Matisyahu's Blog

Finished the first season of Paradise and funny if there appears to be a good amount of overlap that I see with Silo and Fallout along with a few other dystopian films I’ve watched in the past. It’ll be interesting to see how it developers going into the second season how it develops particularly when he goes looking for his wife.

Google has pushed out an updated today for Chrome which bumps the version from 138.0.7204.50 to 138.0.7204.93 (link) – it was probably released early (normally it is Tuesday US time (Wednesday NZ time)) because there is an exploit out in the wild (mitigation was made available 26/06/25) with a proper fix to fully address the issue. As for the performance, no regressions as far as I have noticed and uBlock Origin Lite/AdGuard are working smoothly so that is always a good sign that the update did what it was supposed to do.

It appears that there is light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to water infrastructure in the Wellington region (link) along with continued discussions about the idea of having a ‘Wellington super city council’ like what exists up in Auckland. Personally what I would like to see is the setting up of provincial councils that replace the individual city councils in a particular region then central government to devolve power but keep centrally funding where appropriate (there would be 16 provincial councils in total). It is good to see that there is progress none the less after much upheaval post election where 3 Waters was scrapped in favour of ‘Local Water Done Well’.

What I do find rather interesting is the discussion regarding localism and the National led government justifying the ‘Local Water Done Well’ by claiming they’re pro-localism but then turn around in regards to local planning, zoning etc. by directly intervening. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some local city councils to do a horrible job when it comes to making housing more affordable and building them in a timely manner but politicians should avoid taking absolutist positions – if you believe that 3 Waters would result in a massively bloated institution that would collapse under its own weight then make that argument. If you believe that you generally support localism but sometimes the central government needs to intervene because the inability for an council to ‘get it right’ impacts too many people to ignore it the great, make that argument – reminds me of the quote from Star Wars “only a Sith deals in absolutes”, that there are exceptions to a general rule and if there is then make a robust argument as to why this or that situation fits into that exception.

Anyway, I’m going to go for a good long walk tonight – after being lazy for a few days I need to get off the couch and burn some calories. I’ll probably just keep walking for as long as I can – I get a bit antsy if I haven’t had some exercise in a few days.