What do Witches, Shoe Boxes and Trees have in common?

Nothing - apart from that they're all featured in this week's newsletter.

This morning I went to a “Witches Market” in Lower Hutt, Wellington. This is the second year that the event has been run, and the second year I've been. There were around thirty stalls selling a mixture of art, books, jewellery, magickal items and tarot reading. What's funny about this market is that, for all the potions, herbs and magic wands that I saw, there was a lot less dangerous pseudoscience than I see at regional Mind, Body, Spirit fairs or the Go Green Expo.

I'm a fan of David Farrier's writing - he works hard on his stories documenting nonsense, and has managed to turn it into a job. There have been some great articles on his site recently, including a nice who's who of Conspiracy nuts. It's great to see a light being shone on people like Chantelle Baker, as she looks to me to be a rising star in conspiracy / anti-vax / alternative medicine circles - with both her and her father producing an avalanche of misinformed, brain-numbing videos where they talk about a range of topics they obviously have no clue about beyond having read an article or two from the dark recesses of the internet. David has also written a nice article about social media “influencers” using suspicious vaccine injury stories to increase the number of likes they get for their posts online. And why do these people want more online engagement - to make money, of course.

I've been lucky this week to have had three skeptics send me pieces for the newsletter. Firstly, Jonathon Harper sent me the following brief note about Brazilian politics:

The Brazilian Senate has just recommended that among other things their president Bolsonaro be charged with… wait for it... charlatanism! However, sadly political machinations mean as with Trump, it probably isn't going to happen.

Bronwyn, a member of our committee, has been reading up on an innocent-looking charity, and has found a number of issues. I love her idea of having a list of ethical and secular charities on our website. As well as suggestions from our members, I wonder if we should reach out to Catherine Low from the Effective Altruism group to ask if they have any good suggestions for charities that would align well with skeptics.

Many of you will know Stuart Landsborough, who created Puzzling World in Wanaka. Stuart has been a long-time skeptic, and offers a $100k prize to any psychic who can prove to him their abilities by locating two halves of a promissory note hidden inside Puzzling World. We held our conference dinner at Puzzling World a few years ago, and it was the perfect venue for us! Stuart has jotted down some of his recent thoughts on climate change, which I think many of you will find interesting to read.

But first, here's a couple of items from me - both of which I had the opportunity to talk about with Graeme Hill on his fabulously evidence-based Magic Nights radio show on Wednesday.