Objectively, nothing tops chorizo-fried bacon, right?

Pickup sticks ‘til ‘26.

Out in Titirangi we have lots of power outages. Some water outages. But the most insidious and debilitating is a fibre outage, now ticking into its 30th hour.

My final story from the epic/tragic/comic Zuru nappy trial. Feat: Reflections on the startup exit stories we tell ourselves, competition issues raised for for supermarkets and suppliers, and a hand-scrawled note where the Taylor family are schooled about FAANGT. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

The Zuru nappy trial hearing, just concluded after four long weeks, keeps bringing the tea. (Honestly, the most bonkers civil case I've ever covered.) www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

Week three of the Zuru nappy trial and it somehow becomes even more absorbing. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/zur...

The NYT is categorically wrong to describe closing Alien: Earth ep2 with Stinkfist as a "mistep". It is glorious and proof that the content-creating algorithms are perfectly datamining my long-gestating preferences and long may that - and this show - continue. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/a...

The trial that keeps on giving: www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

Absolute scenes at the Zuru nappy trial. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/zur...

I spent all day at the High Court hearing about the intricacies of nappy production and how Zuru operates. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

Exciting developments in the Nippert household. Am jazzing up my kombu tsuyu udon soup recipe with fish tofu and frozen fish balls (mirin-drenched oyster mushrooms warming in oven).

TFW you're the first guy to publicly call out an obvious con, get threatened with multiple lawsuits and see two football teams change hands in the aftershock, and finally - after 14 years! - see my original reporting proven in court with prison resulting. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

Back to dreading the weather. Gonna have to rip up my deck to see where stormwater is pooling, as panicking every time the daily level hits 50ml and engages overflow seepage is doing my head in.

Buy for a dollar, sell for two is great advice from very savvy businessman Prop Joe. Not buy for $23.5m, tip in tens of millions more, then sell for a dollar. Looking at you, Discovery.

I love wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_t...

Whether it’s the economy turning, or dubious targeting, the entity formerly known as the Provincial Growth Fund has experienced a sudden deterioration in the quality of its loan book. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

Watching delayed. Barely half-time. Ardie Savea is surely due another world player of year nom.

FFS: Seepage into the office again. First since Gabrielle. Once more I reinvent myself as a crawlspace hydrology engineer.

The latest on Waipareira Trust v Charities Registration Board: www.nzherald.co.nz/business/wai...

Just to accurately lay out the course of events, people were yelling at him because his auto-responding robot that was trained on Twitter’s userbase still displayed — against all odds — a modicum of empathy. He then made the robot speak like him and within hours it was calling itself Mechahitler.

Once more I ask why I, a journalist based in Auckland, has better access to courts filing in Wisconsin (through PACER) than those in Wellington.

That one time a Chinese military officer baller went rogue and purchased the hulk of a decommissioned aircraft carrier during a bender, with a cover story as it being floating casino, and ended up bootstrapping the PRC navy into C21 second place in CAGs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese...

Open letter to open letter writers: Get a blog.

I built a corporate rich list, then hand-scraped tax info from cashflow and income statements to rank New Zealand’s biggest taxpayers and assess how well ETRs and CTRs match the statutory company rate. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

The joys of waking to a power outage: Dark, cold, no coffee, having to wriggle through a hatch in the garage to liberate vehicles from a dead electric door.

Immagonna start a Laotian food truck and call it Rocket Larb.

Sound the international reference klaxon, kiwis! (Heat, 1995.)

Israel entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them.

Kiss the ring.

I poked around the government’s surprising announcement it was looking at taxing charitable business and the subsequent (unsurprising) pause. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/per...

I got our data guys to scrape Registrar of Companies banning orders, and wrote up the ten longest cases. NZ has a world class rogues’ gallery. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/nzs...

I think a social media age maximum is actually a better idea than a minimum. I recall back in the day (2005) even Facebook was fresh: Then the boomers found it.

More on the $52m mussel farm: Auditors have held up the Provincial Growth Fund’s annual report for eight months and counting. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/aud...

Tried going to sleep last night by counting the lightning blasts. After hitting 50 in less than half an hour could no longer hear the thunder over the sound of the rain. No sleep for me!

What if they called a trade war and nobody could figure out what tariff rate applied today?

After 14 years, this story has matured to a very crisp and satisfying finish. Feat: private jets, a La Liga team, Terry Serepisos and extradition. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

I have a joke about Samson, but it’s long and if I cut it down to fit the character limit it won’t land.

Not quite the graph for NFTs and tulips, but not too far off either.

After 14 years, this story has matured to a very crisp and satisfying finish. Feat: private jets, a La Liga team, Terry Serepisos and extradition. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

by 'fun' Matt usually means 'I noticed some terrible people doing something terrible'

Fun story tomorrow.

The best advice for trade negotiators contemplating engagement with the US rn.

The two largely incompatible ideas I’m holding in my head today: 1. “Beclowned” is a truly amazing addition to the English language. 2. It’s weird and unsettling that we’re now in a world where the White House metatron uses it. www.cbsnews.com/news/h-r-mcm...

It's 1828. The United States has adopted the highest tariff rate of the century for insane and idiotic reasons. It's 1929. The United States has adopted the highest tariff rate of the century for insane and idiotic reasons. It's 2025. The United States has adopted the highest tariff rate of the ce

Proper empires run massive trade deficits: That’s you, paying in the currency you print, for all the treasures of the world. The US used to be aspirational, man.

I’m back and can report NYC streets are full of psychics and weed. And even blurry night photos without a cityscape can be gelocated in minutes. Found a few amazing leads on old stories (one with 10 years of silence!) and some v promising angles to chase on new ones. Thanks Brian Gaynor Initiative!

BREAKING: America is yet to totally succumb to MAGA Puritanism.

Saffron (in this case in risotto) is pretty amazing.

Reading this missive from 2023, today, is honestly pretty funny. www.act.org.nz/_25_million_...

The state of it: Policy reform is actually more than running find-delete on *.govt.