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.
Welcome to this week's NZ Skeptics newsletter. I'm going to be pretty brief as I've have a busy weekend, but there were a few stories that caught my eye this week.
The morning of the 15th of March I woke up ready for a positive day with my son at Cathedral square, to attend the school strike for climate.
A Christchurch para-normal investigator says Canterbury's September 4 earthquake has more than doubled the number of reported supernatural events in the province (The Press, 8 November).
It was an eye opener. Under the stern glare of past headmasters of Kings College, the NZ Skeptics were holding their annual dinner that always goes with the annual conference.
That was never six months just then -- it felt much longer. Banised to the depths of New Zealand, in Tuatapere (almost as far south west as you can get in the South Island), life took on a gentler pace. Momentous things did happen -- the stoat population declined by 300 around where we were, and the yellowheads had a successful breeding season.
EVERYTHING was roses and buttercups until that fateful day. An omen, it was, for sure. In July, on Friday, only 17 days before the 13th, we had born on our humble dairy farm a calfie. She had four legs, nice black and white patches, a cute butt and two heads, four eyes, four ears and two tongues.
Do horses really have a distinct set of personality types or is it just a load of equine excreta?