are you better off today than 4 years ago?

Reagan also used that against Carter way back. Meaningless, yet effective.

I think it's important to remember how/why our most recent leaders (before Albo) were elected.

Abbott was only (just) elected because the voters got the shits with the Labor Party's Rudd-Gillard-Rudd circle jerk before - surprise, surprise - the Libs started also started doing their own Brutus-to-Caesar act.

That fuckwittery ended up giving us Morrison's first term (winning the multiple spill-wank that ultimately ousted Turnbull), whose actual elected second term was when he ran against Bill Shorten. Arguably, any train station meth-head could have beaten Shorten just by having - y'know - a policy. Man was invisible.

My point is, up until we got Rudd, most of our PMs played the long game, regardless of what it meant for their own careers. For example, Howard managed to get both sides to vote in favour of gun reform after Port Arthur, even though that meant some senators were committing political suicide by supporting it. That was in '96, at the very beginning of Howard's near-12 year stint in the top job. Proof that we all used to value long-term vision over short-term politics.

We haven't had a single leader (either in office or opposition) with the same long-term vision ever since. It's all about the next election, and the fastest way to win it is to appeal to the populist base. Which brings us to the current head-kicking potato the Libs have in charge.

I definitely agree regarding your fears on the majority's views on Trumpist bullshit. Something about wankers like Dutton speaking inside thoughts out loud is helping people feel they have license to do the same. I really do hope we're better than that here...

As much as I hate having to do it, shopping around for all my insurances is an annual thing now.

Like clockwork, I get my RACV renewals at the same time each year (house, two cars, caravan - all co-termed) with the usual, unjustified premium hike. I then go get three competing quotes, ring RACV, and tell them I'll leave unless they can do better. Inevitably, they point out that the quotes I've gotten include new customer incentive, at which point I tell them to look really hard for a loyalty incentive.

They usually find something that brings me to within a few hundred buck total of the competing quotes, at which point I accept. Amortized over 4 policies for 12 months, it's usually not worth my time (and the pain) of having to change everything over.

I fucking hate the insurance industry.

Hmmm - interesting. I hadn't bothered to check before now, but I'm seeing something similar on one of the two PBS CTs I run.

Comparing the output of netstat -lantop on both CTs, I can see that the one with more outbound traffic has more waiting connections from localhost on port 82, the port Proxmox Backup Servers provides its API over:

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:51562         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (40.38/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:56342         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (29.92/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:44864         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (58.94/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:45028         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (11.88/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:44026         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (48.66/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:44852         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (58.80/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:59620         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (0.00/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:56374         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (30.98/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:51544         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (39.98/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:59642         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (0.00/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:45008         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (10.92/0/0)
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:45016         127.0.0.1:82            TIME_WAIT   -                    timewait (11.76/0/0)

I'm wondering if the graph is pulling aggregated network data, including the loopback interface. If so, and it's all just port 82 stuff on 127.0.0.1, then it's probably nothing to worry about.

Edit: found this forum post that seems to indicate it's aggregating all the byte values from /proc/dev/net, so this is probably nothing to worry about if your netstat output, like mine, only shows API conections to/from 127.0.0.1 on port 82.

Seriously - the whole thing is such a befuddling mess to us non-Americans.

How exactly can one win the popular vote but not the actual election? From the outside, the reporting I've seen always talks about the faithless elector problem (not in those words - just in describing the problems). Is it more to do with how many votes (electors) each state gets, based on population size?

Nah - it's at least partly correct.

I believe the states responsible for those silly outcomes have since passed laws to prevent it happening again.

Could be wrong, but I listened to a podcast last week with an American professor who's pretty much written the book, explaining the history of the Electoral College and how it really works. I'm sure he said those states since fixed those loopholes.

Either way, the damage is done today. Another four years of stupidity in charge.

Cheers mate - will have a play

Well, damn! Ondsel ES was what made my transition from F360 that much easier. Really hoping I can fly FreeCAD 1.0 as easily as I could Ondsel. Grabbing RC1 now... 🤞

Maybe a small piece of personalised luggage for the holiday. Does she wear makeup? Maybe a nice makeup case with her initials on it.

If that's not her thing, what about something for your home (assuming you live together)? My wife and I tend to buy ourselves the "bigger" things for Christmas, as our gift to each other - some furniture we've been wanting, or similar.

If that doesn't sounds like you guys, there's the tried and true jewelry option. Or maybe just cruise Etsy for the sorts of things she likes (does she like knick knacks, or ornamental stuff?) that might be customisable.

Failing that, have a think about what makes you special as a couple. Is there a shared interest or experience that got you together or you always talk about? Is there something in that?

Finally, I've been holding on to some ideas for future inspiration should I need them:

• Waveform art: record yourself saying you love her, have the waveform turned into a print, or a piece of jewelry, or similar
• Anamorphic art: a skewed picture that reveals itself when a specifically shaped mirror is put behind it
• A glass lamp base filled with something meaningful: I always thought of filling one with origami love hearts
• Ambigrams: maybe you can figure out an ambigram with both your names, and have it made into something - a print or a wood carving (this will probably take a lot longer than the time you have before Christmas)
• Birth stones, star signs, birth flowers, birth fruit: admittedly these are probably better suited to birthdays