The only "way" involves greasing the palms of every special interest group in the way until they have successfully accounted for the whole potential revenue of the intended enterprise, and that's what blocked everything repeatedly.
I'm in Quebec and very familiar with the exact territory this has applied to wrt getting resources out on the east coast, and unless someone was willing to rule by decree to bypass all those entrenched groups it's not happening, and we all know why such decrees would not happen as well.
They'll ship it out of Churchill. The only special interest groups are Indigenous and they rarely successfully hold up projects that are actually important.
Also, being a European Broadcasting Union (EBU) "Associate Member" is the name for the mechanism that allowed Australia, Canada and other countries to be admitted into Eurovision.
If you've been around the ESC scene, you know there's a lot of embassy involvement (parties in embassies are a thing), the scene is catnip for those interested in politics, the politically active, and to some extent politicians. Eurovision is also one mechanism for discussions of economic development. Hosting the contest is usually an excuse for upgrades to public infrastructure.
And there's Eurovision Asia starting in November. South Korea is an Associate Member of the EBU, for example.
Ahh, that one time the Belarussian delegation tried importing so much alcohol into [host country] to give away for free to everyone at the artist party, that it was all seized at the [host country] border and caused a minor diplomatic incident. The free chocolate branded with the artist's face made it in though. Fun times.
And that wasn't the year that Belarus sent "I Love Belarus" as their Eurovision song.
lol, this took longer to land with me than it should have, being the token "not in the target demographic" guy. And now I know more than I wanted to know about the AI scene ;)
But the concept has floated around for over a decade under several different project names - Asiavision, Our Sound, ABU Song Contest. Somehow "Eurovision Asia" is the one that got countries to sign on and participate. There's a stronger political statement in Asian countries participating in "Eurovision" than in "Our Sound". It surprises me, but 2026 has brought a lot of global cultural & political shifts.
The American version was "The American Song Contest", hosted by Snoop Dogg & Kelly Clarkson, with US states competing against each other. Most Americans don't even know it ever happened.
Russia has its own rival "Intervision Song Contest", which the US participates in. Something something global cultural shifts.
OK as always there are more ways for markets to split than analysis tells at the beginning. Interestingly enough this is probably also a good part of the luxury market.
I have always hated watches until I had a reasonably good one for a year, and lost it because ADHD just does not handle keeping track of things well.
But it seems to me people who refuse smart watches for normal watches probably are not doing so for crappy watches (and if you are for the rest of the post I shall assume you are the outlier). They must be reasonably luxurious brands that are preferred, as such there is a larger amount of the luxury market who might like smart rings (but this also seems off to me, who the hell wants to wear a crappy looking ring, in the luxury market.)
Maybe however the multiple watches look might catch on, like the stand-up routine of Harry Anderson the guy who used to play the judge on Night Court. He was a guy who could wear two or three watches on each hand, and maybe a couple on his ankles. That was style right there.
I like to look down at my wrist and see the time down to the second, and my Apple Watch S7 can't deliver on that. Either the screen doesn't light up, or it lights up after a second or so, or it lights up but it's showing me the Smart Stack or an old notification instead of the watch face. And the screen fades quickly and hides the second hand (my girlfriend's S10 shows the second hand when the screen is dimmed, so they've at least fixed that in newer models).
It also needs to be charged daily which is inconvenient, whereas a normal watch lasts for years, and the smart ring lasts several days.
The smart phone integration features don't really work well either. It'll buzz with a notification, I'll look down and there's nothing. 2-3 seconds later the notification appears, but it'll only say who it's from, not the contents, despite my privacy settings being set correctly. I tap it, and a second later the message appears. I may as well have pulled out my phone instead.
By normal, these are the criteria I've decided I want in a watch, after trying out a handful from aliexpress:
- Quartz mechanism
- day-date
- Arabic numerals
- light face
- some sort of illumination
So that's all valid but those are pretty much all reasons to not want a smart watch, or it failing to do its basic job. When you talked about not wanting two watches, I thought you meant that even if you had a smart watch you liked, you'd still want a normal watch on top.
All of these problems are solved by buying a CA$35 Colmi ring off Aliexpress.
1. If your finger changes size, spend another $35 for a second one.
2. If it gets scratched to shit, buy another one. Though I lift with my plastic R09 and there's only a bit of scratching around the edge. Other models are metal and should resist scratching better.
3. If it eventually breaks, get another one. Personally I fidget with mine a lot, so removing it before or after washing my hands happens unconsciously.
On top of that, the protocol has been reverse engineered so you can use Gadgetbridge or make your own app instead of using the stock one.
No idea how it compares, but my local Lidl was selling a smart ring for $15 so I decided to give it a shot. I assume half the measurements are "for entertainment purposes only" (glucose, blood pressure, stress [heart rate variability proxy?], blood oxygenation [might be ok with my skin tone, not sure I'd trust it]) but the others seem fairly accurate. Again, no idea how it compares to the pricier ones, but seems to match my pulse measured at neck and what I remember of my nightly sleep pretty well.
And yeah, I'm certainly not going to worry about it getting scratched or slightly wet. Actually, it got dropped and stepped on, and is slightly dented but still seems to run fine - the epoxy sealant for the electronics seems intact and while I was a bit concerned for the battery, that's been a while with no issues.
And, while I have no idea whether the app is quietly collecting data and pushing it to a server in china (if it is, it is doing it in a way that is sneaking past the firewall), at least it does not require creating an account to use.
So in that sense it is maybe more private than oura or samsung ?
Colmi smart rings have a reverse-engineered Bluetooth protocol, so you can use Gadgetbridge instead of the official QRing app and keep everything local.
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