3 March 2025
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:
8 July 2024
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how we had one of our YouTube videos removed from YouTube, due to Google mistakenly deciding that it was promoting medical misinformation - a rookie mistake, given that it was critiquing medical misinformation. I expressed my doubt that an appeal would change the outcome, but I was pleasantly surprised just after we recorded our last podcast episode to receive an email from Google letting us know that they had reversed their decision:
4 March 2024
Another fortnight, another newsletter. Thanks to everyone who's been ensuring that I have good skeptical content to publish. And, dear reader, if you think you have a skeptical story in you that you want to tell, I would love to hear from you. If you're not sure if you're able to write a compelling story, don't worry - I'm more than happy to help you craft something that will pass muster. And if you're concerned that you'll be too verbose, I'm happy to cut down your story to a more manageable size - or, more likely, serialise it and publish it in multiple issues. And, remember, if you write us an article and you're happy joining us on the NZ Skeptics' podcast, Yeah… Nah!, we'd love to talk with you there as well. Just reply to this email to get in contact with me, or email news@skeptics.nz, if you think you might have something that is worth sharing.
28 August 2023
This week I'm concentrating on climate change misinformation through a bunch of slightly connected items.
22 May 2023
This week I've looked at what might be behind a funny story about combat-ready mermaids, and found out that it's not the answer I thought I was going to find. I also did a silly thing, and joined a Multi Level Marketing scheme - but don't worry, it's all above board. Just email me if you'd like to join my downline or buy some of my scrapbooking products, and I can give you my affiliate link.
11 April 2023
Despite my regular attempts to unsubscribe from some of the more egregious nonsense I receive in my email, spam still gets through - at this point it seems there's a mailing list that I signed up to that is able to subscribe me to new lists quicker than I can unsubscribe from existing ones. And, to be honest, I don't mind that much. My spam filter is able to deal with most of the fluff, and the stuff that does get through is often great fodder for this newsletter. To that end, I recently received an email titled “The BUDDHA STONE Money Magnet Kit!” which intrigued me:
11 April 2023
In this week's newsletter I've taken a deep dive into a spam email trying to flog me snake oil, and found a funny coincidence at the end of the rainbow. I've also written about some of the more sneaky tactics I've seen the church of the Eastern Lightning use to try to attract new members, and keep them in the church. And finally Bronwyn has returned to Multi Level Marketing schemes (MLMs), detailing Prüvit and their health food products - I'm very tempted to make a joke about the food pyramid!
6 March 2023
I received a company wide email at work recently from a colleague, where they were recommending an app to help people concentrate during work hours by minimising distractions. What caught my eye, though, was a justification given for the need for this app. Apparently if you've been distracted at work, it takes people on average 23 minutes - or, to be precise, 23 minutes and 15 seconds - to fully regain your focus and get back to your work properly. Now, as a skeptic, the specificity of that number alerted me that this was probably nonsense. On top of the unlikely nature of that number, I wondered what relevance “fully” regaining your focus is. If your focus (however that may be measured) is 95% recovered in the first 60 seconds after a disruption, and the rest of the time is a slow crawl to 100%, I imagine that's not so bad. If it's a linear recovery, then it's not so great.
6 March 2023
It's a bumper issue today, but I make no apologies for bringing you a ridiculously long email! If you're using a web based client like GMail, you may need to click the “View entire message” link or similar to read the whole newsletter this week, or click the “Read this in your browser” button at the top of the email to open the newsletter as a web page in your browser.
5 December 2022
Recently I received an email that purported to be from the anti-virus company Norton that was blatantly a scam, but I decided to follow through as much as I could to see what the scammers were trying to do. There's often a side effect of doing this, which is that I can waste the time of the scammers - the more time they're on the phone to me, the less time they'll have for scamming people who are at risk of falling for the scam. Plus maybe, just maybe, the scammers will start to question their career choice if many of their potential marks end up making their life a frustrating misery. Below is a series of events that, all in, might have taken about an hour from start to end.
9 May 2022
I received an email the other day from Joanne O'Brien, who according to her website is a Professional Organiser, Image Consultant and Health Coach. Now, I'm not going to deny that I am probably in need of all three of these services, but despite that I have no idea why I received this email from her (although I accept that I may well have signed up for a newsletter at some point). The email was advertising the health aspect of Joanne's repertoire, promoting an “amazing treatment” called Rife Therapy. It said:
11 April 2022
I recently had a clear out of my email inbox, as I'd reached about 20,000 unread emails. As a part of this onerous task, I unsubscribed from a large number of mailing lists. Many of them were from online stores where I'd never agreed to be emailed in the first place, but a bunch of them were from conspiracy groups where I'd signed up for more information, or filled in a form to get access to a series of nonsense videos (like “_The Truth About Cancer_” and “_GMOs Revealed_”, two truly awful video series). It was obvious that several of these mailing lists I hadn't even signed up for, so I assume there's some crossover and sharing of mailing lists between these groups. There are also some groups that I've decided to still receive emails from, such as Family First and Voices for Freedom, because I think it's important to keep an eye on them.
11 April 2022
Today's newsletter includes a fun evening myself and some other skeptics spent meditating, a rant about my junk email, and the daft convoy that's on its way to Marsden Point. I take a deep dive into Arise church, looking at their preaching of horrible prosperity gospel nonsense, and the horrific way they treat their interns. Also Bronwyn Rideout has written about a UK charity promoting the discredited CEASE therapy for “treating” autistic people, and finally I ask you all for help with finding skeptical dates in New Zealand history.
30 August 2021
Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.
24 May 2021
I have a super-secret email account that I use to sign up to various mailing lists, including the Voices for Freedom mailing list. Boy do they put out some propaganda!
12 April 2021
Many thanks to the people who have paid their 2021 membership subs. This is a final reminder to members who paid subs in 2020, but have yet to pay 2021 subs, that the 2021 subs are now due. Memberful have streamlined the payment process (it is no longer necessary to set a password), and this is reflected in the instructions that follow:
22 February 2021
For those of you who like the work we do enough that you want to support us financially, it's that time of the year when membership subscriptions are due. Membership is only $40, or $20 if you're unwaged, and the money we receive will be spent on worthy causes, allowing us to help make New Zealand a more skeptical place.
14 October 2018
The other day I received an ominous email telling me that I have malware installed on my PC as a result of visiting porn sites, and that I need to cough up £850 so that my sordid life isn't made public:
1 February 2011
Alison Campbell finds the creationists are still trying to get into our schools.
1 May 2006
The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce has launched a trans-Tasman campaign to inform consumers about the most common types of scams and how to recognise whether an offer is genuine or false. Consumer Affairs Minister Judith Tizard announced in March the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and the Commerce Commission were joining the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce, along with 16 agencies from across Australia.
1 August 2003
Had an email the other day from someone we hadn't heard from in a while. Among other things, he took the opportunity to ask why we heard so little from the Skeptics in the media, and made unfavourable comparisons with the Consumer's Institute. Given the breadth of that organisation's support base and consequent level of funding, that hardly seemed fair.
1 February 1990
For those of us who cannot communicate by paranormal means, email is a useful alternative to letters, FAX, and phone calls.