50% qntm, 50% Charlie Stross

As a 15 year old, riding my bike ride in the woods near my house at mach 2. Some other kids had dug a ~2m cliff into the track for daredevil reasons. I Wylie Coyote'd it, screaming in terror. Landed it, but my feet came off the pedals and I landed groin-to-bikeframe and then ploughed into a tree.

God I love ART 🤩

Best episode yet!!

(And of course, if this trend continued we would see the Greens prosper more than ever!)

At the end of the day it's still motion to the left which is what I want for my country. This is the thing: no matter who I put for my first preference, the most important thing is to put the LNP (and their various cooker minority party supporters) last. Preferential voting is great 😊

Yeah I'm sad that we lost those seats. But the reason behind it is comforting. Last time we won because a chunk of the centre moved left, rejecting Labour in favour of the Greens. This time we lost because a chunk of the right moved to the center, rejecting the LNP in favour of Labour.

And anyway, the recent surge of independents shows that there's nothing about preferential voting that prevents minority governments or independents. (We had a minority in 2010!) There must be another reason independents weren't popular before - probably the will of the electorate 🤷‍♂️

Preferential voting doesn't produce false majorities though. It only seems to if you ignore people's preferences. The only way to win in preferential voting is if a majority of the electorate rejects every other party. E.g. from 2022: 52.13% of Australians rejected the coalition, so they didn't win.

This is much less accurate in the last decade - independents and minor parties are strong in Australia and strengthening! Check out the distribution change:
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04...

Can't wait!!!!