Our annual NZ Skeptics Conference, being held in Wellington on 25th - 27th November is just weeks away now.

Happy Halloween! Today, as this newsletter goes out, it's officially the day of Halloween, or All Hallow's Eve, though, as I write this, in my neighbourhood, children are expected at my door this evening (Sunday).

We've talked about the local body elections over the past couple of months, and now the results are in. Local freedom, anti-vax and conspiracy theory group Voices for Freedom tried to sway the elections by encouraging their members and supporters to stand but hide their affiliations.

I'm encouraged by news from the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a skeptical organisation in the US. They are suing the CVS and Walmart pharmacies for their placement of homeopathic products alongside real efficacious medical products.CFI refers to Homeopathy as “Fake Medicine”, which it surely is.

We've covered Alex Jones many times in the past. Alex Jones is a fairly well-known far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist. Most skeptics will be aware of his InfoWars website, which promotes conspiracy theories and certified-real fake news.

One of our readers from the other side of the world, a Kiwi living in Ireland has told us about a Destiny Church in the UK.

In my last newsletter I mentioned the local body elections which are currently underway. The elections have some candidates standing who are aligned with various “freedom” and anti-vax groups. The media has done a fairly good job of identifying at least some of the candidates representing dodgy positions.

Hey, I know that there are some skeptics in Auckland. We're holding our first regular (monthly) Skeptics in the Pub this Tuesday night (4th October, 7pm) at Dice & Fork at Victoria Park Market. We'd love to see you there.

This past week has been replete with stories related to climate change. Firstly, there's Hurricane Ian which has wreaked havoc and destruction and loss of life in Florida most recently, but previously in Cuba and Puerto Rico. It's fairly obvious that extreme weather events are exacerbated by climate change, and that living near the coast is going to be an increasingly risky proposition for large numbers of people.

The NZ Skeptics Conference 2022 is being held in Wellington on the weekend of 26th and 27th of November. We'd love to see you there, in person. We've got some great speakers lined up, and it will be great to see everybody again.

Finally this week, I received my local body elections pack. I have the opportunity to vote for candidates for the Mayor of Auckland, and members of the Auckland Council, for a local board, and also a liquor licensing trust (where I live in Auckland, we're a “dry” area - where we can only purchase alcohol from licensing-trust-run businesses).

One of our skeptical operatives informed us of a Voices for Freedom flyer that's been turning up in mailboxes across the country. This one concerns masking.

So, as I've mentioned Mark, Bronwyn and I paid a visit to the Mormon Temple in Hamilton, or as it's more formally known, the temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

This last week has been pretty astounding on the topic of conspiracy theorists.

Popping up on my various social media feeds over the past year or so have been ads for “THE Interview”. I'm going to take a look at this and the movement behind it.

So in a couple of months we're all going to have the opportunity of voting in the local body elections, for our city, district and regional councils. And in some areas, there are elections for local and community boards too.

And now that I've just written about Chantelle Baker, the latest news is that her page, where she shared a lot of her content, has been removed from Facebook for violating community standards. It's gone the same way as other prominent pages, such as Voices for Freedom. That will affect her ability to spread her message as Facebook is often a gateway to pulling people into these movements, though she's planning on moving to other platforms such as YouTube, and likely more niche platforms such as Rumble and Odysee.

Last week Stuff Circuit, part of the Stuff media organisation, released their Fire and Fury documentary.

Just a friendly reminder that the Covid pandemic is not over. We continue to see cases and an alarmingly high daily death rate, which had an all time high of 32 people dying one day last week.

Regular readers of our newsletter will have seen the “adverts” for our official podcast - Yeah... Nah!, which we record on a fortnightly basis. Mark, Bronwyn and I discuss recent skeptical topics, usually in a sort-of pub chat format. We enjoy recording it, and we hope that listeners enjoy hearing it.

This past week has seen the alarming heat waves in Europe, with the UK seeing highest ever temperatures, exceeding 40C.

Last week some of our media engaged in an attack on Dr Siouxsie Wiles. Siouxsie, with her iconic pink hair, has been a leading voice globally, but certainly here in NZ/Aotearoa for a sensible, science and evidence-based approach to handling the Covid pandemic. (And, of course, Siouxsie will be familiar to many NZ Skeptics, having MC'd and spoken at our conferences in the past.)

In my last newsletter, I put a call out for people to help with a project investigating pharmacies and the pseudoscientific products they had on their shelves. We got a good response, with several people coming on board to help with the project.

I got into a conversation with some people on Twitter over this past weekend, after commenting on an article about people overdosing on vitamin D.

If you've been around skeptical circles for a while, you'll have no doubt heard of the Georgia Guidestones - a granite monument that was constructed back in 1980 in a rural area in the US state of Georgia.

I regret to inform you that the psychics have won. They've clearly demonstrated their abilities and the $100,000 challenge at Puzzling World in Wanaka is now over.

NZ Skeptics has been running a project that investigates products sold in pharmacies that are based on pseudoscience - you know the sort of stuff - homeopathy, and various herbal remedies with scant evidence of efficacy.

This weekend I took a look at the FutureFit website. This site is designed to make people aware of their carbon footprint - the amount that their household is contributing to climate change through Greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week it was announced that the US Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade - the landmark case from 1973 that protected the rights of pregnant people in the US to have abortions. The ruling set out rules around what states could regulate depending on the trimester stage of the pregnancy.

This weekend we saw the first official celebration and statutory holiday for the Māori new year - Matariki.

Louise Wallace is a reality TV actor, most recently having appeared on The Real Housewives of Auckland - a show I've not seen, but the title of which puts me off immediately. She's also previously appeared on various current affairs shows, and also worked as host of The Weakest Link, a TV quiz show from the early 2000s..

I continue to monitor the emails sent out by the Voices for Freedom crowd. My reaction is usually a combination of disbelief and despair. My impression is that they're struggling to remain relevant. Now that the vaccine mandates have disappeared, they seem to be concentrating on all manner of whacky stances.

We've covered the Peter Ellis case before, and indeed, it was a particular focus of NZ Skeptics activity in the 1990s.

I'd like to draw attention to the work done by Te Pūna Matatini. They have released an initial report on mis- and dis-information in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Over the past few months, I've been contacted a few times by one of our members sending information about Covid from the popular podcast TWiV - This Week in Virology. The podcast is hosted by Dr Vincent Racaniello with a number of co-hosts. Dr Racaniello has spent 40 years in virus research at Columbia University.

It cannot have escaped anybody's notice that this week there was yet another mass shooting at a school in the USA - this time in Uvalde, Texas.

Late last week saw some carnage in crypto markets - dubbed the crypto crash. We've covered cryptocurrencies and their associated technologies, such as NFTs many times.

Now for a bit of an amusing item.

I was interested to read an article about the unexpected death of babies. This used to be called Cot Death, but is now referred to as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). There's also a broader term Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI) - which encompasses SIDS but also includes sleeping accidents.

Recently there's been a flurry of activity from a group in New Zealand who believe that they are Sovereign Citizens - that they have disconnected themselves legally from the laws of our country. Sovereign Citizens believe that the government is an illegitimate corporation with which they have no contract - that they can therefore exempt themselves from our country's laws, and pick and choose which laws they want to obey, which they describe as common law.

Late last year Dr Nikki Turner appeared on TVNZ's Seven Sharp current affairs program to talk about the number of people who would be expected to have medical problems from being given the Pfizer COVID vaccine.

I might well be stealing Mark's thunder here, as he has written extensively on NFTs in the past.

As I write this on the Sunday of Easter weekend, it was announced on Saturday evening that John Cameron, lead pastor at Arise church, had resigned his position on the board, though remains as an employee of the organisation. Additionally, his brother Brent had also resigned from the board. This was announced through a statement on their website.

It would be hard to miss that there has been some controversy in the science community in Aotearoa/New Zealand around the role of Mātauranga Māori (translated as Māori knowledge) in the school curricula.

As a professional software developer, I'm aware of various ways in which websites can be hacked - and it's a constant battle keeping up with the latest knowledge and techniques to ensure safety.

I've previously revealed that I keep an eye on Voices for Freedom by subscribing to their email newsletter, where they send out communications to their flock. I don't pretend that they're not aware they have “moles” who subscribe - and so it's likely that their newsletter only contains the most sanitised versions of their thoughts. I don't have the personal free time or inclination to subscribe to their Telegram channels to see what's really being discussed behind the scenes.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, propaganda raises its head. Propaganda has always been a tool of war (and peace) but we're seeing escalation to new levels.

We don't often cover sports stories in our newsletter, and I'm certainly not one for writing them, but yesterday we heard the news of the untimely death of Shane Warne, the Australian Cricketer. Warne was only 52 and died of a heart attack.

I've written about Liz Gunn before. She used to be a respected broadcaster on TVNZ's One News, but has now gone well down the rabbit hole. Last year she claimed that an earthquake was Mother Nature's response to Jacinda Adern's Covid-19 response . She announced her FreeNZ movement, which appears to have political aspirations.