The Off Topic Topic

[Grey Fox]

2021's Azerbaijan Mata Hari was that too. Didn't go anywhere.

[Duque de Bragança]

So, Spain held its Eurovision candidate selection contest this past weekend. Non-shockingly, the jury selected the most boring act possible.

The two favorites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_WqBxwAbJY&ab_channel=RTVEM%C3%BAsica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uGN9efcACw&ab_channel=RTVEM%C3%BAsica

The winner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO2yGXVQCfo&ab_channel=RTVEM%C3%BAsica

Oh man, people went absolutely nuts with this over here, if you checked any form of social media it's as if notihng else was happening. And of course people are not happy at all with the result, reactions go from the purely butthurt to conspiracy theories about nefarious TVE plots.

Do they attempt to rule or manipulate the world through Eurovision? A friend of mine asked; 

[The Larch]

So, Spain held its Eurovision candidate selection contest this past weekend. Non-shockingly, the jury selected the most boring act possible.

The two favorites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_WqBxwAbJY&ab_channel=RTVEM%C3%BAsica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uGN9efcACw&ab_channel=RTVEM%C3%BAsica

The winner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO2yGXVQCfo&ab_channel=RTVEM%C3%BAsica

Oh man, people went absolutely nuts with this over here, if you checked any form of social media it's as if notihng else was happening. And of course people are not happy at all with the result, reactions go from the purely butthurt to conspiracy theories about nefarious TVE plots.

Do they attempt to rule or manipulate the world through Eurovision? A friend of mine asked; 

The scope is much more limited, according to the conspiracies TVE simply wants to keep sending whoever they want, but with a veneer of (ultimately pointless) public participation to back it up.

[Sheilbh]

In this case the accusation to the professional jury (all of them veterans of the industry who have been involved with Eurovision in some capacity for years) is more of corporatism/insiderism, as one of its members seems to be a long time colleague of the eventual winner and the selected song is more of the Eurovision "format" (ie, written by a platoon of mercenary international songwriters and performed by a nobody), while the other two had their own personality and style (and were written by the performers themselves).

Ah interesting. Here I think we often get a jury run by the BBC with someone old X Factor judge like Gary Barlow who clearly think they're above Eurovision.

One of the "conspiracy" theories going on is that TVE precisely want to avoid the "chaos" of purely popular voting, as the last time they did that (2008) the audience selected a troll comedy act that apparently rubbed the Spanish organizers the wrong way massively. It was Spain's best performance in a long time (and the song itself was a novelty hit as well), but that was irrelevant for TVE.

Ah the Dustin the Turkey moment

Anyway I'm really looking forward to the Ukraine v Russia stuff in this year's Eurovision - as long as it's just on Eurovision The 2014 Eurovision after Putin's anti-gay laws and the invasion of Crimea was the most politically charged in years - and a banger won

[The Larch]

In this case the accusation to the professional jury (all of them veterans of the industry who have been involved with Eurovision in some capacity for years) is more of corporatism/insiderism, as one of its members seems to be a long time colleague of the eventual winner and the selected song is more of the Eurovision "format" (ie, written by a platoon of mercenary international songwriters and performed by a nobody), while the other two had their own personality and style (and were written by the performers themselves).

Ah interesting. Here I think we often get a jury run by the BBC with someone old X Factor judge like Gary Barlow who clearly think they're above Eurovision.

What they did was a bit of a first, as this was the 1st time that this particular format was employed. 50% of the final points would come from the "professional jury", that was formed by 3 spaniards (TVE's head of its music department, a coreographer and a vocal coach, all of them with previous experience regarding Eurovision one way or the other) and 2 foreigners (the head of Iceland's Eurovision comittee and an Austrian artistic director of past Eurovision events), and the other 50% from two types of popular voting, half of it direct popular voting and the other half from the voting of a selected group of people.

One of the "conspiracy" theories going on is that TVE precisely want to avoid the "chaos" of purely popular voting, as the last time they did that (2008) the audience selected a troll comedy act that apparently rubbed the Spanish organizers the wrong way massively. It was Spain's best performance in a long time (and the song itself was a novelty hit as well), but that was irrelevant for TVE.

Ah the Dustin the Turkey moment

Yup, something like that.  Apparently the TVE bigwigs considered it a huge embarrassment, even if the act was somehow successful.

[celedhring]

So, Spain's largest trade union has just issued a statement demanding the cancellation of the results of the contest and that all documents pertaining to the election of the jury and and the jury's deliberations be released to the public.

It's extraordinary. 

[Jacob]

What they did was a bit of a first, as this was the 1st time that this particular format was employed. 50% of the final points would come from the "professional jury", that was formed by 3 spaniards (TVE's head of its music department, a coreographer and a vocal coach, all of them with previous experience regarding Eurovision one way or the other) and 2 foreigners (the head of Iceland's Eurovision comittee and an Austrian artistic director of past Eurovision events), and the other 50% from two types of popular voting, half of it direct popular voting and the other half from the voting of a selected group of people.

Ah... Hong Kong style democracy. No doubt they'll change the rules if they dislike the outcome.

[The Larch]

So, Spain's largest trade union has just issued a statement demanding the cancellation of the results of the contest and that all documents pertaining to the election of the jury and and the jury's deliberations be released to the public.

It's extraordinary. 

I just read that there's going to be questioning on parliament on the topic and calls by political groups there to investigate any possible "irregularities". 

[HVC]

... Europe is weird

[Sheilbh]

So, Spain's largest trade union has just issued a statement demanding the cancellation of the results of the contest and that all documents pertaining to the election of the jury and and the jury's deliberations be released to the public.

It's extraordinary. 

I just read that there's going to be questioning on parliament on the topic and calls by political groups there to investigate any possible "irregularities". 

Europe: "Seems weird that the UK's having a massive political fight over some parties."
Spain: "Hold my beer."

[Duque de Bragança]

So, Spain's largest trade union has just issued a statement demanding the cancellation of the results of the contest and that all documents pertaining to the election of the jury and and the jury's deliberations be released to the public.

It's extraordinary. 

I just read that there's going to be questioning on parliament on the topic and calls by political groups there to investigate any possible "irregularities". 

And I thought people only cared about Eurovision in Scandinavia, plus Eastern Europe for political reasons.

Spain, the Sweden of Iberia, for all bad aspects only. 

[The Larch]

It's not as if it's going to paralyze the political life of the country, I guess that at most it will keep whichever parlamentary comission is in charge of supervising TVE busy for a bit. I mean, if this had taken place in a private station not a finger would be lifted, but the whole stuff was done with public money (TVE is a public corporation after all), so there's a role that politicians have to fulfill, however silly the reason for it is.

[Syt]

Been looking at the #DeleteSpotify thing over the Joe Rogan stuff. Sure, not a fan of them having him on, but they'll also not kicking him off. They paid a ton of money to have him exclusively, and they're not going to terminate the contract without a watertight clause, because that'll probably be a costly legal battle and/or settlement.

Anyways, thought I'd look at alternatives anyways, because I've not done comparisons for streaming services in years. And quite honestly, if you want a similar sized library you need to pick your poison. There's obviously Apple, Google/YouTube and Amazon who each have their own baggage in some way. Then there's Tidal, which is owned by Block, Inc., where Jack Dorsey is the biggest shareholder. Deezer, owned by Accept Industries which is owned by the charming individual Len Blavatnik. And finally Qobuz, which is owned by Quebecor and Nabuboto which are a bit harder to research in a 1 minute Google search) )

[insert "no ethical consumption under corporate capitalism" rant here? ]

[Grey Fox]

I didn't know Quebecor owned an international version of it's streaming services. This explains so much.

Quebecor's controlling share holder is an anti-union SOB.

[Josquius]

A thought. You hear a lot these days about the damaging effects of porn on kids, the scandal of its easy availability, etc... Lots of efforts to setup mandatory porn blocks which never seem to get anywhere.
Banning porn is of course a terrible, stupid idea.
Though we really should be looking at setting up pretty strict bans on porn advertising. It worked for fags. Albeit in a very different context.
It just annoys me to no end the amount of "hot cam girls!" and "hi I'm in random village near your ip and want to shag!" adverts all over the net.