That sounds great; I really appreciate it.

Huh, I didn’t realize decent laser projectors would be a reasonable price.

Thank you very much for the tip. It looks like this (and many other projectors) are basically smart TVs, with Hulu and Netflix and stuff. I assume they’re controlled by a phone app instead of a remote?

I’ll get an actual projector screen, but not an expensive one. Your stand idea looks great for the purpose. Trying to think how I could make it more wind-resistant.

He’s got a really interesting vibe, but the guy can’t sing.

The collabs I’ve seen were all pretty fun.

That’s a great idea, thank you!

I’m pretty sure Tommy is Estonian. He’s got a bonkers video with Käärijä, too.

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.

I appreciate the tips!

You’re talking about how a projector throws out a trapezoid instead of a rectangle if it’s above or below the screen, right? I didn’t know that would impact the picture quality - I understood that you could adjust the shape of the image.

My reading suggests that a DLP projector is probably brighter than an LCD, so I’m thinking I should go with DLP. LASER sounds good but too expensive.

I have a WII, and you’re on a good track, that would be fun as heck.

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.

Wayfair, maybe? Online furniture store.

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

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.

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.

I’m open to conversion!

Reading, thank you.

On Debian it is. The stable branch is a pain. I need to switch to something else.

Interesting - I’ll give it a try.