Ville Saalo, moi! 👋

Last night it was confirmed that the band KAJ would represent Sweden in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. This is funny, because KAJ is, in fact, a Finnish band, so in a sense Finland now has two entries in this year’s contest! 😁 KAJ’s song is called Bara bada bastu, and Finland is sending Erika to the contest with Ich komme:

I’m in the habit of taking a photo of each new energy drink I try. At this point of I can make a nice 4x4 collage out of the ones I’ve tried this year, and I even had to leave one out.

Helsinki central railway station at dusk: 📷🤩🌆

I’ve watched the Oscars live broadcast close to twenty times now, and I’d argue that’s no mean feat, as they are aired here in Finland in the middle of the night. I also post my observations about the show to Facebook every year, and several of my friends there have indicated, either offline or online, that they always look forward to my recap. Waking up in the middle of the night to watch the Oscars feels like madness already, but tradition is tradition! The best way to stay awake is to keep eating snacks. 🍿 The following is a summary of my live observations.

This year’s ceremony faced an unusual challenge, as the wildfires in Hollywood came dangerously close to disrupting the event. Host Conan O’Brien even had to relocate to a hotel due to the fires.

Conan was hosting for the first time, but he made the show his own right from the start. He had some sharp quips, like calling Wicked “a movie for those who watched The Wizard of Oz and wondered what college was like for the side characters” and describing Conclave as “a movie about the Catholic Church — but don’t worry.” He also introduced a new concept: if someone’s speech ran too long, the cameras would cut to John Lithgow, looking extremely disappointed.

One of the surprises came early in the night when Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain. In his speech, he reminded his wife of a promise she made a year ago: they could try for a fourth child if he won an Oscar — something she might not have expected to happen. 😄

In animation, the underdog triumphed as the Latvian film Flow took home Best Animated Feature, breaking the usual Disney/Pixar dominance. Meanwhile, the Iranian short In the Shadow of the Cypress, a PTSD-themed animation, won Best Animated Short, with its creators only receiving their visas the day before the ceremony.

Unlike previous years, the Costume Design category was given proper attention instead of being rushed through. It was revealed that the same designer from the original Gladiator worked on Gladiator II. The Oscar went to Paul Tazewell for Wicked, making him the first Black man to win in this category.

Similarly, cinematographers were introduced with the same care. Lol Crawley won for The Brutalist, marking the film’s first win of the night. The Brutalist also picked up Best Actor (Adrien Brody) and Best Score, with Brody ignoring attempts to play him offstage.

The first half of the show moved at a leisurely pace, even including a random Bond theme medley, but things sped up in the second half as winners were hurried offstage – although nobody got the ultimate punishment of getting the disappointed look from John Lithgow.

Other notable wins included:

• Best Adapted Screenplay: Conclave, written by Peter Straughan, who wore a Ukraine pin but otherwise, the ceremony remained largely apolitical.
• Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The Substance, a body horror film. Conan played into this by introducing himself in a clip where he crawled out of Demi Moore’s body. 😈
• Best Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez, whose speech included a complement about her husband’s hair.
• Best Original Song: El Mal from Emilia Pérez, dashing Diane Warren’s hopes for a win — her 16th nomination without a victory.

One of the few winners I had actually seen, Dune: Part Two, won for Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. At one point, Conan even had the Dune sandworm playing the piano and harp, because why not? 😂

The night’s biggest winner was undoubtedly Sean Baker’s Anora. It took home:

• Best Original Screenplay (Sean Baker)
• Best (Sean Baker)
• Best Director (Sean Baker)
• Best Actress (Mikaela “Mikey” Madison)
• Best Picture

Baker dedicated his wins to the importance of cinema and gave a special shoutout to his mother, whose birthday was that day.

The In Memoriam segment honored legends like Maggie Smith, Donald Sutherland, and James Earl Jones. The ceremony finally wrapped up an hour later than last year at about 05:45, well before the sunrise at 07:12.

Today I reached a streak of 100 in Wordle. 😃

Wordle 1,352 4/6

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WordleBot
Skill 90/99
Luck 46/99

My GitHub account is located at github.com/ZeroOne30… Micro.blog claims these posts can be synced there automatically. Let’s see if this triggers the sync! 💻

The number 6 has come loose in my watch. I got a quote for 60-80 € for fixing it. 🤯 That exceeded my expectations 3-10x. I’m still considering what to do… 😞

I feel rather cheated by Intel… I got a new desktop PC in 2020 with an i7-10700K CPU that uses the then-brand-new LGA1200 socket, thinking that as it was brand new, it would have a long and happy life ahead of it and I could safely just upgrade the CPU in the future.

Well, they used the socket for like two years only. Apparently the socket life spans have gone down dramatically from what they were earlier (like 20 years ago; see e.g. the LGA 775 socket), but Intel is especially bad in this respect, vs. AMD who has longer socket life spans. AMD released the AM4 socket in 2016 and the next socket, AM5, wasn’t released until 2022.

I didn’t feel bad for Intel when the news broke the other day that their stock value is plummeting. My next PC won’t feature an Intel CPU.

Hello people! 👋 I just learned about the Micro.blog platform from the Hanselminutes podcast and decided to join. 🙂