Unfortunately, when the Union disbanded into independent states, one of the free amenities that disappeared was free natural gas. Apparently it became expensive for the local government to maintain the flame. As the article in English Russia puts it, “the memories don’t cost much in wild capitalistic realities!”

Unfortunately I don’t know when exactly the awesome turn of events occurred, but the important thing is that officials found a way to keep the fire burning by installing a cellphone transmitter with what I think are LED panels, which displayed the pixelated flames.

I don’t know how much utilities cost in Ukraine, but we’ll just have to assume that the cost of the powering the new torch is much cheaper than the old one.

[via The Presurfer]

Upon closer inspection, the robo-historians will snap with their metallic fingers, and the archaelogist ninjas will say, “A-ha!” in Ninja speak, slightly muffled by their ninja masks, because they now know:

Surely that is a bottle beside those stones! They’ll be scrambling all over the place, and the headlines in all Robot news channels and Ninja newspapers will read, “Bottle found beside some stones: archeologists not useless after all!!!”. But as for the stones they will be wondering still. These inscriptions will surely baffle them even more, even as it causes not a few archeologist ninjas to throw Shuriken at each other because of their excitement:

A commenter at Gizmodo said, “According to the plaque this is a monument to “KLAVA” (a name of a girl) by Anatoly Viatkin. It was built to be displayed during the “Festival of Modern Art in the City Environment.” Then there is a long list of thanks…” So if we want the robots and ninjas of the future to enjoy their exotic find, we must delete that stupid comment. Why not delete remove the plaque itself? Because it’s another puzzle for the robots and ninjas! One that will never be solved, because we humans know that the Russian language is made-up. It doesn’t make any sense, except to one Gizmodo commenter.

But ninja & robot bewilderment will quickly turn into ninja & robot disappointment when they find that piece of stone, which will lead them to the conclusion that this is nothing more than an Apple advertisement. Then they’ll report to their leader, Chief Ninja Robot Steve Jobs, that more evidence of their findings can be found at Jason Eppink’s Flickr site.

[via English Russia & Inventor Spot]