Therefore, I seriously struggle to imagine Putinist municipal policy that would pose an immediate security threat if we do not limit voting rights. Esteemed proponents of revoking voting rights, please help me out! Help the public understand the real and tangible security threats you’re talking about. And do it in a way that avoids painting Estonia as hapless and incapable of enforcing its rules without stripping a tenth of the population of the right to vote.

To four years of bully bullshit and handmaid agenda.

The irony that people whose only tools in a debate are deceit, sowing hatred, spreading misinformation and bashing their political opponents are using exactly the same methods when it helps them inside their own party… the irony seems lost on Helme.

This is a good reminder for other parties when planning to go into coalition with whatever comes out of this power struggle.

It’s unfortunate how the article doesn’t try to get a critical view to the comments made by the producer or user side. The directive doesn’t state as its purpose to reduce plastic, but to lower its impact on the environment.

Leaving the producer’s strawman of “more plastic used” and the users anecdotal “i’m inconvenienced in my car” or sheer gutwrenching “I don’t believe the scientifical result of the impact of plastic in the environment” is just another example of EU-bashing and bad journalism.

It’s always a bit sad to see how complex issues (impact of single use products on garbage piles in the sea, complexity of maritime and fishing objectives as a main driver of EU policy, effect of consumer behavior in one part of the EU and their outcome and impact of other parts of the Union) are trivialized instead of explained.

As an inhabitant of Uus Maailm, a father, walker, biker, driver, and someone with an interest in urban issues, I have been eagerly anticipating the results of this competition with high expectations and hopes. The redesign of Koidu Street on this side of the Endla / Suur-Ameerika “maantee” will have a major impact on how we, as citizens, will be able to live in and utilize our neighbourhood, Uus Maailm, far more than any other recent projects or street renovations, and likely for the next couple of decades.

The short version

1. Thoroughly alter the traffic pattern by
   1. uniting school space and Koidu park,
   2. creating a recognizable Koidu 80 plats with minimal traffic,
   3. breaking up all the residential streets leading into Koidu, allowing pedestrians but restricting cars from passing into or over Koidu,
   4. honoring the ideas of the Liikuvusagentuur T-Model for the Liivalaia-Kristiine tram line.
2. Avoid artificial branding through material gloss, historicizing street decor, and coerced street branding. Instead, make the space more flexible for the residents to define their own brand through usage patterns and emerging lifestyle and urban culture, then make this coherent through later redesign.

The slightly longer version

When I look at the street, I see three major centers that require special consideration: the Suur Ameerika Entrance, the Koidu 80 plats, and the Humanitaargümnaasium / Koidu Park complex.

These three areas require a fundamental rethinking of how we consider public space. For me, this mainly means pushing further towards a car-free city (car-free not in the often misunderstood sense of forbidding cars, but in the sense of not depending on them).

As I understand, the brief asks for an urban space that prioritizes pedestrians/people above all modes of transport. For this reason, these three areas should go even further and fundamentally alter the traffic pattern by reducing through traffic to pedestrians and small vehicles, particularly in the school/park complex.

But also, to a degree, at the Koidu 80 plats, and (considering the proposed tram stop and the overall atmosphere setting character of an area entry) the Suur Ameerika Entrance. All the necessary functions of the street can be relocated elsewhere in the vicinity (parking, drop-off/pick-up around the school, utility vehicles).

The opportunity to combine school space and park space into one unit, uninterrupted unit by car traffic, is an amazing chance to create a truly free room for people to enjoy, reducing stress and noise.

Videviku can easily be restricted to pedestrian and small vehicle traffic at both ends, ending in Koidu, leaving access for residents, utilities, and emergency vehicles. This will create a real plats around Koidu 80 that can be traversed with vehicles along Koidu but does not become a transit thoroughfare between Luha and Tehnika. This should also be considered for Planeedi, Virmalise, Kiire, Videviku, Saturni, and Komeedi. None of the streets need to be traversable over Koidu.

Regarding the Suur Ameerika Entrance, the proposal from the Liikuvusagentuur T-Model 2022 should form the basis for any long-term considerations of how Koidu gets connected. It reasonably demands the reduction of the crossroads to a city- and human-sized dimension without losing any access opportunities. There is also a long-term vision to establish a good public space with facilities for the residents on the plot of the current gas station, another foundational entrance lighthouse project to mark the urban space as Uus Maailm. One could even dream of a proper connection between Kassisaba and Uus Maailm following this current project, and a further reduction of the Endla/Luise Autobahn.

These three outstanding areas will provide ample opportunity for the residents and the city to give purpose to the newly created urban space. Over time, given a certain flexibility and adaptability of people and administration, the newly emerging use patterns will offer “branding” opportunities for the area. And as we are looking at a decade-long development of urban character, we should reject any kind of preconceived branding that the proposals provide. Uus Maailm does not need marketing decoration or glossed-over historicized lamp posts, etc. Sensible preservation of historical details is, of course, preferable.

We need to be given the opportunity to properly use our urban space, and have an open ear and a long-term participatory vision following the much-welcomed redesign of Koidu Street.

Just testing static cms with jekyll

For example, we have TV “seasons” somewhere from about January 10 to Midsummer, or 22 weeks, followed by 11 weeks of summer, then 16 weeks for the fall season, and three weeks of Christmas and New Year.

today in Tallinn a woman got killed by a reversing van on a sidewalk while waiting for the bus… and it’s not even front page news.

this city is so utterly fucked up with normalizing traffic violence, it’s beyond believe.

1st episode

cone of uncertainty

Before thinking the app from top to bottom (fancy well-designed ui and ux) or bottom to top (thought out database model with all attributes and interactions), focus on figuring out if the app can do the most important thing it should do, try that out in some place, like the console and then move on from there.

lib folder

All apps are essentially ETL bodies. We take data from somewhere (api, forms, imported files), do something with it and push it on (api or webhook, html site, etc). The transformation is the thing that is the business logic, the service, the work. That can really start living in a lib module, namespaced. Starting with self.function model functions.

last responsible moment

Have the maximum possibility space by waiting with a decision until the last moment when you have to take it.

sure, we should do studies, and get more data, and have a full view of the …ah, there goes my dad, who is 74 with heart condition… data. we should also make sure that the we really only shut down the areas of the economy that are actually …ah, now my mom’s dead, cause she has worse chances than the new born with its mum who is 24 and also needs a respirator in a hospital with 15 places…affected by the pandemie. after all, we shouldn’t sacrifice the economy on the altar of public health …and now my grandmum is also dead, along with the 20 others in the nursery home where they still had ‘social visits’ to keep up the spirits.

you know what? who cares. some people (loose couple of scientists/doctors, a handful who have come out in the last couple of days, in a profession of what, maybe 10.000, 15.000 professionals, that just do the actual work?) just think they have eaten it with spoons, the wisdom of how to run a massively complex society of tens of millions of people.

but sure, i’m happy that they come out now and speak up, and ask the “really important questions, that yeah, actually, it makes so much sense when you think about it”. truly. it’s a right to spread your opinion, and i cherish that, really. it also helps me to figure out who i don’t care about when i need to focus on keeping my babies healthy, hope the best for my pensioner parents, and watch the images of stashed away coffins with actual dead people.

we are not trapped in here with the coronavirus, the virus is trapped in here with us.

Look at it in this way maybe.

Robot delivery company Starship Technologies made a large number of redundancies last week after feeling the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, website DigiPRO reported.

A company uses an external crisis to restructure their business to the expense of its workers. That is nothing new. That is why other countries have made laws against that kind of behavior towards employees. How is this surprising?