Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10hr ago
Confusingly.
Basically, Eurovision has two separate votes: televote (ie. conducted among viewers) and jury vote. Both are organized country by country, with both the televotes and the juries awarding a maximum of twelve points to the top-voted country, 10 points to the second most voted, and then 8, 7, 6, 5 etc. to the next ones.
The implicit purpose of the jury vote can often specifically negate the televote when there's a feeling a "non-preferred" song (typically one that seems too much like a comedy entry and not like a traditional Eurovision winner ballad) might win (like last year...), so it's possible that Israel might, for instance, win the televote and not the jury vote. Then again it might also do quite well in the jury vote, Israel has not been a particularly bad performer there either in the previous contests, from what I've understood.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10hr ago
162 million people The 2023 Eurovision Song Contest, organized by the European Broadcasting Union, reached 162 million people over the 3 live shows across 38 public service media markets.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2d ago
Okay, can you list the "etc.", "etc.", and "etc."? Because whenever I've seen this claim the reference point is always the SCUM Manifesto, and that sort of a thing kind of makes one think there are, in fact, no other reference points.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
It's already been nearly a decade since mainstream economists stopped trying to say MMT is wrong, and switched to "we knew that already"
This might also be because talking with MMT'ers is often a constant exercise of dealing with motte-and-baileying with risible radical claims and commonsense stuff described in somewhat different words from usual.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4d ago
The smartphone map features are genuinely useful and I use them all the time to figure out what bus I need to take where, for example.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
8d ago
The first answer to come to my mind on "Who is the most famous woman in history apart from Virgin Mary" was Cleopatra, though Queen Elizabeth II would be a great answer.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
8d ago
Most vegans I know aren't particularly fond of Impossible Burgers and such, or other recent "meat imitation products" (non-meatish meat substitutes like tofu are another matter). The supposed constituency is probably "vegan-curious" hipsters who occasionally cook non-meat dishes, though it hasn't taken hold of them, either.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
9d ago
The most famous woman in the history of the world would be Virgin Mary, I believe.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10d ago
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10d ago
Not to forget that just five years ago very few people would have considered there to be anything strange or political about a well-known American celebrity cutting an ad for a pharma company.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11d ago
I don't think they were, in the context of the great 90s/00s creationism/evolution online wars. The race/ethnicity culture war was at a low ebb and a lot of creationist types talking about this subject probably genuinely conceived themselves as, at least, non-racists if not anti-racists.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11d ago
I actually thought that the Civil War movie itself remarkably represented a CRPG. Quoting from a post I made on the basis of ACX comments:
I kept thinking about how this would still provide a good setting for a computer role-playing game (CRPG) (why are there comparatively few CRPGs situated in a present-day-style wartime setting?), and it then struck me that the plot, such as it was, was a CRPG plot already.
We start with a water-riot-based tutorial where we get a refresher on how to use action points, take photos, communicate and even transfer an item to a party member. Then, at the hotel, the main quest starts, and the party is assembled.
An early random encounter demonstrates that one party member is underexperienced or has the wrong skillset, and the narrative has told us that the main quest's final encounter is going to be difficult, so the party decides to grind side quests for levels. They even visit a literal shop and a literal rest site.
During one of the side quests the party encounters an enemy, a Nazi played well by Jesse Plemons, that's a bit too high for their current levels, so in addition to two temporary party members who were hardcoded to be killed anyway, they lose one of the main party members. After this, they find out that the main quest's time limit has run out and they're locked out of the best ending. However, the story graciously lets them go through the final battle for another ending.
Alex Garland has served as a video game writer as well, so I guess it sticks.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11d ago
I'd guess that marriage and owning a house are generally somewhat correlated here, but I know a plenty of married couples with kids who rent.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11d ago
The reason being, historical revisionism is woke people’s favourite pastime.
Should be noted this isn't just a woke pasttime. Every culture warrior enjoys attacking the other side's guys. Sometimes (many times) same figures will get flack from the both sides. I've read countless right-wing articles and posts about how FDR was a commie symphatizer or JFK and LBJ and MLK were cheaters or (getting into Christian conservatives) how Darwin and Margaret Sanger were racists or (getting to more commie side of things) how Marx was personally filthy or Lenin continously said and did psycho things. I mean, I had thought of using the almost obsessive focus on Che Guevara, a figure more for the past generations (I have seen many more "revisions" of Che's history online than actual Che shirts) as an example, but you did it yourself! And during the War on Terror, of course, talking about it online, one couldn't avoid hearing about Mohammed and Aisha. One gets the idea.
Of course the conservatives would not think in the terms of progress and a "right side of history" as much, the point here is tearing down the other side's totemic figures with a gusto is a fairly natural part of the culture war.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
12d ago
Yeah, but it manages to say fairly little about photography, either, and certainly nothing that needed the fictional second US civil war backdrop to say.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
12d ago
If it somehow turned out to be true, the most embarrassed party would probably be Fidel Castro, in afterlife. A son that hides from the right wing instead of doing this?
I went to see Civil War to a small local movie theater with friends yesterday. It was mostly a confusing experience.
Spoilers:
I knew that the movie would try to present an "second American civil war" without trying to get too political - a befuddling decision itself - but the movie doesn't really commit to any narrative.
Is the WF justified in rebelling against the authoritarian president? Maybe? They vaguely indicate that the president is bad (he's on a third term!), but the loyalist forces are not shown doing anything particularly bad (unless you count that fed riot cops are tetchy in a situation where a suicide bomber might strike at any moment), and all the war crimes are committed by WF or the presumably WF-affliated Hawaiian shirt irregulars who execute surrendered uniformed troops. But since there's no weight to either side it's not really a "war is hell, both sides are bad" thing either.
Are they trying to portray Wagner Moura's character as someone who is doing a toxic masculinity? Maybe? Is it bad that the one community has decided to go on conducting life as normal expect with snipers on roofs? Maybe? The clearest narrative ark is the Kirsten Dunst character being on a suicide run after "losing her faith in journalism" (lol) and, in the end, willing her photography mojo to Cailee Spaeny figuratively through the lens of a camera, but since we've established that photojournalism is basically useless for anything besides taking cool photos and seeking thrills, we should we care?
The only scene with actual tension is the one with Jesse Plemons and his racist militia, and that's partly because Jesse Plemons is a great actor (some said during Breaking Bad that Jesse Plemons is a dollar store Matt Damon, I argue that eventually we'll see Matt Damon properly as a dollar store Jesse Plemons), but also in large part because these guys at least seem to hold an actual ideology and be actually doing things that happen in actual civil wars, ie. running a death squad on ethnic/religious basis. I've seen some indicate that the whole rest of the movie is basically a long intro and outro to the Jesse Plemons scene.
It was probably a good idea for them to make a war movie about reporters. Since many journalists are a obsessed with the idea of their social relevance, getting 5 stars in magazines doesn't seem particularly hard, especially since I don't think the movie was advertised as concentrating as heavily on journalism as it was.
2.5/5, 2 for some cool shots and for not being too long (though you could have easily cropped out half a hour by cutting back on some early stuff and the unnecessarily long DC fight scene) and 0.5 extra for the Jesse Plemons scene.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
When I started lifting I got a PT who gave me a good routine, and when I ran the program he gave me through ChatGPT it said it’s a good programme with nothing much to add.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
Well, the Tories are hardly in a position to propose a solution to expensive real estate, as (as far as I've understood) their chief constituency still continues to be the sort of middle-class types who have owned their home for decades (perhaps specifically because of Thatcher and right-to-buy). If you're in such a situation, housing prices skyrocketing are a feature, not a bug. I don't know much about the Reform Party, but my impression is Tories but even more Brexit-y, and the Brexit, in addition to doing nothing about the housing problem (especially now that we know that the reduction in EU immigrants just led to replacement with non-EU immigrants with dividends), is generally massively unpopular with the youth, perhaps making a certain generation gone for good (or gone without massive efforts) for the Tories.
Also, even more speculatively, housing is an issue that can be exploited both by the left and the right, and I'd guess that the left-wing housing voters would be the ones who have managed to snag a place for rent in a major city and now want rent control to keep the rent from skyrocketing out of their reach, and the right-wing ones would be the ones who are living in a remote suburb or a dying rural region, want to move to a city, and want less immigrants so that the waiting list would eventually reach their number. Maybe the green belts mean there are less such suburban housing voters? Are the green belts even a thing any more?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
Hell, Bernie Sanders came out swinging this week:
Should be noted here that while Bernie has rather tendentiously called for a ceasefire (while saying the same letter that the war against Hamas in itself was justified), saying that Netanyahu is bad is not the same as saying that the war is bad. Presumably something like a half of Israelis would simultaneously say that Netanyahu is bad while the war is good.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
At least the Finns Party has an interesting demographic regarding religious views: at least a while back, they're the most popular among "no religion" types but also the most popular among the "strongly religious" types, particularly those who belong to Protestant churces outside the Lutheran quasi-state-chuch. The party itself has MPs ranging from precisely such committed Pentecostals etc. to atheists: in one of the larger cities, they even have a council member who (probably mostly for reasons of edginess) has defined himself as a Satanist.
All of these cooperate rather easily, though, since they all share the same focus on immigration, and the party itself is mostly rather secular in both its policies and its communications.
While youth tend to be mostly secular, the ones who are strongly religious will tend to mostly congregate to non-Lutheran movements (there have been several stories in media, like this one, about a new trend of young men joining charismatic groups or Orthodoxy, for instance, the latter of which I can anecdotally confirm noticing myself).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
Yeah, this is probably a large factor. One of the main splits in Continental Europe is less that "young are right, olds are left", but rather that the olds vote for traditional boomer parties (social democrats and Christian democrats, and equivalents) and youngs vote for new "challenger" parties (right-wing populists and greens/new left parties, often split by gender). As dissatisfaction with the pensioner-focused boomer parties that wish to stay the course even while Europe is mired in 15 years of no growth and little development grows, the right-wing populist parties derive particular benefits due to several reasons (center-right parties have generally tended to be a bit more popular than center-left ones, right-wing populists are better at appearing to center-left voters than challenger left parties to center-right ones, the Greens in particular have become quite "pro-system" in recent decades etc.)
The actual instability in many continental (ie. usually PR-using) countries is less due to the small parties (they're often easy to ignore - they're small!) and more because there are major parties that are politically toxic (due to being extreme right or extreme left, or separatists) and thus basically almost automatically out of the government, which thus forces the rest of the parties into ideologically amorphous, unstable coalitions, or alternatively leads o the creation of large ideologically amorphous, unstable "system parties" (like the Italian Christian Democrats, the hegemonic party due to the main opposition being the Communists who were kept out of the government) where political barons bring down governments and cut each other down due to byzantine political machinations or simply due to spite.
The reason why those parties exist is because there are or were deeper systemic factors in those countries leading to large portions of population choosing such extreme or separatist parties. The Weimar Republic was not unstable because of its electoral system but simply because huge portions of the German population distrusted democracy and supported antidemocratic parties like the Communist, Nazis and the DNVP. If unstable countries were using FPTP, the same factors would just express themselves otherwise; the extreme left and right would eventually affect and radicalize the mainstream parties, and separatist/ethnic parties are usually concentrated enough to elect MPs even in FPTP systems.
The main FPTP-using countries, ie. Anglo countries, have been stable because they have been wealthy and have had longlasting liberal democratic cultures with powerful mechanisms encouraging stability. Nevertheless, even they've seen increasing destabilization lately, and that destabilization has then channeled itself in different ways, so you have the Trump presidency, Corbyn leadership in Labour and the Brexit.
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