Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: What's Going on in Europe (Read 257473 times)

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #450 –
So... I see Australia is also part of the European song contest?
Bearded transvestites conquers the world...  :faint:
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #451 –
Maybe Australia can join the EU to replace the UK?

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #452 –
Stockholm is an East European capital,  and all the major East European countries won, Ukraine, Australia and Russia. Me, I happened to leave the Stockholm area for Oslo before the final, reentering Sweden just when it finished. ESC may be a paragon of style, poise and restraint,  but I can't see how anyone can watch more than a few minutes at a time,  never mind the whole program. The final alone is nearly four hours.

Yes,  most everything is on YouTube,  including guides, and watching people watching people watching it. Here people from China,  the next likely East European country to join, have their say. Good enough sample of the genre.

https://youtu.be/koQ5JX4xQsk

Or simply watch this,  from yesterday:

https://youtu.be/aMgW54HBOS0

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #453 –
I prefer the classics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FsVeMz1F5c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=447LKTYDv4Y

(Actually I think they won with the English, worse version.)

And of course there's the modern classic by Lordi, although I've always thought the band peaked with their '04 album The Monsterican Dream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAh9NRGNhUU

Then there's this year's winner, said to be an important but not necessarily a good song. In any case it's much better than Russia's poppy trash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iExW72v0BSw

Quote from: jax on
Or simply watch this,  from yesterday:
Beats most of the entries. :right:

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #454 –
Used to watch bits of it but gave up a while ago. It is more about flashing lights, dancing, trying to appear different and is mainly a load of rubbish.

One outstanding and utterly ridiculous basic thing since the early days raises a question of what the H Israel is doing un it. When I went to bed last night it was still in the Middle east.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #455 –
Quote from: ersi on
The Eurovision song contest ended up making a political statement against Russia. The fact that this occurred by means of popular voting may mean something, even though I doubt it will have any effect on the political arena.
Your statement about popular voting against Russia is misleading to say the least.
If it were only the popular voting, Russia would have won the ESC. That's exactly the opposite of your interpretation. :)
Not popular voting but the jury of the respective countries made a political statement against Russia.
source

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #456 –
Neither is a "popular vote". One is by SMS/app (max. 20 votes per phone number), one is by "professional" jury, the results were merged earlier and now they are presented separately, for treble the excitement.

The bitching afterwards is the fun part of ESC. You don't have to actually watch the entries to discuss voting systems and voting results, which is much more interesting than the competition. As Eurovision themselves headlined, Australia won the jury vote, Russia won the televote, and Ukraine won the combined vote.


Eurovision 2016 Results: Voting & Points

Sweden's song is supposedly most downloaded, which you would think is a more honest assessment of popularity. Australia's is according to some self-elected judges the "best" song, which would be hard to determine without actually having to watch the songs, and it depends where these judges of quality are geographically and culturally.

Televoting is by far easiest to fix, probably not by nations, but it could be tempting for record companies. If you were to want to fix the result, it would make sense to prefer smaller countries (fewer votes total, meaning fewer votes to add). You would have to be rather subtle about it, an excessive number of televotes would likely trigger some circuit-breaker (and cost a lot of money).

In principle it could be cheaper to bribe the juries, but that is, to put it mildly, a higher risk strategy. Clearly the juries are biased, otherwise there would be no talk about voting blocks. It would be interesting to have the data mined to see if anything organised is going on for or against a country or a song. There is a much simpler explanation: The diaspora.


If we take the top 10 by final position (and difference relative to the outcome of a pure jury vote)[and to televote, for completeness]:

  • Ukraine (+1)[+1]
  • Australia (-1)[+2]
  • Russia (+2)[-1]
  • Bulgaria (+3)[+1]
  • Sweden (+4)[+1]
  • France (-3)[+3]
  • Armenia (+3)[0]
  • Poland (+17)[-5]
  • Lithuania (+3)[+1]
  • Belgium (-4)[+6]

Neither jury nor televote can vote for the country they live in, but emigrant televoters can vote for their country of origin. The most extreme case is Poland.

This is the list of countries that gave Poland, Russia, and Ukraine 12 or 10 points (jury votes in parenthesis):

Poland got 12 telepoints in the following countries: Austria (0), Belgium (0)
Poland got 10 in: Germany (0), Iceland (0), Ireland (0), Netherlands (0), Norway (1), Sweden (0), UK (0)

Russia got 12 telepoints in the following countries: Armenia (2), Azerbaijan (12), Belarus (12), Bulgaria (6), Estonia (0), Germany (0), Latvia (7), Moldova (7), Serbia (1), Ukraine (0)
Russia got 10 in: Cyprus (12), Czechia (0), Greece (12), Hungary (0), Israel (0), Malta (7), Montenegro (8 ), San Marino (7), Slovenia (0)

Ukraine got 12 telepoints in the following countries: Czechia (0), Finland (0), Hungary (0), Italy (10), Poland (12), San Marino (12)
Ukraine got 10 in: Armenia (0), Austria (0), Azerbaijan (10), Belarus (7), Bulgaria (0), Croatia (0), France (0), Georgia (12), Latvia (12), Lithuania (8 ), Moldova (12), Russia (0)

Countries with a large Polish, Russian, Ukrainian diaspora are the ones that tend to give a high televote to Poland, Russia, Ukraine.

It's not a perfect match, and countries like Sweden, with a minuscule diaspora, rack up a high televote as well. And while a country like Czechia hasn't exported quite as many of its inhabitants as Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania (disqualified for not having paid the bill), a significant number works outside the Czech border, and they got next to no televotes. 

Comparing with (jury votes) clearly the Russian and Ukrainian entries have fan countries, with high televote and jury score.

There is very little to indicate a political campaign to exclude Russia and promote Ukraine. In general Russia and Ukraine tend to group, those who vote for Ukraine also vote for Russia and vice versa, but there are countries where the support of one but not the other is very clear, and in those cases it is probably political rather than cultural or demographic. This goes particularly for Georgia and Poland. Though a country like Sweden, also strongly on Ukraine's side politically, gave more votes to Russia than Ukraine. Perhaps they liked the song. Iceland gave nothing to Ukraine and the fourth best score to Russia.


This is all based on ranking. To get more useful and reliable results the actual scores, and not the relative rankings, should be compared, preferably with year series. I'm not going to do that.

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #457 –
Quote from: krake on
Your statement about popular voting against Russia is misleading to say the least.
If it were only the popular voting, Russia would have won the ESC. That's exactly the opposite of your interpretation. :)
I picked up the interpretation from the news. I didn't watch the show myself. But you are right that I must have messed something up when I was listening to the news. In the other reports I listened to, they put it the way you do.

It would be interesting to see how Russian TV takes it.

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #458 –
I have essentially given up on the whole thing and as I said it is all about dancing about, wearing costumes, trying to look more or less daft and so on. The music plays second fiddle and shows how poor general singing is these days. I have had a better time in Edinburgh on a dashed wet day than this lot of cobblers and nonsense. A waste of time and money.
"Quit you like men:be strong"
 

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #459 –
This article could be useful for the uninformed http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/why-global-migration-statistics-do-not-add-up-a-1090736.html

It's a bit sensationalist in its setup, but according to the article itself that's merely because of the UN and its unlikely allies, right-wing populists:

Quote
It's a vicious circle. The UN needs money and is constantly sounding the alarm. But its dramatizations create more fear than a willingness to help in the individual countries and the public. They also lead the paradoxical situation that actors on the left and right sides of the political spectrum use the same blustering rhetoric to talk about migration. Aid organizations and the left are fueling the fire because they want to inspire pity. Right-wing populists are sounding the same tune because they want to generate fear. It's just the truth that is hard to sell.

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #460 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Aid organizations and the left are fueling the fire because they want to inspire pity. Right-wing populists are sounding the same tune because they want to generate fear.
And who is the idiot, neither from leftists wanting pity, or rightist wanting fear, that says so? a middle center wanting indifference?
Or is it Der Spiegel an humanitarian organization? What is the truth?
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #462 –
Quote from: Belfrager on
Bearded transvestites conquers the world..
They did? At least that's funny :)
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #463 –
Yes colonel it does so you keep hope alive boy.  :happy:
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #465 –
While you can find Swedish kissers, they are heavy into hugging.

Why I can't embrace Sweden's obsession with hugging

It's a fairly new, on the other hand "hug" is supposedly a word of Norse origin. Then again "hugge" today means to chop, as with an axe, in modern Scandinavian. 

Treehugger (trehugger) would thus mean somebody chopping down a tree. (The actual word for lumberjack is "thimber hugger" though.)

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #468 –
And damn bagpipes as well........
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #470 –
Isn't it redundant to write a scifi of Trump? I mean he seems to have come from science fiction in the first place :left:
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #471 –
It takes place in a Walloon bar, so maybe, maybe not. :P

Quote
- Malou, you find normal that declares war on the United States? We become allied with Islamic countries?
- Islamic, it must not exaggerate, moderates the boss. We are not allied with the Caliphate and Daesh nonetheless.
- Yes, but Pakistan, Chechnya, Iran and even Russia and North Korea. We went with the terrorists or something?
- Should you understand that the struggle for survival of the planet there! Trump express burn gas fields to provoke us, replica man whose nostrils populated oily black hair quivering with anger. Experts agree: global warming can not be stopped.
- Ben precisely, if it can be stopped, why go kill? Malou huh?
- To not do worse, here! The Tsunami of Knokke, you think it was not enough?

It also touches on Belgium itself:
Quote
- By the way, is that they are still negotiating a government or is it that they are all from Switzerland as the French Parliament? meets his sidekick.
- No idea. But I think it does matter much ...

Malou seems to reflect a moment.

- But if there is no government, which voted the fact that we declared war on the United States? Because it's fine to discuss the decision is made, right?

The man nods.
(It's good enough that I won't bother correcting it.)

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #473 –
Come on Frenzie, wasn't Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave mistake enough to stop with dreams that "work are for computers and life for human beings"?
Computers are to enslave human beings, period.

I see...many of you work for the computer/software industry.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's Going on in Europe

Reply #474 –
The only thing I directly imply without further commentary is that I find it interesting. But enslavement to whom? Or perhaps better, how is it worse than the currently existing form of wage slavery?