Happy Halloween!

This week I take a look at Halloween - today!, talk about Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, the Just Stop Oil campaign, and Bronwyn gives us an update about Highden Estate and ISTA.

Oh, and buy your tickets to the conference! You'll have a great time, and the tickets are really cheap!

Craig Shearer

Halloweeen

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). 

Halloween celebrations haven’t been around that long in Aotearoa/New Zealand - at least when I grew up they weren’t a thing - but seem to have been imported (like a lot of our culture) directly from American media influences, such as movies and TV programmes. 

And, as with many things, Halloween is promoted by retailers as a way to sell stuff - from costumes and decorations, to confectionery and special foods. Indeed, I have a couple of bags of treat-sized chocolate bars at the ready for visitors at my door this evening. (Though, part of me secretly hopes there’ll be a few left over for me afterwards!) I particularly liked this decoration from my local neighbourhood.

Trick or Treating, thankfully, doesn’t often involve the “trick” part here. 

The history of Halloween dates back to the Celts, nearly 2000 years ago. They believed that October 31st was the night before the new year, and that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred, allowing the ghosts to return to earth in search of the living to possess. Folk would dress up in costume and parade around their village, being noisy and destructive to frighten away the spirits looking to possess them. 

Of course, for the skeptic, we’re unlikely to believe in an afterlife due to lack of evidence. Thankfully, the ancient reasons for the celebration seem to be mostly ignored by modern people.

But, over the years, various concerns about Halloween have been raised, both legitimate and less so. Children wandering the streets and visiting strangers’ houses raises the potential for danger - but realistically, most people are harmless and I’ve not seen good evidence of trick or treaters actually being in danger. Still, for parents, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and young children, particularly, should be accompanied.

Of the less legitimate concerns that have arisen over the years are objections raised by fundamentalist Christians about association with the occult, and seemingly bogus concerns about treats (candy in American lingo) being laced with drugs or needles or razor blades!

There have been actual cases of this happening, but they’re few and far between as Snopes points out, and they’re more likely to be hoaxes than real incidents. But, things have happened - such as the 1959 case of a dentist in California who gave out laxative pills disguised as candy. 

Source

And, last year, in Ohio, sewing needles were found in Kit Kat bars given out at Halloween. But such incidents are super unlikely, and unlikely to cause any real harm - a needle in a chocolate bar is likely to be discovered before being swallowed. 

These incidents have prompted some politicians in the US to start promoting the wild idea that “Rainbow Fentanyl” pills will be given out to children at Halloween. There’s no evidence for this, and it seems particularly unlikely that Fentanyl pills, with a reported street price of $25 - $50 USD would be being given out randomly!

Conference is close

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

We’ve got some great speakers, plus the opportunity to spend time with like-minded people. Check out the website - new speakers are still being added.

It’s time to book your tickets - early bird prices (only $99 for the entire weekend) run out at the end of October!

Musk’s Twitter purchase

This week the social media landscape changed. Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter, after a rather interesting historical timeline around the deal:

• Back in April, he revealed he was the publicly-listed company’s largest shareholder. Twitter agreed to appoint him to the board of directors, a few days after which Musk then rejected that idea.

• By mid-April, Musk had made a bid to buy Twitter for USD $54.20 per share, as a hostile takeover. The total cost to Musk was USD $44 billion.

• A month later, Musk was having buyer’s remorse, supposedly concerned about fake accounts and bots on the site, making it less valuable than he originally thought.

• In early July, Musk tried to back out of the deal, after which Twitter reacted by suing Musk, arguing that he must complete the deal. Musk counter-sued on the basis of supposed information about widespread problems in the company. 

• In September the Twitter shareholders approved the deal to sell to Musk, but if the suit against Musk was successful and he backed out of the deal, he was going to lose about USD $2 billion.

• A few days ago, Musk agreed to go through with the deal, with the deadline imposed by the court looming. As I write this, Musk is now the CEO of Twitter, amongst several other companies (including SpaceX and Tesla).

Musk is the world’s richest person - at least on paper - through the value of his shareholdings in his companies - estimated at USD $221 billion as of 2022. But of course, the value of companies is very volatile, and that number can go up and down.

The purchase of Twitter was done on the basis of leveraging his holdings in his companies, and also some third-party financing.

The controversy around this is that Musk is a proponent of “free speech”, which includes being free to say anything, essentially. It’s been noted though that while Musk purports to support free speech, he has a pretty thin skin himself, and has resorted to blocking accounts that criticise him.

Of note, from the free speech perspective, is that accounts that were previously permanently banned for violations of Twitter’s terms and conditions, are being reinstated. This includes the likes of former US president Trump, and various other odious figures including vaccine misinformation peddlers, racists, and bogus US election fraud promoters.

One of Musk’s first acts as CEO of the company was to fire a lot of its staff, including executives (which trigger clauses involving payouts in the hundreds of millions of dollars!) and the content moderation chief. Indeed, it now seems that content moderation is going to be a thing of the past on Twitter, with people able to say what they like. Many accounts immediately took advantage of this by tweeting racist slurs.

The puzzling part of this all is that Twitter as a business is actually a pretty bad investment. In its history, it’s only been profitable for two years of operation, and is not currently profitable. It would seem that advertisers are likely to be spooked by this, with them naturally not wanting to have their ads appear beside vile racist and hate speech tweets. And, Musk, as a polarising figure, is likely to further erode that profitability (or, should I say, further worsen the loss-making) in people actively rejecting ads on the network (i.e. by blocking companies ads).

As I write this, many people are wondering what the future of Twitter will be. It seems likely that the social network will deteriorate (further - it certainly has a deservedly bad reputation). While there are alternatives (I’m aware of Mastodon, Tribel, Bluesky social) none of these is a leading contender that people can jump aboard and expect the reach and community they find on Twitter.

I find Twitter useful in my personal and professional capacity. Many are vowing to stay aboard, at least for the time being to be able to challenge misinformation (an unfortunately futile cause, in my opinion).

For the record, I find Elon Musk to be a lot (not just a bit) of a dick. While I own a Tesla, my purchase was for environmental reasons, not endorsement of Musk. But, people are complicated, and I think that, on balance, the world’s a better place for his presence. 

I guess it’s “watch this space” to see how Twitter plays out over the next few months.

Update this morning...

Well that escalated quickly! As of this morning, Elon Musk is now tweeting out awful conspiracy theories about the shocking and shameful hammer attack on the US Speaker of the House's husband Paul Pelosi. I have a feeling that Twitter is going to go downhill very quickly!

Climate mis-information

In depressing (but expected) news this week, it seems that it’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to constrain global warming to 1.5C, and that we’re on a path of irreversible damage to the climate which may well lead to catastrophic failure of the climate and likely extinction of vast numbers of species including humanity. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I do worry for the future young people today.

I’ve been following the actions of climate protest groups in the UK. You will have likely seen the articles in the news about the Just Stop Oil protestors who’ve been attacking artwork with tins of tomato soup, or glueing themselves to roads, or splashing orange paint over the retail outlets of luxury brands. It’s difficult to know what to think about these protests - whether they help or hinder the cause, but they’re being subject to misinformation campaigns against them.

The Just Stop Oil protest is against the further approval of fossil fuel projects by the UK government. This makes total sense to me. We can’t be digging ourselves further into the climate hole by extracting more fossil fuel from the ground. But the group is being misrepresented by people claiming that they want an end to all oil use. That is obviously (at the moment) an impossible goal to achieve (and one unlikely to be achieved by their current tactics). 

People are being driven to desperation by the inaction or negative actions of governments, especially in the light of windfall profits made by fossil fuel companies, to the tune of about $3 billion dollars a day for the last 50 years. As they say - “follow the money” - that buys a lot of political power. 

We certainly have the technical capability to vastly reduce our CO2 emissions but inertia by governments, lobbied by powerful interests to retain the status quo is hampering efforts. And, of course, disinformation campaigns keep ordinary people misinformed. I'm amazed by how many people are still in the category of denying the reality of climate change.

Highden under scrutiny

Bronwyn Rideout

The last time I wrote about Highden Temple, I noted that Bruce Lyon had been able to escape public and media scrutiny despite Highden’s association with the controversial International School of the Temple Arts (ISTA) organisation. 

On September 26th Ellie Wilde, former NZ-based ISTA facilitator, shared their story about ISTA and how her break from ISTA/Highden cut her off from her community. It’s an important read in and of itself but it also opened the floodgates to talk about ISTA and Bruce Lyon. In a series of public posts that came afterwards, Lyon affirmed his position that Highden/ISTA is not therapy and that the work of ‘soul initiation’ will always have the potential for trauma. Moreover, recent posts from the Highden Temple facebook page seem to place any trauma being more historical than as a result of temple training or the facilitators themselves. 

But still, they’ve felt the heat. Highden has established its own aftercare support team with each of its three members graduates of Highden or ISTA; this fact is clear on the Facebook post but not on the website. This was a change but it was still a situation of  “if you know, you know”, and wasn’t quite cracking the public consciousness.

But that’s all changed as Halloween arrived early on Friday with RadioNZ releasing two pieces on Highden Temple and ISTA, a segment on Morning Report and a longform article. This was followed up on Saturday with a feature in the NZ Herald’s Canvas magazine about journalist Anke Richter’s disillusionment with ISTA and the neotantra movement.

These pieces do a very good job of outlining the sexual boundary-crossing and the danger that is entailed by unregulated and unlicensed healers and facilitators. The RNZ piece also highlights that the covenant signed by participants, that one must take full responsibility for their experience, gives abusers a perfect cover because it denies the participant the ability to call themselves a victim.

No victim, no abuser. 

Both of RNZ’s articles mention that as a result of the ongoing negative attention that ISTA has faced “...significant financial loss, professional damage, and emotional distress” and are considering legal action. But ISTA and its financial entanglements with Highden are only a small part of Bruce’s operation. At its heart, the Highden concept has been about the occult and that has been part of Lyon’s model back when he first accessed the property in the early 2000s. Current course offerings scheduled through to early next year that aren’t explicitly ISTA-related, although maybe facilitated by an ISTA-qualified instructor, vacillate the divide between the divine and sexuality. Further enriching the business model are Highden-affiliated, but not ISTA-affiliated, temples in Greece and Finland (although graduating from ISTA programmes is noted as being helpful). 

This is where I find RNZ reporting falls a bit short. No one, as of yet, is trying to follow the money and as horrific as the allegations are, there is a voyeuristic veneer that comes with its focus about sex. Overlooking the religious and spiritual dimension embedded in the foundations of Highden means the average radio listener doesn’t fully grasp why this particular brand of sacred sexuality is causing the wounds that it does.