NZ Skeptics Articles

Twisting the truth

11th December 2023

It’s weird not having had a newsletter out last week. Hopefully you didn’t miss us too much! As our sole editor I’ll be keeping to a biweekly schedule for now - although if we get more content coming our way from readers and committee members, who knows, I may be able to return to producing the newsletter on a weekly basis. For now, you can expect to read something from myself, Bronwyn and Craig every fortnight, and then we’ll be recording our podcast in the days following the newsletter’s release, and chatting about either our articles or something else that tickles our fancy. If you feel moved to write an article for us, just send your article to news@skeptics.nz and we’ll let you know if we plan to publish it, which is very likely to be the case as we love reading all your thoughts on skeptical topics, and I’m sure our audience does too. And, once your article’s been published, we’ll probably want you to join us on the podcast to talk about it as well - but only if you’re comfortable with doing that.

Thanks to everyone who came to our conference a couple of weekends ago - the event was a great success, and Hamish, Simon, Lisa and all the other organisers did an amazing job. Our next conference will be at some point towards the end of next year in Auckland, and we’ve already started planning some of the details in the first of our regular committee meetings with our new committee. If anyone in Auckland would like to help organise next year’s conference, please let us know by emailing committee@skeptics.nz or just heading to the next Skeptics in the Pub event and letting Craig know that you’re keen.

In this week’s newsletter we have a couple of articles that involve people taking the truth and twisting it somehow. Craig’s article is about “Winston Smith” (or “Barry from the BNZ” as he’s correctly been identified on Twitter/X and elsewhere), who has taken private COVID data and managed to totally misrepresent it for Liz Gunn. I’ve looked into 15 Minute Cities, and how the conspiracy theorists have twisted a nice idea into a dystopian nightmare. Finally Bronwyn has written about someone who’s not twisting the truth, but instead just wholesale making up nonsense - Blair Styra, a channeler who is supposedly a conduit for a Sumerian merchant called Tabaash.

Mark Honeychurch

Barry Young and the data dump

Craig Shearer - 11 December 2023

Barry Young and the data dump

You'll no doubt have heard about the supposed revelations of COVID vaccine deaths recently revealed by an IT employee of Te Whatu Ora - a government agency - the MInistry of Health.

15 Minute Cities

Mark Honeychurch - 11 December 2023

15 Minute Cities

Many of you, as skeptics, will have heard mention of 15 minute cities and, in our case, because New Zealand likes to be different, 20 minute cities. The 15 Minute City idea has joined Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset in the pantheon of recent Big Ideas that actually exist, but have been converted by conspiracy theorists into grotesque versions of themselves where governments are supposedly trying to take away our rights and enslave us all. But, what is the idea of a 15/20 minute city, and how have the conspiracy theorists misrepresented the idea?

Crossed Lines: Ascended Masters and the Kiwis who channel them

Bronwyn Rideout - 11 December 2023

Crossed Lines: Ascended Masters and the Kiwis who channel them

For an island nation with a population of 5.3 million, I would hazard that we have more than our fair share of pākehā with a hotline to millenia-long dead Asians. And by more I mean a non-zero number, because mediumship is a paranormal practice/belief that so far has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy, other than the ability to make money disappear out of the pockets of those seeking confirmation of the afterlife, or one last chance to speak with their loved one.