Italian had a great presence this year, with their own good song (#5), the unexpectedly fun San Marino (#26) entry, and the fake Italian song from Estonia (#3). I hear Italians were pretty pleased!

I had expected Sweden (#4) or Finland (#11) to win, but my favorites were Albania (#8) and Latvia (#13).

Austria performed really well and I knew the jury would love it, but I only really rooted for him toward the end of voting because the alternative was infuriating.

La la la lava!

Watching the national finals starts to feel like work. This year there were, I think, three Super Saturdays with several multi-hour shows to watch. Oof.

Benidorm Fest from Spain is usually good. San Remo (Italy) is great, of course, since they’re the template on which the ESC was based and because the Italians view THAT as the real show. Ukraine’s Vidbir is interesting because you can tell they have no budget and are often bombed during the show. Portugal’s Festival de Cançâo has some amazing songs, because they don’t care about winning ESC, they’re just focused on highlighting the best Portuguese acts.

I have some favorites from 2025 that didn’t make it out of the national finals - From Ukraine I loved Future Culture’s Waste my Time Vidbir Live - Music Video . From Finland I’m still listening to Goldielocks’s Made Of UMK Live - Music Video . Germany sent the wrong song again, they should have gone with Feuerschwanz’s Knight Club is super fun. NDR live - Music video .

I found the Eurovangelists podcast, and they’re a lot of fun to follow along with. Taking in too much media ABOUT the contest can color your enjoyment of the songs, though.

I listen to the music I liked as a youngin: grunge, 90’s alternative, nu-metal, weird Al, and sea shanties.

I also watch and listen to the Eurovision Song Contest every year since I found it a few years ago. That gives me ~40 new artists every year that I might like. I follow a few favorites and see what else they’ve made. Watching some of the national final competitions gives me dozens more songs.

Eye see.

Cuy!

Wayfair, maybe? Online furniture store.

NO, YOU’RE TOTALLY RIGHT MAN. IGLOO HOMIE, MAYBE?

SKEEEZY’S MY HOMIE TOO, BRO! WE’RE BASICALLY LIKE ESKIMO HOMIES!

I don’t care much about this guy specifically, but I wanted to chime in and say that I appreciate you looking for a source.

Shots!

I was so depressed that my doctor gave me antidepressants for a few months. Capitalism!

Does this require libratbag?

I’ve done that. Taken several naps in random gas station parking lots rather than drive tired.

Hurray! Are there snacks?

That’s incredible! I hope you didn’t write all of that just for little old me, and it’s your standard evangeluxing script!

I love this idea; you’ve convinced me to try! I’ve had a few instances where I’ve had to jump on the console and stack overflow to get something working, and there’s no way I could repeat it. I can see the appeal of what you called the declarative method. I have one desktop and one old laptop, so being able to copy (some) of the system definition sounds really handy.

I have nothing to lose but stability and sanity, lol. I’ll look at copying everything off of /home and finally wiping my primary windows drive - I haven’t booted into it on purpose in almost a year.

She is, it’s true! I love this series.

He’s bonkers on the current series of Taskmaster UK. It’s so good, and free on YouTube.

I can see the appeal, but yeah that sounds more complicated than I want. Thank you for all the info!

Nothing, besides seeing the name on some memes.

I’m not a sysadmin and I want a computer that just works, to the extent that that’s possible. I’ll fix stuff that needs fixing, but ideally I don’t need to do much. I’m not a customizer, so themes and rice and stuff go over my head. I don’t have any real ideological bent - FOSS is lovely but if I need proprietary to get my ultrawide monitor working or whatever, I’ll use it.

I like the KDE I’m using now (though I understand I’m a major version behind!) but am not afraid to try something else. I play games with Steam and Lutris, most of which work some of the time.