Are These Better Work Stories?
NZ Skeptics Newsletter
It’s less than a week before my skeptical road trip to try to find the Kaimanawa wall, on the way up to Auckland to visit the new Mormon temple. We’re looking forward to meeting up with people for brunch on Sunday, and we’re also looking to see if there’s anything weird and wonderful we can do on the Sunday afternoon or evening. Maybe a visit to see Brian Tamaki spout his vitriolic hatred would be fun?
In this week’s newsletter, I have three different articles that all connect to my work in some way. Well, the first one, about Microsoft’s new quantum computing chip, is a bit of a stretch, but I do work with computers! My second article is about an email I received at work, claiming that taking leave was going to improve my health. And my final article looks at Search Engine Optimisation, something I do as a small part of my job. Additionally, we have an article from James Kerr about how conspiracies, especially the type that attract QAnon believers, show a lack of understanding about how governments work. Katrina has written about a nifty little online game that teaches kids and adults alike about how social media misinformation works. And finally, Bronwyn has written about an update on our local sex cult, ISTA, looking at an unsympathetic article that was published about the group recently.
James Kerr - Approx. 10 min read
Astute reader that you are, it has probably not escaped your notice that politics has taken a turn for the conspiratorial in the last few years. We've recently seen a rise in anti-vaxxers, sovereign citizens, and people convinced that They (whoever They are) made up a global disease in a bid for control over the populace.
Mark Honeychurch - Approx. 2 min read
The Christmas before last, I received a work email informing me of the holiday dates during which our office would be closed, and that for these dates I would need to book annual leave. I guess in an attempt to soften the blow of people needing to use over half of their annual leave on days outside of their choosing, management decided to let us know of the benefits of taking leave:
Katrina Borthwick - Approx. 1 min read
This week I accidentally stumbled upon an excellent resource created by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) called Keep It Real Online. This website has content targeted at youth, as well as content for teachers in Primary and Intermediate/Secondary School.
Mark Honeychurch - Approx. 3 min read
Microsoft released a video last week claiming they have created a new state of matter, a base building block for their efforts to make a new type of quantum computer using “topological superconductors”:
Mark Honeychurch - Approx. 9 min read
Search Engine Optimisation (known as SEO) is an IT discipline in which a website owner attempts to optimise their site in a way that makes it appear high up in google's search results, ideally on the first page. The factors that Google considers when ranking pages, through an algorithm called PageRank (and more recently other technologies), are something of an open secret these days.
