Freddie is still with us.
Nice to hear We Are The Champions.
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This was a decent summary to explain (rationally and scientifically, at a general audience level) how it is possible for people (such as Olympic athletes) to have different biological realities than the binary expectation.
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Canada is much better coverage with very few commercials and very little commentary.
I’m not hip to worldwide music acts, that Phoenix group ain’t too shabby.
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Alas for that, there is no trustworthy evidence that there is any “different chromosomal make-up” involved.
Evidence has been claimed but not presented, by an organisation so fabulously corrupt that the IOC told them to fuck off. And the IOC happily works with FIFA.
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Oh, they’re not claiming anything about what the biological situation is with regard to the Olympic athletes. It’s more of a primer to explain how there are many ways this can happen, which is proof that the binary concept is wrong.
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TIL that it was once possible to win an Olympic medal in… medals.
Not as in “we are gonna give a special bonus medal to the athlete who won the most medals this year.” As in “these sculptors are so good at making medals that we’re going to award them their very own official Olympic medals.” (This was back during a period during the early decades of the 20th Century when the Olympics had categories for the arts.)
Adding to the weirdness of the competition, nobody was awarded gold that year because the judges decided the best two medal-medalists still had room for improvement. I wonder if either the silver or bronze medalist was tempted to just make a gold one for himself.
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I wanted to thank @ClutchLinkey for starting this thread.
I also want to give a shout out to Rugby Sevens, my new favorite team sport! Why? I’m getting older and I don’t have time to waste. I now love a sport that compresses action into two seven-minute halves. It’s the perfect team sport to watch if you have ADD. (Added bonus, you can easily see all the seven players and whether any are offsides.)
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I was thrilled to see Kavinsky. I even exclaimed loudly, “holy shit is that Kavinsky?” He was definitely not on my Olympics bingo card.
I had heard of Phoenix before and they were pretty good as well.
There was a lot of great music at this Olympics for sure which isn’t surprising given the many great French musicians across many genres of music.
It’s too bad Daft Punk refused to reunite for one night even for the Olympics.
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My Way was an awesome rendition, I really liked her voice.
I’m familiar with H.E.R., not my cup of tea but her National Anthem was also really good.
I can do without Tom Cruise but that bit was pretty good. He was great with the crowd as he came in.
I noped out of the LA hand off show because Red Hot Chili Peppers but Billie Ellish was good and Snoop was kind of fun to see.
That hanging piano was cool. Hey Mr. Famous piano player, you want to play the closing ceremony? Sure.
Hanging upside down and sideways? Um, okay.
I liked when the stadium announcer tried to get the athletes off the stage and back in their seats during Phoenix. They were well behaved but were having a great time.
All in all we really enjoyed it. Something for everyone.
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Two people won medals for both sports and art.
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FWIW GB News is a far-right shitshow, masquerading as news (it pretends to be an entertainment channel to dodge culpability).
Believe it at your peril.
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I’m still enough of a dada/surrealist type to appreciate that bizarre thumbnail 
Æsthetically pleasing in every possible way, and well done the ladies!
ETA:
As I watched w/only cats for company, without even thinking about it, I said aloud as they showed the various elements involved, “The Ball!” “The Ribbon!” “The Hoop!” “The Group!” “The Cluuubs!”
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Now get ready for more amazingness in 16 days.
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I had to go look that up.
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Again: it’s the other way round. IOC was fabulously corrupt before FIFA. It was IOC president cronies who corrupted FIFA.
Boxing is a whole other level though; gangsters, literal murderers, gun and drug runners, and of course sports washing petrostates run the show.
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Much obliged.
It’s been fun sharing the experience with you all back here. With COVID still running rampant, I haven’t been attending any watch parties IRL or any anything.
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Yeah, ended up watching on CBC because of all the commercials on NBC. And all the talking on NBC, like shut up for a couple minutes and just watch this weird thing happening on stage.
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Ugh, I ended up just muting the artistic swimming duet events bc the commentators talked over the whole thing, couldn’t even really hear the musical accompaniment. Before I muted, they were talking through the entire performance, seriously. I think when one commentator took a breath the other leapt into the void so there wouldn’t be one moment of silence from them. Then when it was done and the athletes are waiting for scores, the commentators were silent. Drove me crazy! Just talk about the performance then, ffs.
Maybe one thing to look forward to with AI is if we’ll be able to selectively mute voices from tv programming.
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UK sportscasters, esp equestrian ones, are nothing like that. No one makes completely inappropriate analogies to other sports, nor fills every last second with their voices. When it’s an uncommon sport, explanations are made beforehand, and viewers are briefly filled in on necessary details as they arise.
I watched women’s hammer throw, and the non-expert (why use any non-experts anyway?!) said, “She threw a grand slam tonight, after throwing a home run last night!”
Watching horsey stuff w/UK sportscasters is a special joy: there’s no clueless talking head going on and on about Yankistani football while the horses jump or dance.
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