Exponential Growth

Mark Honeychurch - 4 September 2023

For this week’s newsletter, I bumped into a news story about Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist who seems to be making a career out of making unfounded claims of having discovered aliens. On the back of the recent David Grusch shenanigans in the US, it’s not surprising that the public are hungry for alien stories, and Avi has a great one for them to feast on - it’s just sad that it’s likely going to end up being found to be nothing more than sloppy science and wild conjecture.

I’m going to make you all suffer by recounting the contents of a podcast episode recorded by a young Christchurch street preacher who has modelled himself on the great Ray Comfort. The episode, titled “My list of Questions for Non-Christians”, details some horrible logic and awful creationist “gotcha” arguments that it’s always disappointing to have to listen to.

Bronwyn has set her sights on a topic she first talked about writing about several months ago - Labour MP Naisi Chen, and some interesting tidbits about her past and her family.

Finally, I’ve once again had to split an article up as it was getting far too long for a single newsletter - and I’m left wondering if the articles in this issue get exponentially longer as you scroll down the page. In this first part of my article detailing a Chinese scam I deliberately fell for, I talk about how I was found by a scammer, the exponential financial growth I was told I could expect from the new scheme I was being invited to take part in, and the beginnings of my beautiful relationship with someone who was supposedly a young Chinese woman, but who I suspect was actually a man in a basement somewhere trying his hardest to follow a script.