Harve

Congrats for the second win! I voted for 5/6 of the top 6 and liked the Summericia song too so very happy about that. Also pleased at a solid placing after being very mid/low-table until a last minute surge.

Voted - was very tricky! Did we bring back indie rock???

Gonna do a cringe centrist take here, but it's so easy to profile the perpetrator as being firmly from from the opposite camp to yours (Bella Ciao engraving on the casing vs. white boy from a gun-loving law enforcement/military Mormon family ). There has been so much focus on the motives and the demographics of the perpetrator but there was every chance that we ended up in this situation where there is no manifesto, and no neat political explanation. The overall picture of his online life that has quickly come out is pretty inconclusive, with much of it politically meaningless, and don't suggest much other than his brain perhaps being fried on a diet of memes and video games more than anything coherently ideological. Which figures because as extreme as ideology can get, ideology alone can't ever explain committing a lone wolf public atrocity and the obvious personal consequences for doing it - there has to be some form of mental illness + access to weapons alongside it. Despite it targeting a political figure, I think it'll end up in the school/mass shooting basket of atrocities where there is often no clear motive. Unless something more concrete comes out (and of course the perpetrator is still alive), then the shooting is quite different to attacks that make an overt political statement like Dylann Roof/Christchurch/Islamist terrorism I think. I'd put the Trump assassination attempt in the former category too. The most meaningful thing about the assassination so far is not the esoteric profile of the perpetrator but the immediate calls for dire repercussions (themes ranging from violence or some form of anti-democratic repression) against anybody deemed to be left-wing that were widely shared by conservatives - and that goes from politically engaged randoms to the actual US president. 'This is our Reichstag fire' indeed.

I saw the video first which was obviously horrifying. He's someone who I know existed but had tried not to pay attention to, and it just turns out that there are far too many quotes excusing violence in general, gun violence in particular (specifically 'I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.'), empathy being a 'made-up new age term', raising funds to bail out the attacker of Nancy Pelosi's husband. And the smorgasbord of racist, Islamophobic, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT bigotry as well as the conspiratorialism that aren't necessarily ironic but made him a horrendous person. All that and the irony of his last words being about gang violence before being shot in one of the whitest part of the US. So the secondary reaction is: lmao.

12 Q 10 Q 8 Q 7 08 | Scotland 2 • Dijon • Yamaha | 6 Q 5 24 | Lookylion • Goddess • Sexual | 4 Q 3 Q 2 Q 1 Q Feels like this is about as bad as it gets in terms of losing my favs in recent months. I guess the smaller number of DNQs is to thank for that.

You are welcome.

Unless Pav fails to vote in which case: lowkey deserved.

Nicolas Jaar cannot DNQ. SACRIFICE ME INSTEAD.

My top 2 was the actual top 2, and I voted for 7/10 of the top 10 which is pretty incredible given that I couldn't vote for myself in 5th!! I really didn't expect that but I do have quite a good track record with spinoffs I feel. Thankyou to everyone who voted for The Embassy, and especially Rich for the top points, with a near Rontvia/Skall 12 swap. My points seemed to consist almost entirely of 5 points until I got a few medal positions after the last scoreboard I believe?

Like the majority I'm definitely guilty of not sending schlager but I'd like to think that my Scandi-indie entry fits in spirit with its tweeness, and since it fits in the Service/Labrador/Sincerely Yours ecosystem (three Gothenburg/Malmo-based record labels that were big in the 00s and early 10s) it does sound distinctively Scandi to me.

I regret leaving this so late as this was so much better than I expected/what the comments so far have indicated I think! I enjoyed the vast majority of the entries and really difficult to order my top 5.

The closest we have to that kind of "country as a tribute act" relationship on actual earth is Belarus x Russia. Or perhaps Cyprus x Greece.

Officially a Visitor now that I've reconfirmed what I initially confirmed last month. A fun and crowdpleasing bop I believe so hoping for a variety of voters.

Like many polls, a simple projection from this poll has the Tories on 20 seats, 19 of which are in London or Scotland. The only other one is Leicester East, a 68% Asían (mostly Hindu) seat that was their single pickup in 2024. It's obviously very dubious but it would be hilarious if the Tories' only non-London English seat was one that Labour won 67-24 in 2017.

Green on white OR white on green is such a good colour scheme