After many months of radio silence, the odd Global Flourishing group that I wrote about last year briefly stirred before going quiet again. Rest assured, if anything comes of this, I'll be watching it closely and writing about it. Here are the messages that appeared on the group's Discord channel last week:
There's a few things I'd like to promote this week.
Another person I've written about in the past is Dr Sam Bailey. To refresh your memory, she's a doctor, previously practising as a GP, based in Christchurch. She appeared on a TVNZ medical show - The Check Up.
Dr Sam Bailey has been in the news this week, which involved in a court case petitioning the High Court to stop the New Zealand Medical Council from investigating her.
Back on YouTube channels again - you may have heard of the YouTube channel Veritasium. This one is a generally good science channel which has nearly 11 million subscribers.
In the good news department, YouTube has de-platformed local misinformant Vinny Eastwood, also joining another local, Damien De Ment, also banned. Vinny Eastwood was king of promoting conspiracy theories, but it seems that various complaints have seen his channel now removed.
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!
Thanks to some wonderful help from Susan Gerbic, we've now got a few of the 2019 conference talk videos up on our YouTube channel.
We've just had the second anniversary of the horrific Christchurch massacre, and as skeptics it's sad to have seen over the last two years those in our country who have posted content denying that the attack was real, or claiming that it was a "false flag" operation. It's been hard enough over the last 20 years watching high profile conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, engage in denial in the US for events such as the Sandy Hook massacre and the 9/11 attacks. But to see this kind of wrong headed thinking at home somehow feels worse. I guess we've been able to rest on our laurels watching America suffer from a spread of the conspiracy mindset, and at least for me it seemed implausible that the problem would ever reach our fair shores. I guess I was just too naive.
Today is the second anniversary of the horrific Christchurch massacre, and as skeptics it's sad to have seen over the last two years those in our country who have posted content denying that the attack was real, or claiming that it was a “false flag” operation. It's been hard enough over the last 20 years watching high profile conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, engage in denial in the US for events such as the Sandy Hook massacre and the 9/11 attacks. But to see this kind of wrong headed thinking at home somehow feels worse. I guess we've been able to rest on our laurels watching America suffer from a spread of the conspiracy mindset, and at least for me it seemed implausible that the problem would ever reach our fair shores. I guess I was just too naïve.
Good news! We have found someone who has a copy of the video (VHS tape) taken of James Randi speaking at Canterbury University back in 1993. Next steps will be to check if it's good to digitise, and if so, we'll look to publish it to our YouTube channel. Keep posted.
Brittany Kara, from the US, is apparently a Christian author, NLP practitioner, hypnotherapist and nutrition coach. She's also an anti-vaxxer, and records herself speaking for a YouTube channel where she talks about her views.