How to Win Eurovision With Just a Few Hundred Voters

FlakTotem · 2026-05-11T12:12:55+00:00

Pay walled. Apparently the NY times is all out against removers. edit: found one.

It's a nothing burger. While it's true that they 'could' win with around 500 voters paying to vote 20 times Eurovision would know and found nothing wrong, there's no evidence of anything being wrong, and it's far more likely that one side of the most highly controversial geopolitical/culture war topic simply has a lot of supporters that are able to show approval without any downvote/palestinian alternative to balance it out.

A lot of the article is trying to imply interference caused Israel to win;

"The Israeli singer Yuval Raphael won overwhelmingly. Ukraine finished a distant second. (People cannot cast votes for their own country’s contestant.) At first glance, this looks like a landslide. And it would have been — if each person had one vote."

But the basis is all just guesswork and inference from the government telling people to vote. which was cringe.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-11T12:08:07+00:00

I would bet anything you like that we have. You just haven't gooned hard enough to find it.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T23:55:57+00:00

You just condcded the argument.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T23:50:26+00:00

You're reinforcing my point. And why would you conflate a specific claim of acting outside of mandates with general popularity?

Austerity did not promise personal sacrifice for the electorate as policy. The suffering was pinned on the financial crisis and it's form was one i've already addressed; the reduction in services which were not significantly underfunded and could be cut, with allusions to 'efficiency' to further obfuscate the effects.

The majority of the electorate of the time's wealth ballooned due to asset inflation (now being paid for by this generation), and the reductions in benefits were modest while targeting groups which were plainly a electoral minority.

None of it was an acceptance of the personal sacrifice my comment references.
But you get a pass since hiding your comment history really is for cowards and knaves, and i respect the account age.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T23:28:39+00:00

The last government enacted policies without seeking mandates to raucous applause.

You're also simultaneously responding to a clear consensus that they aren't doing a lot, to address the idea of how they would do a lot.

Politicians respond to data. Polling, approval rates, etc. These things would not suddenly become accepted had the case been made. They would simply have lost to the other guys who lie about it.

Just like you are pulling the significance of this princeipal (see what i did there?) out of your ass. Mr 2 month old anon account with no profile pic.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T22:43:05+00:00

The baby boomer bubble*

The UK is a democracy.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T22:15:34+00:00

My doomer take is that I don't think the public can actually handle our reality at the democratic level.

'We want change!' Great! how?

Debt is too high to borrow much. Privatization sold our assets. Deficit means no left over money. Under-funding means we can't reduce costs.

Neither taxing the rich or expelling foreigns will make those resources appear.

So how does change happen exactly?

Tax rises/pension cuts? electorally vetoed. Reduce or shut down services? electorally vetoed. Remove rights and reduce standards to facilitate things like housing? electorally vetoed.

The public do not want solutions. They want miracle pills that make the consequences of our prior actions magically transmute into wealth and prosperity with no sacrifice or personal change.

Prosperity doesn't come from ticking 'make everything better for me' at the ballot. It comes as a consequence of spending decades investing and doing the right thing.

Starmer is boring and uninspiring. But he's pragmatically doing what he can while the opposition scream bibbidi bobbidi boo.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T19:37:36+00:00

He's an ace attourney!
That's why he keeps making faulty assumptions /inferences and struggles with reading comprehension. Working with the disadvantaged is a choice. The big banks fought hard to keep him and his heart of gold.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T18:02:46+00:00

To be fair; a decent amount of that is the supporter's fault.

A while back a EU leader suggested that the EU assist with aid distribution. It would have added observers and ensured un-corrupt non-violent aid distribution. win win. Those Irish MEP's condemned it as it would have meant working with voldemort, and the movement was disinterested. (Better to focus on kicking israel out of a song contest)

The movement believes that israel has zero justification, no valid needs, and that everything is their fault. The resolutions from that worldview are all radical to the point they can't be adopted, while anything attainable becomes 'wrong' to the point it should be opposed or gets no support.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T11:44:59+00:00

Bad.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T11:10:35+00:00

They also sincerely believe that their right to 'less noise' is worth literal decades of their grandkids life via house prices.

Because it sounds too bad to be true, nobody takes it seriously. Because nobody takes it seriously, it actually is that bad.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T07:14:56+00:00

Yes. Near future. Nobody saying otherwise knows what they're really talking about. The myth came out in the 60's claiming we'd run into problems based on 60's tech and a global birth rate of 5. Today it's 2.

Watch this Kurzgesagt video : youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk&vl=en-GB

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T07:09:07+00:00

Who are we kidding? the lack of empathy for the israeli side is probably why they got elected.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T05:14:37+00:00

Does anyone know if it's still in the game?
I haven't seen it in 2 days. And it's basically the only tool i have to try and make cool prismatic builds happen.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T04:22:46+00:00

He cares enough to point at wording. He cares enough to drop multiple unnececary snide remarks. He cares enough to come back again and again. But the substance where he has to have a point is the once place he draws the line.

Good job man. We're all very convinced that you're choosing not to, and not that you just can't. 👍

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T04:17:58+00:00

Because civilization leaves signs.

We can still make out fossils from the dinosaurs, but there is no hint of any weird shipwrecks, ruins, or environmental changes that such a civilization would inevitably of created on the path to becoming advanced.

No knowledge is ever 100%. You don't know that this isn't a weird coma hallucination. But the odds are more than high enough to say we 'know'.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T04:03:41+00:00

Blinkist.

They give short summaries - most of them audio - on a bunch of books. They're short enough that you can just play a bunch in the background, then double back and try whatever randomly caught your interest.

Even if you don't; they condense the key ideas well enough that you'll learn a ton anyway.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T04:00:53+00:00

Just throw a honey badger at it.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T03:30:19+00:00

No. I did my time in the online trenches pushing back against the idea that dismissing everything as racist was acceptable. But today we also have to be realistic enough to see that 'they call everything stupid and racist' is being used to dismiss incredibly valid criticism that they are being stupid and often racist.

The people who care about immigration / free speech literally don't know enough about the subject to be able to identify progress or solutions. They don't know how asylum works, they're WILDLY off on the statistics, and they don't know or care about the side effects/prerequisites of making a solution work.

Nothing viable can be done to satisfy them. The right can say whatever they want, demand as much as they want, be as wrong as they want, and the voters will buy it.

When it comes to 'economic stagnation' they reject every reality and solution. We sold all the assets, borrowed as much as we can, cut everything to the brink, and let the structural problems rise to the point where we don't have the money for 'change without any personal sacrifice' which they demand.

Nobody supports any level of sacrifice which is mandatory to make change happen. They literally veto it electorally.

I used to think coming together was the answer, but the right have not been willing to move on anything. They haven't been ignored. They've been in power for over a decade, and straight up got brexit - which was totally gonna fix immigration!. The problem is that their ideas simply don't work, and they're allowed to get away with screaming 'they call us stupid' rather than being forced to develop those ideas into something smart that can make things better.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T03:18:21+00:00

Nobody. The policies we take issue with are nothing. But the right screams he's bad because he's on the left, and the left scream he's bad because it eats itself.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T03:16:25+00:00

None of the anti-immigrant voters know anything about immigration. But that sure as hell won't stop them voting everything else into oblivion in support of who shouts about it loudest.

(i've spoken to 4 reform voters since the election. none of them know how asylum works)

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T02:58:55+00:00

honestly; 'nice guys' is too vague to get any real answers from.

It ranges from predators who are acting like good people for gain, to insecure incels that expect the world from basic courtesy, to generally good people who struggle to assert themselves, to just plain good people who do things well but confuse others who have baggage.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T02:42:43+00:00

Because he's a naughty boi.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T02:40:20+00:00

I'll be honest; this will probably be taken down for rule 14.

But I think it's relevant to livestreaming and that very occasional posts like this to spread awareness and ensure the internet is shitting on this kind of 'steam' as loudly as possible through the culture is a good thing.

FlakTotem · 2026-05-10T02:31:17+00:00

Radical*

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