I had a busy day to day at work but it was mainly off the phones dealing with office work which allowed me to get a whole lot of stuff out of the way that had been accumulating over the week. When voting closed on Saturday I loaded up the election results website to see the results are they were coming in – I had realistic expectations given that it is incredibly rare to have a one term government so as a result I thought the best case scenario was that the outcome of the election would be really close and that has turned out to be the case.
As disappointing as the outcome is (I would have preferred to have a change of government) it is important that we don’t catastrophise the outcome of the election – we aren’t the United States so I think it is important that people do not conflate the right wing in New Zealand with the right wing in the United States. What I also hope is that Labour don’t learn the wrong lessons from this election – there was a slim chance of winning so the fact that Labour and the broader left didn’t win shouldn’t be seen as a repudiation of every policy Labour was championing.
I’m sure there are going to be a post mortem after the election and I have to admit I had some concerns with not only policy but also strategy. I think it is important that when there are successful campaigns by the centre left around the world that we learn from them – not all of their ideas are going to be transferable due to cultural differences and political structures but lessons can be learnt. One important takeaway is this – don’t think small because when bold solutions to big problems are required the last thing the voting public want to see is a timid response. When we propose these bold solutions it is important to remind the voting public that we have done these massive nation building projects in the past and we can do them again as so long as we have the right leadership team running the country.
Getting back to the the United States election (it is difficult not to address it given how impactful the change will be on the globe) it’ll be interesting to see whether Silicon Valley will once again reinvent themselves in the name of ‘detecting a vibe shift in the culture’ in much the same way that they reinvented themselves after Trump’s 2024 win. Always remember that these billionaires don’t have a guiding political philosophy other than backing whichever party isn’t going to hurt their interests. This is the reason I think that if Gavin Newsom runs for president then don’t be surprised if the Silicon Valley billionaires line up behind him. Expect Gavin Newsom to be an Obama like figure particularly after the negative experience of Trump which will probably result in people prefer the boring instead of the spectacle. Politics should be boring and maybe we’ll see a return to that – where policy not outrage is the currency of conversation.
I also see that there is a beta release of Safari 27.3 however it is only available for the previous two versions of macOS so I guess I’m going to have to wait till 27.3 is officially released. I checked on Google and the rumour has it that it’ll probably be released either in the first or second week of December. I think even with the improvements that are coming with Safari I am sceptical that it’ll pull me away from Chrome because the impression I get from Apple is that they’re doing the bare minimum because a capable browser may challenge the revenue stream they get from selling native apps through their app store. Yes, I know, it is conspiracy theory minded along with the fact that one shouldn’t attribute to malice that can be explained as incompetence but I just keep being let down by Apple everytime I see a glimmer of hope that things are going to change.
