{"id":317734,"date":"2025-11-01T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T06:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=317734"},"modified":"2025-11-02T08:45:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T08:45:47","slug":"this-halloween-in-the-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=317734","title":{"rendered":"This Halloween in the New Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Off-Guardian \u2013 Oct 31, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

1. Climate Change is ruining Halloween, too<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Everything for everyone everywhere is getting more expensive, and yet it\u2019s always for different reasons. Brexit or Putin or Covid.<\/p>\n

For chocolate, it\u2019s Climate Change. Trump too, but mostly climate change. Something about growing cocoa beans and extreme weather events I think. I don\u2019t know, after a few years of doing this, things start to blur together.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s check in on The Guardian<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ghosts and goblins might not be the only scary things popping up this Halloween. Prices for the holiday\u2019s most popular candy treats are rising, spooked by Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs and climate change.<\/p>\n

We recently ran a piece bemoaning the smallification and shitification of confectionery. Clearly, that author didn\u2019t realize it was all climate change\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

To be clear, you\u2019re not being price-gouged by super-monopolies bent on eternal profit, it\u2019s climate change.<\/p>\n

Got that?<\/p>\n

2. Urban Scary-tales<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s one of those fascinating meta-phenomena, that Halloween has spawned urban legends to scare the parents of eager children.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the razor blades in the bobbing apples and cyanide in the Pixy Stix!<\/p>\n

Scary stories of demonic neighbours bent on seasonal sadism. Tales that persist despite there being no record of them ever happening. Not one single time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This year, apparently, it\u2019s THC-laced \u201ccounterfeit candy\u201d in a bid to get kids baked out of their minds, at least that\u2019s what Good Morning America says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This one probably isn\u2019t true either. But that won\u2019t stop some people from adding a urine dip test after their candy X-ray<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Digital Costumes are making the internet a scary place<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Writing on the UK Parliament\u2019s website, Mike Freeman MP is warning of the danger of deepfakes. Apparently, a deepfaked video of him switching parties went \u201cviral\u201d, and this shows that\u2026<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve allowed the growth of a dangerous digital space where pretty much anything goes.<\/p>\n

He bemoans the \u201cgap in the law\u201d that enables digital identity theft and the \u201clack of accountability online\u201d.<\/p>\n

We all know where this is going, right?<\/p>\n

This ad pretending to be journalism<\/a> from Integrity 360 strikes a similar tone, warning of Deep Fakes meaning you could be conned into talking to pretend people.<\/p>\n

In the age of Deep Fakes, we need to be sure we\u2019re talking to real people.<\/p>\n

\u2026if only there was some way to digitally identify people!<\/p>\n

4. Halloween is racist. Again.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Every year there\u2019s more race-bait outrage about Halloween, usually focused on who can dress up as what. It\u2019s actually quite hard to keep track.<\/p>\n

For example, we\u2019ve all heard of \u201ccultural appropriation\u201d and how important it is to avoid it<\/a> when picking a costume.<\/p>\n

And yet, according to this Professor of Psychiatry from Yale<\/a>, her \u201cblack-presenting\u201d child being told she can\u2019t dress up as a Korean girl because her skin is the wrong color is racist. Not just racist but tear-jerkingly, \u201cexcruciatingly\u201d racist.<\/p>\n

Oh, and wearing a sombrero to dress up as a Mexican bandit is racist<\/a>, but Speedy Gonzalez isn\u2019t. I don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n

Suggested Halloween Watching<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As usual with these recommendations, we try to go outside the box. Nobody needs to be told to watch Halloween on Halloween.<\/p>\n

Saying that, a critically and commercially successful mainstream movie is hardly \u201coutside the box\u201d, but Robert Egger\u2019s Nosferatu<\/em> is\u00a0 a wonderfully evocative and unsettling film.<\/p>\n

If you want to be truly scared, then The Haunting<\/em> (1963) and The Woman in Black<\/em> (1989) are, quite comfortably, the scariest films I have ever watched.<\/p>\n

Mike Flanagan\u2019s loose remake The Haunting of Hill House<\/em> is very good, and is only held back from being great by a lacklustre ending, nevertheless it is very worth watching. As is his movie Oculus (2013).<\/p>\n

To go even further back in time Dead of Night<\/em> is a classic of early British horror cinema.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn\u2019t even mention dangerously flammable Halloween<\/a> costumes or how sustainable choices can maximize Halloween fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us<\/a> or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Support Off-Guardian:<\/p>\n

Ko-fi<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribestar<\/a><\/p>\n

Paypal<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Off-Guardian regularly charts the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":317737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=317734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317736,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317734\/revisions\/317736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/317737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}