On 23 January 2026, Radio New Zealand published an article titled "US touts 'New Gaza' filled with luxury real estate." It was wire copy from AFP — a news agency report about US officials presenting a vision for turning Gaza into a seaside resort of skyscrapers and luxury developments.

The article quoted Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and an Israeli real estate developer. It included a brief background paragraph acknowledging the war. It did not include a single Palestinian voice, legal perspective, humanitarian view, or any challenge to the claims being made.

I filed a formal complaint with RNZ. They rejected it. I escalated to the New Zealand Media Council. They didn't uphold it either.

Today, both the Media Council ruling and RNZ's own write-up are public — with my name attached. This post is the part of the story those publications don't tell: the full arguments I made, and why the process itself matters regardless of the outcome.

Talofa reader,

I had an encounter the other week, with a smart, very capable young Pasifika person on my Discord who said they're not political because they're "either not interested in it or ... too busy living life and having fun to do anything about it".

And I went, "ooh, that's quite the take", and we went back and forth a few times, but ultimately we just parked it. I had to sit with it for a little while after, to figure out why that encounter really rubbed me the wrong way.

This isn't about this young Pasifika person, not at all. Everyone's free to their opinions and to live their own lives, 100%. So, given that, why did this irk me so much?

Talofa reader,

In 2001, a guy named Marc Prensky published an essay that shaped education policy for a decade. "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." The argument was: kids who grew up with computers think differently. They're wired for technology. They don't need to be taught how to use it — they already know.

Complete rubbish.

Talofa reader,

Anthropic dropped $8 million on a Super Bowl ad to tell you Claude is ad-free. I posted this about it the other week. The internet immediately started debating whether that's sustainable.

Anthropic pulls $4.5B from enterprise. OpenAI gets 75% from consumers. Both are burning billions. Which model wins?

I got into a thread about this on LinkedIn and someone brought up an interesting angle — what about companies that let you monetise your OWN data? What if the consumer gets a cut?

Which led me to River.

Talofa reader,

The relationship with my tools is no longer "what was that hammer? Oh right, I just use you to smash nails. The end." It's a lot closer to what it would be like if I had an assistant who's brilliant—but has no memory of what we did at 2am.

We are a few years now since the explosion of ChatGPT, and despite the many hot takes about how good or bad AI is, I can only attest to my personal experience: it's been a 20x minimum boost in the projects I've been able to build, in less than half the time I would have estimated.

Talofa reader,

The argument that "AI is inevitable" has been accepted by tech and non-tech professionals alike, largely with muted reservation rather than loud proclamation. I've led workshops on generative AI, and the feeling from participants is that AI is a foregone conclusion:

"If you don't keep up, you'll be left behind."

They're not saying it because they're convinced about the technology, but because of how it feels to be surrounded by it.

And that's the problem. This is a claim that needs to be scrutinised, because you may have more optionality than you're led to believe.

Talofa reader,

To say 2025 was a 'challenging year' would be the understatement of understatements. No, it wasn't challenging—it was full-on "masks off": power consolidation and imperial impunity on full display.

Yes, it's going to be one of those newsletters.

It's that wonderful, magical time of year where we get to reflect on everything that happened for us this year. The highs, the lows, the lessons learned and friends we made along the way. But in my heart of hearts, or at least if I'm getting it one hundred, I don't feel that way. At all.

Talofa reader,

I remember one of my first AI-related engagements with one of my highly capable AWS Partners, a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company, highly resourced. It was early 2024, and I was delivering a workshop on GenAI. I was talking with one of the company tech leaders, and I was a little surprised at how they were thinking about AI—essentially, off-loading a good chunk of the problem decisions to the LLMs, and little to no emphasis on context details and scope going either way: to, from and back to the LLM.

Talofa reader,

I know it's been some time between posts, but thanks for making the move with me from Substack to Beehiiv.