Just unlurking for a moment to say that this and David Pope’s “Fuck off we’re deeply concerned for your safety at sea” are tied for my two favourite political cartoons of all time.

EAC is the phone votes, not a physical polling place. No blind or Antarctic votes in that electorate, maybe.

Those who are following the count closer than me: why all the consternation about the postal swings? Wasn’t that accounted for in the matched historic votes?

An Uber driver told me that there was a multi-year wait list for new hybrid Camrys in Canberra (so he bought a BYD instead).

Old boss: Do you miss it?
Me: No. Sort of. A bit.

Early voting for the 2025 Australian federal election still going gang-busters, substantially more votes than this time in previous elections.

Bit of a screed from me about how the website They Vote For You can mislead the voting public.

It has a reputation for being non-partisan and fact-based. This is being misused by partisan campaigners to make misinformation for the middle class.

patleslie.net/blogs/blog_t...

Line goes up – the early voting line, that is.

Back in my old job I made an R package to make this sort of thing (relatively) easy. If you’re clever if you even be able to find a (slightly out of date) version of it floating around somewhere.

I’m not sure if anyone is still posting/cares about this stuff, but I dusted off my R skills and ran the early voting numbers for the 2025 Australian federal election. And yep, there are a lot of them – we may beat 2022 at this rate.

I’ve only started listening to this but one factor is it’s really difficult to avoid enrollment these days. If the AEC sends you a direct enrolment letter, it won’t take no for an answer. If you’re eligible, you don’t have a right not to be enrolled.

A copy came with my old office.

With a federal election on the way, my only voting advice is to give your first preference vote to a candidate you think will get less than four per cent of the vote, and save the tax payer $3.386 in public election funding.

A yellow Labrador sitting on the carpet very reluctantly wearing a birthday hat.

Birthday boy – 13 today.

I don’t think AusPost will be texting from the Philippines (+63), but also the “you must have interacted with a sender before the link is clickable” thing is a smart and significant roadblock for these sorts of scams.

My usual people-who-know-everyone don’t know what’s going on, but it looks expensive, so someone knows.

Anyone know why they’re apparently running a pipe under Lake Burley Griffin by the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge in Canberra? Is it a light rail thing?

The way that the ACT times its driver’s license expiry means that you can let people know you have a significant birthday coming up by saying you have to get your license renewed.

Completely agree. One of the things I miss about my old job was the semi-regular 45-minute phone chats with Antony (mostly him talking).

Was just shat on by a currawong.

How I Use My Notebooks: Twitter Replacement Field Notes I used to be a heavy Twitter use. I discovered the service pretty early on through webcomic artists like Scott Kurtz, and I found the challenge of crafting short tweets to be a fun writing exercise…

As someone who drafts and deletes a lot more posts than I ever post, I love this idea – writing the posts in a notebook and not posting them at all. writingatlarge.com/2025/02/20/h...

A sulphur crested cockatoo and a male king parrot sitting near each other in a tree.

Troublemakers.

Hey look, my old stomping ground. Perfect job for politics nerds (who don’t talk about politics on social media).

Sleepless Empire (24-bit HD audio), by Lacuna Coil 11 track album

Now that I don’t subscribe to any streaming music services I only discover new music is out by serendipity, so happened to stumble across the fact yesterday that Lacuna Coil have just released a new album centurymedia.bandcamp.com/album/sleepl...

Irregular Canberra bus ticketing update: On the 182 and for most customers the credit card tap function isn’t working until the driver does something on his console. Weird.

An Australian water dragon, sitting on a log.

Here be dragons.

Dog is currently demanding that everyone goes to bed because he is very tired (because we have had a visitor over during the day and he can’t relax when we have a visitor around).

a man is talking to another man in a store and says i know more than you Alt: a man is talking to another man in a store and says i know more than you

When your regular coffee place has a new staff member and they ask how they can help you.

If you want the Australia’s Political Finance Expert crown, I still have it sitting around here somewhere. It’s a bit dusty these days, but I’m not using it any more, so you’re more than welcome to it.

So all we’re left with is rage-baiting headlines by the think tanks and online media. At least it’s all happening on BluSky now, where no one will ever see it.