#UP Opinion Poll 2022

[ravenstargames]

✦ IMPORTANT! ARTSTYLE / SPRITES POLL!

CHECK OUR NEW SPRITES' UPDATE HERE!

And we begin the week taking the big guns out for a walk!

As some of you may know, we have been planning an artstyle change for our sprites.

Our current sprites are 2 years old. Meaning, the art of our dear artist, Raquel, has changed and improved a lot in the past 2 years of development. She doesn't feel like our current sprites reflect her abilities and her style anymore, and she wouldn't feel truly comfortable working further on them in their current state, as she believes they can be hugely improved.

However, we know a lot of you decided to support us because of our sprites. We know "improving" is not objective, and we don't want you to feel like you have no say in this! It's a big change, after all.

As the director, I want to ensure Raquel feels comfortable and happy working on our characters, but we also want to value y'all's opinion.

Hence, the poll below, where you'll be able to vote if you'd be happy with this change or not.

Raquel has been working on two examples of how the new sprites would look, using Gael and Xal, so you all can give us your opinion. Also, these are WIPs, so if you see any mistake, don't worry!

(Left, Xal's sprite, 2022. Right, Xal's sprite, 2024)

(Left, Gael's sprite, 2022. Right, Gael's sprite, 2024)

And a close-up of their faces!

As always, feel free to contact us anywhere with your thoughts, opinions, worries, etc. We are always here to hear you all out, so don't be scared of being honest with what you want and think.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully respond to these anon messages. I work in dc w a fairly wonky set and i cant overstate how haunted the DC Professional Thought Havers are by the spectre of the "low propensity voter." I think these ppl (myself included LOL) thought we had everything figured out ahead of the 2016 elections and then never recovered from the way it ended up going......i feel like in all the years that followed.....the liberal bubbles.....the coastal elites.......the hillbilly elegies......the real america....the ohio diners....the pennsylvania diners.......the polls......the 2020 horserace....while part of an earnest attempt to understand What Happened, were primarily self-indulgent, self-flagellation for being "out of touch" bc of a self-diagnosed "elite" status that then turned into ANOTHER myopic view of the world, just opposite, where the "libs" are hapless and everyone else remotely to the left are primarily victims to the unstoppable supernatural forces of the Right. Then in 2020 the narrative flipped AGAIN and once again, instead of taking the opportunity to expand a worldview and having the bravery to confront their own shortcomings, the opinion havers and wonks and beltway pressers have decided to groupthink their way into writing off democracy altogether. Its BEYOND frustrating to see! Like damn volunteer at a soup kitchen or smthn instead of being obsessed w the fact that i vote lol

Yes, and there are several reasons for that. First, despite all the factors that contributed to Trump's shock win in 2016 (anti-Clintonism, white backlash to Obama, general low voter enthusiasm, Russian disinformation, etc) we should never forget that until James Comey decided to announce 10 days before the election that he was reopening the EEEEEEEMAILS case, even though we all knew there was nothing there, she was leading fairly comfortably in the polls. And while we will never know how the 2016 election would have gone without that, which imho was one of the most unforgivable acts of blatant sabotage by a public official in American history, it's also true that we saw her poll averages start sliding almost in real time, as people who hadn't really been keen on voting for her anyway decided firmly not to and Trump was able to scrape out 16,000 votes across PA, MI, and WI to take the Electoral College. Which... we all remember how we felt that night, right? (Or in my case, early morning, since I was overseas?) We don't, we really, really don't want to feel that way again. Just saying.

As such, the media (which had already beat up Clinton nonstop during the BUT HER EEEEEMAILS saga) drastically overcorrected and as you say, began writing endless angsty handwringing pieces about Trump Voters in Rural Ohio Diners and giving endless sympathetic airtime to how "economically left behind" they felt, regardless of the fact that open racism, especially Obama backlash, was and remains the principal animating feature of Republican politics (since their only economic platform is that which makes very rich people even richer and Democratic economic policies are the only ones actually targeted at helping ordinary people). The hangover was so strong that even when Democrats had a massive 2018 midterm result and flipped the House blue for the first time since the post-ACA backlash lost it in 2010, the Conventional Wisdom was now beyond any doubt that Democrats were doomed for a generation or something, and not that Trump had squeaked out a fluky win (while losing the popular vote) due to endless Russian/Comey/third party-etc interference and wasn't actually that powerful. Even in 2020 when Biden was leading fairly steadily and things were going to hell with Covid, etc. etc. TRUMP IS UNSTOPPABLE, TRUMP IS GOING TO WIN.

(And now. Like. I know Trump thinks Trump won in 2020, as do a large majority of his cultists, but that doesn't mean he did.)

Even after that, when Roe went down in 2022, that made no difference to the RED WAVE COMING!!! narrative, and the amount of smug white male pundits insisting that abortion just wasn't very important and people weren't going to base their entire vote on it reached truly disgusting levels. We're now seeing the same thing with the constant "people won't vote for democracy and/or abortion rights" blast, when as you say, this narrative has just been completely made the fuck up by a lot of groupthinking DC media who are determined that this time, Trump really is going to win and then they get to be principled chroniclers in opposition or something. Not to mention, the basic principle of "democracy and abortion rights are good" do in fact win by thumping margins every time they're on the ballot, including in deep red states. But there is literally not a single piece of empirical evidence despite the massive amounts of it supporting the truth (i.e. that Democrats are doing historically well in competitive elections since 2018 and there's not really a major reason to think this will change in 2024) that will get the media to change the "Democrats in disarray and Biden Iz Doomed" horserace BS they so love. They don't like Biden because he's boring and competent and just does the job without being insane, because it's totally a great idea to treat American government like a reality show! (Recall the infamous comment by the CBS CEO who literally said that Trump was bad for America but great for CBS, because he pulled in high ratings and therefore lots of money and visibility for CBS. We live in the worst timeline.)

As such, the mainstream media has a vendetta against Biden, is determined that this time Trump is super definitely going to win and everyone will see how genius they are, and not-so-secretly wants Trump back because a) he's good for money and ratings, and b) because the media conglomerations are owned by oligarchs who have a vested interest in making sure that Democrats and their policies never get too popular. Notice how the once self-proclaimed centrist independent Elon Musk has turned into a rabidly alt-right fanboy ever since the Democrats really got serious about taxing billionaires as a key part of their platform. Likewise, insisting that Biden Iz Doomed makes Democrats nervous (and thus more likely to tune in) and Republicans gleeful (and thus more likely to tune in), so there's literally no incentive for the media to even try to report things accurately. You could create a very different narrative of the 2024 election if you just remotely bothered to write about things that have actually happened as they have actually taken place, rather than bending over backward to insist that Biden being four years older than Trump is a worse crime than 91 felony indictments, 2 impeachments, 1 insurrection, 450 million dollars and counting in punitive jury verdicts, more major criminal trials coming down the pipe, and just demonstrably being the worst human being alive in so many ways. I mean. Wow.

The good news, as I said in my other post, is that when people actually vote, these utter bullshit narratives get routinely blown out of the water, and that's a good thing. Because it turns out that unlike Super Smart Beltway Pundits' Super Smart Predictions, the average American does actually like democracy and freedom for women to make their own personal healthcare decisions, and they vote accordingly. So while yes, it's being made harrowingly much harder than it needs to be because of how much the media simply refuses to report that basic fact, and there is no amount of evidence that will convince them otherwise, at least we're trending in the right direction and, if we all pull our weight, can do it one more time. I realized the other day that I hadn't heard a fucking peep about Ron DeSantis in the last two months, and oh, how glorious it was. I yearn beyond words for the day (God willing, soon) when the same is true of Trump as well.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Because she’s refusing to go to Birmingham 2027 without Princess Diana-level security,

Do you think she genuinely believes she needs that level of security? Is it just manipulation?

She was there for TQ’s funeral. What changed?

Ask from July 31st.

Harry is the one who genuinely believes Meghan needs Diana-level security. He's the one with paranoia and an inferiority/competition complex against William. Meghan, in my opinion, feeds into it.

It reminds me of a movie I watched a while ago, Wicked Little Letters with Olivia Colman and Jessy Buckley. It's 1920s England (so you know, a proper society of faint-hearted women) and Olivia's character suddenly starts receiving rude, harrassing, profane letters. Everyone suspects the new neighbor, Jessy's character, an Irish migrant new to town because she is foul-mouthed. They investigate and, well, what do you know, Olivia's sending the letters to herself.

I kinda feel like that's what is happening with the Sussexes. Now, I do believe that Meghan is (or was) getting hate mail and I do believe that there are legitimate threats/risks out there. But I don't believe they're really that serious because if they were, then the RAVEC threat assessment would be a little different and/or she'd be the one pushing the matter in public court of opinion. So what could be happening is Meghan - who we know is chronically online and can't help but to read comments/DMs everywhere - is cherrypicking specific messages or threats to show Harry to rile him up and fight this security battle for her.

I do realize that's a pretty nefarious theory to suggest, especially since my preference is always to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But nothing about this makes sense. When Meghan really did feel genuinely threatened, she was the one complaining and she was the one making noise. That's not happening here. But yet Harry believes there are threats against her and their children. So clearly there's some kind of provocation going on.

Because that's the other thing too that doesn't make sense. As much as Meghan has made "mama bear" her new brand, she doesn't seem to acknowledge the threats against her children. If someone's brand is "mama bear," then you'd think they'd be out there advocating for their children's safety. But she isn't. It's Harry doing that. So either there are no more risks/threats to Archie and Lili than any other child has or Meghan doesn't care.

Anyway.

What changed? Public opinion.

Ipsos did a poll in April 2024 of the British Royal Family. The poll included favorability questions about Harry and Meghan. Here are their favorability results over time.

In October 2022, Harry's favorability was 40% and his unfavorability was 30ish%. As you can see in the chart, that was the first time since pre-Megxit that Harry was liked more than he was disliked.

By April 2024, everything had flipped. His favorability was 31% and his unfavorability was 46%. The flip looks like it started in December 2022/January 2023 - the Netflix docuseries and Spare's publication.

Now let's look at Meghan's polling.

In October 2022, Meghan was at 45% unfavorable and 30% favorable. A year and a half later in April 2024, public opinion is worse; 53% unfavorable, 35% favorable.

So long story short, worsening public opinion means a greater propensity for an unfavorable public response. Like booing or throwing bread rolls/rotten fruit or angry op-eds or people turning their backs to her or refusing to shake her hand. That's why Meghan is refusing to go to Birmingham. That's why she's demanding Diana-level security. She wants the enormous security presence to intimidate crowds into accepting her, or at least being silenced from vocally rejecting her.

[coochiequeens]

Common sense is returning.

James Crisp, EUROPE EDITOR 13 April 2024

Dr Hilary Cass said children who think they are transgender should not be given any hormone drugs at all until at least 18 CREDIT: Yui Mok

Belgium and the Netherlands have become the latest countries to question the use of puberty blockers on children after the Cass Review warned of a lack of research on the gender treatment’s long-term effects.

Britain has become the fifth European nation to restrict the use of the drug to those under 18 after initially making them part of their gender treatments.

Their use was based on the “Dutch protocol” - the term used for the practice pioneered in the Netherlands in 1998 and copied around the world, of treating gender dysphoric youth using puberty blockers.

The NHS stopped prescribing the drug, which is meant to curb the trauma of a body maturing into a gender that the patient does not identify with this month.

In Belgium, doctors have called for gender treatment rules to be changed.

Research into impact

“In our opinion, Belgium must reform gender care in children and adolescents following the example of Sweden and Finland, where hormones are regarded as the last resort,” the report by three paediatricians and psychiatrists in Leuven said.

Figures from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom show that more than 95 per cent of individuals who initiated puberty inhibition continue with gender-affirming treatments,” the report by P Vankrunkelsven P, K Casteels K and J De Vleminck said.

“However, when young people with gender dysphoria go through their natural puberty, these feelings will only persist in about 15 per cent.”

The report was published after a 60 per cent rise in the number of Belgium teenagers taking the blockers to stop the development of their bodies. In 2022, 684 people between the ages of nine and 17 were prescribed the drug compared to 432 in 2019, the De Morgen newspaper reported in 2019.

Pressure is also building in the neighbouring Netherlands to look again at their use. The parliament has ordered research into the impact of puberty blockers on adolescent’s physical and mental health.

Dutch protocol

The Telegraph understands that the Amsterdam Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, where the protocol originated, is set to make a statement on the use of puberty blockers next week.

“I too thought that the Dutch gender care was very careful and evidence-based. But now I don’t think that any more,” Jilles Smids, a postdoctoral researcher in medical ethics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, told The Atlantic.

Attitudes in the Netherlands have hardened against trans rights, with a bill to make it easier for people to legally change their gender being held up in parliament.

The Cass Review said that the NHS had moved away from the restrictions of the original Dutch protocol, and researchers in Belgium have also demanded those restrictions be reintroduced.

Belgium is regarded as one of the most trans-friendly countries in Europe. A minister in the government is transgender and people have been able to legally change their gender without a medical certificate for the past five years.

But the hard-Right Vlaams Belang party is currently leading the polls ahead of national and European elections in June.

It has called for “hormone therapy and sex surgery to be halted for underage patients until clear and concrete research has been carried out.”

‘Greatest ethical scandals’

In March, a report in France described sex reassignment in minors as potentially “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine”.

Conservative French senators plan to introduce a bill to ban gender transition treatments for under-18s.

On Monday, the Vatican’s doctrine office published a report that branded gender surgery a grave violation of human dignity on a par with euthanasia and abortion.

Finland was one of the first countries to adopt the Dutch protocol but realised many of its patients did not meet the Protocol’s strict eligibility requirements for the drugs.

It restricted the treatment in 2020 and recommended psychotherapy as the primary care.

Sweden restricted hormone treatments to “exceptional cases” two years later. In December, Norwegian authorities designated the medicine as “under trial”, which means they will only be prescribed to adolescents in clinical trials.

Denmark is finalising new guidelines limiting hormone treatments to teenagers who have had dysphoria since early childhood.

In 2020, Hungary passed a law banning gender changes on legal documents.

“The import and the use of these hormone products are not banned, but subject to case by case approval, however, it is certain that no authority would approve such an application for people under 18,“ a spokesperson told The Telegraph.

In August, Russia criminalised all gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Arthur Delaney at HuffPost:

Ahead of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign went back to the well. On Monday morning, the campaign held a press call with Tom Behrends, a retired command sergeant major who served in the National Guard with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president. Behrends has become famous in conservative circles for his attacks on Walz, whom he replaced as the unit’s command sergeant major when Walz retired.

“When the nation called, Tim Walz hung up and ran the other way,” Behrends said, reiterating claims he’d made in 2018 when Walz first ran for governor, in 2022 when he ran for reelection and in August, after he first accepted the vice presidential nomination. “When his 500 soldiers needed him most, he deserted his post and his unit.” Allies of Walz are decidedly OK with this line of attack. “There’s a group of, like, four right-wing guys who served with Walz, and every single time we run they do this,” a source close to the Minnesota governor said. “Obviously, it doesn’t land.” Republicans’ reliance on recycled attacks has been part of the recipe for Walz to become the most popular member of either presidential ticket, allowing him to follow the first rule of being a vice presidential nominee: Do no harm. Though he has not fundamentally changed the election, he’s becoming a reliable campaigner for the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, especially in Wisconsin and Michigan, two states where the cultural milieu is similar to Walz’s Minnesota. “He came from a humble background,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told HuffPost. “I think people, once they have time to know him, have liked him, and that’s because he’s true to himself.”

The goodwill Walz generates has helped him fend off waves of GOP attacks on his honesty. In 538’s polling average, 40% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Walz while just 36% have a negative opinion heading into Tuesday’s debate, when he will face off with the distinctly unpopular Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio). Vance’s favorability sits at just 35%, while 46% have an unfavorable view of Trump’s running mate.

Vance, an Iraq War veteran, picked up the National Guard story the day after Harris picked Walz as her running mate last month, calling it “shameful” Walz retired before his unit went to war. Republicans were clearly hopeful it would devastate Walz, with Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita expressly comparing the attacks to the infamous “Swift Boat” lies he pushed against then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in his 2004 campaign against President George W. Bush.

Democratic VP nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) weathered a right-wing swiftboating attempt regarding his National Guard career, and the right has struggled to land a blow on Walz.

[licenseplateshowdown]

The Great North American License Plate Showdown

=== Pinned Post ===

for years i have been passing silent judgement on different states’ license plate designs. well in 2022 i sat down and did the math, and it turns out that 50 u.s. states + dc + 13 canadian provinces and territories = 64 which is the perfect number for a tournament bracket. so i broke the basic license plate designs of the united states and canada into regions (or "conferences"? i am too gay to know how sports work) and paired them off one by one until i determined which license plate i considered to be the most aesthetically pleasing of all

when i was doing it, several people expressed surprise that i was conducting a tournament bracket, but not opening it up to voting or polling. this is a fair point. so now that i've put my opinions down on cyberpaper, it's time to open it up to you, the people

some details: for the sake of consistency, i will be using the same designs i used for the original bracket, which were accurate as of april 2022 but may not be the most current design for a particular state. i am only using the standard default license plate for a given jurisdiction, not optional plates. there will be qualifying rounds for utah and new mexico, both of which have three "standard" plates for motorists to choose from with (as far as i can tell) no one serving as default. most images come from 15q.net. the qualification rounds will last for one day; all subsequent polls will last for a week

let the tournament begin!

[alltoomaples]

life in film - LN

pairing: fem!uni student x lando norris

synopsis: after a year-long of hard work, the day was finally here where you present your portfolio project. you're family and friend circle has joined but will lando be able to reach there on time?

type: writing + picture portfolio

a/n: here's the much-awaited and most polled-in for the write-up! part 2 of love.jpg is here! ngl i feel this can be read alone as well as part but you readers can decide whichever way you wish to read i don't and won't mind <33 (linked down below). a bit of reference was used from the film 'five feet apart' as on the previous day, i binge-watched it (yes i do bing watch this movie for unhealthy times) and the monologue kinda gave an inspiration to write for this part. i must say the writing got way longer than i anticipated hence i had to skip the insta au part. although i think the end is quite an unexpected surprise in my opinion? lemme know what you folks think? now, i'll be working on our poll winner 2 and i'd be happy to take in any requests if you have :))

until next one, happy reading <;33

pre-part: love.jpg

. . . .

You were pacing around the backstage, feeling all anxious and panicky as the day you were looking for was finally here!

Your project portfolio presentation.

A year full of waiting now feels like a moment gone by and yet, you were very grateful of the journey that you had. Your family, friends, Lan, and professors have helped and guided you throughout the process, keeping you sane.

"Y/N, the show's about to start! get down to the staging area please" the lady annouced as you nodded to her.

You turned around the room to see whether Lando could make it as it was his last race of the triple race weekender and although you said it's totally fine if he couldn't make it yet Lando being Lando, he promised you he'd be there. quoting his own words, "i wouldn't miss it for the world and i will be there, bubba"

You get to the side staging area and tries to sneak at the couple front rows. You see that your and Lando's family was seated with a couple of your friends and the quadrant squad. you smiled at them, even waved back at baby Mila when she saw you and squealed. and yet, a deep sigh leaves your lips as you see the empty seat beside Max.

He still hasn't reached here. yet?

You fiddled with the ring on your hand and quickly took your phone when it beeped. it was a message from Max.

from Maxy: he's on his way y/n/n. don't worry about it! ps: if he doesn't, then we'll kick his ass fr. your word will be my command, your highness😤

Silent laughter resulted once you read his texts as you looked at him and shook your head.

You heard people's whispers, and as you turned around, the anchor of the event walks up behind you and enters the stage, meaning the show was about to begin.

"Welcome to one and all present here today! it's an honor and privilege to showcase the works done by our talented students of the graduating batch 2022-23" a round of applause echos the auditorium.

. . . .

Few presentations later, the anchor of the event walks up behind me, about to leave for the stage entrance, indicating its your turn.

You quickly opened your phone and texted Lando.

to Lan <3: hey bubba! im about to go on stage now. and before you say anything bad about yourself, its totally fine and don't blame yourself for it bubs. and maybe, I'll give you a private presentation? anywhoo, wish me luck xx

"You're up in a few mins y/l/n. you ready?" the lady approaches to you. You took a deep breath on and nodded.

"And here's our final student who has set her portfolio with an outstanding theme and work of art and graded first rank of her batch, Ms. y/n y/m/n y/l/n"

As the mic was handed over to you, your phone went off. It was a text from Lando.

from Lan <3: you don't need luck cause your lucky charm is here xx

You were slightly confused and before you could register what he meant, you're now walking onto the stage, and the audience applauds, your fam corner goes a bit wild, hyping you up.

You set your speech papers in front of you. And took another deep breath as the audience went silent.

"Greetings to esteem team and faculty members, my colleagues and everyone gathered here today. I am y/n l/n, a very proud graduate in photography and graphic design. And today is not just any ordinary day but it's much more special ordinary day that I've been waiting for a whole year" you say, with smile on your face as you look to the crowd.

And just like that, there he stood. At the entrance gate, very much like in movies.

Now, it made sense. Your lucky charm is finally here.

"Ladies and gentlemen, here i present my portfolio, 'Life in film'" you say proudly, as the projector starts showing your cover page on the big screen.

As soon as the picture is shown on screen, a loud applause echoes, making your head turn in the direction of sound. Lando was the one who made the whole audience clap once again. A smile crippled on your way as you nudged your nose. Lando walked over to his seat quickly, keeping one of his hands over his heart as he nudged his nose back at you.

it was a sign that the two of you made, similar to eskimos' kiss (long distant version).

"Life on film. The name is very simple, minimal, and a daily basis terminology in our lives. So what's the purpose of this theme? You might think what makes such a simple concept of life an extraordinary one?" you say, as you look down at the paper you had in front of you, but then you looked at the ring on your finger. And then looked towards your squad. You show your hand at the big screen and the next slides play along, showing a couple of pictures you shot.

"Well, we humans tend to overlook life. We've stopped taking time and appreciate what we have. The bright sunny sky we rarely see in the UK, a string of laughter from a little baby, flowers blossoming in spring, an old couple walking hand in hand. A moment of stillness amongst the chaos, a moment of laughter, contentment, and love," you say, looking at your loved ones.

The looks on everyone's faces were the best reward you could ever receive! Even Lando's expressions spoke volumes of how much he was amused and in awe by your works. You were getting a bit overwhelmed with joy by seeing this and felt like your heart would burst out of so much happiness. Then, you decided to speak from what your heart says as you folded your speech sheet.

"Life could give some tough times, but it's during these times we remember what our purpose is. That even the sour lemons could be made into lemonade. You just have to find the sweetness, your lucky charms," you say, looking at Lando. You saw everyone around him cooing at him, making him blush.

"From being a small girl who'd roam around with her dad's camera, dreaming her life revolve around films and polaroid, and here's she is! chasing her dreams with her lucky charm, " you say, showing the ring on your finger. People in the audience said, 'aww', as were from your squad side.

"A second turn into a minute, into an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, and so does it goes. Yet how crazy it is to be able to live life to its fullest, and not just for those successful moments, but for small, big, and everything in between moments! Cause life's too short to waste a second" you say, as the final picture is being shown.

A picture of you and Lando on the day he proposed you, 4 months back.

"And that's life on film! thank you, everybody, for being here! and special shoutout to my parents and Lan's for all the guidance and love, siblings and quadrant squad for all the support" you say, looking at them and then, looking at the person who's your everything.

"And to the most important person with whom i don't think i could have achieved this without him. my project partner, the boyfriend at the start to now, my fiancé, Lando, " you say, getting a bit teary-eyed as you look at him.

"Thank you for choosing me as your partner cause i can't think of anyone else with whom i would have done this!" You say, voice getting a bit crackling. And as soon as you turned the mic off and took a bow, the lights of the room turned on, and the whole room stood up, applauding and cheers of hoots erupting the room.

Lando didn't think twice as he stood and ran up towards the stage and engulfed you in a tight hug as he picked and spun the two of you around.

"You made it very on time, Mr. Norris" you said, tugging by his coat as he put you to the ground, arms still around your waist.

"I promised you I'd be here. And you did an outstanding and amazing..." he starts rambling, making you laugh as a tear slipped out your eye. before you get it, Lando holds your face in his hands, wiping the tears off while he still continues his ramble of appreciation for you.

"... and gorgeous and adorable work of masterpiece!! I'm soo proud and lucky to be your partner, my future Mrs. Norris" he says, tugging you an inch closer to him.

"Your future Mrs. Norris?? I love how that sounds" you whisper to him, with a smug expression on your face.

"I bet our lives would be a sweet sweet lemonade of lucky charms" Lando says, making the two of laugh before you two pull in for a kiss. You two pull back with a smile and look at the crowd. Lando takes a step back as he raises both his hands and takes a bow at you, making you feel so special, and then photographers capture it as well.

get yourself a goofy gentleman who treats you like a queen and makes you laugh out loud, ladies!

. . . .

Then the two of you lead your way to you squad where both the families hugged you, congratulate, and said that they were so proud of you today. the sibling and quadrant squad did the same as well as asked for copies of your portfolio.

And as you were on your way to the exit, Lando pulled you behind carefully as you had baby Mila in your arms.

"I wanted to ask about that private presentation you texted me earlier" He whispers into your ear, and then proceeds to cover Mila's ears with his hands.

"Is the offer still open??" Lando says, sending shivers down your spine.

"Lando Norris! there's a baby between us" you whisper shout at him.

"Henceforth, covered her ears" he says, a bit frustrated with the lack of answer. You shrug his hands off the baby's ears and walks ahead, Lando following you.

"C'mon baby mils, let's leave your uncle Norris behind and get you on a nap" you say, say you nudge your nose into her belly making her giggle faintly as you saw she was getting sleepy.

"I guess, Uncle Norris gets his presentation later tonight then?" he asks, a tad bit of hope in his tone. You get to the car seat and buckle Mila up.

"You are all good to go baby Mi! You say. once you're all set with Mila, you turn around to meet with Lando, standing close by.

"and I'll see what i could do for you, Mr. Norris" You smoothen his collar of the coat as you leaned in and whispered, with a smile.

"How did i ever got so lucky?" He whispers, pulling you close before you walked by. You squish his cheeks with one hand.

"I guess it's the lucky charms?" you say, with thinking face, making Lando laugh.

"Thank god for that lemonade season" He says, making both you reminisce the day where it all began for the two.

. . . . memory unfolds

"Lemons are soo bitty. So would the lemonade be bitty too, mama and mama norri" the 3-year-old you asked as you stood in the kitchen, watching the two besties, your mom and Cisca make lemonade.

"Sweetheart, even the sour lemons can be made into lemonade. You just gotta add sweetness" your mom says, Cisca carrying the jar of sugar.

"Oohhh i hear lemonade" yells the 4-year-old Lando as he ran into the kitchen and sat next to you. The dads entering the room as they had came back from Lando's go-kart practice.

As the glass contained only lemon juice, you stopped him from drinking it.

"That's sour lemon landoo!" you say, grabbing the glass from him and leads his along with your glass towards Cisca to add sugar.

"Sour lemons can be made into lemonade by adding sweetness, the lucky charms" you say to lando. you and lando had a phase of saying sugar as lucky charms as it was sweet as the cerals luck charms.

Cisca handed back to you the two glass you had and then you mixed it well before handing it to Lando and yourself.

Seeing this scene unfold, your parents were in awe and felt like they're witnessing something special with their kids. And without any further request, your dad picks his camera and shot a picture.

A picture with an embark of new journey. A picture that both set of parents had it framed in their house as well as their hearts.

. . . . back to present

"Yoo lovebirds, come over and have your lemonade drinks" Oliver calls over the two of you.

You two walk over to where everyone was seated and handed a now sleepy Mils to Oliver. Flo hands the drinks for the two as well as your lucky-charm sugar sachets. Once you kept the drinks down, Lando grabbed it to drink it and before he could, you grabbed his hand, stopping him to take a sip.

"That's sour lemon, landooo!" you say as you shake your head at his carelessness. You then tear the sugar sachets and add to both of your lemonades.

"How do i always forget the lucky cha- i mean sugar" Lan mumbles, enough sound for you to hear as you let out a small laugh.

As the two of you have your lemonade drinks, the parents watch the two of you as they did 20 years back. Your dad takes a picture with your camera, that you had given him to hold it for you.

And i guess, the lemonade story have captured your lives in film roll.

. . . .

am i wanting a part 3 for this, just to wrap it?? you guys let me knw ;))

check out my works: until i found you masterlist | other works

[maverices]

sequel poll for the sequel! again, please read the explanatory notes before voting!

*main ship as in this is the ship you most often/intensely seek out and/or create fanwork for.

** a.) please only consider ships originated in the 2022 film! i excluded ice/mav on purpose, please do not vote for them with Secret Option

** b.) absolutely do tell me if your Secret Option is Halo/Omaha. There's 200 fics on AO3 with that tag despite neither of them having any lines, what's up with that?

** c.) feel free to use the Secret Option for any poly ships!

*** please only vote for the last option if you consider yourself part of the Top Gun fandom!

(it should go without saying that i do not want any ship discourse here. if you have strong negative opinions on some of these options, please keep them to yourself, or make your own post.)

Top Gun (1986) poll can be found here

[mariacallous]

Last week, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency took the dramatic step of classifying the Saxony state branch of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as a threat to democracy—a potential first step towards banning it outright as unconstitutional. “There can be no doubt about the extreme right orientation of this party,” declared Dirk-Martin Christian, president of Saxony’s State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Although Germany has, in the past, exercised constitutional powers in the name of domestic security to rein in hardcore far-right (and radical leftist) forces, the objects of censure were marginal neo-Nazi parties and associations that had no chance of coming to power—even at the municipal level or in coalition governments. The AfD is a different story. Opinion polls show the AfD as the strongest party by far today in eastern Germany; riding a powerful wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, it has also notched record tallies in western German state elections and is poised to win the most votes next year in the country’s eastern half. It could conceivably wield executive power, should conservatives—such as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP)—consider it in their interests to treat the far-right party as a legitimate expression of popular will.

Even though both parties say they rule it out, the option is not so far-fetched: Across the EU, conservative parties have turned far-right parties into governing coalition partners, including in Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Slovakia, and elsewhere. In the German state of Thuringia, the CDU, FDP, and AfD, all in the opposition but with a majority between them, now team up occasionally to bypass the leftist minority government.

Suddenly, Germans are seeing images of the political chaos of the interwar Weimar Republic flash before their eyes—the republic that ended ignominiously in the Nazi party’s victory and Adolf Hitler’s takeover in 1933.

This is why the agency’s ruling and a possible injunction against the AfD—the latter a highly controversial and risky option that is nevertheless gaining backers across Germany’s political spectrum—has observers questioning whether the Europe-wide surge of the far right can be stopped or slowed by legal measures.

The strategies pursued by the political class haven’t done the job thus far—on the contrary, the AfD is booming—and there’s a long history of banning extremist parties and associations in Europe, not least in Germany. Since mid-2022, both Germany and France arrested members of far-right extremist organizations involved in the planning of terrorist attacks. Under its autocratic leader Viktor Orban, Hungary, as well as authoritarian-ruled Poland, have been denied European Union funds, and in 2019, Orban’s party, Fidesz, was expelled from the mainstream conservative European People’s Party.

But Fidesz’s ouster wasn’t a prohibition, and the extremists in France and Germany did not belong to parties with representatives in the national parliament. In fact, the AfD is the second-largest opposition party in the German Bundestag after the Christian Democrats (and their Bavarian counterpart), and it says that it wants to come to power—democratically, through the ballot box.

The ruling makes Saxony the AfD’s third state branch to come under this level of red-button surveillance, which can include measures such as the German spy services’ covert observation and even infiltration of the party. All three state-level parties—Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia—are eastern German states with elections scheduled for next year. (In mid-April, the AfD’s nationwide youth organization was also deemed a threat to the democratic order and thus put under surveillance.)

Moreover, in the wake of Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom’s victory in the Netherlands in November, like-minded contenders across Europe, including the AfD, are expected to perform better than ever in June’s European Parliament election, an event that would have ominous ramifications for the European Union—and beyond.

Much like the rulings on Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, Germany’s intelligence agency declared that leading members and functionaries of the Saxony AfD regularly express racist, Islamophobic, and antisemitic sentiments. It labeled the branch as one with “typically ethnic-nationalistic positions” and said that both it and its national youth organization work in tandem with known neo-Nazi and officially banned movements, such as the Reichsbürger movement.

The Saxony branch has a diverse membership, the intelligence agency found, but the party’s leadership adheres to the ideology of its “spiritual father and leader,” referring to “the right-wing extremist Björn Höcke, who now shapes and dominates the character of the entire state-level party.”

Höcke, the AfD’s high-profile, outspoken party leader in Thuringia, was on the party’s far-right fringe for years. But the party has drifted so far to the right that its standard-bearer is now the 51-year-old Höcke , a demagogue who publicly espouses revisionist theories of Germany’s Nazi past and employs racist slogans against immigrants. He was charged in June with using Nazi slogans at AfD campaign rallies—a crime in Germany, where the use of slogans, propaganda, and symbolism linked to “anti-constitutional” organizations is banned.

German law gives the constitutional court the authority to shut down a political party when it pursues anti-constitutional goals and is in a position to achieve these goals. In 2017, Germany’s highest court chose not to disqualify the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a thoroughly neo-Nazi party both in public profile and programmatically, on account of its diminutive size: The party of 6,000 people rarely breached the states’ 5-percent hurdles to be included in parliament and thus never came anywhere near entering government. This autumn, the constitutional court confirmed the expulsion of a former AfD official as a justice in a Saxon state court for constituting a danger to constitutional norms.

This year, the AfD saw representatives voted into official posts as a district administrator and a mayor (in Saxony-Anhalt) for the first time. Presumably, the AfD’s recent showing in the Bavarian and Hessian elections (15 percent and 18 percent respectively, which makes it the strongest opposition party in the regional legislatures) and polling numbers of twice that in eastern Germany endow it with a size unlike the NPD’s and great enough to pose a legitimate threat.

This, at least, is what a growing number of voices from all of Germany’s mainstream parties argue. Those voices are collecting supporters in the Bundestag, where a majority is required to bring the party before the constitutional court.

One of them is a lawyer and CDU parliamentarian from Saxony, Marco Wanderwitz, who argues that “there’s a good reason why the [German Constitution] gives us the option of banning a party,” as he told the daily Die Tageszeitung, “because a defensive democracy [wehrhafte Demokratie] has to wield very sharp swords against its greatest enemies. I have come to the conclusion that the AfD is now undoubtedly radical right wing. They are up to no good and are serious about it. We’ve got to use all of the options at our disposal to beat them. I’m afraid that without a court-ordered prohibition, we’re not going to be rid of them.”

Living in Saxony, Wanderwitz said, he observes how the AfD and its even more militant counterparts draw in disillusioned people and set a confrontational, aggressive tone. “In the parliaments, the AfD is on our backs every day,” he said. “It has thousands of employees who flood the internet and parliaments with right-wing extremist content 24 hours a day. At events in Saxony, I regularly experience that we’re met with burning hatred; we’re shouted at and threatened. I’m glad that there are loads of people standing between us and them outside the door. It’s something that feels a bit like what I imagine the early 1930s were like.”

Wanderwitz added that he thinks it is conceivable that the AfD garner 40 percent in the eastern elections come September. “What democracy here needs is some breathing space,” he said.

Other commentators shoot back that Germany’s democratic culture and the solid arguments of its political parties can beat back a populist party that spins outlandish conspiracy theories, apes Nazi slogans, and wants out of the EU.

“We can’t give the impression that we’re taking the easier route with a ban procedure because we can’t manage it any other way,” retorted Social Democratic lawmaker Sebastian Fiedler, who belongs to the Bundestag’s subcommittee for domestic security. “Well-functioning constitutional states can’t dismiss the way their own populations vote. We have to offer concepts that are convincing: here and now. Of course, the AfD is trying to attack the state from within, but the constitutional state is resilient.”

Fiedler and his parliamentary peers—not all of whom are opposed to putting the AfD on trial—argue that the state has other means at its disposal to mitigate far-right parties. In November,  all of the Bundestag’s democratic parties passed a  law that deprives the AfD from the kind of public funds that other parties use to finance foundations involved in public education work. They also argue there should be more funding for grassroots programs that strengthen civil society and fight fake news in the Internet. Wanderwitz and Fiedler—and just about all of their colleagues—agree that putting the AfD on trial and then losing would be a disaster, as well as a confirmation for the AfD that the mainstream parties are out to get it, based on the party’s specious rationale.

One of the strongest arguments against such bans is that outlawing a party doesn’t annul its supporters—and sometimes even turbocharges them. The Germans need only to look to Greece to see how the prohibition of a far-right party, the Golden Dawn, did nothing to dent the vote tallies of the Greek far right, which reorganized itself under new parties. Golden Dawn itself was disqualified from running in the election this year not because it was an immigrant-bashing, Holocaust-denying scourge, but rather because its leaders had engaged in criminal business activities.

Nevertheless, the party that captured more than 6 percent of the vote in 2015, when economic paralysis gripped the country, was out of the race. Instead, in June, three far-right parties made it into the national legislature, comprising the Spartans, backed by imprisoned Golden Dawn leader Ilias Kasidiaris, the pro-Russian party Greek Solution, and ultra-Christian Orthodox Niki (Victory). They captured 34 seats out of an available 300 and accounted for more than 12 percent of the vote.

It seems that Germany and Greece—in fact, just about all of Europe—will have to dig further down into their respective legal scriptures and political cultures to get at the  toxins that threaten to imperil their democracies.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In the two years after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, leading to abortion bans across many parts of the south and midwest, abortion rights have only grown more popular, new polling from Pew Research Center has found.

A majority of Americans has long supported abortion rights. But more than 60% of Americans now believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases – a four percentage-point jump from 2021, the year before Roe fell.

This support transcends numerous demographic divides in US society: most men, women, white people, Black people, Hispanic people and Asian people believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. It extends to majorities of all age groups and education levels, although 18-to-29-year-olds and people with more education are more likely than other cohorts to believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

People who live under abortion bans have also become increasingly supportive of abortion access since the overturning of Roe in June 2022. In August 2019, only 30% of people who live in states where abortion is now outlawed said they believed it should be easier to access abortion. Today, 42% of people in the same states say that.

The broad support for abortion may prove pivotal in the upcoming US elections – Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has zeroed in on abortion as a winning issue as the president continues to trail Donald Trump in polls. Battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada are expected to hold ballot measures to protect abortion rights, which Democrats hope will boost both voter turnout and their own chances.

Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to support abortion rights, with 85% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters believing that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. By contrast, 41% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters said the same.

GOP opposition to abortion is largely fueled by conservative Republicans, since more than 70% who identify as such think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances. More than two-thirds of moderate and liberal Republicans support abortion rights, Pew found.

Among the groups measured by Pew, conservative Republicans and white evangelical Protestants were the only groups with majorities that opposed abortion access. Nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances.

Some people’s views of abortion did grow more complex the deeper Pew inquired. Most groups that support abortion rights ultimately thought abortion should be legal in “most” circumstances, rather than “all”. In other polling on abortion, support for the procedure tends to dwindle when people are asked whether they would back abortions in the second or third trimester of pregnancy.

More strikingly, Pew also asked Americans to evaluate how much they agreed with certain statements about abortion. More than half of Americans agreed with the statement that “the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman”, while only 35% of Americans say they agreed that “human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights” – a stance that would logically lead them to oppose abortion.

Yet a third of Americans said that both statements describe their views to some extent, even though those statements clash.

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Fiction Adaptation Poll (3/3): Archive 81 (Dead Signals, 2016–present) and Archive 81 (Netflix, 2022)

Please vote for the option that you feel best represents you opinion of the television show. I understand that it's possible to feel multiple of these at once, so please choose the one that sums up your thoughts the best.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: James Crisp

Published: Apr 13, 2024

Belgium and the Netherlands have become the latest countries to question the use of puberty blockers on children after the Cass Review warned of a lack of research on the gender treatment’s long-term effects.

Britain has become the fifth European nation to restrict the use of the drug to under 18s after initially making them part of their gender treatments.

Their use was based on the “Dutch protocol” - the term used for the practice pioneered in the Netherlands in 1998 and copied around the world, of treating gender dysphoric youth using puberty blockers.

The NHS stopped prescribing the drug, which is meant to curb the trauma of a body maturing into a gender that the patient does not identify with this month.

In Belgium, doctors have called for gender treatment rules to be changed.

‘Last resort’

“In our opinion, Belgium must reform gender care in children and adolescents following the example of Sweden and Finland, where hormones are regarded as the last resort,” the report by three paediatricians and psychiatrists in Leuven said.

Figures from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom show that more than 95 per cent of individuals who initiated puberty inhibition continue with gender-affirming treatments,” the report by P Vankrunkelsven P, K Casteels K and J De Vleminck said.

“However, when young people with gender dysphoria go through their natural puberty, these feelings will only persist in about 15 per cent.”

The report was published after a 60 per cent rise in the number of Belgium teenagers taking the blockers to stop the development of their bodies. In 2022, 684 people between the ages of nine and 17 were prescribed the drug compared to 432 in 2019, the De Morgen newspaper reported in 2019.

Pressure is also building in the neighbouring Netherlands to look again at their use. The parliament has ordered research into the impact of puberty blockers on adolescent’s physical and mental health.

Dutch Protocol

The Telegraph understands that the Amsterdam Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, where the Protocol originated, is set to make a statement on the use of puberty blockers next week.

“I too thought that the Dutch gender care was very careful and evidence-based. But now I don’t think that any more,” Jilles Smids, a postdoctoral researcher in medical ethics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, told The Atlantic.

Attitudes in the Netherlands have hardened against trans rights, with a bill to make it easier for people to legally change their gender being held up in parliament.

The Cass Review said that the NHS had moved away from the restrictions of the original Dutch Protocol, and researchers in Belgium have also demanded those restrictions be reintroduced.

Belgium is regarded as one of the most trans-friendly countries in Europe. A minister in the government is transgender and people have been able to legally change their gender without a medical certificate for the past five years.

But the hard-Right Vlaams Belang party is currently leading the polls ahead of national and European elections in June.

It has called for “hormone therapy and sex surgery to be halted for underage patients until clear and concrete research has been carried out.”

‘Greatest ethical scandals’

In March, a report in France described sex reassignment in minors as potentially “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine”.

Conservative French senators plan to introduce a bill to ban gender transition treatments for the under-18s.

On Monday, the Vatican’s doctrine office published a report that branded gender surgery a grave violation of human dignity on a par with euthanasia and abortion.

Finland was one of the first countries to adopt the Dutch Protocol but realised many of its patients did not meet the Protocol’s strict eligibility requirements for the drugs.

It restricted the treatment in 2020 and recommended psychotherapy as the primary care.

Sweden restricted hormone treatments to “exceptional cases” two years later. In December, Norwegian authorities designated the medicine as “under trial”, which means they will only be prescribed to adolescents in clinical trials.

Denmark is finalising new guidelines limiting hormone treatments to teenagers who have had dysphoria since early childhood.

In 2020, Hungary passed a law banning gender changes on legal documents.

“The import and the use of these hormone products are not banned, but subject to case by case approval, however, it is certain that no authority would approve such an application for people under 18,“ a spokesperson told the Telegraph.

In August, Russia criminalised all gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments.

[ Via: https://archive.today/0oU9Z ]

==

It's kind of ironic that in the early 20th century, Russia was the center of the scientific corruption and scandal that was Lysenkoism, where ideology trumped reality. Millions suffered and died as a result of denying biological reality.

The process of cementing Lysenkoism was eerily familiar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

On August 7, 1948, at the end of a week-long session organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that Lysenkoism would henceforth be taught as "the only correct theory." Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko, and criticism was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist".

Today, countries like the US, Canada and Australia are up to their armpits in a modern-day form of Gender Lysenkoism.

[euroquision]

"The Fairest of Them All" A EuroQuision Article

Hello everyone! I hope you're ready for the first official EuroQuision article release! This one is a mathematical doozy, but trust me when I say this is worth the read. If you wanna download a PDF of the article, you can do so here!

And if you don't feel like downloading the whole thing, I'll be copying the entire article into this post after the section break so you can read it here! Thanks so much to the Patrons and other supporters that make this work possible!

The Fairest of Them All

By Beatrice Quinn

Quickly: what is the most overrated song of Eurovision 2024?

…got an answer? Ok, now: Prove it.

Today we’re talking about one of the most ambiguous, aimless, misunderstood metrics we use to say whether a song is overrated or not, and that is: Ratings. Literally! Now, we’re familiar with “ranking” Eurovision songs – dragging and re-dragging “Halo” up and down your 2022 scoreboard depending on whether or not you think Pia Maria is a real person or not – and other such activities! Ranking is crucial and emblematic to the existence of Eurovision and its fans, it hardly needs to be said. Developing babies watch the dancing fruits of Cocomelon, we watch a series of rectangles and numbers combine to shift and jump around aimlessly until they eventually settle in place. And once they’ve settled in place, forever to remain unmoving from those results, fans all across the world will continue to exist in a frenzy about how they should have landed instead.

But what’s the difference between ranking and rating? And by extension, why are the phrases “overrated” and “underrated” thrown around so frequently? Well, ranking songs is an action that always exists in and around the context of all competing songs that year. That’s why when the first Eurovision song of the season rolls around – usually courtesy of our lovely Albanians – it’s ridiculous and repeatedly unfunny to see YouTubers upload their “Eurovision 2021: Top 1 Ranking” videos. Rating a song is something you can do whether you’re talking about one song, or 42 songs. You don’t have to judge the songs ranked against each other. You can judge it based on its own merits or whatever frame of reference you have. I’m not here to write an article trying to tell people how they can or can’t rate songs – I would only ever tell that to the WiwiJury. And I would tell them politely, yet firmly, to stop.

No, I’m writing all this to do one thing: To give you a quick math lesson! And by quick, I really mean it, I promise. I swear I’m not a nerd! Well, that’s a lie. I’m a huge nerd. But I’m not a math nerd. It would be more accurate to say I’m a numbers nerd – specifically, Eurovision numbers. That’s the kind of numbers we like! We’ve seen our share of Twitter polls, asking us to choose between anything from Biggest National Final Robberies to “do you think Joker Out read the fanfic?” We just love stats and percentages! So I’m here to put those to the test in the most straight-forward, least-opinionated way possible. And let me be so clear about this: This article is not going to try and definitely prove anyone’s personal tastes right or wrong. This is about the mathematical results of how we rate Eurovision songs and whether or not this provides any accuracy.

Before we get into all the numbers: Let’s say you’re an Albania stan – a type of stan I’m familiar with, fond of, and am deeply frightened by – and you go to EurovisionWorld.com to excitedly check the results of the star ratings left by online visitors from every end of the earth, all coming to rate a song you’re excited to rate and enjoy yourself. You get there and you see: 2 stars – 2,815 ratings. Your heart sinks. “Only two stars? Is this actually a bad song? Do people hate the song? Am I dumb for liking it?” These are all things we’ve all felt about certain songs we hold dear to our heart, but it really doesn’t make sense, right? Why should a number generated by the preferences of 2,815 people sway your feelings towards a song you like? Then, as the season goes on, more songs pop up and get rated as well. As your Albanian gem middles out around 2.3 stars after 5,000 or so people decided to rate it, you see a grinning Dutch lad beating out the majority of the competition in terms of stars. “Wait, that just has so many views and over ten thousand more ratings than Albania has, what gives?” Then: the accusations start. “Joost is overrated!!” “Baby Lasagna’s hype won’t last forever.” “Vidbir said they’ll announce the results after six business days, not counting shipping and handling, but when they do, they’re gonna be so overrated.” And on the flip side: “Everyone is sleeping on Dons.” “Hera shock Q in May.” Various statements that however passionate are sadly not actually provable – at least, not in the moment.

It goes without saying that a Eurovision song’s rating out of 5 stars on EurovisionWorld does not, in any way, affect the results and winners of Eurovision. Instead, these ratings exist as a rare form of communal discussion. While the subjectivity of musical taste varies, we all get to share our opinions. And this process is what leaves us with two sides of the same undefinable coin: Over or Under Rated. 

We all have experiences with people or conversations where a fun song may be chastised for being overrated, or overly praised for being underrated. The attitude for or against a song doesn’t always exist like this – you can love an overrated song and hate an underrated one, I don’t care. But the point here is: these terms are something we relate to being an idea or descriptor, rather than something that can be mathematically determined. In fact, by treating the Eurovision “rating” system in its current state as purely a matter of statistics, we can then use that information to reference other claims against it. It’s quite scientific, if I do say so myself. Now, are both my college degrees in film, music, and writing? Yes. Did I ever get anything higher than a B in any math class I’ve ever taken? No. But allow  me to explain!

If someone were to say “Sweden is overrated,” what if there were a way to actually find out if that’s accurate or not? And once you find that out with some quick math, you can use that as evidence as to why or why not Sweden is overrated. My hope is that once we find out whether a song is mathematically overrated or underrated, we can then discuss possible reasons why or why not. Of course, this kind of question is going to be answered by collecting a LOT of numbers and doing a LOT of organization. Luckily I know someone who personally is sick enough in the head to sit down and pour through all the numbers, make the spreadsheets, make the graph, explain the equation, and write the article about it.

…it’s me. I think the “write the article” part was a giveaway, but here we are! So enough fluff, let’s get rating!

CHAPTER 1: The EuroQuision Equation!

Say that five times fast. And if you choose not to say that five times fast: I respect your decision, but I am disappointed in you.

So, we’re working with numbers. That means I am now tasked with figuring out the best way to observe the information I’m given, find out how it all balances out, and how do we compare all of that together? For context, there are two key components to finding out how over or underrated a Eurovision song is. As you’ll see while scrolling down the songs of any Eurovision year, you’ll see the stars beside them which are a result of ratings given by any IP address that rates the song. So not only do you get to see a song’s star rating, you can also see how many people contributed to that average rating. For anyone who doesn’t know, averages are a mathematical result of adding up the values of a set of inputs, then dividing that total by the amount of inputs. It’s hard to explain averages in a proper sentence, so here’s an example. If you are given the numbers 4, 8, and 3, you would first add up the numbers. 4+8+3 equals 15. Then, you take the sum (15) and divide it by how many numbers you added together. You added 3 numbers, so you divide (15 / 3) and find the average of 4, 8, and 3 is 5.

This is how those star ratings show up the way they do. If a song is rated by 10,000 people, you would add up the total stars given by each person, then divide that by 10,000. However, there’s another statistic we can find out by collecting all of this information. Like I said before in the Albania example, there are songs that only get 10,000 ratings by April, and others have hit over 40,000. You would think it’s as simple as saying “The songs with the most ratings are overrated, case closed.” But I’m here to say: not quite! If you were to rank the songs by most to least amount of ratings, that’s one result to find, sure. But I’m choosing to ask: what’s the average amount of ratings themselves? It’s something we can actually find out, since we have all the information!

Needing only the numbers provided by EurovisionWorld.com, we can find out what the average number of ratings is, and what the average number of stars is. We can’t really say who is over or underrated until we have an idea of how many people have contributed to these ratings. After finding these averages, the next step would be to compare and contrast how close or far each country deviates from those averages. Let’s say, if I were to add up all the star scores and find their average, I get an average of 3 stars. Therefore, any song that scores fewer stars than that is under average, and those scoring higher are above average. The same goes for ratings. After adding up EVERY number of ratings from each country and dividing by 37, we’ll know the average number of times a Eurovision 2024 song is rated. This will matter greatly in comparison to other years because the global attention to Eurovision grows every year. A year like 2014 is going to have a significantly lower average number of ratings simply because not as many people rated the songs in comparison to 2024. Sounds easy enough, right?

Ok, even if it’s not “easy” to understand now, it will be very soon! To help guide us into the numbers of it all, I made some visual aids! Let’s stop talking about the numbers and actually start crunching them!

CHAPTER 2: Playing With Numbers

Before we find out if any country is over or underrated, we gotta find our global averages first! Let’s look at the stars first. As you know, a song can achieve anywhere from 1 to 5 stars on EurovisionWorld.com – a very standard format! While we the voters/raters can only select a whole number of stars (one star, four stars, etc.), the website takes all those scores and calculates the average for us and displays that as a more accurate number often with a decimal point. Another important note is that I know this information doesn’t exist in stasis: songs can continue to be rated long after the contest is over. So for accuracy’s sake, I gathered ALL numerical information for this essay on one day: April 25th! This is to account for a few factors. Like I said, the amount of ratings grows over time and has a recency bias, so I didn’t want to get the ratings in late March. I also didn’t want to wait after the contest, just in case any results of the contest cause a shift in mass ratings from the rest of the world. I chose April 25th to write down every song’s current amount of ratings and current star score so that it reflected nothing but expectation and audience reaction, and without any influence from rehearsals or live shows.

Now, a song’s release day does play a part in how many ratings and stars it gets…most times. We’ll discuss that in the analysis chapter AFTER we go over all the numbers. So, this is all you need to know right now: I collected these numbers on April 25th, 2024. Additionally, there’s something else I did for making the math easier and more score-like, which is that I convert a song’s total amount of ratings into a whole number with one decimal point so that I’m operating with two factors closer to each other in size. For example, if a song has 18,311 ratings, I’m converting that to 18.3 so that I’m working with a star score of, for example, 3.6 and a rating total of 18.3, which are easier to put into the equation and find a Deviation Score that is represented by a small, whole number. The last important detail is that there WILL be more visual aids, and if any of this is still confusing by the end, let me know and I’ll figure out how to make this easier for everyone!

Lastly, you might wonder why I’m looking at both stars and ratings in this big equation. If this is about who is or isn’t fairly rated, why do the star scores matter? Well, I’m factoring both ratings and stars in a song’s Deviation Score because these numbers don’t exist separately from each other. A song only gets a star score after thousands of people leave their opinions, and people share those opinions in this medium by clicking somewhere between one and five stars. Therefore, it isn’t fair to say a song is “overrated” simply because more people have rated that song compared to others. Spam rating exists (as EurovisionWorld has learned the hard way), and there are songs every year that are perceivably more “popular” based on things like YouTube video views or Spotify streams. Those things don’t factor into this because simply watching the video or streaming the song isn’t the same thing as “rating” it. Spotify only has stream counts, and YouTube has a like or dislike button. EurovisionWorld has a conventional 5-star rating system that is determined by people from all around the world and is mathematically calculated. So by giving a song a Deviation Score that’s based on how close/far from average a song is in stars and ratings, we’re acknowledging all the factors that go into this question.

Now onto the numbers! Do you wanna take a guess as to how many ratings were left on EurovisionWorld.com from the start of the season through Apr. 25th? There was a staggering total of 689,968 ratings across 37 songs! Over half a million ratings is a lot of opinions, right? And still that’s barely a fraction of the total people who watch the show itself. Regardless, that’s the information we have to work with! So, if there’s a total of 689,986 ratings given out to 37 different songs, that means our avg. # of ratings is: 689,968 / 37 = 18,647.7838. Obviously, 18,647.7838 is an awfully long, complicated number to use. Therefore, I’m simplifying it to just 18.6 (approx. 18,600 ratings). So, 18.6 is our avg. # of ratings. As for avg. # of stars, there is a grand total of 130.1 stars totalled up between all the songs. This is a really good number, when you consider the math. For example, if every song of 2024 only got on average one (1) star, then we’d have a total of just 37 stars. So with this info, it means our avg. # of stars is: 130.1 / 37 = 3.51621622…… and many more numbers after that. Therefore, I’ll state our avg. # of stars is 3.5. Once again, this is a good number! On a scale of only one to five stars, the average of that would just be 2.5 stars, right in the middle. That means the public thinks that overall, Eurovision 2024 is a bit above an average level of quality. And I would agree! Anyway, just to sum up all the numbers we just found out, I’ll list them here:

Total amount of ratings from all songs: 689,968

Avg. amount of ratings per song: 18.6 (simplified from 18,647)

Total amount of stars from all songs: 130.1

Avg. amount of stars per song: 3.5 (simplified from 3.5162…)

For me, the easy part is over and the hard part begins. Now is when we begin to document every song’s amount of ratings, their star scores, and running the math to see how far above or below the averages they are. For the super hot and cool nerds that like excel sheets, I’ll link the viewable sheet of all the info at the end of the article! For the sake of this article, I’m going to choose a couple key examples, and those are: Sweden, the Netherlands, Iceland, and…sadly, “Israel.”

CHAPTER 3: Do We Have a Valid Result?

Let’s actually see this equation in action and find out what we can learn from all of this. The reason we’re going to be looking at these select countries is that each of them exists at a very specific point on the spectrum of overrated or underrated. We’ll begin with the country that receives arguably the most “overrated” accusations thrown at them in a given Eurovision season, and that is: Sweden! Did you find the twins’ song unforgettable? Regardless, let’s run their numbers through our equation and figure out just how “rated” they are.

As you remember from our graphic, the equation we use is shown as (a - x) + (b - y) = z. Let’s take a look at Sweden’s stats, which are documented altogether in the same list as all 37 songs. “a” is Sweden’s star score. Sweden, as of April 25th, has a score of 3.4 stars. “x” is the total average of stars across all songs, which is 3.5. (3.4 - 3.5) = -0.1. This -0.1 means that Sweden is just ever so slightly below the average score, which is something I would agree with (but that part’s just my opinion). The second half of our equation is about ratings. Sweden was rated on EurovisionWorld a total of 18,259 times. We simplify that big number just to 18.2, and we subtract the average number of ratings from that number. (18.2 - 18.6) = -0.4. Now, we can also observe that in its total number of ratings, Sweden is actually still below average, even though not by a whole lot. Now that we have -0.1 and -0.4 reflecting Sweden’s relationship to the global average of stars and ratings respectively, we combine those! (-0.1) + (-0.4) = -0.5. There you go! Sweden got a score of, overall, slightly underrated. Shocking, right? That’s right, in numbers and stats alone, Sweden is very close to the global averages. However, the claim that they’re “underrated” isn’t as true as it sounds once we look at another country through this equation.

Next, let’s take a look at a country that was 1st in the odds…only to fall from those heights down to a last place finish in their semi-final. Iceland’s song “Scared of Heights” is an interesting case. I won’t try and pretend that these ratings exist separately from a song’s public perception – or at times, their public drama. So don’t worry, we’ll address that and much more after we do more fun math activities. Not many people were running around saying “Husavik 2025!” when this got selected, but how was it rated? Iceland has the literal lowest star score out of all 37 songs this year, sitting at 2 whole stars. Since we know the global average is 3.5, that means Iceland is -1.5 stars from the average. However, this is where we can see the ways ratings and stars can differ. When it comes to stars, a song scores anywhere from 1 to 5; it’s not a very wide range. But for ratings, Iceland only has 10,951 ratings (shown as 10.9). Even compared to Sweden, that’s eight thousand fewer ratings, meaning: people either chose not to go out of their way to leave a rating, or it's just not as popular. From the average of 18.6, Iceland’s 10.9 ratings is a whole -7.7 away from the average. Let’s combine those two differences: (-1.5) + (-7.7) = -9.2. In comparison to Sweden, Iceland is actually “underrated” when we look at the numbers. That final score of -9.2 is a culmination of the song not only getting a lower score, but it comes from fewer people deciding to rate it. Would “Scared of Heights” be closer to the average amount of stars if more people had chosen to give it a rating? Or would more ratings just reflect the same sad score of 2 stars? This is something to consider when we have more context about who/which countries have more ratings than our first two examples.

They may have been disqualified for total BS reasons, but they’ll never be disqualified from my heart! The Netherlands’ “Europapa” is a song that has a lot to give it a leg up over a country like Iceland when it comes to public perception: Joost Klein is a more  “established” artist in comparison to most Eurovision competition. “Europapa” contains satirical-yet-universal lyrics that touch on personal and international topics at the same time, and the whole thing is a lot of good fun, even with a touching ending. However, this can all add up to what no sounds like a very reasonable claim of “overrated”-ness. Do the numbers reflect that? Unsurprisingly: yes, yes they do. The Netherlands has a star score of 4.1, which is the average score from a total of 35,557 ratings. Again, we see how the number of ratings can vary much wider than just star scores on their own – I can only imagine how it feels to see someone else’s song get 20,000 more ratings than yours. Let’s run the equation!. (4.1 - 3.5) + (35.5 - 18.6) => (0.6) + (16.9) = 17.5. As you can see, now that we move to the opposite end of the spectrum, the difference in influence is more observable. That score of 17.5 now properly reflects how a star score of 4.1 comes from a severe increase in number of ratings, and Joost’s popularity can very well be a factor in that, all regardless if the song is “good” or “bad.”. Like I promised, we’ll talk about the implications and conclusions these numbers can represent in a moment. We have one more “country” to look at.

“Israel,” as I’m sure you need no reminding, is the reason all of Eurovision 2024 was a complex, un-fun, total mess of a season. All the reasons supporting this can fill up their own article, so we’re going to be focusing on how 2024’s hottest potato fares in terms of stars and ratings. “Israel” and their song “Octo–” sorry, “Hurricane” has the same star score as the Netherlands, which is 4.1 stars out of 5. However, “Hurricane” has almost ten thousand more ratings than “Europapa,” at 45,255 ratings. (4.1 - 3.5) + (45.2 - 18.6) => (0.6) + (26.6) = 27.2. Just for another moment, let’s disregard the implications of this number and just compare it to the 3 other examples we’ve done. At one end of the spectrum, Iceland is underrated with a Deviation Score of -9.2, and Sweden has a Dev. Score of -0.5. As a reminder, if a country is completely and perfectly “average,” they would receive a score of 0; as in, it’s not overrated nor is it underrated. However, the score for songs being underrated are a lot less severe than the others. The Netherlands’ Dev. Score of 17.5 and “Israel’s” 27.2 are up in the double digits, but why?

Well, the first explanation is very easily observable: “Israel,” the Netherlands, and several other countries are simply rated more than other countries are. Therefore, this is evidence to support the claim that more people overrate songs than people who underrate other songs. For context, the country with the lowest number of ratings is Albania, with only 9,094 ratings and a star score of 3.1 stars. The country with the highest number of ratings is actually Croatia, with 47,315 ratings as of April 25th and has the highest “overrated” Dev. Score with 29.5. And now that we have our equation and can actually tell who is statistically over or underrated, let’s actually ask what that “means.”

CHAPTER 4: Take (It) Away

At ten pages (and two visual aids) in, we finally have some concrete numbers to look at and discuss, leading with the question: What are we meant to take away? If being over/underrated is now mathematically observable, what does it all mean? To answer that question, we need to look at the entirety of our data table and apply real-world context to the numbers we’re looking at. As I mentioned near the beginning of this article, this is not about simple labels. Let’s start with the observation I made right before this chapter, “More people are more likely to overrate songs than people are to underrate them.” This is visible in multiple ways. First, as we discovered when we found the global average of each song’s star score, we got a score of 3.5/5 – above average! But it’s not just about the stars; there’s another noticeable trend between the highest star-scoring songs and how many people have rated them. Ten songs from 2024 have a star score of 4 stars or higher – Croatia, Greece, and Serbia were all tied at 4.3 stars. Between all ten songs, they have a total of 292,504 ratings. Now at the other end of the star spectrum, how do the lowest scorers look?

Well, no song this year got less than 2 stars, now matter how much I dislike “Scared of Heights.” However, there are eight songs that scored below 3 stars, in comparison to the ten higher scoring songs. Fun fact: Finland’s “No Rules!” is the lowest-ranking song that qualified for the final (as of April 25th), whereas the highest ranked NQ was Belgium. Anyway, between those eight songs underneath 3 stars, there’s only 129,063 ratings, which is approx. 170 thousand fewer ratings. The numbers don’t lie: if anyone ever claims “Eurofans just like to hate things,” statistically that’s wrong! It’s not impossible, either. On that note, though, one would be allowed to ask “But doesn’t that mean there are songs that are overrated?” And if you’re talking about the literal, specific definition of songs having a greater number of ratings than others, then yes you’re right. But I have a feeling that most people say the word “overrated” more emotionally than logically. Remember how I introduced Sweden as one of the most frequently overrated countries? My guess is that you didn’t disagree with that claim. And I’m not just guessing: I’ve seen every upset Kaarija stan, Mans-hater, and person with ears that dislikes “If I Were Sorry.” Sweden’s no stranger to the overrated accusation, but we just saw how this year that’s statistically untrue. The most perfectly middle-rated song this year is Luxembourg’s “Fighter” with a Deviation Score of -0.4. Sweden, Slovenia, Austria, and Czechia round out the Top 5 Most-Midrated Songs of 2024. And like the title of this article says, these five songs are by all definition “the fairest” of them all. Czechia is actually closest to the average number of ratings (that 18.6 we’ve been using in the equation) with 18,614 ratings. But hey, I like to indulge my own curiosity, so I wondered if these numbers are connected at all to who did or didn’t qualify. In Eurovision 2024, 11 songs did not qualify to the Grand Final. So, let’s look at the 11 most statistically-underrated songs!

They are from lowest to highest (of the low): Albania, Iceland, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Australia, San Marino, Armenia, Portugal, Malta, Latvia, and Cyprus. Now, Denmark and Poland aren’t that much higher than these 11, but they managed to not be in the bottom 11. And of these lowest 11 Dev. Scores, 7 ended up being NQ’s. In fact, it’s more understandable why the few Q’s of the bottom 11 are here. Armenia was the last-revealed song of 2024, and Portugal had the very last National Final of the season. They didn’t have as much time between their selection and April 25th when I collected the numbers like other songs had. And yet, Albania was one of the earliest selections and sits at the very bottom of the list – time may not heal all wounds. 

Cyprus and Latvia are the other two songs from the Bottom 11 of the Underrated’s that qualified, and I genuinely think this is where the legitimate factor of chance plays a part. Cyprus came 6th in its semi, so we can state that the live performance and competition of the semi elevated Cyprus to a better position in the televoters’ preference, despite the odds! Latvia could be a similar case, as it finished 7th in the second semi-final. Then come Saturday, the two songs ended up right next to each other on the scoreboard with Cyprus at 15th and Latvia at 16th. As we keep moving up the list of Deviation Scores, we can spot the four songs that did qualify in the eyes of the raters, but not in the show itself. Denmark is just above Cyprus, and two more spots up is Poland. Four more spots up is Czechia among the most midrated songs of the year, so they were a true “Could go either way” case. Then in the biggest jump to our final non-qualifier, Belgium is 11 spots higher than Czechia and sits at being the 9th Most Overrated of 2024. Here and now, we have finally arrived at the fabled: Shock NQ. Now, a non-qualifier being a “shock” is up to your own opinion. If you’re me, you’re sitting here writing this article knowing damn well you knew Belgium’s Q-streak was over before Mustii hit the stage. This is the honest truth, and only Silia Kapsis has the right to try and say otherwise. But it also can be said that it’s not about asking “Who was the Shock NQ?” and more about asking “Who had the most attention before they NQ’d?” And the answer would be Belgium! Anyway, at this point I’m starting to think to myself “Huh, can using this over/underrated equation be a method to possibly predict a country’s qualification?”

…and then I remembered: Qualifiers are chosen entirely by televote. Therefore, if the Deviation Scores can predict the qualifiers with about 64% accuracy, can it predict the televoting Top Ten?...Let’s find out!

When looking at the Top Ten Most Overrated Songs of 2024, we have:

1st. Croatia

2nd. Israel

3rd. Netherlands

4th. Switzerland

5th. Italy

6th. France

7th. Ukraine

8th. Greece

9th. Belgium

10th. Ireland

(11th: Lithuania)

And for comparison, let’s look at the Top Ten of the 2024 Televote:

1st. Croatia

2nd. Israel

3rd. Ukraine

4th. France

5th. Switzerland

6th. Ireland

7th. Italy

8th. Greece

9th. Armenia

10th. Lithuania

To begin, you’ll notice I included the 11th Most Overrated song in parenthesis, which is Lithuania. I did this to reflect that even though the Netherlands is 3rd Most Overrated, they sadly weren’t able to receive the televotes they deserved the night of the Final. Using the data from this table alone, my conclusion on the Netherlands is that they were easily going to place Top Ten in the Televote, which would then leave who in 11th? Lithuania. All that’s left is to replace Belgium – a poorly-staged pop ballad with a party-harshing climax – with Armenia, which is a song bursting with fun, flawless vocals, and something so Armenian it caused Azerbaijan to get sent to the Doom Dimension. Additionally, mostly out of curiosity, I checked how many more reviews “Jako” has on EurovisionWorld as of May 22nd, and they’re up from ~12,000 ratings to ~18,000 while maintaining their 3.7 star score both times – that’s a show of quality and enjoyment from audiences over time. So other than those cases…I think I just mathematically figured out how to predict the televote? And, I don’t even mean the Top Ten – I mean the whole competition.

So I ask you this: What do we do when we are suddenly given information about the ways the results of Eurovision can be reflected in data before the fact? The answer is not “try and make a profit.” No, that’s not how EuroQuision works. Instead: we use it as mathematical evidence that propaganda fucking works.

CHAPTER 5: Couldn’t See It Comin’

Except: now we know we did see it coming.

Before we dive into the serious stuff, you might be thinking that what I’ve presented is an attempt or desire to “break Eurovision” or take advantage of this information for personal gain. I won’t deny that bets play a huge role in Eurovision – it’s how we get the odds in the first place. But if you know me, you know I’m not in this for the money, even though that may differ from the EBU’s intentions. The truth is that I don’t have any practical means to try and “profit” from any way this information could be used. Part of journalism and sharing of information is the inability I have to control how it’s used despite my best intention.

My intention with this article is to provide evidence that “Israel’s” attempts at utilizing Eurovision to get a good result and repaint their global image was nearly perfect, and the numbers said it was going to happen the whole time. Even without the numbers from EurovisionWorld, we knew how desperate “Israel’s” pleas for votes from the world were. From Duolingo’ing her way across the internet to coordinated efforts to vote en masse in various countries, Eden Golan was gunning for a televote win that she nearly reached, and that’s assuming every single one of those votes were completely legitimate. This is not said to try and accuse anyone of fraudulent voting when I don’t have evidence to support that. I mention it because vote buying is a practice that has been done in the past and actual delegations received punishment for doing so. Given the context of every other effort “Israel” put into their campaign for votes – and I mean everything: begging other artists/teams for positive press and harassing them to the point of retaliation – doesn’t make fraudulent voting seem out of the question. 

Unfortunately, I am no expert on voter fraud – ironic, me being an American and all, but I digress. This is something that, if proven true, will be revealed in the time post-Eurovision 2024. And if it’s true, I will happily discuss it! But for now, I can only  talk about what we do know, which is the newfound connection between EurovisionWorld’s sample of public ratings indicating a song’s predicted success or failure in the contest. This connection is reflective of the greatest tool a Eurovision song has: public perception. Or as some countries treat it: propaganda. Even though “Israel” is a country being sued by the ICJ for genocide, actively commit acts of violence to Palestinians as well as fellow-EBU member countries Lebanon, Jordan, and Egpyt, and were told multiple times by the EBU reference group to rewrite their political song lyrics, they still performed and qualified and finished Top Ten. Truly, did we even need my equation to prove “Hurricane” was overrated? Not really. Instead, “Hurricane” being so statistically overrated was a symptom of the larger effect of a successful PR campaign. When you consider that “Israel’s” mere existence inside of Eurovision is in itself a PR campaign, none of this is surprising. “Israeli” media took every possible moment to try and tell the world that their Eurovision participation was a good thing and truly represented being “united by music.” They did this in commercials and even in what “Israel” calls a sketch comedy show. 

All of these factors had me worried that despite my best hopes and efforts, somehow “Israel” would pull off a good result when they should have been removed months ago. However, the numbers were there the whole time. As we can see, the numbers don’t only apply to solely to “Israel.” Just as they came 2nd in my list and 2nd in the televote, Croatia was 1st in both, and the accuracy of the Top Ten as well as the bottom eleven/NQ’s can’t be ignored either. Truly think about that for a moment: on April 25th – several days before we saw any rehearsal footage or official performance – we knew with 80-90% accuracy the Grand Final televote results and who wasn’t going to qualify with 64% accuracy. And before you suggest that this was a Eurovision 2024-exclusive phenomenon, I thought of that too! So as a surprise fun addition, I ran my equation with the 2023 songs as well!

Since I can’t travel back in time to April 25th 2023, there’s no way I could collect all the ratings and stars with the same accuracy as I did for 2024, Thankfully, using the Wayback Machine Internet Archive. I managed to “go back in time” to a window of time spanning from mid-April to early-May and collect all the numbers. Even with a wider window of information, the 2023 Deviation Scores proved to be almost identical in accuracy – even more accurate in some cases. Starting with the Bottom 11 Most Underrated according to my equation, 9 of those countries turned out to be NQ’s. At the other end with the Top 10 Most Overrated, 7 out of those 10 did in fact finish in the Televote Top 10. And who was the most “overrated” of 2023? Not Finland, not Sweden, but “Israel” and “Unicorn.” This shows that for two years in a row, despite the drastic shift in public opinion and discussion concerning Israel’s participation, their songs that directly correlate to geopolitical aggression and self-victimization proved effective in the realm of Eurovision. So once again, I ask you, the reader: What do we do? CONCLUSION

Since I’m aware that a 20-page article is a bit long, I will go ahead and just list out the most important bits of information I covered and discussed:

Using the information from EurovisionWorld.com, we created an equation that figures out how close or far a song is from the global average of both stars and number of ratings.

Comparing these Deviation Scores reflects a somewhat-accurate correlation between how much the public “rates” a song and whether that song qualifies or potentially comes Top Ten in the Televote

Once these connections can be observed, we can discuss what factors or influences play a part in these connections (Is a song more popular? Is it less popular? Is it representing a country committing war crimes and hopes no one notices? Etc etc.)

Finally, here in the conclusion of all of this, we can answer that third point. As I mentioned, cases like Joost and “Europapa” being overrated are fairly easy to explain; well-known artist, extremely radio-friendly banger song, the list goes on. It also reflects why Iceland and “Scared of Heights” is near the bottom; a more “generic” paint-by-numbers pop song with simple English lyrics, a very unambitious composition, etc etc. However, there’s a difference between a song being over/underrated based on merit, and those with scores based on skewed public opinion one way or another.

I won’t pretend for a moment that spam-liking or spam-disliking doesn’t exist. For example, I’m aware of how Bashar Murad was the clear favorite to win over Hera Bjork, but sadly finished 2nd in what felt like a very devastating blow to the potential of Palestinian representation at Eurovision when it’s needed most. Anyone who rated Iceland poorly because of this is able to do so just as fairly as those who rate it low based on song quality alone. I cannot control the reasons as to why people choose to rate a song high vs. low.

Conversely, you might reasonably be saying “If ‘Israel’ is continuing to treat this as one big PR stunt, wouldn’t that mean all those positive ratings and their televote score are a result of artificially inflating the numbers and/or buying votes?” And as much as that’s one possible explanation, I’ll remind you that there are people who genuinely just enjoy “Hurricane” and dislike having to engage in contextualizing “Israel’s” Eurovision participation. For example, Worldvishawn is a Eurovision TikTok creator with over 300,000 followers, and on multiple occasions has published videos voicing his enjoyment and support of “Hurricane” this year. In a video discussing “Hurricane’s” rehearsals, he notes that the song is a “9/10” and is a case where “the live vocals are better than the studio version.” The issue here is not the fact that a fan of Eurovision has a positive opinion of a song that a lot of people dislike, that’s never a problem with me. The issue is that people with large platforms are able to give their opinions to hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button and provides a space where people can attempt to remove any context of “Hurricane” and “Israel” whatsoever and just say the song is good. This is what indicates to me that all the positive numbers surrounding this song aren’t all completely fabricated and this should not conclude in a baseless accusation of buying or faking votes.

Eurovision 2024 was a year where at every level of control, nearly everyone chose to do nothing rather than doing something. At the tippy top of the ranks, it was up to the EBU to remove “Israel” because of their own previously-established actions and morals concerning geopolitical violence during Eurovision, specifically in the case of Russia. After they refused to do that, it was the responsibility of participating broadcasters to withdraw and refuse to participate. After all 37 broadcasters refused to actually do anything, it was up to the artists to put their career aside and take a stand in the public eye. And then, none of the artists did that! Some showed and voiced their advocacy, but none of them showed solidarity. If you aren’t familiar with the difference between advocacy and solidarity, advocacy is when you “advocate” your morals and beliefs in your words and attitude. Solidarity is when you put those words to action and actually do something actionable to disrupt the status quo to be in solidarity with those who are suffering and against a system of power that is ignoring them. And since none of the artists’ advocacy led to solidarity, there we were with a Grand Final with “Israel” coming 2nd in the televote and no one doing anything about it.

Now, I could go down the entire chain of responsibility of “Who needs to do something about this?” and eventually land where I and many others have been for months, which is the fun destination of Boycottville, but a lot of people hear the B-word and think its an invitation to start arguing and calling me a hypocrite. What I will state is this: boycotting is not something asked of us to try and simply prove our morals for show or optics, and it is not something we ask people do to in order to shame them should they choose not to. Boycotting is what we do when every level of command above us refuses to do anything about a system that is completely broken and exploitable. The numbers were there from the beginning and even I can admit I was foolish when I stated in my own video essay that “‘Israel’ isn’t going to get an enormous televote score.” That is something I said based on optimism and my own reasoning, before I actually came up with this equation and ran all the numbers. I was proven very wrong and I think I’m not the only one.

In the end, I need to remind us all that this was never about the results, it was never about “making sure ‘Israel’ doesn’t win.” If this were truly about making sure “Israel” didn’t win, then we would all have had to agree on one (1) artist to mass-vote for AND hope the juries liked as well, but that would be literally impossible. Whereas Eurofans could argue “Let’s mass-vote Croatia!” or “Mass-vote Ukraine again,” that is nowhere as easily and streamlined as it is for Zionists, “fake” votes, and “Israeli” fans to just spend all their money on voting for “Hurricane.” So once again: THIS IS NOT ABOUT RESULTS. The numbers sadly reflected “Israel” succeeding in their campaign nearly the entire way, and because they know that Eurovision is a system where everyone from the broadcasters to the fans don’t actually want to do anything that poses a threat to this silly contest, they’ll get the numbers they want. Trying to beat “Israel” at the game of Eurovision is a mathematical impossibility as things currently stand, and if EVERYONE continues to not want to change their behavior (the EBU, the broadcasters, the artists, the news websites, even the fans themselves), then “Israel” will keep playing this game successfully for years to come.

“The Fairest of Them All”

Researched and Written by Beatrice Quinn

Research Data Links:

Eurovision 2024: Deviation Scores

Eurovision 2023: Deviation Scores

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[keystone8379]

keystone you should talk about something in regards to kirby fighters 2 community edition

Oh you're right I haven't done that yet! Regarding Kirby Fighters 2: Community Edition, there is a metric TON of stuff to talk about here. The dev team is some of the closest friends I've ever had. Smash Tactics is a thing because I was able to test the game over and over again with the members of the dev team. We've spent many hours sharing progressively crazier character ideas. We have created some warcrime moves. (or, well, more warcrime moves. KF2 already has plenty of those) I think, however, the best place to start for CE on the KF2 lore account is probably just a development history.

So it's late September, the year is 2020. Kirby Fighters 2 was leaked, got a trailer, and released all within the span of 24 hours. Soon after that, firubii (you might have seen her before) shows her findings from a Twitter datamine, that being evidence of a 3D Kirby game. "Wow! Awesome! I sure hope it's nothing like Battle Royale!" I say at the time. But I digress.

A few months pass and eventually fish gets in touch with Firubii for I believe checking hitboxes and frame data? We get a few things for some of the weirder moves from characters like Ninja, but the fact that a modder was among us got people excited. The prospect of a balance patch mod was an undeniably appealing one and could breathe new life (and a time) into the game. And one that Firubii was interested in.

March 16th, 2021 rolls around and Fish pings everyone saying that they had set up a poll for balance suggested for Firubii to implement. They also got an all star cast of top players and fighting game expects and colgate and me. because I "have lots of opinions." We're all put into a dev chat and poll responses start flowing in.

This poll was crazy. You had Ninja downplaying Mag like crazy. You had Celica Trying His Best. You had nonsense adjustment suggestions like "Not really that effective." But my favourite would have to be probably Qwertz saying to EVERY balance suggestion box "The game needs no balance changes, only quality of life changes."

So we all in the chat start throwing around ideas while not really getting anything done. This will be a running theme. About a month later I was like enough is enough and starting pinging people for proper balance discussions and locking in changes. There's a few notable things we did for v0.1, including making Sword a LOT faster, giving Hammer Palutena's Lightweight, (the s4 custom move) making Bandana Dee's spears stick into the ground for a few seconds, and making Cutter's boomerangs bounce off walls. That last one was our first real criminal change, as Cutter could effortlessly lock down the entire screen. I spent hours labbing counterplay only to find none and grew to despise the character and suggested massive overcorrections for v0.2. Oops.

Overall v0.1 was pretty good! It had some iffy stuff and launched with a Whip desync in game but other than that it was a success I think. It came out during July of 2021, a little under 4 months from the initial announcement. There's a few public tourneys with good turnouts but run via Parsec and Parsec makes me want to commit violent crimes. Progress on 0.2 also goes fairly well. There's some bad ideas in there like making MK not very fun but overall it's not so bad.

Until development just HALTS. To my understanding, I believe it was something personal Firubii was going through but I don't have all the info. Then again, I didn't ask. Like sure, I'd like to have the new CE versions as soon as possible, but ultimately the well being of the people actually making the mod is the top priority, it's why it's so irritating when people are jerks about CE's slow development. Obviously I want the new versions out. But we all have lives outside of this and sometimes other things need doing.

Eventually 0.2 gets out, at the start of Febuary 2022. It's solid but still has some things that irk me. After a few months, we ask for player feedback on overall balance and specific changes and get not many results. Granted, CE doesn't have much players so balance discussion is somewhat meaningless for a game this unexplored. I think 1.0 fixes all of the glaring flaws though.

At some point, once again, development freezes, and this one was rough. No communication from Firubii led to a lot of dooming, especially with how close we got to actually launching 1.0. We DO actually know why she vanished for so long this time, it's because her house caught fire. It didn't burn down don't worry! But this still caught us all SUPER off guard.

Anyway, CE resumed development and went for a little while, but hit a brick wall when trying to add training mode. I'm not an expert on the inner workings of KF2 but I know Firubii talked to Ryn (yes, the goku in strive Ryn) about it a little bit. I actually posted about this to my Threads account but who gives a shit about threads. That's more or less where we are now. It's been a while since the last tester build but what can you do.

There's also a few other things but there wasn't really a good place for them. Colgate thought it was a good idea to make a tierlist video for a game no one could play. It wasn't. I had to spend the days after that video doing damage control. There was a playlist where people could suggest songs to add to CE, but tbh it was more just an excuse to listen to music in VC while we could still do that. We were gonna move off Gamebanana because the site is run by N*zis but this was during the fire arc so didn't happen. AV also thought it'd be a good idea to shittalk CE and ask to join the dev team in the same day. There was also the time we had to rush out a trailer for Savi's Dream Display but I have a few criticisms about that which I'll share with him one day.

I think that's it? If you wanna download the mod I'll link it right here: https://gamebanana.com/mods/303920

[warningsine]

PARIS (AP) — Voters across mainland France have been casting ballots Sunday in the first round of an exceptional parliamentary election that could put France’s government in the hands of nationalist, far-right parties for the first time since the Nazi era.

The outcome of the two-round election, which will wrap up July 7, could impact European financial markets, Western support for Ukraine, and how France’s nuclear arsenal and global military force are managed.

Many French voters are frustrated about inflation and economic concerns, as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership, which they see as arrogant and out-of-touch with their lives. Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally party has tapped and fueled that discontent, notably via online platforms like TikTok, and dominated all preelection opinion polls.

A new coalition on the left, the New Popular Front, is also posing a challenge to the pro-business Macron and his centrist alliance Together for the Republic.

There are 49.5 million registered voters who will choose 577 members of the National Assembly, France’s influential lower house of parliament, during the two-round voting.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s resurgent National Rally, cast her ballot in her party’s stronghold in northern France on Sunday.

Turnout at midday at the first round stood at 25.9 % according to interior ministry figures, which is higher from the 2022 legislative elections at this time of the day. It was 18.43% at midday two years ago.

After a blitz campaign marred by rising hate speech, voting began early in France’s overseas territories, and polling stations opened in mainland France at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) Sunday. The first polling projections are expected at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), when the final polling stations close, and early official results are expected later Sunday night.

The voting is taking place during the traditional first week of summer vacation in the country, and absentee ballot requests were at least five times higher than in the 2022 elections, according to figures from the interior ministry.

Voters who turned out in person at a Paris polling station on Sunday had issues from immigration to inflation and the rising cost of living on their minds as the country has grown more divided between the far right and far left blocs with a deeply unpopular and weakened president in the political center.

“People don’t like what has been happening,” said Cynthia Justine, a 44-year-old voter in Paris. “People feel they’ve lost a lot in recent years. People are angry. I am angry.”

She added that with “the rising hate speech,” it was necessary for people to express their frustrations with those holding and seeking power and cast their ballots.

“It is important for me because I am a woman and we haven’t always had the right to vote,” Justin said. “Because I am a Black woman, it’s even more important. A lot is at stake on this day.”

Pierre Leclaer, a 78-year-old retiree, said he cast his ballot for the simple reason of “trying to avoid the worst,” which for him is “a government that is from the far right, populist, not liberal and not very Republican.”

Macron called the early election after his party was trounced in the European Parliament election earlier in June by the National Rally, which has historic ties to racism and antisemitism and is hostile toward France’s Muslim community. It was an audacious gamble that French voters who were complacent about the European Union election would be jolted into turning out for moderate forces in a national election to keep the far right out of power.

Instead, preelection polls suggest that the National Rally is gaining support and has a chance at winning a parliamentary majority. In that scenario, Macron would be expected to name 28-year-old National Rally President Jordan Bardella as prime minister in an awkward power-sharing system known as “cohabitation.”

In the restive French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, polls already closed at 5 p.m. local time due to an 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew that authorities on the archipelago have extended until July 8.

Nine people died during a two-week-long unrest in New Caledonia, where the Indigenous Kanak people have long sought to break free from France, which first took the Pacific territory in 1853. Violence flared on May 13 in response to attempts by Macron’s government to amend the French Constitution and change voting lists in New Caledonia, which Kanaks feared would further marginalize them.

Voters in France’s other overseas territories from Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, French Polynesia and those voting in offices opened by embassies and consular posts across the Americas cast their ballots on Saturday.

While Macron has said he won’t step down before his presidential term expires in 2027, cohabitation would weaken him at home and on the world stage.

The results of the first round will give a picture of overall voter sentiment, but not necessarily of the overall makeup of the next National Assembly. Predictions are extremely difficult because of the complicated voting system, and because parties will work between the two rounds to make alliances in some constituencies or pull out of others.

In the past such tactical maneuvers helped keep far-right candidates from power. But now support for Le Pen’s party has spread deep and wide.

Bardella, who has no governing experience, says he would use the powers of prime minister to stop Macron from continuing to supply long-range weapons to Ukraine for the war with Russia. His party has historical ties to Russia.

The party has also questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France, and wants to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality. Critics say this undermines fundamental human rights and is a threat to France’s democratic ideals.

Meanwhile, huge public spending promises by the National Rally and especially the left-wing coalition have shaken markets and ignited worries about France’s heavy debt, already criticized by EU watchdogs.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

In the past month, nearly $100 million has been spent on anti-trans ads across the United States. Conservative super PACs have launched these campaigns in swing states, targeting vulnerable senators. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is running a national anti-trans ad during football games. However, recent polls and past election results cast doubt on the effectiveness of this strategy. Today, a Gallup poll confirmed that, similar to 2022 and 2023, voters rank transgender issues as the least important concern; Democrats should not be afraid of anti-transgender ads in swinging the election in 2024. The poll asked voters to gauge the importance 22 issues to their vote. These included the economy, Supreme Court justices, taxes, education, Israel and Palestine, China, race relations, and more. Among the options was “transgender rights.” When asked about the importance of each issue, voters ranked transgender rights dead last, falling below concerns like climate change, race relations, the federal budget deficit, and China. You can see the Gallup Poll chart of issues here: Gallup Poll issues importance The relative ranking of transgender rights compared to other issues voters care about stands in stark contrast to Republican spending targeting transgender people. Over the past month, Republican PACs have launched significant ad campaigns aimed at swing-state senators. The Senate Leadership Fund, a major conservative PAC, announced plans to spend $80 million in Ohio alone. The first ads released by the PAC targeted Senator Sherrod Brown for supporting gender-affirming care for trans youth. Similar ad campaigns followed in several other states, targeting Senator Jon Tester in Montana, Senator Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, and Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, among others. It is not just Senators who are being targeted by anti-trans advertisements. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign has launched its own massive ad buy across the United States targeting transgender people. Ads saying “Trump is for us, Kamala Harris is for they/them” are running alongside football games nationwide, including in safe Democratic states. The latest Gallup poll confirms that these ads are not effective. While people may hold differing views on transgender rights—covering issues like driver's licenses, bathrooms, sports, health care, and more—the issue is not salient for the vast majority of Americans. Transgender people make up a small percentage of the general population, and issues relating to them are overshadowed by bread-and-butter concerns like the economy, democracy, education, and Supreme Court justices. To make matters worse for Republicans running ads on this issue, voters who rank transgender rights as very important to their vote are not Republicans but primarily Democrats. In fact, twice as many Democratic voters consider transgender issues important to their vote. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, transgender rights rank higher than immigration, crime, taxes, and energy. For Republicans, however, transgender rights rank below nearly every other issue. The only issue ranked lower is climate change, something many Republican candidates don’t even believe in.

These results are supported by years of polling and election data showing consistent trends. While responses on individual transgender issues can vary greatly depending on how the question is framed—such as "banning" gender-affirming care for youth (Americans oppose bans) versus "do you support or oppose" gender-affirming care for transgender youth—several constants have emerged across nearly every poll. Voters view the issue as unimportant, prefer the government to stay out of it, and politicians who focus negatively on it face backlash.

A recent Gallup poll reveals that transgender rights issues rank very low in voter salience, and among those that do view it as a high-salience issue, Democrats lead there. This is despite Republicans putting millions of dollars into ads featuring anti-trans content.

See Also:

The Guardian: Trump and Republicans push ‘hate and chaos’ with anti-trans ads, advocates say

HuffPost: Republicans Are Pouring Millions Into Anti-Trans Advertisements In Election’s Final Stretch