This is not news. It was the same last year.

It’s the second time politics has dominated Eurovision,

Okay, this author has not been following Eurovision for very long then. Here are some that come to mind:

• 1964: Stage invader protested against Spain’s and Portugal’s dictatorships
• 1969: Organised by Spain
• 1973: Israel debuts
• 1977: BBC cameramen stike right before the contest
• 1978: Israel wins
• 1990s: Yugoslav Wars and dissolution of Soviet Union, with some countries participating while at war
• 1998: Israel wins, with a trans performer
• 2003: Invasion of Iraq, UK was allowed to participate but got last place
• 2009: Azerbaijani government interrogates people who voted for Armenia, Georgian entry is anti-Putin
• 2012: Organised by Azerbaijan
• 2014: Start of Russo-Ukrainian war
• 2016: Ukraine wins over televote favourite Russia
• 2019: Organised by Israel
• 2021: Belarusian entry being government propaganda
• 2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine

Eurovision has always been political.

493 in favour, that makes me very happy to hear. Amid all the horrors of the time we live in, there are still some places where some human rights are unchallenged.

What? Now already? That’s sad.

I’m not sure how much you know about Eurovision, but each country’s jury is appointed by the participating national broadcaster, not the organisers. And we’ve seen before that if the points announced during the show are different from what a country’s jury voted, the national broadcaster loudly complains about it (see the 2022 jury drama). This means that if there was some conspiracy to give Sweden points, the broadcasters and their jury would have to be in on it too, including those of Finland, Moldova, Israel, etc (which all gave 12p to Sweden) – certainly not countries that have any interest in Sweden winning. I can’t imagine the EBU pulling this off and compromising their own integrity just for a nice anniversary.

I think the actual reason for the disparity between the jury vote and the televote is more nuanced than that. The makeup of the juries could play a role here: it’s only five people per country, and it’s largely radio hosts, TV personalities, and songwriters, who have already established themselves in the industry. So it’s not a conspiracy, just bias. Another factor is that the juries only give points to the countries they ranked at the very top; the 11th best song gets the same number of points as the 26th ranked song: zero. By design, this will mean one country or a few countries will get a big jury lead, then some countries get in the 100s of points, and most get less than 60 points. And the same with the televote. This year this was quite obvious, but it’s not the first time. In 2017, Salvador Sobral got even more jury points than Loreen got this year, but because he was also the televote favourite, no one said his victory was undeserved.

Not every Eastern European country is like Hungary though… In fact it’s only Hungary, now that Poland’s getting a new government.

Also it’s not like Western Europe’s free of populists either.

At least then limit your attacks on the Israeli military or police. Mass killing civilians does not do anything about the genocide of Palestine. There’s a good chance it’ll only make it worse.

The idea that people just being in a country are automatically complicit with the government’s actions is the real mental gymnastics here. And yeah I understand that hatred can make people blind, but that does not make it justifiable.

Shoot the person harassing you, sure. That’s something completely different from killing civillians arbitrarily.

“besluiten” is hier een zelfstandig naamwoord meervoud, niet een werkwoord. “Op de dag dat het kabinet besluiten (…) moet sturen.” Maar het leest inderdaad niet makkelijk.

I still have some Reddit Premium left, so I don’t get ads, so I don’t feel guilty about visiting the site occasionally. But I removed the link to Reddit from my task bar, so the times I visit the site is almost always just because I followed a link.
That said, I do miss Reddit a little bit. Kbin replaces it partially, but simply because if its size it’s much more likely you find something interesting on Reddit than on here.

De mens is toch juist een sociaal dier met sociale constructies? Dat is wat ons primaten onderscheidt van andere zoogdieren.

Mij lijkt het een slecht idee om nu al zeker te zijn van je stem, terwijl er nog zo veel kan veranderen. Ik zie mensen hier al stellen dat het GL/PVDA wordt terwijl we nog niet eens weten hoe die samenwerking er uit komt te zien.

Winters zijn alleen een probleem als het ooit sneeuwt; niet alle fietspaden worden gestrooid (vooral buiten de stad). Het is mij één keer overkomen en toen had ik een half uur extra reistijd. Maar voor de rest is er niet veel verschil tussen winter en zomer.

I know you’re just summarising, but I don’t think your first point gets across how deep the childcare benefits scandal goes. Thousands of parents had to pay tens of thousands of euros, often for no clear reason. The debt made them lose their posessions, jobs, relationships, and their own wellbeing. Their kids were taken out of their homes because parents in debt can’t take care of their children. These people literally lost years of their lives because of one single action by some unknown employee of the tax authority with no justification needed.
The government is supposed to protect its citizens from itself, and the Dutch government failed at its most important task. The protections against arbitrary punishment that you have on paper were actively being bypassed. Requests for information resulted in completely blacked out documents. When it was brought to court (if you could somehow afford a lawyer), even the highest judges blindly trusted the information they got from the tax authority (even though vital information was illegally left out), rather than assuming innocence. The ombudsman seemed to care very little. The government also lied to parliament, and most MPs did not question it too much anyway because staying in the coalition is so much more important. And then the fourth power, the press, took over a decade to bring all of this to light, after ignoring several signs before. All branches of government failed here, and the foundation of rule of law was violated. Rutte, of course, knew about it, but oopsie he has no active memory of it.

It’s weird if it’s real, but it’s also weird if it’s fake. That’d mean that they moved a lot of troops out of Ukraine, split them up with some heading to Moscow and others staying in Rostov, destroyed the morale of the Russian soldiers staying in Ukraine and allowed Ukraine to continue their counteroffensive, shot down six of their own helicopters and a plane in the conflict, and killed and wounded several of their own soldiers, all just for show. They could have done this so much more efficiently.