Iz様 🌟

Interestingly, I thought over the last month or two that Badenoch was doing a bit better and the amount of ex-Tories joining Reform is starting to worsen their image.

Harriet's intensity in the church was absolutely fantastic, I was hoping she'd bring that sort of considered energy to the rest of the episode, intense when it needs to be but evidential and considered elsewise, unfortunately she stayed in that mode and started accusing random people like Roxy, going off target from Rachel, while her evidence didn't have the bite I wanted it to have (Fiona vs Rachel was a Traitor-on-traitor, she said that before in a confessional, but didn't in this Round Table). She very nearly cemented herself as a GOAT Faithful there but unfortunately by about halfway through the episode it felt more like she'd had enough and wanted to go. The game is such that players can really focus on the loudest people in there, often illogically. Would have worked better if she'd gotten a core vote of people she was more sure of (enough of, from her perspective, Sam, Jack, Jade, Faraaz, Jessie, Stephen, Ellie to ensure she wins a vote) to absolutely go for Rachel. Whose survival and lack of heat at this point is quite amazing btw, she must have a really good social game because that is two people now who've gone 'I think Rachel is a Traitor' with intensity, one of whom was a confirmed Traitor, the other someone who'd clearly been watching her for a while, and yet the average one among the rest of them is more likely to go 'idk I think Jade seems more suspicious 🤷‍♂️' based off of seemingly nothing. Matthew looks in such a precarious position too now, not revealing his questions looks so suspicious (I can't believe that neither he nor Rachel seemed to think of plausible fake questions to talk about prior to the breakfast).

Absolute genius record, 'Grace Kelly', I heard it loads at the time, played it semi-regularly ever since, and it's never gotten boring. Such a good progression and as you note, all its drama and satire built into the vocals, I think that plays really well with what he was aiming for. I am a fan, I've kept up with him at times as he became a bit more niche, and there were a few songs that came close to this, but it really is such a perfect combination of factors, a radio dominating track, that's well-performed, and has some interesting and open to interpretation lyrical content. Fantastic #1. Slight shame he stopped FOB getting a #1 but Grace Kelly is so good I've never really considered it an option.

God I despise Shine even all these years later. Not even the adverts, it just exudes white bread as a song. If I were doing this thread, it might have been out, perhaps not first, but quite a long time ago x Ruby and The Way I Are would be my pick of the top 10 so far, I think both did well at representing their respective genre causes in this year and they're both just rather fun. Do remember 'About You Now' possibly the clearest of all of the #1s from that time, absoulutely inescapable and has remained one of their best songs, not really so for Beautiful Liar, I've always found it pretty forgettable.

I love it when previously quiet contestants come out of nowhere with a power game move, fantastic use of the opportunity Matthew. Happy to see Fiona gone, she was entertaining enough while on screen but it was really wearing thin and she completely torpedoed her own game there, always happy to see the backs of crudely arrogant Traitors.

Talk today about banning X. actually please do it Starmer this would justify this whole shitshow and give Ofcom some teeth again

'Long Way Down' has stuck with me very much more than a lot of the 2018 tracks, I think I'd heard it because of following Darren Styles myself before it got entered but it getting entered cemented it as a fave. Good year for me on the whole although we didn't cross paths much this year (except in 18s, most of yours were excellent), I think Purple Haze was my favourite of yours here.

Hold on there, I've just won Group A Scorpio Cup with this fantastic Taishin I've been relentlessly perfecting. AND I pulled her card I've been repping in my avatar first try as soon as it finally released. Obviously it's concerning that Cygames is exploring AI, but I would honestly have been more surprised if Japanese gaming companies didn't try this. More rational is that because a big part of the reason I've kept playing the game is the fantastic translation (ranks up among the best J-to-E translations I've ever seen in a game) and its sense of heart and humour that I will really start to notice if they replace that with AI. As they're still transposing content from the Japanese server, the only real risk is the translation for now. But I will keep an eye on it and only really make a move away from the game if it's actually in Uma. already submitted some feedback to them to emphasise that I do not want AI in the game.

I am quite happy for the Traitor team at this point in time to go down in a blaze of civil war so those last few minutes were glorious. Amanda the right choice to go in the end given it sparked off this, I thought she had some decent moments here and there but her dogged play against Jade for what seemed very little reason overshadowed any other deducing ability she had (and it did feel mean when it just kept continuing), and when she tried to throw out another theory, going for Sam, she instantly got heat for it. Unconscious bias talk, definitely a factor that keeps coming back, it's there, it being talked about is good, unfortunately you can't do much more than that.

You're always allowed to try, occasionally very popular artists who quite probably are mostly known in their domestic market or otherwise not well known in the UK turn up in the contest. YOASOBI's 'Yoru Ni Kakeru' is my favourite example of this, smashed the streaming records in Japan before being sent here, no one really called it out for being cheap as only a handful of us pay attention to Japan charts, and then I as one of those had to helplessly watch it not qualify from the other semi. The mods would make a judgement call after research, so it could be vetoed, but you'd have the opportunity to submit a replacement. If they've never been mentioned on this forum then, obviously depends, but that may be fine.

Stephen's implication of Maz seems like it was lucky everyone else had Ross or Reece in their heads and wasn't looking too closely because it is indeed full of holes and exactly the sort of thing a Traitor would try to shift the narrative, it's a decent tactic in a social deduction game as an outsider to reinvent facts and get first mover advantage, I've done that myself in Among Us, but it's also such an easy way to get caught, something that has also happened to me in Among Us numerous times - Reece's memory of the night before seems to be missing. Feel like they're getting rid of Sam here, I reckon that Reece somehow got 5 votes at the round table will make them think he has heat. Plus did have to laugh at Fiona just doddering about and refusing to take part in the mission, I think she had her eye on Reece as a murder potential. Which is potentially risky play if anyone remembers this. decent reveal of the secret traitor btw, she's coming in like a real wildcard and feels like she's running rings round the other traitors at this point, setting narratives and plans, will have to see if anyone catches this. but otherwise team Jessie, only sane woman in there it feels like sometimes (though this is a pretty great cast on the whole)

love seeing standard deviation fix all (well, some) of the issues with other rankings simultaneously proud and painful seeing Marnik so relatively high on both metrics, second-highest non-winner via SD

I enjoyed the atmosphere of this very much. Plus the thought out nature of such a show, how it takes into account the vastness of the world, questions about supply chains are raised and answered, those left unaffected are naturally and randomly demographically spread out, Manousos' journey up to New Mexico, I very much appreciated the whole process of it, plus Rhea Seehorn did wonders carrying most of the show. Hope we can get a second season in a reasonable timeframe. Excellent philosophical work, they did a great job of showing the characters of those left as individuals, plus the show's natural commentary as an pro-individualist text jives well with what I see are the hivemind's parallels with AI and it does feel like a very good show for Gilligan to go to following his others.

The Venezuelan situation took most of my political winds over the weekend but let's give something a go here. Domestic (UK) Keir Starmer stays in place as PM, even after the locals, which are less a disappointment for Labour purely because of the context of them being almost entirely favourable areas for them and so it's hard for Reform to trumpet the wins they did last year when they win control of five councils at best, three of which were already Tory-held. General good economic conditions continue but the government is continually dogged by occasional scandals and people constantly feeling like they have less money than they should. Reform still hold first place in the polls by the end of the year, but only just, as, England-wise at least, pretty much all 5 parties lie somewhere in the range of 17-23%, and election nerds are being edged to the point of breaking by the chaos an FPTP election would cause on these numbers. Your Party quietly disbands after winning less than 10 council seats in the local elections. Scratch that, they can't do anything quietly. But they do disband. PC and SNP win their respective elections in Wales and Scotland, Reform do get in both places in reasonably significant numbers (fail to become the opposition in at least one though) and spend the remainder of 2025 finding scandals emerging from these national politicians. International Trump invades Greenland, why not at this point, by which I mean plonks more military there without asking permission, the EU and the rest of NATO pontificates about whether to do anything but ultimately decides to leave it alone rather than go to war or risk their economies collapsing over a frozen island not even on their continent, Denmark isn't happy but can't do anything about it, Greenland is now listed with dotted lines and ambiguous ownership for at least the next 3 years. Trump spends much of the rest of the year talking about doing the same to the Panama Canal before doing the same thing there in the autumn without consequences. We end the year with him noisily talking about invading Cuba and are genuinely wondering whether a world war will start at some point. Midterms are not as disastrous for the Republicans as we hope, partly due to disinfo across red states but also partly because the median voter is callous and/or disaffected, but the Democrats do take back the House. Lula wins an incredible 4th term in Brazil, he and Sheinbaum begin the workings of a Latin American pact, not openly anti-American but aimed at preventing more nonsense like January's abduction, early stages though and doesn't really achieve anything by the end of the year. Ukraine war ends with Crimea and most of the Donbas ceded, I predicted this last year too but it's continuing to look likely. With peace, Russia is welcomed back into the international fold like they never left and so they're in perfect time for the Los Angeles Olympics (the Russian Olympic team were upset they never saw it in 1984). Israel manage to avoid starting too much trouble in the first half of the year, at least until they win Eurovision, which... sort of goes ahead but in a rather subdued manner with viewership slightly but noticeably down. Vain hopes Netanyahu's cohort will be defeated in the election come to nothing and another attack from an extremist group (Hamas or otherwise), gives them the green light to start things again. China doesn't invade Taiwan yet, rather chooses to continue to economically dominate. Recent news that BYD has overtaken Tesla will be punctuated by other Chinese companies like Xiaomi getting more popular, though this'll particularly hit in the automotive sector with others like Geely and Jaecoo making waves. World Cup is successful overall but the amount of group games is criticised for a number of boring matches, regardless at least one fun underdog team will make it to the quarters by simply dodging the big teams. The organisation of games particularly in the US will also be criticised with tickets not selling out in several group matches and heat being a major factor. Fidesz is not ousted in Hungary as that country becomes less and less like a real democracy, but the right-wing bloc lose power to Sweden and Magdalena Andersson becomes PM once again after having too short a time of it last time, though her and her party's aims to emulate their Danish Social Democratic neighbours on immigration doesn't make this an entirely positive development. The Danes lose power to a right-wing coalition, btw, because that's where that line of thinking eventually leads you.

This happens a lot with Youtube comments, partly people so oblivious they leave generic 'beautiful music' comments or something to that effect, and partly bots themselves, dead internet theory and all. Oh true, I have thought that for safety I could go to older entries or an artist I know makes real music, but that does lose some of the discovery magic I'm here for, I might do that more than I used to though. Hopefully we don't go through an entire contest without uncovering any AI entries, and I think it'd be hard for them to win once it's known. That said, the tech gets better at doing what it's doing each day, so it's quite possible it becomes harder to notice them, duplicitous behaviour in itself of course. I've started looking at song credits and other provenance a lot more closely in the last few months. I don't mean everything I post to be speaking as an admin, you know - here I'm just someone who enjoys entering a song contest and wants it to continue healthily. Each other song contest runs independently and can do what it likes, but as there's a significant overlap in participants in most of them, I imagine it would turn out much the same.

Greenland shouldn't even be a question. You get people like Starmer pontificating about how 'the future of Greenland is for the Greenlandic people to decide' which, while may be one of his more forceful lines, doesn't go far enough, it shouldn't even be on the fucking table and the EU and every other international organisation under the sun need to make that very clear to Trump. He is not God.

Yeah, I personally would not choose to use AI art if I were hosting, even though I have limited artistic skills, I want anything creative I do on here to reflect me and my interests (hence I may appropriate an image from an anime or something, but I'd rather put together something bad in Paint without any existing images than tell a computer to create an image, particularly as I nearly always find the images it creates to hit the uncanny valley in some way), but I have no problem if some hosts want to use it as an aid for something inconsequential like graphics, I'm not going to get precious over what others do in that sense. I guess that for songs there's some closeness to varying 'artificial' aspects of songs like autotune, vocaloid programmes, electronic beats and such-like that then spills into a spectrum of AI-assisted and created elements, so there is some nuance, but I can normally make a decent judgement call after learning the background of a song on whether there is enough real, human, creative and original energy in it - which is probably what I'll have to do going forward, and if I find out that there is any LLM involvement, it likely will taint it for me except in really really light cases.

My shortlist is Harriet, Ellie and Fiona. Of those, I think Harriet is the one, I think the production will have wanted to pick someone they were sure of handling it, and she's shown an ability to craft a plan. If it is her, her move against Hugo was deliberate, has her correctly yet plausibly using the information she has to her advantage, and is a great way to cement herself as a Faithful early on, to give her the time to craft up narratives against other Faithfuls. Ellie has been shown to be quietly observant and could well have picked those on the shortlists, she is definitely my second guess if only from some of her interactions with the other Traitors around the castle, Fiona I will admit could possibly have something to it based on the latest episode and her hiding some parts of her personality does keep me with her as a possibility, yet I feel her shortlists might have been a bit more random if it were her.

Davey's comments were just as noted as Farage's in the media I think? I just highlighted Farage's because of how disagreeable they are. Anyway: I had low expectations for the Labour government's stance on this but holy hell that's horrendous. 'We always support international law unless we don't feel like defending it this time because the big strongman over West said no' fwiw of course Maduro is no loss but the absolute INSANE precedent this sets that a superpower can just abduct another country's leader and remove them from power is not good for the international order and it makes a complete mockery of international law, which as of this morning, pretty much ceased to exist.

yeah that's the Trump stooge (who I do think made a bit of a PR gaffe here, even only a portion of Reform weirdos likes a Trump suckup over here) who's more willing to say that America contravened international law than our esteemed PM. Could have told you that ahead of time though, no courage in this administration - and the Trump admin will continue to see no resistance to its warped view of might makes right

The US Special Forces are also now claiming to have captured Maduro what indeed, literally Putin's playbook, the United States claiming its Latin America playground. Just like old times!

Strikes in Caracas this morning, which the Trump administration have already claimed responsibility for. Nice 'peace president'

Jade was the only (shown) contestant to ask to be Faithful, I wonder if that's because by some coincidence, everyone else wanted to be a Traitor - applying to the show would generally self-select for those willing to be such and it's definitely a more reliable route to prominence. Either way I don't want to psychoanalyse too many people from the edit (Sam's edit is definitely villainising but his strategy, obnoxious as it is, is also an understandable way to play) but her aiming to play a quieter game as a Faithful and likely less confident than most of the mostly older (than her) cast seems entirely plausible to me. Finding the Secret Traitor misdirection interesting, and it does allow the murders to feel more controlled and purposeful. Depends who it is and how it ends up so withholding too much judgement until later. Amanda's only doing a slightly better job of concealing her police background than she is her sexuality so I don't feel her, either. Given the series opened with her and her also concealing her background, Harriet's had like 2 minutes of screen time across both episodes so far, I'm keeping an eye on her, when the producers decide to show her to us again.

This is it, right, I used to love finding faceless artists who'd let their musical talent speak for themselves and sending them in, they're still out there probably, but I have to do vetting now, I can't trust that that talent is real. Mostly what I've done is look for reddit threads or comments on review sites that confirm to me if the artist is real - which I start doing if anything about the artist's output or the song's quality, its description is suspicious. Sadly, popular subgenres (that I tend to like!) with only a few notable artists in them like synthwave, electro-swing or city pop are prime territory for it. You might be able to tell from uncanny valley vocals or production but I've learnt to never be too complacent with 'AI tells' because the damn chameleon tech always changes. If there is an awareness to check, hopefully people will do that.

That is an excellent resource uhsting, thank you for sharing, I'll be adding that as something to check and perhaps even contributing to it.