While it’s true that we’ve had improved yields in the short term in e.g. Finland (this year has been quite good for farming), suitable temperatures aren’t really enough to make creating a new bread basket in the arctic feasible. Lot of the arctic area doesn’t get enough rainfall in the summer to be proper farmland, especially the vast areas of land in Russia. We’re lacking the predatory insects that would keep the pests in check, and overall the ecosystem is very poorly protected against high temperatures.

This year is also anomalous in being somewhat normal a summer in terms of temperature and rainfall for us. Previous two were very dry, to the point of causing issues for farmers. We’re not necessarily suffering from a drought over here, as opposed to e.g. Mediterranean Europe, but are still seeing abnormally low water levels and less snowfall than usual.

The arctic also doesn’t have a lot of soil that’s suitable for farming, were the weather to warm up. Much of the soil is sand and peatland, covered with a thin layer of moss or lichen. There really aren’t a lot of nutrients available; Finland has a long history of trying to clear fields on swamps as well as planting forests on a drained swamp. Neither have typically worked that well, as drained swamps are a difficult growing medium for most crops and trees. Nowadays we see the swamp as an increasingly more important thing as itself, providing a good carbon sink and improving water quality in the lakes by absorbing excess nutrients and humus.

The only real sustainable solution is, apart for pushing for renewables even harder, trying to decrease the consumption of meat and other unnecessary use of farmland. We can relatively easily absorb a 50-80 % reduction in farming yields globally if we were to get rid of most livestock and bioethanol/biodiesel from edible crops. Another thing is that in developed countries people are far too picky in terms of what they’re willing to eat. As an example, around here we’re actively trying to get people to eat more freshwater fish, as we have an issue with there being too much nutrients in the lakes, and fishing is one of the easiest way to reduce the amount of nutrients in water. Good fish like smelt, roach, ide and bream are often through to be “trash fish” as they can be difficult to prepare (or can smell weird (smelt), can taste of mud at the wrong season (roach)). They’re all very good when prepared correctly and caught at a correct time, though. Nowadays you can get them in a can as a more sustainable alternative to canned tuna, and those have been selling quite well AFAIK.

Most likely is. Many open source projects have a joke as a name, often containing some form of innuendo or a double meaning. Helps in maintaining the free nature of the tool (corporations don’t want anything to do with it) as well as lower expectations on professionalism. Plus it’s funny, especially if it’s an in-joke of a niche language.

On the topic of “runk”, it’s also been loaned from Swedish to Finnish as runkata, or to runk = to jerk off. The actual act of it would be runkkaus or runkkaaminen. Can also be encountered in the form runkkari, aka a wanker (I’d assume Swedish had a matching equivalent). So the joke works in Finnish as well.

Well, let’s give torpedoes to the orcas then.

However, there’s only so many times the enemy in this case is actually able to use the tactic. Russia has absolutely no way to replace losses on the battlefield with their birth rates, which are consistently among the lowest in the whole world. Much of the manpower in soviet times was from the former bloc that’s now either at war with Russia, joined NATO, or a reluctant vassal like is the case with Belarus. Ukraine is also next to the only country in Europe where piling more bodies to the front works even to this extent, as there are fewer natural defenses compared to the likes of Poland and Finland.

Was there a conflict between NATO and Russia, it wouldn’t be long before dying at the front would be the new Russian pension scheme. A dying empire that has been quickly withering even before a war, for three decades, simply doesn’t have a route to a recovery.

The myth of smekalka still lives strong. But there’s adaptation due to the situation on the battlefield that’s done by every miliatry, and there’s adaptation due to bottom-tier logistics, shortages, and desperation. These are indeed examples of the latter case.

Truth be told, almost every time the Russian culture has done something to “adapt” it’s been out of desperation, and re-framed later to cope with the fact they’re not strong enough a country to solve it the right way. On the other hand, you can actually see very good examples of actual adaptation and cleverness displayed by Ukrainians.