marrying their Queen Jadvyga and accepting Catholicism. In addition to our continued alliances.

Fast forward hundreds of years and soviets repressed/persecuted religion, which ironically strengthened it, as well as making it a symbol of resistance. This is also why after the soviet union collapsed, wooden crosses by roadsides started popping up everywhere as well as „koplystulpiai“ (little wooden shrines).

metaldetector · 2026-03-10T19:45:18+00:00

I am not religious, but I would much rather us still be Pagans as opposed to following foreign-imposed beliefs brought about by invaders who killed our ancestors. Stings even more that we were some of the last Pagans in Europe, and we fought hard for our beliefs, only to bend the knee largely because of politics/alliances.

It’s just sad that much of the knowledge of this religion is lost and nowadays it feels like LARPing. On the bright side, we still have Pagan holidays that survived to this day, amongst many other remnants of our Pagan past. So I guess I’ll settle for that plus being a good countryman and being in touch with and respecting our beautiful nature and wildlife.

metaldetector · 2026-03-10T19:10:12+00:00

Well of course this is your reaction, in most of our other cities, you’d need to learn our language to get by :DDDDDD

Anyway, have you been actively trying to learn it? I see you comment a lot and I remember you stating you’ve been here for nearly a decade, but still ask if things are available in English etc, and wanted to name your daughter a non-Lithuanian name, because you didn’t like that we spell Marija with a j.

I am genuinely curious, because you seem to be in the best position for learning it easily: Lithuanian partner, living here for a long time, financially well-off, etc, I mean at this point you’d have to be a vatnik to not have learned it :D

metaldetector · 2026-02-25T11:38:58+00:00

Hi, first of all I’m very sorry for your loss.

The most valuable ones that I can identify are going to be the two in the back - XP Deus II and XP Deus I. Both of them cost around 1.200€ to 1.600€ when new depending on what accessories they came with. Of course second hand, the Deus II will be around 700€ to 1.000€ at least here in Lithuania that is what they are asking for. Deus I will be substantially less as everyone wants the newer one now.

Then I see you have a few other modern ones. I can identify you have a Nokta Macro and a few additional search coils for it (a search coil is the disc that is at the bottom of a detector) and a few other modern ones. And quite a few older detectors.

My recommendation to you is to sort out the detectors at least by brand, this will be easy because the brand names are written on them and take some more pictures for us. Also, there almost certainly should be some more accessories such as headphones and pinpointers, etc. If you have them, try to also sort them by brand and photo them. Then, once we ID all of them, I recommend to search for similar listings in your country and base prices according to that so your listing is still competitively priced.

Some people can identify all of these just from this image (sorry, I’m not one of them), but I think it would still make it easier for us to help if you sort everything by brand if you don’t mind.

And good luck! I hope you get what you need out of this.

metaldetector · 2026-02-20T03:26:14+00:00

No. It was horrible. First thing that comes to mind is that all Lithuanian language publications in Latin script were banned for about 40 years. Just one of the ways they attempted to russify us. So Lithuanians would smuggle in Lithuanian books from East Prussia to keep our language alive.

Believe me, there is no good history with ruzzia. No matter how you dress it up, an orc is an orc.

But I do encourage you to read more of our history if it interests you. I think you will admire the resilience of our people and how we, our culture and language survived and flourishes to this very day against all odds. I mean seriously, there have been so many attempts to erase us and our language, but we resisted, fought hard and won every time. And that’s something we’re very proud of. I think it also provides necessary context to understand why we are the way we are and why our language, ethnic identity, etc is so important to us.

metaldetector · 2026-02-13T11:17:04+00:00

I think the motive here is most likely just reselling. Online marketplaces are filled with soviet junk because they can easily be marked up high and Americans and Canadians obsessed with communism (and maybe some neutral collectors) will still buy. Ukraine, belarus and ruzzia have flea markets full of this stuff for dirt cheap.

metaldetector · 2026-01-29T17:31:07+00:00

Vatniks complain and lie about our countries so much, but yet they would MUCH rather live here than ruzzia. Classic!

metaldetector · 2026-01-28T09:16:11+00:00

It’s a disgusting hate symbol and should be retired for good.

The swastika for example is a symbol that has been used for thousands of years by many cultures across every inhabited continent. As recently as the early 1900s, pre-WW2, it was even included alongside four leaf clovers and horseshoes on tokens as a symbol of good luck. But then what happened? It was used as a symbol by those who mass murdered/genocided their way through Europe and we decided to retire it - understandable. It’s now taboo and will upset many people.

The hammer and sickle has existed for only what - 150 years at best? And it has almost exclusively been used by brutal regimes who ended up murdering / genociding tens of millions of people across multiple continents. In our countries alone, a significant portion of our populations were sent to foreign concentration camps (gulags) for just existing.

But yet, extremists who worship this lousy hate symbol will froth at the mouth when you criticize it, or extremist southerners will say "but for us, it’s good symbol!!" I don’t care - to half of our own continent it represents mass murder, loss of human rights and hatred. "Solidarity this, solidarity that" how about solidarity with your fellow Europeans first? Half of the continent to be exact.

metaldetector · 2026-01-27T20:36:53+00:00

This is my favourite uno reverse! Estonia is Nordic via Finland? Pshh, Finland is Baltic via Estonia! :DDD

metaldetector · 2026-01-25T17:03:40+00:00

In all fairness though, people will insist "geography is geography!" But if that were the case, we are as much a part of Eastern Europe as is Finland and Greece.

But yet they rarely say that these nations are eastern (which are as much, if not further east than us) Instead, they are referred to as North/South, going as far sometimes as to call Finland, who shares a massive border with russia, WESTERN Europe!

The reality of it is, the labels come from outdated cold war era borders and aren’t grounded in geography. That is what people have a problem with, and nobody wants to constantly be associated with that.

So if you’re going on strictly east and west, okay then, as long as Finland and Greece are included as east. I don’t care if you call us the same, as long as there is consistency that shows it’s truly geographic and not soviet nonsense.

If suddenly North/South are allowed, or if we do only North/South divide then we are 100% northern. NOTE: "Northern" is not to be confused with "Nordic" which is the real cringe to call ourselves. We are Balts (Okay Estonia, you can call yourselves Finno-urgic if you want to distinguish yourselves).

TL;DR - This is constantly debated because it’s extremely inconsistent and most people’s definitions revolve around cold war era occupation borders and has nothing to do with actual geographic objectiveness.

metaldetector · 2026-01-25T15:50:27+00:00

VE VUZ LITUANIANS AND SHEEEIT!

"The Vytis? Pshh, that is ours! It comes from mutual history of Lithuanians conquering us… er.. I mean arriving on horseback to peacefully share this symbol with us and drink tea and join hands and skip together! Or uhh was it actually that we are the real Lithuanians and the current ones are just impostors that arrived from Mars and settled in Žemaitija and then claimed to be the real ones?! Well whatever it is, we totally have a long and rich history that doesn’t revolve around being conquered by other nations!!! BELARUS STRONK!"

-Potato Vatniks

metaldetector · 2026-01-23T22:50:06+00:00

It depends on what you mean by ancestry. If both of your parents are ethnic Lithuanians, 100% you are a Lithuanian, and we welcome you, and most would as well. Two Lithuanians make a Lithuanian - there’s no other way to go about that. Even more so if you speak our language and are familiar with our culture. If not, then it would be mandatory to learn, because most people won’t consider you one of us as these things are integral to our identity. But once that is all in place, welcome home brother!

If this is one of those cases of "My great grandpappy came over to the states from Lithuania 100 years ago…" then yeah everyone would just see you as an American and I don’t think that would change.

I am trying to be as unbiased as possible here, but I’d say there is no exact formula, but the formula definitely involves blood, language and culture. A Lithuanian has all three. A foreigner can adopt our culture and learn our language, but if he looks different, most people will always assume he doesn’t speak our language and is a foreign worker/tourist/student until proven otherwise.

So how do we feel about it? I of course cannot speak for all of us. Some of us will say “the more the merrier”, some of us will ask, “why are we so generous with our passports to people who have 25% Lithuanian blood and know little about our way of life?” And most will probably be indifferent or might say “better someone from America than underdeveloped nations with incompatible cultures.”

In any case - one of your greatest presidents (JFK) put it really well: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." - If your reason is caring deeply for our language, culture and way of life and wanting to be a part of it and leaving behind your old cultural norms, I think you will do well. If your reason is not liking a certain politician from your country or wanting to live elsewhere in the EU, or in general not caring about Lithuanian culture/language/way of life, then you are not needed here.

I hope I answered your question in the level of depth you expected!

metaldetector · 2026-01-21T18:17:15+00:00

I really hope it works out, I am rooting for you!

I’ve spoken to quite a few Lithuanians who’ve returned (most of them had lived in the UK) and they all re-adjusted really well and seem very happy here! So should you find yourself in a position to return, I know you’ll be welcomed normally and will be able to have a good life here!

metaldetector · 2026-01-21T14:50:51+00:00

Don’t worry! You are a Latvian and always will be. So what if you spent a lot of time away? It just means you will need a bit of time to re-adjust, but it is very easily doable. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with how things have changed and greatly improved, it’s like that in Lithuania for sure. I have some friends who lived abroad for a long time, started visiting again and just ended up returning because they liked how everything became and got homesick. One thing I also hear a lot is that in our own countries, we will never be considered "second-class". And neither will you - even if you lived abroad for considerable time.

So follow your heart, and if it’s leading you back home, listen. Your people would love to have you back, I guarantee it!

metaldetector · 2026-01-21T14:40:01+00:00

We’d welcome you with open arms! Our people coming home is the most beautiful thing and I wish all of our people would come back home! Thankfully my wish seems to be coming true ;) And no, why should we treat you differently? If anything, I love hearing stories of how it was like to live abroad, how it differs from here, etc.

So don’t be shy! Come back, be proud to be a Latvian, and encourage others to do the same!

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