Well, I am sorta familiar with Tommy, to an extent. His 100 gecs remix with Hannah Diamond, his collab on an Umru track, he’s got songs with Charli xcx, Oliver Tree & Little Big, etc.

I’ve never been kinda sure if I like him. He’s got some bangers, that I know of (it’s mainly collabs that I know), but some of his lyrical themes are kinda… idk. Can rub ya off. Like linking one’s assumed inability to handle a stick by virtue of driving automatic to a supposed inability to handle certain private parts that one can take as similar to a stick in some ways; or comparing the easiness of death to the hardness of life (I can deal with that theme better, but I imagine it could trigger someone who might have depression, idk)

I can wholeheartedly agree on the last paragraph. I truly did a full 180. Was almost screaming at the TV in the middle of the night lmao.

I can also wholeheartedly agree on the first paragraph. Gabry Ponte’s Tutta L’Italia for San Marino was my favourite before I even watched anything, because I knew it and liked ir ahead of the final. Estonia’s Espresso Macchiato, by Tommy Cash. What a banger as well. Won me over quick. Was my pick for winning. Italy’s own song was also good, I quite liked it. More on the chill side. Interesting that this whole paragraph was about Italy, even though I’m talking three different entries by three different countries and groups of artists (Gabry Ponte, for San Marino, is Italian. Not Tommy, though, afaik)

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Well, best I get before the show is a Switched on Pop podcast episode about Eurovision. And I may or may not hear it before the show, depends on how much I care about going in unknowing to the finals. Portugal did definitely make a banger this year, and so did Italy. Viva l’Italia was one of my favourites ahead of the finals, and Espresso Macchiato won me over quickly. I wasn’t at first big into the eventual winner, but soon as they were the only one left for scores at the very end, I quickly changed my mind and needed them to win (I got kinda heated there…). Plus, the song isn’t bad either (though I wanted Espresso Macchiato higher up, and will deem it second place in my mind)

Your mom thinks your music taste is good? Dang. Mine just be like “wtf we listening to” (it’s Polish) or “Not German” skips. “We hearing Japanese, now?”. I did kinda get her somewhat into modern popular hispanic music, I think. Or at least helped in some way with that.

ESC?! Hell yeah! I only follow the finals, though. I generally go in without spoiling much for myself ahead of time, so it all ends up being a fresh listen (other than when I already heard the song elsewhere, like Viva l’Italia, which I’ve heard before knowing it was part of the ESC)

I don’t really watch the nationals either. I did once, for Spain (the finals). I was gonna do it another year, for Spain (not sure which year came first tbh), but the one song I knew ahead of time, by Rakky Ripper, did not make it onto the finals :(

Honestly, I wonder what the best way to enjoy ESC would be. Following semis? Nationals?? How much should I invest myself? But then I think it works as is, and would be too much work following everything. Plus, a lot more options to my already large pool of artists and music.

Well, sometimes if my mind is too active, I can have a hard time falling asleep. I end up thinking too much or too “hard” and my brain can’t rest. I sometimes just listen to music to fall asleep. As I focus on a song, my mind can drift asleep. Either that or I try and just not think, so my mind can rest. Sometimes I legit gotta go “welp, time to sleep. Silence, now” and just be quiet to try and sleep

Wow, I too can silence my mind. I think. Since I often think consciously, I can just stop and enjoy nothingness, which surely is interesting. Sometimes the contrast between thinking a lot and just plain nothing is quite interesting. Can go badly, though, when someone expects me to say something and I don’t have anything to say. They must be on their own side just waiting, thinking I’m crafting something. Meanwhile, if anything, I’m on my side thinking of not thinking, or just plain empty, experiencing the akwardness. It’s been some of the most awkward situations, when I’m done speaking and they wait in silence, like I’m not done yet. Yeah, my answer wasn’t very long, and you may want more, but I’m just done on my side. Do I need to vocalise an End of Line character?

Ooh, Alpha channel. Forgot of that. That is a nice one. Love me some alpha channel.

So, what would you say is best? If someone wanted to save an image, which format would you recommend? I usually go with PNG. JPG if I want bad quality on purpose (drag quality slider to minimum for extra compression)

The Vengabus… is coming.

Wow, did not expect a match! I do also sometimes just flat out talk to myself, or say stuff aloud. Not sure that necessarily classifies into the topic of “thoughts”, but whatever.

The Rich Have Their Own Ethics: Effective Altruism & the Crypto Crash (ft. F1nn5ter)

Oh, I think I’m familiar with that “chorus” (?). Maybe it was featured on Djs From Mars’ The History of Hip Hop. It was also sampled in Timmy Trumpet, Marnik & Ely Oaks’ Sound of da Police (with DES3ETT)

Not sure who KRS One is, but that was rather insightful. Never thought of it like that

That isn’t really what I was questioning there. I was just wondering what makes race. One might associate, for instance, skin colour to race. But skin colour is more of a… idk, a range? It’s not just two different things, black and white. There are darker skin tones, and lighter ones. It’s a scale, really. So if we were to take skin colour as defining race, one would have to draw a line somewhere, where one becomes dark enough to be deemed Black (assuming you’re taking skin colour as the indicator for race, that is). And that doesn’t even account for other races one might see. If one, for instance, were to imagine Asian as a race (idk if it is. Is it?), Asians are (generally) white, no? As far as skin colour. Like, what is it that defines a race?

lossless recompression of existing JPEG Uh… how does it make a JPEG lossless? Or is it lossless in that it makes a JXL out of a JPEG without affecting the original JPEG quality (i.e. no further loss beyond JPEG’s)?

Being able to turn JPEGs into JXLs and JXLs back to JPEGs is cool, though

What’s with the AVIF thing? Yet another I am unfamiliar with (all I know about image formats is JPG = worse quality, PNG = better quality, GIF = animated (and something WebP. Idk much about that one either))

Also, in my research, I’ve found something about the distinction between lossless JXL vs lossy JXL. Seems like you wouldn’t be able to tell if the image is lossy or lossless just from it being a JXL

Mexico == cartels???

Why are they trying to make it happen, and why it no work? Is JXL better than PNG? Maybe I need to do some research to better learn the difference

Interestingly, I downloaded GNOME’s pride month wallpaper to see what it looked like, and the files were JXL. Never seen them in the wild before that

Now if anyone don’t mind explaining, PNG vs JXL?