perestroika

It is sad to see those people arrested and put away for acts of public defiance. They could have burnt down something and fought another day. :(

Some day, at some point, some act of defiance will trigger a revolt - maybe a revolution - but that time doesn't seem near. Covert attrition seems many times more effective currently.

That is quite a lot of interesting experiments, thanks for introducing. :)

I'm inclined to add one more:

51: monitor the radio spectrum for drones (and if their signature looks hostile, warn people about them) - there's a DIY recipe for a monitoring station out there somewhere, and some Ukrainian guys scan their sky using HackRF

SDR is definitely a technology worth learning. I'm already a happy user of RTL-SDR, but if I want to really see what my WiFi is doing, I should get a HackRF eventually too. (Note: WiFi is too fast to intercept without loss, except with another WiFi card, unless a slower bitrate is deliberately chosen.)

It looks beautiful, but a bit fragile - I'm not used to seeing wooden wings and a jet turbine. :)

I would feel more confident with a propeller-electric rebuild of Antonov An-2 "crop duster". Which sadly doesn't exist. :( Someone has to do it, or do a similar thing. :)

Thanks for the advance warning, I hope it goes well. :)

Burned less wood (I think - unless things change and the month is not over). Previously, I have never been able to finish the wood-burning season in March, but with a better equipped solar power system, this now seems to have happened.

Checked it out, and the local ones that I know are listed. :) So the map may be reasonably good. :)

Just wait for the zombie engine. :D

The car is correctly represented, about 0.15 KWh / km is what one gets.

However, the positioning of the e-bike looks strange to me. I've looked at previous studies and the e-biker has always been first in efficiency - because the efficiency of a motor far exceeds the efficiency of human digestion and muscles, while weight and speed remain comparable to an ordinary cyclist.

I think someone has calculated food energy incorrectly, or assumed that e-bikes move faster than they do. :)

My inner anarcho-bureaucrat approves of this. ;P

Unity for the sake of unity has little purpose...

...but unity for a common goal, or solidarity with a person / group who's been wronged - that has a lot of purpose. :)

If someone is being repressed, defending them should not depend on sharing my views. If someone is fighting back against repression, assisting them should should not depend on agreement about everything.

An exercise in game theory:

• first protester: blocks the road personally
• state: sends the protester to jail
• second protester: drops caltrops, hopefully on a slow-driving road
• state: huffs and puffs, but won't find the person

That wouldn't be a smart way to play this game. :( As long as civilized protest gets the goods (or has some effect), one should always prefer that. It's short-sighted to remodel the playing field to make it dangerous.

I hope the sentence will be something ridiculously small, because otherwise state is sending out a signal "you shouldn't get caught, consider real sabotage instead of civilized protest".

I did not admire him, but did respect him for growing a spine.

I would say - his early political career was tarnished by populism. His first response to the war between Georgia and Russia (characterized by escalation by both sides) was a misguided kneejerk reaction - he was not a competent politician back then.

His responses to the 2014 events in Ukraine are already smarter: a realization that Western sanctions were not serious provoked Navalny to suggest improved sanctions, a realization that Putin had gained great popularity by annexing Crimea caused Navalny to give ambiguous answers to questions about returning Crimea (he suggested a new referendum instead) and finally a realization that relations with Ukraine had been damaged for centuries, resulted in Navalny criticizing Putin for destroying friendly relations. I don't think he was a Russian chauvinist at that point (could have been earlier, though). It seems that he viewed Russians and Ukrainians as brothers, likely because his father was from Ukraine. As a result of Putin's actions, soon enough, reality no longer accommodated that viewpoint.

At some point he started playing hardball and taking risks. Perhaps when Boris Nemtsov was murdered in 2015, perhaps at some other point...

...I think Navalny chose anti-corruption for his banner because polls showed that people cared about corruption - viewed it as a threat to leading a normal life - and those in power were setting records in corruption. I think he didn't choose a more noble banner because polls also showed that people didn't care about principles (I recall a Levada poll where 25% were concerned about corruption, but only 3% about democracy and human rights).

When other oppositoners started going to prison and dying, I think Navalny realized that he needed to help eveyone who opposed Putin. While doing that, he ended up doing provocative things that he was blamed for - like helping far-righters get a permit for a march in Moscow. I would characterize his role as a lawyer - he was a lawyer by education too. When government caused problems for someone, he tried to support these folks, largely without regard to their ideology - as long as they were opponents of Putin.

As for him and anarchists, he couldn't help them much, but didn't stay silent. When the "network" trial ended with convictions in Penza, Navalny commented:

These very young people’s testimony about an imaginary terrorist organization were beaten out using torture,” wrote opposition leader Alexey Navalny in a post to Twitter. “Any minister in the Russian government is 10 times more of a criminal and a threat to society than these guys.”

(he was correct, the accused were indeed tortured)