Mark Honeychurch

A few weeks ago I wrote about mouth tape, and threatened to buy some from Temu. So, while recording the Yeah… Nah! Podcast a few weeks ago, I jumped onto Temu, added a $5 box of tape to my basket, and clicked to check out:

I'm a big fan of the Assassin's Creed series of games, where you play an assassin in a virtual reality simulation of history. For me I think a large part of the attraction is a mix of how well the parkour parts of the game flow when you're in towns and cities, along with the completionist inside me that loves to 100% complete games that have a large task list of missions and collectables.

I've just returned from this year's Decult, the conference run by journalist Anke Richter that focuses on cults and cult survivors. I figured I'd write a quick review of the talks I attended, along with my 19 year old daughter who also has an interest in cults. Like at the inaugural Decult two years ago, there were two rooms for the talks - one mainly focusing on panel discussions, and the other, smaller room mainly for solo talks. We found ourselves in the smaller room for most of the weekend, as I tend to find that giving people the space to give their personal stories, or focus on a topic for an extended period, is more engaging than the back-and-forth of panel discussions.

In David Almandsmith's article in this issue of the newsletter, he questioned why October the 13th is International Skeptics Day, and announced that International Skeptics Day 2027 (October the 13th again) will be the date for the next event. Now, I have strong feelings about this (something that won't be much of a surprise for those of you who know me well!).

When Bronwyn told me a couple of days ago that she planned to write about Spirit Boxes, a part of many ghost hunters' arsenal, I was reminded of the fact that a few years ago I'd started a project to write a browser-based software version of a spirit box. The idea was to stream a handful of internet radio stations, switching between them rapidly to emulate the scanning of a spirit box. However, the project was never finished, and the code had been left in a semi-working state.

A few days ago I was sitting at home, re-watching an episode of Breaking Bad, when I noticed - during a scene where Skylar White was talking on the phone - that the audio track had a weird background vocal track to it. The vocal wasn't part of the phone call Skylar was on, and there weren't any SWAT outside the door ready to burst in on her - so the audio seemed a little out of place. Then the scene changed, and after a little while the voice started up again, which was odd. I paused the show, and sure enough the background voice kept on speaking - letting me know it definitely wasn't part of the show.

In September 2024 I wrote a short article, titled Saeed's Millions, describing an email exchange I had with a man named Saeed. He'd emailed me asking if our communication was private, and when I responded he followed up by offering me millions of dollars to give to charities, with 30% of the money going to me in exchange for doing the work.

TikTok seems to be a never-ending source of bad advice that needs to be debunked, and this latest article in my series detailing the nonsense people say on TikTok involves taping your mouth shut. Specifically, this pseudo-medical idea involves you taping your mouth shut while you sleep, forcing you to breathe through your nose.

It seems like every time I write an article about a new TikTok trend, five others spring up in their place. This week, we're going to look at Destiny Swapping, the idea that people are not only endowed with pre-ordained destinies for their lives, but also that these destinies are not indelibly attached to us.

A few years ago, in the midst of COVID, Bronwyn wrote an article about Sri Chinmoy, and in it she briefly mentioned the Lotus Heart restaurant in Christchurch and their efforts to avoid implementing sensible COVID restrictions.

Angel Numbers are patterns you may notice when looking at the numbers around you - maybe the digital readout on your oven's clock, a number plate of a car on your street, or the total of your dinner bill at your local Indian restaurant. These special numbers are supposed to be sent by your angels to guide you in life. Most of the number patterns you're meant to look out for are pretty simple - either the same number repeating, like 2:22 or $88.88, or a simple run of numbers, such as RKH123. The numbers are meant to have significance, letting you know about your life, in a kind of fortune telling way.

Last night I went to see Sue Nicholson at the Petone Spiritualist Church along with Bronwyn, frequent skeptical partner in crime Tim, and two of my children - as well as one of their friends. Sue was appearing at the Spiritualist Church as a fundraising event, with the church charging a $5 entry fee. We figured that this amount was a lot more palatable for a skeptic to pay than the $50 to $70 she usually charges for her public events.

On Saturday night I went to see wrestling. Specifically, I went to the All Star Wrestling Porirua 2 event, where eight different wrestling matches were held in one evening. Here's the signed poster I paid $7 for, to commemorate the event:

It's been a year and a half since our last awards, so we've had ample time to put together this list - and still it ended up happening at the last minute!

A few weeks ago I was up in Auckland for the NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists' AGM, and as soon as I walked into their building, Rationalist House on Symonds Street, I noticed that something was different. The picture of Ernst Haeckel hanging on the wall in front of me, as I walked into the main room on the ground floor, had a new info card that had been added to it, declaring the image part of a series on “Dead Old White Men”.

On Friday night Bronwyn, Tim and I went to the New Zealand premiere of Universe Designed, a new Christian movie that attempts to prove that the universe, earth, life, and humans are not the result of random, undirected processes, but instead are created by a loving God. The subtitle of the movie sums up at least part of the movie's message nicely - “_Creation is an act, not an accident_”.

I first learned about RCTA - Race Change To Another - a few years ago from my daughter. It was one of the weird and wonderful topics she found on TikTok. Here's a screenshot from a TikTok video that gives something of an overview of what RCTA adherents are trying to do. In this case, their aim is to change their appearance from that of a white Australian woman to South Korean - along with a name change from Caitlyn to Chaewon.

It feels like the new National/Act/NZ First coalition government has been pushing through a lot of changes to legislation in their first term, and much of it has been done through Urgency - a way of fast-tracking important, time-sensitive legislation.

Last year I wrote about Majorana, a quantum computing chip created by Microsoft. Back then the company claimed that they had discovered/invented a new state of matter, the topological superconductor, which exists at near-zero temperatures and allows their chips to work more reliably than other quantum computer designs.

The hyperloop, one of Elon Musk's grand ideas, was slated back in 2013 as a way to beat traffic in heavily congested areas, with the first planned route being from Los Angeles to San Francisco. This plan was documented in the 2013 document Hyperloop Alpha, which is still available on the Tesla website and was written by Musk and some of the engineers he employed.

Although the chemicals in rocket propulsion have changed over the years, from kerosene and liquid hydrogen, to complex ammonium perchlorate compounds and more recently liquid methane and oxygen, the basic idea of how it all works is the same - following Newton's idea of action and reaction (or conservation of momentum), if you shove stuff out the back of a rocket, it pushes the rocket forward. The more mass you shove out, and the faster it's shoved, the quicker the rocket moves.

Aires Tech is the latest in a line of scammy companies, going back to the 1990s, selling products that are claimed to protect you from the dangers of electromagnetism. Previous iterations, like WaveShield, SafeTShield and BluShield, have sold stickers that you apply to your digital devices, pendants that you wear, and totems that you can strategically place around the house. Aires is no different, selling “One” holographic stickers for your mobile phone, “Flex” pendants and “Go” keyrings to carry around with you, and two different types of device to cover your home - the “Zone” and “Zone Max”:

While researching for the articles I write for the NZ Skeptics newsletter, I often find myself staring at the Google AI response that shows up ahead of search results, trying to come to terms with just how uncritical our current slate of AIs have been trained to be. If I type in the name of a crank scientist, all I see is positive words about the groundbreaking, unconventional work they've done. A quack therapy is painted by Google AI as a miracle cure. A fringe conspiracy theory sounds like a legitimate political viewpoint.

Clavicular, better known to his mum and dad as Braden Peters, is a 20 year old internet influencer who promotes an extreme beauty regime known as “looksmaxxing”.

A few years ago at the Society for Science Based Healthcare, we attempted to tackle what we saw as a problem with the fundraising website Givealittle.

A couple of decades ago I backpacked around Iran, and to this day I consider it to be one of the most fascinating, rewarding countries I've ever visited. Without meaning to bore you, here's a short summary of some of the highlights:

Yesterday my daughter told me about a recent trend on TikTok - Scientology Runs. For those not in the know, Scientology is very much a pseudoscientific self-help cult that has ruined many people's lives and tries to legitimise itself by, amongst other things, convincing celebrities to join and then convince others in turn that it's a legitimate organisation. If you want to know what Scientology teaches, check out this primer from South Park:

Last week I was in the pub having a few drinks with a friend, and in the middle of a particularly heavy part of the conversation he mentioned how it's common knowledge that sugar feeds cancer. This statement is a common alt-med claim that comes along with the idea that if you have cancer you can treat it by reducing your sugar intake, starving the cancer cells of energy.

My friend Aaron messaged me the other day and let me know about a pamphlet that's recently been released by prominent ex Jehovah's Witness Lloyd Evans. The pamphlet, available both digitally and in printed form, is titled “You Should Not Fear Him” - Why It's OK to Question “The Truth”, and is a counter-argument to JW arguments for the existence of their particular version of God.

The Auckland Deep Thinkers is a group on the MeetUp website that meet both in-person and online. The group's description states:

A while ago a work colleague told me that she had a strange connection with a friend of hers, where they had been talking late into the night and found out that both of them would sometimes wake up just before their alarm goes off in the morning, especially if there's something important happening that morning. When I told her that I also have this ability, she was surprised - there were three people all with the same unusual ability. At this point I let her know that this, like many of the quirky things in her life, is likely to not actually be very rare at all - it's just that we don't often talk about these odd everyday things that happen to us.

The NZ Skeptics mailboxes have recently been receiving some interesting emails, asking to have content published on our website. Whereas historically these requests would be for hosting obvious spam on our site, featuring online casino adverts, alternative medicines, MLMs and other dodgy products and services, this trio of recent emails were a little more subtle.