Matisyahu's Blog

Woke up this morning and went for an 8km walk – the weather was a little overcast but it was comfortable weather to go walking in. When I came back home I watched a few YouTube videos to catch up on the news and then grabbed lunch – Tuna & Quinoa Asian Style and two packets of roasted seaweed. What I am doing now is keeping a food diary to keep track of the calories at each meal and recording it into the Apple Journal with each day having its own entry in the journal so then I can keep track of how things are progressing. The benefit of having that journal is s that I conscious of what I eat during the day and recording when I eat – am I eating because I’m bored or am I eating because I’m actually hungry?

Just before I started writing my blog I was watching a video from a YouTuber that I watch because although I don’t always agree with everything he does have some interesting takes. Tonight however I have to admit I disagreed with his assessment of the left wing within the United States – and the end of the day you can have a fit of righteous indignation and feel very smug about being perfect and pure but if at the end of the day you have nothing to show for it other than being smug then I have to ask what is it all for?

If you want to engage in transformation politics then you need to build up a coalition of the working class that is bought together through the shared economic interests of the working class. Part of the coalition building means you have to meet people where they are, it also means that some things that are important may need to be on the back burner until such point that you have mass support needed to not only address the material conditions of the here and now but also the ‘big picture’ issues. The failure to address those material conditions creates fertile grounds for reactionary forces to claim that the left is obsessed with xyz at the expense of ‘real issues’.

This is the reason why I’m dismissive of people over on the New Zealand subreddit who whine on a near constant basis of how the Green Party should stick to environmentalism and leave the social and economic issues to one side. The problem with such thinking is that firstly the environment, social issues and economic issues are intrinsically tied together (you can’t address the environmental issues without examining the economic model etc). The second issue is that if you don’t deal with the material conditions that the working class face then you run the risk of once again reactionary forces will claim that the Green Party is more interested in environmentalism as a new age religion rather than dealing with the ‘real issues’.

I think the reason why this issue raised online was because of a recent interview of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez where she raised the issue of Woke 1.0 vs Woke 2.0 – the excesses of Woke 1.0 leading to the reactionary backlash then the return of woke in the form of Woke 2.0. It is all very well to parade up mainstream talking about ‘defund the police’ and ‘abolish ice’ but what does that actually mean in terms of actionable policy? when regular people aka ‘normies’ hear ‘defund the police’ what is actually going through their minds – something tells me that the moment ‘defund the police’ is chanted that the regular person hearing such a chant the first thing that comes to mind is chaos, anarchy, crime, violence etc. I hope that what was said in the interview is a sign that the left in the United States are thinking strategically so that it is possible to win then engage in transforming the system for the better rather than engaging in empty virtue signally and moral posturing.

I’m back using Safari after giving my installation a good cleaning – I logged into recover, mounted the data drive then opened the terminal to then navigate to the Library directory to clear out all the contents. Once all that was done I rebooted, logged back in and signed into my iCloud account then installed uBlock Origin Lite which had been updated to 2026.812.1211. Everything is going smoothly at the moment and there are reports of Apple working on a 26.6.2 update for macOS and a 26.6.1 update for iOS and from what the rumour mill is reporting it will be focusing on security fixes – I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is using the same developer tools other big names are using to pick up security holes that have laid undetected for years.

I woke up this morning at around 9:10 am just before my alarm went off at 9:30 am – I got out of bed and prepared for the day. The groceries got delivered at around 10:30 am with everything arriving perfectly so I put everything away and then after that was done I started preparing for the meal tonight but cooking the chilli during the day. The reason i started cooking early is because I like to cook the chilli ‘low and slow’ so that the meat takes on all the flavours and the amount of liquid is gradually reduced so then it becomes a good thick consistency perfect for nachos at home. The recipe includes 500g of mince along with the two vegetarian meal packages I mentioned early which makes the whole batch I cooked contain 24g of fibre.

Watching another interesting put out by Mehdi Hasan from Zeteo regarding Ben Shapiro’s ‘Daily Wire’ movie ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’.

I have to ask Ben Shapiro, if someone made a movie regarding Kahanist terrorists, made frequent reference to Orthodox Jewish traditions throughout the movie – would you just brush off concerns that the movie may be perceived as antisemitic? something tells me that if such a movie actually existed that Ben Shapiro would be one of the first to condemn such a movie by claiming that it is antisemitic and yet when it comes to ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’ he claims it isn’t Islamophobic. I don’t ask for much, I just ask people to be consistent.

For some unknown reason Ikea is sending another parcel to me so I guess I’ll find out what it is all about when it arrives. Regarding the order from the United States via YouShop, the scheduled delivery time being 12–14 August so I guess I’ll need to keep my eye out for that delivery during the week. When it arrives I’ll wash it so then I can start wearing it – if I have time I might take some photos of the clothes as well. I’ve got some meals for the next week along with burger buns and a few other items so next week I can have come chicken burgers for dinner – I tend to keep them fairly basic.

I’m looking forward to 13 August when Google will do their big announcement – it is know there will be a Pixel 11 announcement along with a watch refresh however there are rumours of maybe a new bluetooth tracking device, maybe an updated Google Streamer etc. Next week is when Chrome 152 will be stabilised however it’ll probably be released two weeks after – if you want to keep track of what is happening in the world of Chrome you can check out the roadmap website (link). The one thing to keep in mind is that the roadmap does change – the ‘IndexedDB: SQLite backend’ had been scheduled for Chrome 152 but it got pushed back to Chrome 154 for technical reasons so it is very much dictated by how things are progressing in a given project and if it needs more time then it’ll get bumped to a future product release.

FInished the week and now I’m in bed for an early night sleep with the focus on waking up at 9:30 am – so I’ve gone from 11:30 am to 10:30 am and 9:30 am on Monday. Although I’ve set the alarm for 9:30 am I am tempted to just go for a straight 9:00am which gives me 1/2 hour to wake up and get out of bed then get changed to go for a brisk walk in the morning. The weather is looking a whole lot nicer so maybe we’re lucky enough to have gotten through the wet part of winter so then all we have to deal with is just the cold which I can easily deal with – a few extra layers of clothing and everything is all good.

Regarding the walk tomorrow, I’m tempted to go for the walk down along the waterfront like a couple of weeks ago – get some fresh air and I think if I go down there earlier I’ll find that there won’t be as many people out. One thing I did enjoy on my last walk was being able to listen to podcasts because in the past I never really thought about the idea of listening to a podcast when doing a work out but I found it pretty relaxing – mixing up the monotony of listening to music with some podcasts for variety. I’m not going to push myself because I am getting back into regular excise – no use pushing oneself to the extreme and the find it is next to impossible to function for the rest of the day or getting up the next day to do some exercise.

Does anyone remember after Trump had won a second term and there was this narrative in the media that there had been a ‘vibe shift’ or sometimes referred to a ‘cultural shift’ with centrists politicians insisting that the middle had moved to the right and now they have to move to where the new middle now resides. Then came the avalanche of businesses moving away from DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) by claiming once again there had been a cultural shift in the country away from such policies. Then there was the rise of ‘trad wife’ influencer that were once on the fringes were now having their moment in the spotlight – carefully curated content that was completely devoid of any practicality.

As we get to the middle of Trump’s second term, his poll numbers are going from bad to worse, influencers who were cheerleading Trump have either turned on him or completely changing the subject in a hope their audience won’t remember their role in getting Trump elected. Then there are the trade wife influencers who are now doing the rounds – “oh who, me, na, I was never a trad wife…I don’t know who gave me that label but that isn’t something I call myself”. The whole ‘cultural vibe shift’ is now having another vibe shift as the Trump vibes have become toxic thus no longer a viable business model so they’re now all rebranding as something else.

Social conservatives have become more visible especially of the Christian nationalist variety but sooner or later they’re going realise that there hasn’t been a ‘revival of traditional values’. What was sold in the form of ‘trad wide’ was off the back of an nostalgic aesthetic that attempted to cater for the anxieties of its audience by providing that felt reassuring, a return to stability, providing fulfillment etc. The problem with making a decision based on vibes and aesthetic is that eventually the whole thing comes crashing down when reality rears its ugly head and then those involved quickly realise how utterly unfulfilling it is trying to live up to an unrealistic archetype that isn’t grounded in reality.

I woke up this morning at 11:30 am after a great night sleep, got out of bed, had a cup of coffee and relaxed on the patio out the back in the sun – it was a little on the cool side but the sun made the experience enjoyable. I’ve set the alarm for Sunday to be 10:30 am and then on Monday I’ll set it for 9:30 am – I wanted to gradually get used to going to bed at an earlier time so then I can get back into a good habit.

I’ve been watching the politics in the United States and it is always painful to hear talking heads in the United States media label something that is a main stream position in every other country as being ‘far left’. This whole term ‘far left’ is becoming yet another talking point along side ‘woke’, ‘DEI’ and ‘CRT’ where those using such terms can’t even clearly define the term means that they’re throwing around and yet their ignorance is paraded as some sort of fount of wisdom. I wouldn’t mind it so much if this ignorance was being spewed by randos on the internet with a platform and far too much time on their hands but I would have thought that media outlets would at least have some standards particularly when their media brand is going to be associated with such half baked commentary.

With that being said there is a glimmer of hope that that is the fact that my generation and younger make greater use of the internet to seek out news. Previous generations had the excuse that the only news they had access was either from their local newspaper with maybe articles syndicated from one of the bigger newspapers (or wire service) or when it came to television you were pretty much at the mercy of one of the big television stations. Fast forward to today and it is now possible to jump onto YouTube and watch news from all around the world, from Bloomberg to BBC, from DW English to France 24, from ABC in Australia to Al Jazeera English service. Long story short, the gatekeepers of news no longer exist and if you want to seek out news from different points of view then you’re able to find that online from reputable sources.

This is why the complaints from people displaying ‘big boomer energy’ when it comes to TikTok makes me laugh – “the problem with kids these days is that they’re on their phones with their TikToks not getting the truth” . We’ve had Benjamin Netanyahu complain incessantly that the carefully curated narrative is slowly losing its impact on this and the next generation (both Jews and Gentiles alike) as support for Israel falls through the floor even as his right wing allies try to use botnets to shape the narrative both with Israel and outside of the country (link) (link). Then there is the persistent narrative by talking heads in the media, be it on the centre or on the right, calling anything and everything they dislike as being communist, socialist or far left while ignoring that their red scare tactics only work on the generation who still needs their children or grandchildren to come over and show how a PDF document can be resized or rotated or trying to get their printer to work.

Getting back to closer to home. It is always interesting to see what the fall out is from what Winston Peters said in parliament to the Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan. The reason why it is interesting to see is because of the recent poll that was done where 54% of New Zealanders want Chris Luxon to sack Winston Peters (link). The first problem is that such a percentage, although a majority, it isn’t really a large majority and the second problem is that the recent polling as of a day or two ago (two weeks after what took place in parliament) demonstrated that although New Zealanders weren’t happy with Winston Peters the voters didn’t consider it a ‘deal breaker’ (link) which is why Chris Luxon is happy to keep him on as foreign minister. This is the reason why it is important to check what the polling is after the event – people can demonstrate that they’re unhappy with something but that doesn’t necessarily translate to “so therefore I can going to vote for a party on the left”. What we’re seeing is the right hold onto their majority but it is now a matter of shuffling the seats around between the three parties over who ends up getting the bigger say if that majority in the polls holds to election day.