I did a bit of first-hand UFO account investigation for a while. Lots of people wanted to share their experiences as a narrative that they could control. Unfortunately when I started with a set of questions I had been working on to help me gather info, many of those same people would refuse to discuss further or wouldn't complete the questions.<p>Eventually I had to conclude that, among other things, a lot of folks are unconsciously concerned about the magic of the experience being taken away. (But maybe they don't realize it unless someone brings up that specific question, and until then they are pretty fiercely protective about what they saw.)<p>And one time I myself was out for a walk in the middle of the day, and saw what appeared to be a totally legit UFO in the distance. Well that's pretty wild, I thought. A real shape-shifter! A nearby contractor shouted, "am I the only one seeing this sh*t" and I was like "nope" and got out my 25x zoom camera to gather direct evidence!<p>Result: At high zoom it was obviously wedding-style white balloons in a bundle, resembling a morphing UFO.<p>I told the other guy what it was, and BOOM the magic in the air was gone. He looked SO disappointed, and I had to admit I felt that way too. By the time I got home I had half convinced myself never to do that again!<p>While I still leave room for there to be UAPs from wherever, IMO there are just tons and tons of different experiences with so many different phenomena. And most discussions are unfortunately going to hover around this real-vs-made-up dichotomy that's also just super unhelpful.
Even leaving aside arguments for the viability of extraterrestrials coming to our planet and then accidentally being detected by us, I rarely see anyone discuss the boring human aspect of stories like this–namely that there is simply no way that information about a close encounter wouldn't leak.<p>Even the largest successful government coverups (MKULTRA, Iran-Contra, etc.) required far fewer people to be "in the know" than would be required for something like a crashed or observed alien spacecraft. In addition to this, the people who would have to be in the know would not be a community of high-ranking intelligence officers who are dedicated to their mission. It would be janitors, construction workers, commercial radar operators, and the like. There is no way that people like this could be motivated to keep an existential threat like this under wraps.
When conspiracy theories become mainstream in politics, so does other non-sense like this. My question is then, who's keeping the secrets secret now?
So I got to the bottom of this recent alien hype. It's that Avi Loeb is the department head of astronomy at Harvard and he has turned to be some kind of insincere scientist and grifter and his latest grift is aliens. This has caused all kind of horrible downstream effects and emboldened every alien grifter and delusional ones to step forward with their theories reaching critical mass that the legislature has to acknowledge this army of alien enthusiasts.
>Rubio, a longtime advocate for transparency on the alien issue (...)<p>Person who already believes in aliens and flying saucers finds stories of aliens and flying saucers credible. Film at 11.<p>Show me some evidence. Show me wreckage. Show me autopsies and photos of alien bodies. Something that can't be walked back from. You say we've reverse engineered alien tech? Publish the research. Tell us how anti-gravity and warp drives work. Give us the science and a replicable model. I don't care that Marco Rubio heard a thing from a guy, I want the smoking gun.
It's only shocking if you weren't open to seeing the larger picture. There's clear scientific evidence that there's something unexplainable. What that is remains to be seen IMHO.
This weather phenomena is something that might be of interest to this thread: <a href="https://earthsky.org/earth/best-photos-beautiful-lenticular-clouds-around-the-world/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://earthsky.org/earth/best-photos-beautiful-lenticular-...</a><p>But I think more than that it's important to be aware that many contractors and govts. conduct tests that aren't public or even inter-agency knowledge. Projects are need to know, even for people with the highest clearances.
It appears that something is happening. It could be a disclosure or a psychological operation (PSYOP) to divert people's attention away from something.
"And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We’re going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens’, and all of it, he said, is a lie.” -Werner von Braun to Carol Rosin [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.texasoutlawwriters.com/the-last-card/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.texasoutlawwriters.com/the-last-card/</a>
Some years ago, a psychologist named Bem approached the field of parapsychology (the study of psi, psychic phenomenon) and performed several studies that demonstrated statistically significant effects. Much was made of just how thoroughly rigorous these studies were. They had pre-registration, large <i>n</i>, no p-hacking, you name it - truly unassailable papers whose results are antithetical to common sense and reality.<p>In the discussions following those papers, one comment stuck with me, though I forget where I read it. It goes like this:<p>“Coverage of these papers often has titles like ‘Rigorous Scientific Studies Prove Psi is Real’, but I would instead say ‘Psi Proves Rigorous Scientific Studies are False’”<p>This comes to mind with this UFO stuff because I find myself having a similar reaction. We are being presented with the highest quality of what we might call “media evidence”: reputable and named sources from real and major organizations, on the record, quotes that stand alone (no need to editorialize and distort what they’re saying etc), the whole nine yards. They are scrupulously doing everything right, you could not possibly demand a higher standard of reporting - and yet the contention is antithetical to reality. UFO reporting is basically convincing me that even unbiased honest reporting free from any agenda can’t be relied upon.<p>(Am I refusing to entertain the possibility that UFOs are real only because I know that if I did entertain the possibility, the evidence would be overwhelming, and that would result in me being forced to believe in UFOs, which I don’t want to do? Not quite. I am partial to Steve Sailer’s ‘Shoebill’ argument: “there is a giant bird that looks like a dinosaur and sounds like a machine gun” is a wild claim I would refuse to believe, but there are now countless hours of high quality video footage of such things existing; where is the good video evidence for UFOs?)
I noticed Josh Hawley shoring up the Grusch allegations recently[1], and now Rubio (TFA links his name to <i>Why Are Florida Republicans Paying a White Supremacist Goon? The saga of Marco Rubio and the Proud Boys</i>[2], BTW)<p>Is UFO credence starting to split along party lines?<p>1: <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-ufo-whistleblower-report-1807735" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-ufo-whistleblower-repor...</a><p>2: <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/marco-rubio-christopher-monzon-proud-boys-florida-white-supremacist-republican.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/marco-rubio-christop...</a>
There's no aliens anywhere near earth. There really aren't.<p>Given the staggering, likely impossible task of traveling between the stars, it's essentially impossible that they'd turn up on a planet with this many people and be so in tune with our technology and media that they manage to stay out of sight entirely, except for some government secret Area 53 base or whatever.<p>If you think that traveling between the stars is even remotely practical then maybe watch this video that illustrates the distance only to the closest star, let alone any further away: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk</a>
I wonder if this stuff comes in cycles. I remember there seemed to be a lot of interest in UFOs in the 90s then it kind of died down. Here we go again, I guess.
To try to catch hacker news up to the situation:<p>David Grusch, A former NGA intelligence officer has recently come forward with allegations that there are waived, unacknowledged Special Access Programs that are reverse engineering non-human technology, and that these programs have not had proper congressional oversight.<p>Why should we give him the time of day? Well, he was one of the highest intelligence officials in our nation. He was read in to over 2000 special access programs, and he gave Biden the presidential daily briefing for the NGA on a daily basis. He's given 11 hours of testimony under oath to the congressional intelligence committees; giving program names, locations, and people working on those "rogue" programs.<p>These allegations are incredibly serious. There are only two outcomes from here: either he is lying and this is some big government psy-op, or he is telling the truth. Either way, congress should investigate and get to the bottom of this.<p>Marco Rubio amplifying Grusch's allegations by confirming that other whistleblowers who <i>have first hand knowledge of the programs</i> have also testified to the fact.<p>Here is the article that broke the story: <a href="https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-re...</a><p>Here is the interview he did with Ross Coulthart: <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the-ufo-whistleblower-speaks/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the...</a>
If he heard it from someone who saw the UFO, doesn’t that mean the account was second-hand for him?<p>First-hand would be reserved for the person who saw the UFO, wouldn’t it?<p>(Maybe that’s why they put quotes around that term, or maybe I’m wrong, I’m just not familiar with how he’s using the turn of phrase.
I really think we need to distinguish between UFOs and Aliens.<p>UFOs you would expect to be increasingly commonplace as drone and similar technology improves allowing hobbyists as well as domestic and foreign governments to test new form factors.<p>Aliens however is a different story as surely the conspiracy needed to cover something like that up over decades would be impossible.