I help run a makerspace. It’s amazing when a newbie comes in and shows some enthusiasm. They often get swept up by an expert or 2. They tend to leave slightly dazed, but happy. Those that start coming regularly gain skills rapidly. Often they are the ones that swoop in to help the next newbie who turns up nervous and unsure.

Supply and demand applies. In the short term, oil usage is fairly inelastic. If supply is squeezed, by Russia not being able to produce, then prices climb. This encourages the building of new plants, or the expansion of old ones due to rising profits. It also encourages affected nations to build plants, to secure their own national requirements.

To fix things, you need to attack both supply and demand. Demand is helped by reduce the friction with moving away from oil, as well as providing cost competitive alternatives. Supply is helped by forcing the externalised costs back into its pricing. This reduces profitability, and increases the pressure to change away from oil.

Only so long as it’s not rebuilt or replaced (e.g. in India to cope with reduced oil from Russia).

Environmentally, this isn’t good. As a state at war, they are an excellent target to up the pressure.

Even worse, they are often a case of accretion by generations of grad students and undergrads.

E.g. a university was redoing how it hosted student club websites. When it eventually killed the old hosting, 1 site stayed working. It was eventually tracked down to a little mini pc mounted above the false ceiling. It had been plodding away for 20 odd years, most of that without any maintenance at all.

The intro to the big bad is a red dragon fleeing in terror straight past the PCs. Extra kudos if the big bad is just a normal sized goblin. (I’m thinking star wars prequel Yoda)

That’s also one of the simpler ideas. It’s also a bit of a rock paper scissors game. E.g. the counter to my first suggestion is to up the sensitivity of your tracking, and use the extra resolution to pick out the real target(s). That, in turn can be countered with a directional pulse. You either sweep, or target an ultra high powered pulse. The pulse is like a flash bang in a dark cave, the sensors get cooked by it.

The game goes on and on, with many branching methods and counters.

Some early fun on the subject

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams

You can definitely play tricks with jamming. If you have multiple antennas working together you can create weird, messed up harmonics. E.g. (vastly simplified) you might have 10 jammers, but apparently 100 emitters.

The jammer vs anti jammer war has been hit since around WWII. It was a big thing with the u boats, and even Bletchly park got involved. 70 years of defence spending beyond that, takes it a long way.

GPS uses time differential to calculate relative distance. It requires a fairly omnidirectional antenna to function. It would have to be a dedicated anti jammer targeting system.

The easier option is to use GPS to get into the general vicinity, then just go inertially guided, or use a camera etc.

English wine can actually be quite good. It’s only made in relatively small quantities though.

Be aware that English (or Welsh) wine is different from “British”. English wine is made with English grapes, and is fairly ‘artisan’. British wine is made from imported grapes, and is generally low price, low quality.

Why the hell even they would want to sell by the pint is a mystery to me however. Standardisation makes their lives easier, and their costs lower.

I’ll also point out that there was an explicit understanding with the west. Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons (the USSR had a good number based there). In return, the west agreed to back them if Russia tried to annex them. Russia is currently doing exactly that, it’s not unreasonable for Ukraine to expect some help.