02/12/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Parrot Analytics; Cast & Crew; Kristian Nairn; Nathan Foad; Erroll Shand; Trends and Stats; V-Day Video for Prime; In person events and Watch Party reminders; People of Earth; WooAsACrew; Kudoboard for Cast & Crew Update; Love Notes; Daily Darby; Tonight's Taika; Well folks, it was another busy busy day. I apologize, I'm a bit exhausted today so I'll be making this quicker than normal.

== Parrot Analytics ==

Some Q4 data was released by Parrot Analytics for HBO and Max and as you can probably imagine, this made most of the internet explode. Referencing @adoptourcrew here since they did a great bit of research.

SRC: HBO's Most Popular Shows - hidden behind Paywall

== UK How You Can Help==

Below are actions to do every day to capitalise on #OurFlagBBC! More info below on how to use YouGov. Tumblr

=Cast & Crew Sightings=

= Wee John Wondays ==

I think everyone's favorite part of the day was when Nathan Foad appeared on Wee John Wonday's. He is by far one of the best guests ever.

Please go watch the whole damn live, but if you don't have time right now. Here's a clip from our fabulous friend @edscuntyeyeshadow who recorded it for us, I have just left it on repeat so I can continue to laugh.

A few quotes/highlights in case you can't watch anything right now:

Highlights:

Kristian's Garage Fire

Nathan's Writing

Nathan was VERY sick at the beginning of filming S2, Sick AF and had to learn how to roll and smoke cigarettes.

Nathan was not aware he was on camera when the sandwich hit him in the face.

Gypsy made him a jacket to wear IRL that matched his gorgeous one in the show (Gypsy is the best)

Nathan's favorite scene was the one with Matt Maher with the Art on the Wall.

Kristian's favorite scene was the one with Con O'Neill and asking to put on make up

Quotes:

"NOT TO BE A BIG THING RIGHT NOW BUT I AM" - Nathan

"Sniffed the air like a fox in heat" - Kristian

"You little gay bitch" - Nathan

"Mid town special" - Nathan, as Kristian

"Im a horrible un wanted nipple twister" - Kristian

"Needy puffs" - Nathan

== Erroll Shand ==

As usual our dear friend Erroll is out here really pushing the SaveOFMD material/data.

== Trends and Stats ==

== Valentine's Day Video For Prime ==

It’s Monday, which means it’s time to send Prime Video all our love ! Let’s #WooAsACrew 🐙💜 Vocals: ferventrabbit on Twitter Video: Giulianaazr on Twitter

== Event and Watch Party Reminders! ==

= OFMD Matelotage Processional =

Tues Feb 13: 8-11 am at: Kismet Salon 4111 W Olive Ave. Burbank CA 91505

If you show up-- you get free stickers!

= People of Earth Watch Party =

People of Earth Season 1: Episodes 3 and 4 tomorrow! If you don't have access reachout to @iamadequate1!

10 PM GMT / 5 PM EST / 4 PM CST / 2 PM PST

#PiratesOfEarth

#SaveOFMD

#AdoptOurCrew

= WooAsACrew =

Tue 13: Send @netflix some love!

== Cast & Crew Kudoboard ==

Hey all, I already made a short post about it but the Kudoboard was overrun by some absolute twats today so I had to lock it down with a password. If you'd like to still submit something to the cast and crew that's still doable, you'll just need the pw. Please just DM me here or twitter, or Instagram, or wherever you can find me or the @saveofmdcrewmates folks also have it. We will be sending it off / locking it on Valentine's day early morning so please reach out prior!

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies, I am really low on spoons tonight so I'm gonna let some other folks send you love on my behalf. See you tomorrow, all the love. <3

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

Tonight's gifs are courtesy of:

Taika: @chrysalis-writes and Rhys: @thunderwingdoomslayer

Happy Murray Monday and Enjoy tomorrow's Taika Tuesday!

Just started watching Orphan Black for the first time, after only really knowing anything about it through Tatiana Maslany and Kristian Bruun's appearances on Comedy Bang Bang, I'm on episode 5 and my thoughts so far are that I adore Felix (keep dressing surburban Toronto children in drag, please), I hope Sarah and Paul fall into absolutely fucked up love and con everyone trying to hurt the clones together, Alison is my number 1 queen bitch, I really want Delphine to be sincerely just crushing on Cosima, and I need Donnie to start being a better husband who recognizes all he really wants is to submit to his hot controlling wife.

Kristian Børresen &amp; Mdavisto - A Creature Has Many But Offers Nothing [Electronic]

Kristian Børresen & Mdavisto - A Creature Has Many But Offers Nothing [Electronic] https://ift.tt/4i7BzEc Submitted May 05, 2024 at 12:46AM by FearTuner https://ift.tt/td4ghM0 via /r/Music

Newspaper Helsingin Sanomat highlighted a contest hosted by the City of Helsinki that's getting university students to redesign Finland's capital city.

The winning proposal, Dallaillen, drove cars out of the urban core, converted unused office space into apartments and imagined a waterfront sauna, labyrinth and canals along the shores of Töölönlahti Bay.

In the place of auto traffic, many roads in the urban core were replaced with winter green houses, covered walkways and art.

The proposal also aimed to improve the city centre's vitality.

The overall goal of the competition was to find a proposal that would increase the number of visitors and time spent in the downtown area.

Students submitted 20 proposals to the competition, which, according to the city, contained many feasible ideas.

Nonstop skiing

How far do you think you could ski in a day? That's what must have been on the minds of ultraskiers Teemu Virtanen and Susanna Ylinen when they attempted to break the 24-hour world records for men and women on Tuesday.

Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat covered the spectacle as Virtanen and Ylinen spent an entire 24 hours circling the Lahti Stadium on skis.

The 56-year-old Virtanen previously held the record, but lost it to Hans Mäenpää who skied a total 472.007 kilometres in a day. It took several attempts for Virtanen to regain the top spot, but on Tuesday he beat out Mäenpää with a new record of 475.88 kilometres.

"I don't think anyone else my age will break that record," Virtanen said after skiing for 24 hours straight.

Ylinen beat the old record of 375.564 kilometres set by Anni Angeria in 2018 with a new women's world record of 388.78 kilometres.

Grey, but mild, weekend forecast

On Wednesday tabloid Iltalehti highlighted the weather for the rest of the week, forecasting more snow, rain and grey skies across the country.

"On Thursday afternoon, there will be scattered showers and drizzle in the south, with snow in the east, Kainuu and the north-east. In the evening, the weather will clear up and become clearer in the west and north of the country," Foreca meteorologist Kristian Roine told IL.

Friday will also likely be filled with precipitation, Roine said.

During the weekend though, at least in the south and west, conditions will be cloudy with the sun popping out in some areas.

"Temperatures are currently forecast to rise to well above five degrees Celsius in sunny areas, and in some southern areas nearly ten degrees. Areas in the north with precipitation will stay around zero," Roine forecast.

[ad_1] iCap Enterprises Inc., an actual property investor and supervisor that raised $245 million from traders by promoting via unbiased broker-dealers, declared chapter close to the tip of September, and now shoppers who purchased the high-risk securities are suing these companies. Primarily based in Bellevue, Washington, iCap was based in 2007 by Chris Christensen, in accordance with court docket papers which might be a part of the Chapter 11 chapter, which iCap filed Sept. 29 in U.S. Chapter Courtroom for the Japanese District of Washington. Beginning in 2014, iCap grew shortly, elevating $245 million and “deploying” that cash towards actual property investments, in accordance with a court docket submitting. The corporate had 35 staff on the time it declared chapter. iCap owned or managed a minimum of 13 actual property properties, in accordance with court docket filings, and had investments and pursuits in others. About 1,800 traders purchased iCap securities. Christensen resigned from iCap on Sept. 28. He didn't return a name to remark in regards to the matter on Wednesday. Paladin, a third-party administration group, has taken over the administration of the properties. The chapter comes at a time when the commercial real estate market is hurting from rising rates of interest, which make it costlier for builders to do enterprise, in addition to from employees not returning to the workplace. iCap created funding automobiles that had been private placements and a minimum of one publicly registered safety, in accordance with attorneys acquainted with the matter. Non-public placements are illiquid, carry excessive threat and usually cost traders 7% commissions. It’s not clear what number of broker-dealers had been concerned within the sale of the iCap securities. “Within the iCap instances I've, brokers stated, ‘We all know the CEO personally,’” stated Kristian Kraszewski, a plaintiff’s legal professional. “Christensen’s story was, he began from nothing and has been wildly profitable.” The iCap investments supplied yields of 10%, had brief durations and would roll over into new iCap funds after a pair years, in accordance with Kraszewski. Two of his shoppers, Bertrand and Diana Poirier, who're 80 and 74, respectively, have filed an arbitration declare in opposition to the broker-dealer, Somerset Securities Inc. of Portland. Within the declare, they allege that Somerset Securities’ actions within the funding represent a breach of fiduciary responsibility, negligence, fraud and different claims. Their whole principal is $355,000, in accordance with a duplicate of the assertion of declare filed in September with the Monetary Trade Regulatory Authority Inc. “The iCap investments usually renewed on a yearly foundation, incomes [Somerset Securities] and the monetary advisor a wholesome fee stream on [the Poiriers’] retirement financial savings,” in accordance with the couple’s declare. “In March 2023, the monetary advisor once more beneficial that [the Poiriers] renew their iCap investments.” Days later, iCap would announce that it was suspending all dividend funds due to the dangers that rising rates of interest posed to iCap’s investments, in accordance with the declare. Somerset Securities is dealing with three investor claims, together with the one cited above, stemming from gross sales of personal placements, according to its BrokerCheck report. These claims had been filed with Finra in September and October. Thomas Hamlin, the proprietor and CEO of Somerset Securities, didn't return a telephone name Wednesday to remark. , iCap invested in two classes of actual property throughout two divisions often called the portfolio enterprise and the vault enterprise, in accordance with a court docket submitting. The previous is the oldest of the iCap enterprise strains, and operates as iCap Fairness and varied subsidiaries. It targeted on improvement alternatives for multifamily actual property tasks or residence buildings.

The vault enterprise was began in 2018 for the aim of investing in stand-alone actual property investments which have the potential to be or already had been cash-flow constructive, in accordance with a court docket submitting. It operates as iCap Vault and varied subsidiaries. together with iCap Vault 1, which is registered with the Securities and Alternate Fee. One other plaintiff’s legal professional, Alan Rosca, estimated that traders could possibly recuperate 25% of their cash, earlier than varied charges to attorneys and different events, like Paladin. One other twist to the iCap chapter is that the agency marketed and offered securities to Chinese language nationals, a few of whom could have invested hoping for U.S. EB-5 visas, Rosca stated. “Christensen opened an workplace in China,” Rosca stated. “He could have been on the lookout for traders who needed visas or who needed to put cash away from Chinese language Communist Occasion. Greater than 1 / 4 of investor names in iCap are Chinese language within the Seattle space or China.” [ad_2]

DIME QUE TIENE ELLA QUE NO TENGA YO 

No me fijé en Cassandra por como luce físicamente sino por la persona maravillosa que es, estoy enamorado de ella por la forma en que me hace sentir, y amo la persona que es, que es hermosa lo sé, es la mujer más hermosa para mí, espero que eso responda la pregunta. 

Pero buena foto Kris, deberías mostrársela  a Tracy. 

Okay before this trap starts I just wanna let you know that you're one of the first to try out our new automated process so if you have any feedback please submit it as soon as possible! Man I sure hope this neural net isn't a bust haha okay here goes-

Hello, KRISTIAN SMITH. You have been put in this trap for THROW CALCULATOR ON GROUND. To escape with your life, THROW YOU ON GROUND. Thank you and please enjoy your beta tester badge!

Singing Shows and Eurovision: Sweden 🇸🇪 (Part Two: One Season, Three Alums, Four Melfest Wins)

Of the seven Idol Sweden alumni who went on to win Melodifestivalen, three of them made it to the final set of voting rounds in the same season: Idol 2008, which served as the show’s fifth season. Between these three alums, there are four combined Melodifestivalen wins and three Eurovision appearances. (I’ll explain that discrepancy when we get to the third alum in this part.) One of them also holds a pretty dubious distinction in Sweden’s Eurovision record. Speaking of which, she’s up next in our series! So, let’s get to it!

Anna Bergendahl

Anna Henrietta Bergendahl was born 11 December 1991 in the Hägersten district of Stockholm, and was raised in the cities of Nyköping and Katrineholm, both of which are located a bit southwest from Stockholm. She has connections to the British Isles, as one of her grandmothers is originally from Ireland, and Anna first performed in front of an audience as a child in a cathedral in York, England. Anna auditioned for Idol 2008 with the Bonnie Raitt song “Have a Heart” and became known on the show for her folk-pop sound, which was unusual for singing shows at the time, and (if I caught the footage correctly) auditioned for the show at a time when Idols shows were just starting to allow contestants to play instruments onstage (and in some versions, even in auditions; Australian Idol began allowing them in 2006, while American Idol and Idol Sweden both began allowing contestants to perform with instruments in their 2008 seasons), and marked an evolution in the Idols format from simply being a singing contest (at times being glorified karaoke) to a performing contest to look for new overall artists. Anna took advantage of this format change from her very first audition. Anna was almost eliminated before the Finals even started, landing in the Bottom 2 in the last Semifinal round show, where 11 of the 12 remaining singers would advance to the Finals. Luckily for her, she avoided elimination that week. She would go on to land in the bottom group two more times, being eliminated from the competition in fifth place on her second trip on the episode taking place on 21 November 2008.

A few months after her Idol journey came to an end, Anna signed her first record deal in early 2009 and was approached by songwriters and producers Kristian Lagerström and Bobby Ljunggren about working on a song together to submit to Melodifestivalen 2010. Lagerström and Ljunggren wrote and produced the song, and Anna recorded it. That song, “This Is My Life”, was selected to compete in Melodifestivalen 2010 and won the first round of televoting in its semifinal, progressing directly to the Final. In the Final, “This Is My Life” placed second in the Jury voting, but ended up winning the public televote and by a large enough points margin over the Jury vote winner (“Keep on Walking” by Salem Al Fakir) to get the most points and win Melodifestivalen 2010. This marked the first time since 1998 that a ballad (slow-tempo) song had won Melodifestivalen, the last one being “Kärleken är” — which means “Love Is” and is roughly pronounced as “SHAR-leh-ken AIR” — by Jill Johnson, which was inspired by the death of Princess Diana the year before and was the last Swedish Eurovision entry to date to be performed in Swedish. Anna’s Melodifestivalen win also marked the first time that an Idol Sweden alum would go on to win Melodifestivalen (although Loreen and Måns Zelmerlöw competed on Idol before Anna did, they both won Melfest after Anna).

Then came Eurovision 2010, held in Oslo, Norway 🇳🇴 (by virtue of another Idols alum, Alexander Rybak — who was a semifinalist on season 3 of Idol Norway — winning the 2009 Contest). Sweden was drawn to perform in the second Semifinal, and Anna ended up performing 6th in the running order. When it came time for the results…for the first time ever, Sweden failed to qualify for the Final. It marked the first time since 1976 that Sweden was not competing in a Eurovision Final (as Sweden had withdrawn that year due to protests against the Swedish broadcaster spending money on its Eurovision efforts after it had hosted the Contest the year before), and the first and only time to date that Sweden has failed to qualify under the current multi-day Semifinals & Final format used at Eurovision. The Final was won by Germany’s 🇩🇪 “Satellite” by Lena, and when the full voting results were released following the 2010 Contest, it was revealed that Sweden had placed 11th in its semifinal (just outside the cutoff line of the Top 10 who would qualify), and was just 5 points behind the 10th place song that ended up qualifying, sent by Cyprus 🇨🇾 (“Life Looks Better In Spring” by Jon Lilygreen & The Islanders).

Since her infamous Eurovision appearance, Anna has released two studio albums and several EPs. She has also competed at Melodifestivalen two additional times, in 2019 and 2020. In 2019, she competed with the song “Ashes to Ashes”. It ended up finishing in the Top 4 in its semifinal but had to compete in the Second Chance round, where it ended up qualifying to the Final. “Ashes to Ashes” ultimately placed 10th in the Melodifestivalen 2019 Final, and “Too Late for Love” by John Lundvik (featuring one of the other two alums in this article on backing vocals) ended up going to Tel Aviv and placing 5th at Eurovision 2019. In 2020, she competed with “Kingdom Come”. That song won its semifinal and advanced directly to the Final, where it placed third. I’ll get to the winning song from that Melfest a little later. As of early February 2022, she is set to compete at Melodifestivalen again with “Higher Power”.

Robin Bengtsson

Robin Bengtsson was born Hans Robin Gustav Bengtsson on 27 April 1990 in Svenljunga, Sweden, which is located in the southwestern part of the country. This part of Sweden is more rural, and in some ways it kind of showed with Robin’s initial audition for the show. But, he managed to impress the judges with a rendition of “Bring It On Home To Me” by Sam Cooke and he was rewarded with a Golden Ticket to the next round. He eventually made it to the final voting rounds, surviving four trips to the bottom group before being eliminated in third place, just one week before the Final. Robin was the last remaining Swedish-born contestant remaining in the competition that season, as both of the Final Two were born outside of Sweden: eventual winner Kevin Borg (who was originally from Malta 🇲🇹) and runner-up Alice Svensson (who was born in Vietnam 🇻🇳 and adopted by Swedish parents). It was just the second time that happened in the Idols format’s history to that point (the first being Greece’s 🇬🇷 only season of its first Idols series, Super Idol; winner Stavros Konstantinou was from Cyprus 🇨🇾, and runner-up Tamta Goduadze — who herself would eventually represent Cyprus at Eurovision — was originally from Georgia 🇬🇪).

After his Idol run, he signed a record deal and released his first post-Idol single, “Another Lover’s Gone”, in 2009. He would continue to release singles from then on as well as appear on several TV shows, including the Scandinavian version of Wipeout, where he placed 2nd in his episode. He released his first EP in 2014, Under My Skin, but it wasn’t until 2016 that he started making real waves on the Swedish music scene again, when he was selected to take part in Melodifestivalen that year with the song “Constellation Prize”. This was a high-stakes competition, as the acts were all competing for the right to represent Sweden on home soil, thanks to Måns Zelmerlöw’s win at Eurovision 2015. Robin’s song ended up qualifying directly to the Final from its semifinal. In the Final, though, it ended up finishing fifth in the Jury voting, fourth in the public televote, and an overall fifth place finish. The winning song that year was “If I Were Sorry” by Frans Jepsson Wall (or just “Frans”), who at 17 was the second youngest Melfest winner to that point (the youngest being Carola — yes, that Carola, who won Eurovision 1990 — who first won Melfest in 1983 at 16 years old). Frans ended up giving Sweden a 5th place finish at Eurovision 2016.

The following year, he got another shot at Melfest glory, set to compete at Melodifestivalen 2017 with “I Can’t Go On”. Almost immediately he became a favorite, as the stage show involved Robin and several male dancers in crisp suits doing synchronized choreography on treadmills (think of OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” music video, but a little more sophisticated). He won his semifinal with over 1 million votes across two rounds of voting. When it came time for the Final, he ended up placing second in the public Televote (behind Nano), but his 20-point margin over Nano in the Jury votes was enough to give him the win and the ticket to Eurovision 2017 in Kyiv, Ukraine 🇺🇦. This also marked Robin Stjernberg’s second Melfest victory, although as a songwriter. (We’ll meet Robin Stjernberg in Part Three.)

Fast forward to Eurovision 2017 in Kyiv. Sweden was drawn to perform in Semifinal 1. After everyone had performed and the points were tallied, Robin made it into the Final. (It was revealed after the Contest that Sweden finished 3rd in that Semifinal, with the two songs ahead of Robin’s going on to place in the Top 3 in the Final.) Then came the Final. Twenty-six countries performed, and a total of 42 countries cast votes. After all the points came in, Sweden got 344 points, which could have been more than enough to win under the old system…but…

…the previous year Eurovision had introduced a new voting system: instead of points being awarded by a combined Jury/Televote system (where only one score was given and each portion of the vote accounted for 50% of the point total), it switched to the points system currently used at Melodifestivalen, where Jury and Televoting points are awarded as two separate sets of points and the country with the highest combined total after all points have been awarded is the winner. This makes for a bit more exciting results process, as it can result in a country winning neither set of voting still winning the overall Contest because the Jury vote winner finished much lower in the Televote, and vice versa. This is exactly what happened in 2016, where Ukraine ended up winning because the Jury vote winner, Australia, finished fourth in the Televote, while the Televote winner, Russia, finished fifth in the Jury vote; Ukraine finished second in both sets of voting. The same thing also happened in 2019, where the Jury vote winner, North Macedonia, finished 12th in the Televote, while the Televote winner, Norway, finished 18th in the Jury vote. The winner, the Netherlands, finished 2nd in the Televote and 3rd in the Jury vote. But…back to Eurovision 2017.

When the Final came around, Portugal (who had won Sweden’s semifinal) ended up running away with the competition, winning both sets of voting (the only time this has happened to date under the current voting system; Israel did win the Televote the following year, but Austria won the Jury voting). Portugal set a new record for most points scored by a winning song (“Amar pelos dois” by Salvador Sobral) with 758 total points, easily defeating runner-up Bulgaria by a 143-point margin. Moldova (who had finished 2nd ahead of Sweden in Semifinal 1) ended up taking third place, while Sweden finished in 5th place once again, getting third place in the Final’s Jury vote and 8th place in the Final’s Televote. Not another win for Sweden, but still a very good finish.

Since his Eurovision appearance, Robin Bengtsson has gone on to compete at two more Melodifestivalens: in 2020, with the song “Take a Chance”. That song gave Robin his third appearance in a Melfest final, where he ultimately finished in 8th place overall. He is also competing at Melodifestivalen 2022 with “Innocent Love”, but as of 4 February 2022 his semifinal had not taken place yet. The winning act of Melodifestivalen 2020 included our final Idol Sweden 2008 alum in this post, and let’s go ahead and meet her.

Loulou Lamotte

(Yes, Loulou gets three pictures, because those latter two pictures represent each of her Melodifestivalen wins. I’ll explain soon enough.)

Stephanie Louise Caroline Lamotte, otherwise known by her nickname “Loulou”, was born on 16 April 1981 in Malmö, Sweden (which is the country’s second largest city). She is of Swedish and African-American ancestry. Loulou auditioned for Idol 2008 at the age of 27 (which by Idols standards is quite old, as most Idols shows have an upper age limit of around 30; by comparison, she was born the same year as Jay Smith, who won Idol 2010 two years later at the age of 29 and remains the Swedish version’s oldest winner by age) with “Put Your Records On” by Corinne Bailey Rae. (That song went on to have renewed success a decade later thanks to a cover by Utah-based artist Ritt Momney.) Loulou eventually made it to the finals, but was eliminated in 9th place. She did not release any singles immediately following the show, but did appear on the Swedish version of Wipeout the following year.

Her first Melodifestivalen appearance took place in 2013, accompanying (along with Oscar Zia, who was a finalist on the only season of The X Factor Sweden the previous year, and will be hosting Melodifestivalen 2022) Behring Miri on his song “Jalla Dansa Sawa” (“Come On, Let’s Dance Together”). The song failed to advance from its semifinal and was eliminated in the Andra Chansen round, but still made the Top 5 on the Swedish singles chart.

Six years later, in 2019, she made her second Melodifestivalen appearance, this time as one of four backing singers for John Lundvik, competing with the song “Too Late for Love”. And this time, his backing singers got a name of their own: The Mamas. The other three were Paris Renita, Ashley Haynes, and Dinah Yonas Manna.

Lundvik had started his adult life as a competitive sprinter, but later retired from athletic competition to focus on songwriting full time. His first breakthrough as a songwriter came in 2010, when he co-wrote with Jörgen Elofsson (renowned in the pop world for writing songs for artists like Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, and Celine Dion, among many others) “When You Tell the World You’re Mine”. The song was composed for the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and Daniel Westling (who is now styled as Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland) as a gift to the couple, and it was performed at their wedding by Agnes Carlsson (winner of season 2 of Idol Sweden) and Björn Skifs (Swedish pop legend, former Melodifestivalen winner, and best known outside of Sweden as the lead singer of Blue Swede, who had a huge international hit with their cover of “Hooked on a Feeling” in the early 1970s). Lundvik would continue to be a prolific songwriter, also becoming a performer in 2016 and making his Melodifestivalen in 2018 with “My Turn”, which reached the Final, but lost out to “Dance You Off” by Benjamin Ingrosso.

So, when it came time for “Too Late for Love” to compete, it qualified to the Final, and then won the televote and jury points (the jury points by quite a decisive margin) and ended up getting the Melodifestivalen 2019 win, the first of two for Loulou.

At Eurovision 2019, held in Tel Aviv, Israel 🇮🇱, “Too Late for Love” ended up finishing third in its semifinal, advancing to the Grand Final to take place two days later. (The other two songs to finish ahead of Sweden were from the Netherlands 🇳🇱 and North Macedonia 🇲🇰…more on those in a minute.) “Too Late for Love” was actually one of two songs penned at least in part by Lundvik to take part in Eurovision 2019, the other being the United Kingdom’s 🇬🇧 entry, “Bigger Than Us” (performed by Michael Rice…which ultimately finished in last place in the Final). Once all the votes came in, Sweden ultimately finished in…5th place. Initially, it looked as though Sweden had won the Jury voting, but after the 2019 Contest it was revealed that the aggregate jury voting for Belarus 🇧🇾 (whose jury had been dismissed after the Semifinals due to some jurors sharing their votes during the Contest, which is against the rules; the Belarusian jury vote for the final was compiled by taking regional jury voting patterns into account and estimating how they would have voted in the Final) had been incorrectly compiled (mainly, their points had been awarded in the reverse order from what they had intended), and once the Belarusian jury points were awarded in their correct order, it turned out that North Macedonia had won the Jury voting (and Sweden had finished second). A ninth-place Televoting ranking killed Sweden’s chances of winning (just as Televote winner Norway’s 18th-place finish in the Jury vote killed its chances of winning). Ultimately, the win ended up going to the Netherlands 🇳🇱, who had finished third in the Jury voting and second in the Televote.

In 2020, The Mamas would make another appearance at Melodifestivalen, this time on their own and as a trio, as original member Paris Renita decided to leave the group after Eurovision 2019. This time they competed with a song called “Move”, which won (and opened) the first Semifinal round, advancing directly to the Final. In the Final, held on 7 March 2020, they tied for first place in the Jury vote and won the Televote by just 1 point, narrowly handing them their second straight Melodifestivalen win and making Loulou just one of a handful of artists to win Melodifestivalen multiple times (others including Björn Skifs, Carola Häggkvist/Carola, Charlotte Nilsson/Perrelli), and The Mamas just the second group to win it twice, after Family Four in the 1970s, although Family Four did it twice as lead artists.

Four days later, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic of the SARS CoV-2 virus, which caused a mysterious disease that had only been identified in humans about 2.5 months earlier in late December 2019, COVID-19 (often now shortened to just “COVID”). All of a sudden, The Mamas and their participation at the planned 2020 Contest in Rotterdam was uncertain.

A little more than a week after the pandemic was declared, the EBU announced its decision to cancel the planned 2020 Contest, which was to take place in Rotterdam. As the EBU also made the decision to not make the songs chosen for the 2020 Contest eligible for 2021, this meant that The Mamas would miss out on their Eurovision moment as lead artists unless they could manage another Melodifestivalen victory. They did make one more attempt in Melodifestivalen 2021 (staged in a single venue without a live audience) with “In the Middle” and advanced to the Final. Alas, the third time did not pan out for them as they ultimately finished 3rd overall and the ticket to Rotterdam went to Tusse Chiza, who we will meet in the third and final part of this series.

That is Part Two of my planned three-part series. Stay tuned for the final two Melodifestivalen winners who got their start on Idol Sweden: Robin Stjernberg and Tusse!

Eurovision 2020 Song Review: “All Of My Love” by Destiny (Malta)

Feel the love :)

She won JESC in 2015 and was looking for the chance to take the big title. To be honest, this song slaps and could have been a contender for the title.

I’m probably gonna mention this in future posts that there are a number of composers whether solo or group that appear a lot in Eurovision. Thomas G:son has composed 15 entries for the main contest (though he has done more for national finals, especially Sweden) with Loreen’s “Euphoria” winning 2012 and listed as writer for France’s entry. Dimitris Kontopoulos has produced 12 entries (though there’s more than that for national finals mainly or Greece), some along with Philipp Kirkorov, with top entries including Ani Lorak’s “Shady Lady”, Farid Mammadov’s “Hold Me”, and both of Sergey Lazarev’s entries.  And then there’s Symphonix team which seems to be up and coming. They were behind Bulgaria’s highest scoring entry to day (”Beautiful Mess” by Kristian Kostov in 2017) and this year have submitted 3 entries, including Destiny’s “All Of My Love” (going by Boris Milanov’s Wikipedia page) Symphonix’s entries have been hit or miss for me, and “All Of My Love” has been a hit for me.

Looking at the lyrics, it does carry a bit of a religious vibe similar to the Swedish entry, 

Cus your great love is healing me Renewing me through and through I am free to live so I give you 

Now I know your words are true My heart is filled with gratitude It's only you, I'm living for 

You're amazing love so sweet Has raised me to my feet I ain’t going back anymore

but songs with love as a theme tend to be vague enough that it could be love for that special someone in your life (partner, family member, close friend) or love for humanity in general.

All my love Like a river runnin' wild Every brother mother child Now we found each other don't let me down All my love

And it isn’t the only gospel inspired song by Symphonix if you want to compare it to César Sampson’s “Nobody But You” from 2018 though the beat for “All Of My Love” is more of a dancing tune.

Don’t have more to say other than it’s a fun, feelgood tune to dance along.

Search COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) using Vespa - Open Source Big Data Serving Engine

Kristian Aune, Tech Product Manager, Verizon Media

After being made aware of the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge (CORD-19), where AI experts have been asked to create text and data mining tools that can help the medical community, the Vespa team wanted to contribute. 

Given our experience with big data at Yahoo (now Verizon Media) and creating Vespa (open source big data serving engine), we thought the best way to help was to index the dataset, which includes over 44,000 scholarly articles, and to make it available for searching via Vespa Cloud.

Now live at https://cord19.vespa.ai, you can get started with a few of the sample queries or for more advanced queries, visit CORD-19 API Query. Feel free to tweet us @vespaengine or submit an issue, if you have any questions or suggestions.

Please expect daily updates to the documentation and query features. Contributions are appreciated - please refer to our contributing guide and submit PRs. You can also download the application, index the data set, and improve the service. More info here on how to run Vespa.ai on your own computer. 

MUSIC PRODUCER / MIXER / WRITER / ENGINEER LOOKING FOR WORK

MUSIC PRODUCER / MIXER / WRITER / ENGINEER LOOKING FOR WORK Hi Reddit,Tis the season. My name is Kristian. I'm a producer / mixer / writer with my own studio in Hackney. Just wanted to get in touch and find out if you ever require mixing services. Please find my CV here: https://ift.tt/vsiDgAX clients include: A$AP Rocky, MIA, Snakehips, and Joshua K. Please get in contact for my mix.If you are interested in working together or have clients that would be, please get in touch.Thank you.Best,Kristian. Submitted May 03, 2024 at 09:52AM by mrkristiandonaldson https://ift.tt/pVri9ow via /r/Music

A Saskatchewan lawyer will serve a 90-day sentence on weekends for an elaborate fraud that involved phoney residential school survivors.

Kristian Eggum pleaded guilty Feb. 15 to one count of fraud over $5,000 that involved Indigenous inmates at two Prince Albert correctional facilities.

“He was submitting false claims – they were false in the sense that the claimants did not attend residential school,” said Crown attorney Darren Howarth, who prosecuted the case.

Eggum’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The illegal scheme involved the Common Experience Payment (CEP) of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) and the former St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Duck Lake, Sask.

The CEP compensated survivors or former students for being forced to attend the schools. It paid $10,000 for the first year and $3,000 for each additional year.

Applications for CEP did not require a lawyer’s help but some former students sought the help of a lawyer anyway.

Howarth said Eggum received 15 per cent per cent or $35,000 in legal fees on $233,000 in false claims.

The judge at Eggum’s Court of Queen’s Bench sentencing ordered the lawyer to repay the money stolen between 2006 and 2012.

Continue Reading.

Writeup for Buffer Overflows: blind and returnToSqrOne

General procedure:

This will make more sense when you finish reading, I’m only listing it here because what you do in blind vs what you do in returnToSqrOne is pretty much the same.

Create and continually adjust bounds (in this case, the amount of ‘A’s) until you find the instance where the buffer begins to overflow into the return address.

Using gdb’s “info function”, find the return address of the winning function and note it down.

Append the return address to the amount of ‘A’s in little-endian format.

blind

First, let’s start off with establishing the point where the buffer begins to overflow. For those of you who don’t remember, or didn’t know, you can pipe in python commands from the terminal as input for when you run blind.

It’s ‘python -c “print(’A’*76)” | ./blind’ if you can’t read it.

From this, we now know that it begins to overflow into the return address when it reaches 76 since that’s when it starts seg-faulting (pretend I’m a young, naive programmer for a second) - let’s test this out using gdb to see if this is actually true.

You can run blind in gdb just by typing in the command ‘gdb blind’. You can also pipe in a Python command by typing in ‘run <<< $(python -c “print(’A’*32)”)’.

Okay, strange. We’re seg-faulting but we’re not overflowing into the return address. If we were, the last two digits of the address would be 41. Let’s try this again, except with 77 A’s.

This makes more sense, doesn’t it? We’re overflowing and the last two digits are 41 (A’s hexcode is 41, and the address is written in hexadecimal). What I think is happening when you submit in 76 A’s is that it changes the return address to the same function as it was initially running a null character termination is appended onto the end which messes up the address that it gets sent to - or something, please correct me with a reply if I’m wrong.

In any case, let’s try to find where we should be overflowing into. We can do this using gdb’s ‘info function’.

Super useful tool, we can see all the functions that are being used in this program. ‘win’ looks super interesting, doesn’t it?

Let’s try to overflow into the address that the function ‘win’ is at.

One thing to note is that the internal ordering of the addresses is kept in little-endian. What this means is that when we put in an address, we change it such that the least significant byte comes first. Let’s try this out with an example:

0x08048506 is converted to:

[06][85][04][08] (each block is 1 byte)

To change this so the program understands our input, we convert it to \x06\x85\x04\x08. Running blind with our gdb command as ‘run <<< $(python -c "print('A'*76 + '\x06\x85\x04\x08')")’, gives us the flag. Remember that we start at 76, because 77 is when we start overwriting into the address.

The terminal command equivalent of this would be ‘python -c "print('A'*76+'\x06\x85\x04\x08')" | ./blind’.

Q: “Why does it still segfault tho?” A: There’s nowhere for the function to return to because we overwrote the address.

returnToSqrOne

Start by looking for the point where the buffer starts overflowing into the return address of the function.

In this case, it’s 268, since 269 is when it has overflowed into the return address by one byte (’A’).

Use gdb’s ‘info functions’ to find where the winning function is. 

In this case, it’s the very inconspicuous “PlzDontCallThisItsASecretFunction”.

Append it’s address to our string and we get the flag.

Ta-dah!

I think what this program was trying to teach is that it’s not really viable for you to manually type in and keep track of a bunch of ‘A’s. Doing the python command and piping it in really helps with regards to knowing the amount of bytes you’re putting into the buffer.

This next part isn’t important or relevant, just an extra bit of tidbit in case you want to know

You can move your finger from 1 -> 0 on the keyboard and it’ll print out exactly 10 digits! 1234567890! Do it! It’s fun! It’s useful for when you want to keep tabs of the amount of characters you’re putting in, since if you just spam AAAAAAAAAAA, you have to manually count that out. (Thanks for showing us this Kristian!)

We can actually see what each function does by typing in ‘disas [function name]’ in gdb.

Why should we care? Well it’s actually not all that important, but I found it interesting that you can reverse-engineer the code in gdb and sort of guess what the program is doing. It’s all in low-level assembly language that might give you PTSD to a certain course, but it’s useful stuff nonetheless.

You can also set in break points by looking at the address of each command if you wanted to do things like check the state of the registers.

Set break points using ‘break *[address]’ (so something like ‘break *0x0804891′), view breakpoints with ‘info break’, and delete a break point with ‘del 1′. 

Check the state of your registers at a break point using ‘info register’.

Congratulations to the following players and their characters for being accepted to BoystownHQ!

Cameron Boyce | Conor James | 21 | Student | Amy

Beau Mirchoff | Kyle Hullson | 25 | Advice Columnist/Journalist | Angel

Joseph Morgan | Kristian Davison | 34 | Artist | Davin

Take the time to follow the new player checklist and you have 24 hours to submit your character’s blog to the main. We hope to see you around.

"How can anyone be thirsty for Kristian Kostov, dude looks about 8 years old ffs"

Submitted by anon

1, 7 nd 19 💓 (hihi hope ur doing well !!)

hello!! i just submitted an assignment so I’ve been binging seventeen content so it’s been pretty good :)

7. Who are your top 3 gif makers

*cries* okay honestly, you’re one of them n i’m not just saying that because you asked me!!! your gifs are just sooo beautiful!! @8eht because beautiful gifs and…you know….seokmin…. and @kristian-do because every time i think ‘i hope someone gifs this’ it’s on my dash!! and the captions and texts on the gif are 👌

19. What is your giffing process like

I don’t put as much effort as other people (which is why my gifs turn out like they dokjsfnskdf) so it’s just get the screenshots of the scene > load them in > sharpen > colour n voila!!!

1 was answered here :)