This video is a good watch. Niel interviews the man in charge of UAP research at NASA.
Interesting points to note.
1. Of the UAP incidents for which NASA has evidence, only about 1% defies explanation (which includes the infamous "Tic Tac" encounter).
2. NASA doesn't think it's aliens but you can't rule it out based on currently available evidence.
3. There was a proposal from within NASA to develop a smartphone app to enable a citizen scientist program, where upon witnessing a UAP anyone with a smartphone could capture images and metadata, which the app would organize and submit to NASA. The hope being that multiple witnesses submitting images and metadata on the same event would allow NASA to do things like reconstruct the UAP's flight path, estimate it's speed and elevation, etc. Sadly the proposal went nowhere due to budget constraints.
4. NASA's UAP research program has no access to any UAP data or evidence that requires a security clearance. Which seems like a real handicap honestly.
The guy in charge of the current expedition to the Moon testified before Congress at the recent UAP hearing saying that NASA has a lot of data they could use to study this phenomena on hand already
According to Luis Elizondo, there are people right now receiving payments from the government for injuries sustained from interactions with UAP. That's a good place to start I think, if you wanna tug at the government coverup angle.
I think people have a strong reaction to UFO/cryptid stuff, stronger than it used to be, because -- although UFOs and cryptids are very fun to think about, as fiction or as potentially real -- we are increasingly aware of how dangerous conspiracy theories are, and we seem to have reached a point where our communication technology propagates conspiracy theories at an alarming rate and volume. UFO/cryptid discussion looks alarmingly similar to conspiracy theories, moral panics, mass hysterias, etc., which are things that have caused real harm to human beings.
I have personally seen plenty of people slide from being credulous about innocent, interesting things into full-on radicalization. That makes me wary, for sure. I don't think it's helpful when the reaction is to belittle and pathologize, but I understand why people would react violently to try to change how someone thinks. I also think it's clear why that's pretty offensive and offputting (and probably counterproductive). If you're worried about someone's beliefs, being empathetic is much more effective, demonstrably. Calling someone a nutjob is self-indulgent or performative.
The question of government transparency and pushing back against the surveillance/intelligence state (an entity that has engaged in many very real, documented conspiracies, many so deranged with the absence of oversight that they beggar belief and, if written into fiction, appear tawdry and implausible) is a different one, I think, because we should also be deeply skeptical of people with great power telling us that there are things we shouldn't know for our own good, and that they are the only ones who can protect us. I would argue that the intelligence apparatus is inherently authoritarian. A good skeptic should be skeptical of power, and thus the state.
Anyway, I grew up reading UFO stuff (my elementary school, for some reason, had illustrated books for kids with abduction stories and even some illustrations of light vivisection?? the 90s were buckwild) and I have an abiding fondness for it, and more broadly for the way it dislocates us from comfortable assumptions about our world. But the joy of wondering about strange things has been tainted by the danger of credulity, the memories of my aunt emptying her bank accounts to pay for psychics and to talk to angels, of my cousin insisting on pseudomystical cancer treatments, of babies with broken necks and backs from chiropractor cranks thinking they can manipulate energy flows. Being a skeptic is a bummer but the world is an ugly and cruel place that exploits our openness to joy as a place to dig in its claws.
of course this is all what I would say if I were, myself, a UFO
I think that the first bit is pretty important. Like, right now, one of the most popular podcasts in America is exploiting (among other things) the sort of hippy psychic energy consciousness crowd to argue that psychic ability is real, that nonverbal autistic people have this psychic ability, and that this ability is why the (very discredited and prone to abuse) practice of facilitated communication works by tapping into that consciousness, and that the arguments against it are active suppression by nebulous forces for "materialism" (the belief that the universe is fundamentally physics without special powers of consciousness). A seemingly harmless, if fantastical, belief in psychic abilities/consciousness underlying reality has been activated to directly promote harm towards a marginalized group.
When so many of these sorts of fringe belief systems (blblical literalism, supernatural phenomena, a similar kind of consciousness/reality projection idea) are being tied to UAP discussions, and when the relatively more grounded government conspiracy discussions about UAP are still being framed with things like fear of nuclear attacks or the need for the DoJ to take heavy-handed action against specific uncooperative individuals, there are so many ways for this to break bad that it's not surprising that's the framework people act under.
>*In the early morning of July 20, at approximately 1:20 local time, the soldier on duty at the main gate of the Agoncillo aerodrome, warned the Guard Corps that he was observing a strange object in the air. An Ensign and a Corporal arrived at the post and were able to observe for five minutes the strange object referred to by the soldier on duty.*
>*The three witnesses agreed in their description that it was an object flying at an altitude of 1000 m, with E/W direction, at low speed and without noise. However, they disagreed on the shape, since two of them saw a rhombus, while the third one said it had a triangle shape. One of the first two said that the object had four white lights on the vertices of the rhombus, while the other witness did not specify the number of lights, The third of them, the one who assured that it was a triangle, also declared to have seen a white light in each of its three vertices, the three witnesses coincide in the fact that the object had a more intense and intermittent white light in the center of it.*
The second document is the Lieutenant Colonel Chief of the Agoncillo aerodrome addressing the Chief General of the 3rd Air Region, communicating the sighting:
>*In the early hours of this morning, around 0120 hours, while on duty at the main gate of the airfield, soldier (name redacted) alerted Corporal (name redacted) and this latter alerted the Security Duty Officer (name redacted) about the sighting of a strange object in the air.*
>*The Corporal and Ensign, together with the soldier, observed for about five minutes approximately, the flight of a strange object, with E/W direction, whose characteristics, according to the personnel mentioned, were the following:*
>*Ensign (name redacted):*
>*The object was diamond-shaped, with 4 white lights acting as vertices and a more intense central light, emitting intermittently every second or so.*
>*Corporal (name redacted):*
>*The object was triangular in shape composed of 3 white lights, one at each vertex and a central more intense light, emitting intermittently every second approximately.*
>*Soldier (name redacted):*
>*The object was diamond-shaped, without specifying the number of lights and emitting a more intense light. at the rate of one flash every second*
>*The three agree that the object did not emit any noise and that it was flying at an approximate height of about 1000 m. They are surprised that in case it was an airplane, it did not make any noticeable noise. They considered that the speed was low. The object was observed until it went out of sight, without any strange movement.*
I removed most of the post purely for size; please don't read anything into that.
The story quoted here sounds exactly like some folks seeing a drone at night and misjudging how high it was flying, probably because they thought it was much bigger than it was. It also explains why the thing was so eerily quiet - because it was actually a very small, quiet craft.
The first time I saw a drone at night my reaction was roughly, "Wtf is that, why is it moving so wrong and why is it so quiet??" The hairs literally went up on the back of my neck; I always thought that was a metaphor. And then a few seconds later my conscious brain kicked in and I was like, oh, a quadcopter drone. Private or police, I wonder?
I find it entirely plausible that the government was testing drones in 1978, well before anyone knew what they were or what they looked like or that they were even possible. So many of the descriptions of UFOs from that era sound exactly like drones, in hindsight.
And, purely anecdotally, I've met retired folks who worked for government skunkworks (one of the perks of having a 'backstage pass' of sorts for years at the world's largest aviation convention), and they all say that they were working on stuff ten, twenty years ago that I wouldn't believe we could do now if they told me. Which they can't.
edit: and just to be clear, I'm not trying to be rude! My thinking here is, someone posts a thing, someone else goes, "I know what that is!" and then we can cross that incident off the list of unexplained incidents. Which is still a huge list! Once we eliminate the things that have obvious or probable explanations, then we're left with the truly weird things to wonder about.
According to Luis Elizondo, there are people right now receiving payments from the government for injuries sustained from interactions with UAP. That's a good place to start I think, if you wanna tug at the government coverup angle.
This would make perfect sense if they were injured by government property. "We're sorry, our bad, please don't tell anyone about this because it has national security implications. Here's a pile of money for your trouble."
Well, this is awkward, but I don't have any other convenient place to put this. localhjay has requested a self-ban until the Holiday forums are over. We are obliged to do this as moderation staff.
In the nuForums, there will be other tools in place to facilitate this, and also more tools to keep threads from getting weirdly aggressive, like this one seemed to get. Seriously, you all couldn't just live and let live for one week? I'm disappointed.
Yeah, Daeg is extremely disappointed in a lot of behavior in this thread, frankly. Next time you find yourself in a thread writing up a mean post that essentially boils down to just being bullying, maybe think better of it.
If Jay returns and the UFO thread in SE++ continues I will be cracking down on this shit in there
Posts
This video is a good watch. Niel interviews the man in charge of UAP research at NASA.
Interesting points to note.
1. Of the UAP incidents for which NASA has evidence, only about 1% defies explanation (which includes the infamous "Tic Tac" encounter).
2. NASA doesn't think it's aliens but you can't rule it out based on currently available evidence.
3. There was a proposal from within NASA to develop a smartphone app to enable a citizen scientist program, where upon witnessing a UAP anyone with a smartphone could capture images and metadata, which the app would organize and submit to NASA. The hope being that multiple witnesses submitting images and metadata on the same event would allow NASA to do things like reconstruct the UAP's flight path, estimate it's speed and elevation, etc. Sadly the proposal went nowhere due to budget constraints.
4. NASA's UAP research program has no access to any UAP data or evidence that requires a security clearance. Which seems like a real handicap honestly.
Love how cheesey this is lol
I think that the first bit is pretty important. Like, right now, one of the most popular podcasts in America is exploiting (among other things) the sort of hippy psychic energy consciousness crowd to argue that psychic ability is real, that nonverbal autistic people have this psychic ability, and that this ability is why the (very discredited and prone to abuse) practice of facilitated communication works by tapping into that consciousness, and that the arguments against it are active suppression by nebulous forces for "materialism" (the belief that the universe is fundamentally physics without special powers of consciousness). A seemingly harmless, if fantastical, belief in psychic abilities/consciousness underlying reality has been activated to directly promote harm towards a marginalized group.
When so many of these sorts of fringe belief systems (blblical literalism, supernatural phenomena, a similar kind of consciousness/reality projection idea) are being tied to UAP discussions, and when the relatively more grounded government conspiracy discussions about UAP are still being framed with things like fear of nuclear attacks or the need for the DoJ to take heavy-handed action against specific uncooperative individuals, there are so many ways for this to break bad that it's not surprising that's the framework people act under.
I removed most of the post purely for size; please don't read anything into that.
The story quoted here sounds exactly like some folks seeing a drone at night and misjudging how high it was flying, probably because they thought it was much bigger than it was. It also explains why the thing was so eerily quiet - because it was actually a very small, quiet craft.
The first time I saw a drone at night my reaction was roughly, "Wtf is that, why is it moving so wrong and why is it so quiet??" The hairs literally went up on the back of my neck; I always thought that was a metaphor. And then a few seconds later my conscious brain kicked in and I was like, oh, a quadcopter drone. Private or police, I wonder?
I find it entirely plausible that the government was testing drones in 1978, well before anyone knew what they were or what they looked like or that they were even possible. So many of the descriptions of UFOs from that era sound exactly like drones, in hindsight.
And, purely anecdotally, I've met retired folks who worked for government skunkworks (one of the perks of having a 'backstage pass' of sorts for years at the world's largest aviation convention), and they all say that they were working on stuff ten, twenty years ago that I wouldn't believe we could do now if they told me. Which they can't.
edit: and just to be clear, I'm not trying to be rude! My thinking here is, someone posts a thing, someone else goes, "I know what that is!" and then we can cross that incident off the list of unexplained incidents. Which is still a huge list! Once we eliminate the things that have obvious or probable explanations, then we're left with the truly weird things to wonder about.
edit 2:
This would make perfect sense if they were injured by government property. "We're sorry, our bad, please don't tell anyone about this because it has national security implications. Here's a pile of money for your trouble."
In the nuForums, there will be other tools in place to facilitate this, and also more tools to keep threads from getting weirdly aggressive, like this one seemed to get. Seriously, you all couldn't just live and let live for one week? I'm disappointed.
MHWilds ID: JF9LL8L3
If Jay returns and the UFO thread in SE++ continues I will be cracking down on this shit in there