iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

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.

130

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

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

210

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

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?

100

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

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).

110

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

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

040

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

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

250

Reposted by damon

Pat Leslie @palesl.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

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...

patleslie.net

How They Vote For You can mislead the voting public

22116

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

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

011

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

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 If you’re clever if you even be able to find a (slightly out of date) version of it floating around somewhere.

000

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

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.

4354

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

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.

000

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

A copy came with my old office.

030

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

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.

064

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

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.

132

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

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

000

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

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?

101

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

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.

010

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

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).

000

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Was just shat on by a currawong.

110

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

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

042

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

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...

centurymedia.bandcamp.com

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

11 track album

020

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

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.

000

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

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).

020

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

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.

100

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

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.

110

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

I get why they moved to the abbreviated form Digest to get it out by the debate in the first chamber, but I think it drastically reduced its usefulness as policy analysis tool, and with the death of the mainstream media, no one else is ever going to do the analysis to replace it.

210

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

I’m so over this whole thing I didn’t even read your Bills Digest, which I’m confident was great, and then completely overtaken by fast-moving events.

100

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

I could go on about this at length, but I already have, multiple times. So you could just read one of those instead. Like, say, this one parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/dow...

parlinfo.aph.gov.au

011

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

The current Australian federal political finance system that is being replaced is arguably the worst system in any Western democracy. It’s objectively worse than the system in each of the states and territories. That should probably be the starting point of any analysis.

120

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Resisting reading the actual political donations bill because it’s not something you’d do for free but can’t help but think that all the public/media analysis I’ve seen of it in the last few days feels pretty… crap?

220

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Though anyone who comes near Musk is irrevocably tainted by association, Kill V. Maim somehow remains a banger.

000

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

I was early and the bus was early and now I’m about to be at work quite early.

000

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Possibly the most chuffed I have been in my life was seeing Anne Twomey on a conference panel about political finance reform and she had a print-out of this as a reference.

010

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Good day to post this, I guess. law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/asset...

law.unimelb.edu.au

100

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

The ABC News website has a sidebar for “World politics” and I read it as “Weird politics” and frankly my version fits better.

010

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

New boss is a sparky – could probably get him out here pretty quickly if needed with a promise of a slab. Much more useful than my previous boss, that’s for sure!

010

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Partner, about to drill into the wall: There shouldn’t be a power cable there, should there? Me: I guess we’re about to find out.

110

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Saddest part of a holiday: turning the morning alarm back on. The second saddest is when the alarm you have forgotten to turn off wakes you up on the first day of the holidays.

130

Reposted by damon

Luke Buckmaster @skillhello.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Research assistant position in my team in the Parliamentary Library www.apsjobs.gov.au/s/job-detail...

apsjobs.gov.au

APS Jobs

APS Jobs, gateway to the Australian Public Service.

21011

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Reasonably accessible (sixish months old) article about the problems of modern polling. With a US focus, but generally applicable undark.org/2024/06/26/t...

undark.org

Survey Trolls, Opt-In Polls, and the New Era of Survey Science

As polling methods evolve, it can be hard to distinguish solid findings from those that dissolve under scrutiny.

031

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

What this provides above the CSV files you can download from the AEC is that it preserves the relational data between entities. The CSVs make it difficult to join the dots.

010

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

This is just a data package – it won’t be useful to you if you don’t know how to use R. Also I hadn’t touched it for two years before today and there has been some changes to how the AEC provides the data so there may be some bugs in it; I basically haven’t tested it at all.

110

damon @damonism.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Although I’m not working in the area any more, I spent my morning off dusting off my R package that provides all of the AEC’s annual political finance data. You can find it here: github.com/damonism/aus...

github.com

GitHub - damonism/ausvotestr: R package of AEC Transparency Register political finance data

R package of AEC Transparency Register political finance data - damonism/ausvotestr

165