Forest

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

So it is finally that time of the year again: Eurovision time!

It is also going to be the first time I am watching it on the other side of the Atlantic, so I won't have to stay up late to see who wins it.

Believe it or not, I lobbied with a grad student club of my university to organize a Eurovision viewing session in the student lounge and succeeded in convincing people! I don't know how many people will show up, but I hope some European students may be interested, and perhaps some Americans who want to watch this kitschy contest for the first time. (I am waiting for the first American who will be puzzled to see Australia in the contest and will review his/her geography knowledge about the respective locations of Austria and Australia, to be honest.)

We are also going to have a mini-contest among us, where the top 3 people who make the closest predictions about the Top 10 songs will receive a small prize. Based on similar events held in the past, I expect that prize to be a silly scarf with the logo of the university on it. But it doesn't matter. It's a freebie and I like freebies.

Therefore I am here to request Candlewhisper Archive's help in predicting the winner. We all know from last year that he has an uncanny ability to predict the winners (I mean, I personally wouldn't have expected the crazy song of the Israeli chicken lady to snatch the victory), so I am wondering which country is his favorite this time.

Others are welcome to pitch in with their own predictions, of course.

How did you watch it? As an American, I was left only able to see the music videos and none of the live event for most of it, though I did end up using a VPN free trial to get around the YouTube block of the live stream literally moments before they announced the winner...

Thank NSers for introducing me to Eurovision :P

Personally I really liked Norway's - I thought it was extremely catchy, and a nice combination of standard dance-pop and something a little different. I was hoping it would do better, but fifth is a respectable place.

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

We also had trouble streaming it first. Then I suggested the organizer that he installs Opera (the browser) on his computer, since it has built-in VPN. Then we could tune into Eurovision just before the performances started. I am sorry that you missed it though :(

I also liked Norway's song, though it wasn't at the top of my personal rankings. That being said, an interesting fact is that Norway got the highest score from the public votes (291 points) and if there were no jury votes, they would have won.

On top of that....I heard a story that Norway had technical problems during the jury voting (that is actually determined the day before the grand final show) and wasn't allowed a do-over from the organization (EBU) probably causing it to score way lower than in the public vote. I see that I mistook Denmark for Norway in my last post (ouch, painful guess I wasn't on my A-game after the excitement). I also really liked the Norway song but the inclusion of the third singer (to give it some strange cultural relevance about a lost forbidden language) more or less ruined the song for me and it felt manufactured (why does every talent show entry need some sob-story or a message to make it more interesting).

Anyway there is almost always some controversy going on at Eurovision. People are still trying to figure out what exactly happened with the Belarusian voting. The EBU has confirmed that the jurors from Belarus had been dismissed. As per Eurovision rules, it is prohibited for jurors to discuss their votes before the grand final. The votes from Belarus were determined by an “aggregated result” instead. That would suggest that you could expect a middle-of-the-road result instead their results were all over the place and produced some of the biggest outliers ever in the competition. Israel received 0 points from the other 40 jury's...….zero. Yet somehow the Belarussian "aggregated result" gave it their maximum score (12 points). So all 40 professional jury's think the entry from Israel isn't in their top 10 but some behind-the-curtain-statistical-jury has it coming out as the best song in the competition. The fun doesn't end there. The second highest "jury" vote went to Estonia that finished 19th and the third highest score went to Germany that finished 24th. With 10 votes they managed to reward 6 out of 7 from the worst scoring entries (excluding themselves) yet completely missed the top 4. That "aggregated resut"-jury most either have the worst taste in songs ever.....or they just said:"fark this, we don't stand a chance of winning so let's go to the pub and troll these suckers while they come up with some BS-story about an "aggregated result".

EDIT: Americans (depending on their cultural background) seem to gravitate towards the entries from the Scandinavian countries. Including Canada and the U.S. in the competition would probably make the Scandinavian voting block even stronger. Although jury-wise the block this time definitely picked the wrong frontrunner in Sweden and thereby screwed over Norway. Canada could lean more towards France and Belgium though. It would be also fun to see if Australia, Canada and the U.S. would form a new voting block allied with the Scandinavian one and if the U.S. would form an active anti-voting block towards Russia.

EXTRA EDIT: There is post-show a lot to do about the Hatari (Iceland) and Madonna incidents. Especially Madonna gets a lot of heath. The general opinion is that she gave a subpar show (and I am being friendly here) while receiving big bucks and on top of it she caused controversy with the whole flag thing. Many fans are saying "big" U.S.-acts should no longer be included if they are pulling stunts like that. Hatari as a participant was expected to pull something the moment they realised they wouldn't win but Madonna was invited and her "show" was pre-approved by the EBU. If you are planning on doing something like that she should have made that clear to the organization or she should have declined the offer. This was a very dumb move on her part and she has lost a lot of sympathy amongst the Eurovision-fans.

…..and yet still "it is all about the music".

I thought it time Mont come home. Venison stew anyone? ^-^

Turbeaux wrote:

Welcome back! Are you going to transfer your WA membership back to this nation? I will pass on the stew but if you have any vegetables I will enthusiastically accept those!

No. I’m content with Raccoon Creek being my primary nation. It’s been enjoyable developing a nation from the ground up again. Absolutely, I’ve got potatoes, carrots and onions.

Speaking of developing a nation I’ve noticed a quirk with employment. I’ve been answering issues to achieve a Scandinavian-capitalistic style economy. From past experience and from answering issues the past several months, the results of my issues have led to drops in employment when answering capitalistically. But when I take the socialistic approach I find employment rises exponentially. Could the issues editors give me insight into this perhaps?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/huawei-regularly-tried-to-steal-apple-trade-secrets/

If this is indeed true, then that's no way to be, Huawei... ;)

Ok, puns aside, this is what I would expect from companies and corporations that are becoming too cocky and would go to shady tactics to win. But I have to ask them, "At what cost that you are willing to distance yourself from the companies that potentially can hurt you back, as well as with the customer base that has learned about your antics?"

And to think that I nearly bought a Huawei P30 because of how hyped the camera is, but at the end of the day, I'm thankful that I am looking at other options. At the same time, I am not going to be a Luddite or become paranoid with the technology, but of course, we can always take simple steps along the way to ensure that privacy is still around and all that fluff.

As for myself personally, I love my privacy, but at the same time, I have been so ingrained with all the tech stuff that ultimately, I just am going to keep a low profile if needed (though I'm saying this as I have already put up a face of myself a few times even on NS. :P)