Before mum came over for dinner tonight I pulled out all the appliances, swept behind them and then got out the mop to give the floor a good cleaning. I have to admit that because it is just me who lives at my home I can get a bit lazy when it comes to doing the mopping – never dirty but it could always be better. All the floors were given a good wet mopping and now it is looking like it was when the floors were first installed. I also wiped down the fridge, front of the cabinets and then the skirting boards.
Mum came over and we had a chicken Kiev katsu bowl each and for desert we had a Sara Lee blueberry danish and some ice cream. The meal was wonderfully tasty and the Kewpie mayo really kicked up a notch along with the Sriracha Chilli Sauce. After dinner I cleaned up the kitchen, took out the rubbish with this week being recycling as well as general rubbish – it is strange to me how we don’t prioritise recycling more than rubbish by having recycling weekly but rubbish fortnightly like when I was living in Australia.
uBlock Origin Lite 2026.920.1710 for Safari has been released and things are going pretty good – I did ‘clear storage’ for the extension so I was starting with a clean slate (I noticed that the conversion from the native DNR format to the native content blocking format was almost instant when compared to Safari 26). Everything is going well – I tend to hop back and forth between Safari and Chrome with each browser having their strengths and weaknesses. Although I’ve listed the issues with Safari (rendering issue with YouShop (although I’m looking at moving to myUS because it doesn’t have the limits in terms of dollar value that YouShop has), the notification in the tab for Google Chat not supported, the ‘daily writing prompt’ in WordPress not working when you click on ‘post’ which should automatically insert it into a new blog post however the issue with Microsoft Teams has been fixed up in Safari 27) I have found that the bugginess of YouTube seems to be worse with Chrome.
It is interesting to see that Apple has skipped 27.1 which makes me wonder whether we’re in store for a launch of a product refresh soon so 27.1 will be about supporting new hardware or maybe it is a small update that doesn’t require outside testing because the scope of the changes isn’t going to potentially introduce regressions. Version 27.2 will be an interesting one particularly if we start to see it result in the improvements introduced in the Technology Preview make their way into the mainstream release so then maybe we’ll see the mainstream release of Safari reach the web platform test hit 100% in terms of compliance. When it comes to tvOS, I used to rely on the Democracy Now! app (it was an unofficial app that downloaded an RSS feed so you could select episodes to watch – it has been removed from the store) but now that the Podcast app supports video streaming. It is neat how the Podcast app has created a single place where you can search for content while at the same time the content producers broadcast it from their own platform rather than being dependent on third party platform in the case of YouTube.
Nicky Hager has released a new book entitled ‘Dirty Work’ that investigates the ‘New Zealand Taxpayers Union’ – it has been a while since I bought a book so maybe while I’m at Unity Books I’ll also buy a copy of ‘Dirty Politics’. It is interesting how an organisation can call themselves a union given that almost every other organisation tend to have restrictions regarding what they can call themselves – for example you cannot call yourself a ‘bank’ or an ‘insurance’ company without going through a whole lot of legal hoops because of what the use such words implies when you refer yourself as an ‘insurance’ or a ‘bank’. Maybe there needs to be a clear definition of a union, who can and cannot call themselves a union, institute (or what ever seemingly innocuous term being used by a lobbying organisation) in terms of the criteria they must meet. For example, the ACT in ACT Party stands for ‘Association of Consumers and Taxpayers’ – there is no ambiguity that they’re masquerading as something they’re not.
There has been a recent announcement that the National Party have made regarding supermarkets but what people appear to ignore was what was actually said – they would get the ComCom to do a study first before making a final decision. What does that mean? well, the National Party are channelling their inner Donald Trump by announcing they can concepts of a plan – get voted in, the ComCom comes back saying “breaking it up won’t save money…” and then nothing happens. The problem is that in New Zealand we have a small population and the economics of supermarkets are based on having economies of scale because the more economies of scale you have the more you can spread your fixed costs over a larger population and thus your margins do not need to be as high while still making a decent profit. Unfortunately speaking the truth when the masses want a bogeyman that they can hang all their grievances on isn’t going to deliver a solution other than providing something that people direct their frustration at.
The lawsuit lead by California that attempted to stop the merging of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery has been settled – there has been an agreement struck but it will be interesting to see what else has been promised but not written down. As I’ve said in the past, Trump is convinced that his own ‘transactional relationship’ shtick is a one way street but what he is quickly going to realise is that once Silicon Valley get what they want along with many of his backers, Trump will find out that those who backed him only tolerated his existence. I say this in the context of rumours that Gavin Newsom is going to run for president in 2028. Gavin is someone Silicon Valley can see as a person they can ‘do business with’ while not being embarrassed about being associated with him. Don’t be surprised if Mark Zuckerberg once again claims there has ben a ‘vibe shift’ in 2028 – like a chameleon he will change into what ever happens to be the dominant vibe of the moment. Notice how no one is talking about ‘masculine energy’ in the office? the vibe has shifted and so has Mark along with many other Silicon Valley tech broligarchs.
Daily writing prompt
How do you make time for self-care?
The first thing about ‘making time’ is to take stock of everything you do and ask the question the Marie Kondo asks which is “does this spark joy”. Are you sleep walking through life and by what I mean by that is going through the motions of doing things because “well, that is what everyone else does”. How many of those things you do are actually necessary? Life is about learning how to triage what is and isn’t important – not everything you think is important is actually important. It reminds me of when I worked at a supermarket on the checkouts at Christmas time with people fretting about putting on Christmas lunch or dinner for the family – if you’re the one preparing the food for the event then the guests should be happy with whatever you put on and if that means you roll out the BBQ and prepare a pavlova for desert then they should thankful for all that you have done.
