iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 25/09/2026

A little framed picture of Quasi. I will get it out of my bag, and stand it up on the desk facing the interviewers without further comment.

Quasi, a sculpture by Ronnie van Hout. Quasi is a large, detached hand. Quasi stands on 2 fingers. His pinky finger and thumb are positioned to look like arms. He has a sassy stance. On the back of Quasi's body-hand is Ronnie van Hout's expressionless face. In this photo, Quasi is standing atop the Wellington City Gallery, watching and seeing all who pass beneath him.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 25/09/2026

Presented without comment

Stuff’s Letters to the Editor: Nicola Willis’ supermarket plan is a lurch into socialism

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 19/09/2026

If a story sounds a little too much like another story, you gotta ask...uhhh, are either of those stories accurate as described? 🤔 Where they...manufactured, even? 🤔🤔 Deliberate, mayhaps?

The 🤔 emoji, but with 3 hands under the emoji's chin with a tiny face

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 17/09/2026

I can't think of anything less horny

Kermit the Frog scrunching up his face in disgust.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 16/09/2026

It's ok to take a break ❤️❤️❤️ A lil nugget of niceness for you

A stuffed bear wearing pink gamer style headphones. Caption reads "ur looking extra cute today :)"

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 16/09/2026

EXCUSE ME?!?!! SOMEONE HAD HIM IN THEIR CAR AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN FOLLOW UP????

Some of the specific findings and events are a grim and bleak read, such as the woman who had Phillips in her car in May 2023, took a photograph of him, sighted his children, and called police - but they never came.

Despite police being dispatched, they were diverted to a family harm incident before they got there and later recorded the initial callout as 'no further action required'.

Aside: Lillian Hanly reports on reaction to Tom Phillips inquiry -Morning Report 16 September 2026

To this day, police have been unable to explain to the inquiry why the callout was designated as not needing any follow-up.

Then in November 2023, a decision was made to downsize the core investigation team to just three people, despite the children still being unaccounted for.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 13/09/2026

I think that left wing politicians who give any space to transphobic talking points have decided to ignore the shoes in the corner, the murals on the walls, the pleas of the fairies in their faces, and instead eat just a grape or 2 from the table of the bounty of plenty.

Ofelia from Pan's Labyrinth picks a grape from a table full of food while the Pale Man wakes up behind her.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 11/09/2026

Omg this is the *worst* AI disclosure I have ever read, & based on the agressive hyphenation, might be AI, too? "I worked REALLY HARD. I HAD to use the evil tech to make eye-stuff and ear-stuff to finish this game, I am a solo developer who ran out of money so I *had* to do the eye-stuff this way!"

AI Generated Content Disclosure
The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

RoadHouse Manager was mostly made by a single human on a quest to make the ultimate roguelite set in a roadhouse! Quitting his job at Activision Blizzard and undertaking this quest took years of 60 hour work weeks equaling many 1000s of hours of labour, lots of brain-effort, tons of money, roadhouse research, and many rare Earth resources; eventually going way over budget, forging this entertainment out of raw willpower melded with passion-sauce. Eventually to complete his universe-given quest, this dev delved into the dark side of forbidden technologies of 2026, including devil-spawned AI-tooling, the vile monster of which was used, to make some ear-stuff and eye-stuff in lieu of hiring other humans that could not be afforded at this time, to fill in content gaps with the best possible tools available at the time of production. Go-go human race, hurray!

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 11/09/2026

"It's not humanly possible to author so much text; we had to do this" you didn't have to make the most AI heavy writing game ever, jesus christ This is literally just a more complex interface to AI generate a story and get the model to give you bad feedback. Like that's all this is.

AI Generated Content Disclosure
The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Ghostwriter's Pact uses AI as an engine to enable gameplay that would be impossible to achieve with traditional game development methods.

The game is built on a "Hybrid AI" system designed to maximize player creativity while minimizing environmental impact and latency:

1. Pre-generated Content: To allow players to combine word cards into valid sentences, we used LLMs to pre-generate and validate a database of over 1 million properly structured sentences. It would be humanly impossible for a writing team to manually author this volume of text. By pre-generating this data, we ensure the core gameplay is instant, responsive, and does not require constant, energy-intensive API calls for every move the player makes.

2. Live Generation: When a player finalizes a story arc, the game connects to a live LLM to weave their sentences into a cohesive story. A secondary AI acts as a "Critic," evaluating the player's story for cohesiveness and creativity. Pre-generation of stories is impossible here, since players can mix sentences to create a near infinite amount of stories.

3. Visual Assets: The game's imagery was generated locally on developer hardware using custom-trained models (LoRAs) and workflows to ensure a consistent, stylized aesthetic that fits the game's theme.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 11/09/2026

"Only a few small assets were AI generated." Reviewer: "all the assets look AI generated." Oopsie! "Some assets were created using AI-assistance tools." This could mean almost anything. Say what you actually did. Gonna use "under human creative direction" to jazz up anything boring I do.

AI Generated Content Disclosure
The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Story, dialogue, artwork, music, and voice performances were created using AI tools under human creative direction. All content was reviewed and curated during development. No AI generates content during gameplay.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 11/09/2026

If the police chose to serve Chewie a written trespass for about an hour of time, they decided to escalate beyond what was probably necessary. Again, this link talks about official trespass notices, which is much more than a, "hey, just leave the event," thing.

If the trespasser takes too long to leave or comes back

You must give the trespasser a reasonable amount of time to leave. If the person stays or takes an unreasonable time to leave, call 111 and ask for Police.

The trespasser must not return to your property/premises for two years. If they do come back they will have committed an offence. Call 111 and ask for Police.

If they come back and then leave, you can report this online.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 11/09/2026

(I was preparing myself to potentially verbally trespass the ex of a friend on her behalf if he happened to show up while I was at her house.) From the police: a verbal trespass does not require you to even know the person's name. You just need a description. www.police.govt.nz/advice-servi...

Verbal trespass

To deliver a trespass notice verbally, tell the person in clear terms they must leave the property and not return.

If you deliver a trespass notice verbally, you should write down:

- the date and time you verbally gave the trespass notice to someone
- why you are verbally giving a trespass notice to that person
- the name or description of that person.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 10/09/2026

There's a lot of post-9/11 art trying to make sense of it. But there's something so fundamentally real about early MCR going completely in on this song. I totally believe this song expresses what a lot of people in and near New York feel and witnessed.

We walk in single file
We light our rails and punch our time
Ride escalators colder than a cell

[Chorus]
This broken city sky like butane on my skin
stolen from my eyes
Hello Angel, tell me where are you
Tell me where we go from here
[x2]

Tell me we go from...

And in this moment we can't close the lids on burning eyes
Our memories blanket us with friends we know like fallout vapors
Steel corpses stretch out towards an ending sun, scorched and black
It reaches in and tears your flesh apart
As ice cold hands rip into your heart

source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/my_chemical_romance/album/i_brought_you_my_bullets_you_brought_me_your_love#skylines_and_turnstiles

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 08/09/2026

"I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, 'If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.'" OpenAI's published release states the below at the end, and you should not believe a word of it.

We believe we are now in the next period of AI progress⁠, and today’s results provide further evidence of this.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 07/09/2026

I thought the idea behind making a bunch of public servants redundant was to reduce the bureaucracy HMMMMMMMMMM gosh, I wonder why that didn't work!

The Unicode 🤔 emoji, but now it's face is tiny and instead of 1 thinking hand under its chin, there are 3

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 05/09/2026

I'm assuming this is bait, and I'm happy to eat it because this is your regular reminder that the enslaved house elf population is not freed in this series and everyone made fun of Hermione for trying to free them. Only 2 are freed and they die or become alcoholics. Their heads are decorations.

The chapter illustration from a Harry Potter book of the house elf heads mounted on the wall at 12 Grimmauld Place. This is Sirius Black's house which Harry inherits.

Reddit post about Hogwarts Legacy. The title is "Oh boy I love decorating my Room of Requirement with dead House Elf heads!"

The photo shows a student using magic to mount countless house elf heads on a wall. The caption says, "Why is this a decoration lmao"

Reddit post about Hogwarts Legacy. The title is "Oh boy I love decorating my Room of Requirement with dead House Elf heads!"

The photo shows more of the wall of heads. The caption says, "Deek thinks he will be next on the wall of dead slaves"

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 03/09/2026

Without any hesitation, Bev Keane from Midnight Mass. A character who I don't even love to hate, I just hated her so much, I wanted to reach into my TV and throw hands. Real testament to Samantha Sloyan's skill as she seems to be lovely!

Samantha Sloyan as Bev Keane in Midnight Mass. She's a woman dressed modestly (blouse, cardigan) and a subtle look of judgement on her face you might not even notice.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 30/08/2026

Yeah so the existential crisis I was feeling on Thursday chilled out for a few days and is now back with full force again. Just a feeling of dread running down my back, argh. I could take another mental health day, but I think that will make it worse. Arghuugahhbbhb

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 22/08/2026

Give me a single image from a film that immediately makes you hear the song from the soundtrack in your head

Éowyn stands at the top of Edoras, watching the wind carry a Rohan flag down the hill.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 20/08/2026

Quote reposts turned off, but my response to this is that I'm not convinced that C-3PO has personhood. And you might say whoa whaddya mean? Well...LLMs already *display* anthropomorphic personalities in their outputs despite not being people at all. They don't *experience* those things, but...

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith....

If you're opposed to machine learning making outputs based on training on copyrighted art, are you opposed to ai in general doing it, or opposed to the current types of models doing it?

That is, if you had C-3PO, would the same

rule apply? 1/5

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith....

I have this idea I call the C-3PO test, which I haven't seen anywhere.

Scenario: C3PO exists. Although he is a machine, he easily passes any known test of consciousness or personhood that doesn't include knowing in advance that he is a machine. He is capable of suffering and

sadness. 2/5

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith....

One day C3PO tells you he loves art. He has also looked at a great deal of art, and would suffer greatly due to not being allowed to make art.

Is it ethical to forbid him from making art?

3/5

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 14/08/2026

"Overwhelming majority" *Ahem* With a 44.4% voter turnout and no other major parties, Farage couldn't even manage a 2/3rds majority against a Bin. The Bin had more support in London than Farage got yesterday. Twice.

Standards investigation continues

Those comments refer to the scrutiny surrounding whether he should have declared a £5m gift he received from a party donor in 2024 - more details on that here.

Rival parties have said he must still answer to the standards commissioner - whose website said this morning that the investigation has now resumed.

Reform UK's Robert Jenrick told the BBC Farage’s victory should "settle the matter now" as it shows "the overwhelming majority of people strongly support him in full knowledge of the allegations".

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 14/08/2026

Honestly, looking at the piles, Binface voters have certainly turned out. Sometimes it looks pretty close visually. I have this up on a big screen and I can juuuuuust make out the little cards. (The piles aren't always in the same order)

Big long ballots sorted into piles. Far left is "the rest," middles is Farage, right most is Binface

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 14/08/2026

My favourite maths comedian, Matt Parker (standupmaths) also in the house, officially monitoring the count for the Count Binface party!

A man standing on the sidelines of the Clacton by-election wearing a suit and a grey rosette

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 14/08/2026

THE BIN IS IN THE HOUSE (you can hear Binface talking, too meheheh)

The top of Count Binface's bin head just barely in frame

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 14/08/2026

If Binface gets more than 1% vote share today, that will be the best result he's ever had (in terms of vote percentage!)

A table:

2019 United Kingdom general election
Uxbridge and South Ruislip
69 votes, 0.1%, came 6 of 11

2021 London mayoral election
Mayor of London
24,775 votes, 1.0 %, came 8 of 19

2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election
Uxbridge and South Ruislip
190 votes, 0.6 %, came 8 of 17

2024 London mayoral election
Mayor of London
24,260 votes, 1.0%, came 11 of 13

2024 United Kingdom general election Richmond and Northallerton
308 votes, 0.6 %, came 6of 13

2026 Makerfield by-election
Makerfield
95 votes, 0.2 %, came 7 of 14

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 14/08/2026

Omg man with Binface puppet has arrived

A man wearing a leopard print outfit is holding a Count Binface pupper with a cowboy hat on the sidelines if the official count of the Clacton by-election

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 13/08/2026

Wrong. (And no, I'm no cat hater, we are just responsible with where our little dude goes to help protect our native fauna.) predatorfreenz.org/toolkits/kno...

What impact do cats have?

Cats are highly skilled hunters and are known to kill all kinds of native wildlife including birds, bats, lizards and insects.

Cats have been implicated in the eradication of many species, including the Stephen Islands Wren. There is also a well reported case where one feral cat killed 102 endangered native short tailed bats in one week.

Cats are an apex predator in Aotearoa — this means nothing preys on them and therefore we need to try and minimise their impact on our ecosystems as much as possible.

In our cities, native birds do not breed fast enough to stop the decline caused by domestic cats.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 06/08/2026

I haven't watched this video yet (I will), but there's a lot of YouTubers talking about Hank's AI use for videos right now, and they don't seem to be aware of just how much MORE he's used it.

YouTube comment by @NathanButh:

Just a note, that he has also been using Al to build his most recent projects. The sound project, his personal website, the Artemis photography project, 4x3, and Smush were all entirely built with Al.

He was really only semi open about this with the Artemis photography project project, but it has been bizarre seeing the community be surprised by his Al use for scripts after he has been publicly launching vibe coded products for months.

I just want to emphasize this. It isn't like he is sometimes using a freely available LLM chat or from time to time. He is an active subscriber to Anthropic, and based on the rate he was having Claude build and update projects, probably burning through tokens far beyond the base subscriptions.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 01/08/2026

Oh. I don't know what makes me saddest about this. This is akin to a crossed picket line for me personally, but also...why does he care so much play count here? Is that what makes him feel valued? Hank nooo ☹️

Twitter thread:

Anthony Morris @amorrisc... - Jul 23

what has Fable done for you lately?

Retweet: Guillermo Rauch @rauchg - Jul 23

Fable just found a 15-30% memory efficiency improvement in Turbopack /Next.js, nearly autonomously.

@tobi asked me today: what have been you...

Response to Anthony Morris:

Hank Green @hankgreen

Honest answer to this question...4x3 and SMUSH now have a combined 80,000 plays per day and before Claude Code I hadn't done any development for 21 years.

3:48 PM - Jul 23, 2026 - 125.8K Views

Hank Green @hankgreen - Jul 23

(am I doing development now? I dunno, it feels a lot like what it used to feel like to make things with code just with much tighter reward loops.)

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 31/07/2026

I just double checked the calculator, and they say they wouldn't reduce the current super payment. Basically, the ubu + a top up. Land tax is still accrued, but isn't payable until you're dead, buuuuuuuuut uhhh....over 20-30 years on a lowish land value...THAT'S A LOT OF TAX.

No-one who relies on NZ Superannuation will receive less than they currently do under the Tax Reset.

All Kiwis 65 years and older will receive the Citizen's Income, and a special tax adjustment, meaning your income will not change. You will also receive the same after tax income from other sources (such as investment income) up to approximately $55,000 per year.

Your house will attract an annual Land Value Tax of [redacted] but you will be able to defer this until you or your estate sells your land.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 30/07/2026

What is happening and why do I immediately want all of this Look at the lil fan

A 30 minute hourglass that is half orange and half clear or pink

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 27/07/2026

He was a real one, hell yeah 😎

Describing himself as "a keen European", a friend of his noted that he "railed against right-wing politics, reserving special venom for Margaret Thatcher, and fought against all manner of authority, including university paperwork, and most especially if it came in a uniform."

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 26/07/2026

Lots of threatened baby birds get torn apart while still alive, but heaven forbid we try to protect them. Do you even KNOW how fast stoats can get pregnant in Aotearoa??? There's a reason they are so hard to get rid of. Kākākō only have babies once every few years for christ's sake.

Males become sexually mature at 10–11 months, while females are sexually mature at the age of 2–3 weeks whilst still blind, deaf and hairless, and are usually mated with adult males before being weaned.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 17/07/2026

Here's even more from the Poetland Press Herald, and can I just say, incredibly brave of Ashley and their daughter for letting their names be published in this, holy hell. WARNING reader, there is overt verbal domestic violence from this murderer, my god. www.pressherald.com/2026/07/16/i...

She said she has seen videos of Brouillette on the scene of the shooting and told him: “Nowhere in there does it show that this man charged at you with a car.”

“In his head it’s justified. He’s unusually calm about it,” she said.

Ashley Brouillette also described to the Press Herald her ex-husband’s abusive behavior during and after their marriage. She said she does not live in Maine and that she avoids contact with him, but he still reaches out.

She provided a voicemail from a man with slurred speech, which she said Brouillette left in the fall of 2025. He disparages her several times, asserts he’s in a better financial position than her, and states “you should have your (expletive) throats cut, yup, you should.”

“Am I threatening that I’m going to do that?” the man said. “Nope. But do I think you should have your (expletive) throat cut or should have them cut? Yep.”

That relative, whose name the AP withheld, said Brouillette had been diagnosed with manic bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder as a child and was rejected by military recruiters the first time he applied because of these diagnoses. The relative said Brouillette was admitted a year later after going off of his medication.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 16/07/2026

I feel like musicians should be allowed to throw tomatoes at this man for the rest of his life.

Mikey Shulman, the CEO and founder of Suno, said on a podcast last year that he believes the “majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 08/07/2026

I cherish this photo of Binface and Rishi Sunak walking together on election day in 2024 when he also stood for the Richmond and Northallerton seat

Rishi Sunak walking side-by-side Count Binface in 2024 during the 2024 general election.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 27/06/2026

I'm sure there's instances where this is absolutely true, but it happens too often in this country. Like surely there's a way to support people in this position other than name suppression.

However, a person connected to him successfully argued they would face “undue hardship” if the defendant was named.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 24/06/2026

Using RocketLab, a company who's openly working with the US military, as a success story here does not instill confidence that they care about ethical business practices. Peter Thiel also invested money in Xero. Why celebrate these companies unless you are happy to ignore dirty money?

Homegrown success stories like Xero and Rocket Lab show that Kiwi creativity can change the world. But these don't happen by accident. It's time to get our innovation foundations right, so New Zealand can become the best place in the world to start and scale a business.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 24/06/2026

There's also this framing which both sounds reasonable but misses the point, too? Changing the tax and benefits system is *obviously* not going to be solved by changing a few lines of code. A weird thing to say at all. Much code across the country will need to be changed.

Reward work. Always

The current benefit system traps people. It’s not right that a few shifts at the local café can be taxed up to 90%, or that people have to spend hours in WINZ offices to get support. A Citizen’s Income (with top-ups for those who need it) replaces the bureaucracy of the benefit system with a few lines of code - removing these punishing extra tax rates for taking on part-time work. It offers every Kiwi the financial security to enter work, study, start a business, raise a family or support their community.

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Cynethryth @cynethryth.com · 24/06/2026

With all the buzz about TOP, whom I will not be voting for due to their vague both-sidesing, I had a little poke around their site. I think most of their policies look good on the surface. But sometimes when you get into the weeds you see stuff like this:

Simplify the tax system

-

Our tax and welfare system is a paperwork maze. The New Foundations package simplifies the system by replacing most benefit classes with the Citizen's Income (plus several top-up allowances), automating the work of an estimated 2,000+ public servants in the Ministry for Social Development and reducing tax brackets to three tiers (28%, 34% and 39%).

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