pühapäev, 23. aprill 2017

Kalamaja, Kopli, Mustamäe, Õismäe, Lasnamäe

Mustamäe is really not a place with crime, because it's one of the oldest Soviet-era "Hills", and has 'grown up', so to speak. It's got lots of trees everywhere, a forest between the hospital and the university complexes, and patches of forest elsewhere, plenty of malls, and one big new cinema at Mustamäe Keskus. The district is also really compact. But since it's a sleeping area, it's got no nightlife.

Lasnamäe and Kopli have historically been more infamous, though I can't tell what it's like now. I'd venture to say, that Lasnamäe can be reasonably safe, as long as one doesn't associate oneself with questionable company.

One historically dangerous place has been Kopli Liinid on the Kopli peninsula, after which the outlying Kopli district is named. These 'Liinid are a complex of streets (liinid=lines) on one (probably eastern, IIRC) side of the peninsula with condemned and/or uninhabited wooden houses built a hundred years ago that often fall prey to arson. There are ruins. The peninsula is the endpoint of #1 and #2 tram lines.

The Kalamaja (sub)district is adjacent to Kopli near the Balti Jaam train station, and has seen gentrification. Kopli itself might one day become gentrified, too.

Õismäe and Lasnamäe are the ones with less trees. Lasnamäe is the newest and largest, and in the Soviet times, it was the endpoint for the many Russian workers and their families that came to work in the Soviet factories that were stationed here.

London Grammar - "Oh Woman, Oh Man" lyric interpretation

I've found two interpretations of the song. —

The line about taking 'a devil through yellow sands' probably relates to the temptation of Jesus.

The lyrics seem to compare how Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation, and how Jesus did not give in, specifically because He knew what happened to Adam and Eve, and because He was part of a ˇgreater plan to redeem humanity.

'Taking a devil through the yellow sands' could be interpreted as Jesus driving the devil away — so the lyrics refer in some way for the listeners to drive the evil away by avoiding temptation.


At the time, Jesus was fasting in the desert, and the devil tempted him to eat in return for kingdoms of the world and in return for avoiding God, but Jesus rejected the offer. After Jesus drove the devil away, the angels came and tended to Jesus.

'Choose a path or a child' might relate to choosing the narrow road (path) to reach salvation, and the child is more-or-less a literal construct. Or even the Child of God, which is Jesus.

The 'path or a child' are not so much the choices, but outcomes of choices.

Because the implication is, that a good person can drive the evil away by being responsible by avoiding temptation by choosing the narrow path (presumably safe sex), or choosing a child if they literally give in to temptation (unsafe sex).

Ergo, evil can be avoided by making a conscious choice towards either outcome, and then responsibly living with it.

The particular verse reinterprets giving in to temptation as abandonment of responsibility, and the next verse laments, that many do not understand; or, alternately, posits a question from a man and a woman, as to whether they understand this situation.

Now, the first verse of the lyric refers to a man giving up on a relationship with a woman, and the man does not seem to have been up to any good in the first place, per others' observations, but love can be so blind.

The woman in the song pursues her lost love, and she'd do anything to get her man back, but it seems, that the relationship is beyond repair.

I can infer form the second part of the lyric, that he woman is pregnant from that man, and so the song criticizes the man as being irresponsible for having left the woman.

There's another and a more darker implication with the "And I don't know where the rest go" line, that the woman was pregnant, but did not carry it to term (against the advice of her friends). The woman contemplates, that 'it should not mean that much to her', but it does, and she now has regrets. The woman apparently did everything she thought she could to please the man she loved, but he did not return anyway. In this light, it's a tragic case of unrequited love.

Because of all this, the man is impossible from the outset (as told by the friends), and the victimised party would be wise to drive that man away, with the song excoriating him for his evil of total neglectfulness and complete lack of responsibility. Not just because the man left the woman once, and so would not be able to come around in the future, but because the woman made a sacrifice, and would make them again.

The song laments the men and women failing to understand such situations, one another, and their inner selves enough to make a conscious and responsible choice on the possible outcomes.

The two parties are a man, who was looking for a fling, and a woman, who having misinterpreted it as a serious relationship, had become far too attached.

Do note, that since 'oh woman, oh man' are on the same line, then the roles can be reversed. though a woman is singing the song, and so the other party in the song can often be interpreted to be a man.

The black goo spore in Alien: Covenant

This was a reply to a comment thread in YouTube discussing the effects of black goo.

The black goo reacts differently depending on what any of the other reactants are. Not just heat, but also air (+air pressure), different other gases, water or other solubles, contact with David's finger, sprakling wine, ingestion by Holloway, and contact with other Prometheus crew.

The process Holloway went through, is actually similar to what the Engineer in the opening went through, as both ingested black goo. As Holloway was "administered" much less of it and with champaigne, his 'decomposition', if you will, was a lot slower.

The "black goo" that gets into the Covenant cremember's ear, is no longer black goo, but either a spore, or a minuscule Alien life-form, as it can fly and target its flight path right into the ear of the poor colonist. I could count on the life-form being a back-goo-derived insectoid that acts as a very feeble wrapper of Alien protozoa that are to spread into a larger organism.

laupäev, 15. aprill 2017

Especially the lies.

From DS9's "The Wire".

I think the daughter of an important Cardassian military person was also an Obsidian Order operative and Garak's accomplice. My thinking is, that Garak let the Bajoran children go, but she noticed it, and planned to tell Tain. To avoid that, Garak had to off her, and so there was that minor shuttle incident. And hopefully fabricated Bajoran life signatures, too.

Another option is, that she picked up the children _after_ Garak let them go, and entered the shuttle with them, thinking, that Garak would not have the shuttle destroyed, because children. Since he knew anyway, that she was going to tell on him, Garak had no choice. A suboption is, that the children were in the shuttle, but Garak also learned about their demise post factum.

I like to think, that Garak must have been instrumental in how the Cardassian occupation of Bajor ended. Somehow, the Cardassian Central Command discovered, that Garak was complicit. (Dukat's fuming about Garak having killed Dukat's father, who was an archon (a Cardassian justice), seems to be an interesting piece of a puzzle.)

Enabran Tain couldn't have Garak killed, since Garak had to have had something very valuable with him, so Tain covered for his (former) right-hand-man, and Garak was exiled; with Tain hoping at least (or at best) to later bring the exile back into the fold, or else let him go. Tain's price for all that was, that he had to resign from being the head of the Obsidian Order.

reede, 7. aprill 2017

Science fiction television and use of colours


For a moment there, I thought, that a lot of it had to do with the quality of actual film that was used.

The VFX and makeup in TOS must have looked like the high end at the time, but they also did a lot of work with choosing the right colours to make interiours look futuristic and maybe even unobtrusive. Colour on television was still something very new, and the respective personnel probably did their best to accentuate the magic of colour. TOS stands out in clean and straight lines, primary colours, and many pastel colours everywhere.

TNG interiors have a lot of light and Enterprise beige, which at the time looked quite futuristic. Non-Federation ships often had different colours to accentuate their otherness. Exterior-wise, Enterprise-D itself withstands the test of time admirably.

DS9 the station is dark and artfully stylish. Compare also TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. Personally, DS9 stands out to me as having struck the best balance. Interestingly enough, Season 2 of TNG had also struck the right tones. maybe it had something to do with Diana Muldaur.

Voyager had tech-y sets, but mostly failed to be dark and gritty. Ronald D. Moore fixed that with BSG.

Farscape thrived with colours, and shined in ways unimaginable.
Stargate Universe channelled the coloration of Blade Runner.

It may seem like a minor detail, but the kind of coloration, how much and what kinds of colours one uses, and then the amount of makeup on actors determines a lot in the character of a television show. JJ-verse 'Trek often feels plastic.