From a friend who briefly left Ukraine to attend a wedding: “Since being back in Kyiv after a week of beautiful sleep all I want to do is send 100000s Shaheds at Moscow” 4.5 hours of air raids already tonight...

The Moscow Times

Russian Military Electronics Supplier Faces Shutdown Over Underpriced State Contracts - The Moscow Times

A Russian electronics manufacturer that supplies power components for military aircraft and commercial jets like the Sukhoi Superjet has shut down ...

tl;dr: Russia has been forcing companies to supply military contracts at unprofitable prices, essentially forcing the companies to borrow funds on behalf of the state. Additionally, banks are being forced to give military contractors loans. This lets the Russian government shift the debts to the companies, making the budget appear more balanced than it actually is. “Under Russian law regulating state defense orders, prices for dual-use products are determined by the military. For example, the Defense Ministry-set price for a single diode is 2,600 rubles ($33) per unit, compared to the 3,600 rubles ($46) the company would need to charge to cover manufacturing costs.” Officially about 50% of all Russian tax dollars are going towards war. With stuff like this happening, the real amount is clearly even higher.

Aftermath of yet another Russian missile strike on a highschool in Ukraine, close to Odesa. I few months ago I talked to a father in Ukraine who had made the difficult decision to send his teenager to live in the EU. His teen's schooling was being too disrupted by the air raids. The father stayed behind – hopefully his military service means his child has a home to come back to. Where they lived, people mostly ignore air raids because the chance of you actually being hit is pretty low. Especially during the day. Most of the drones get shot down, and there's not too many missiles. But the problem is Russia _intentionally_ targets schools. You are a lot more likely to get hit if you are at a school. So the school system has to respond by rigorously evacuating everyone to bunkers, every single time. If they didn't, a lot more children would be dead. But other than the few places that have been able to build new schools in hardened bunkers, that inevitably disrupts lessons.

@Giacomo Zucco working hard at the Plan B booth.

Probably the most effective thing Iran could do right now to "win" – assuming they do not in fact have nukes – would be to load hot nuclear material onto their ballistic missiles to create dirty bombs. If they're lucky, neighboring countries will recind their support in allowing Israel to shoot down missiles in their airspace. And the radiation contamination could be an effective weapon even on the missiles that get intercepted. If their lucky, the ensuing mess might be enough to horrify the world into pressuring Israel to negotiate some bullshit peace agreement. Of course, it's probably too late to actually do this. Unless you have people willing to die, handling nuclear material hot enough to be a real threat is very challenging. And Israel has already killed off most if not all of Iran's top nuclear scientists. And finally, dirty bombs really aren't that effective as it's hard to get something dangerous enough to actually be effective rather than a mere psychological threat. But... Iran's regime is in deep trouble right now and is highly likely to utterly lose this. So dirty bombs may be the best of bad options for them.