I feel like the US is 5-10 years away from some mass hysteria movement, like a burgerfied Taiping Rebellion where someone declares themselves Jesus' third aunt and orders their legions of rabid followers to crucify every 5G tower in the country.
Issuing a memo that’s like “the most likely explanation for the UFOs is that Covid caused a lot of brain damage”
there's definitely a lot of people out there who don't know what planets look like in the night sky
protip: planets twinkle and look like distorted little discs when viewed through a telescope or binos. stars only ever look like points of light, they are too far away to twinkle (though when thin clouds pass in front of them they sorta change)
I thought stars twinkle because they're just points, so distortions are enough to move the entire image. Planets are large enough that distortions don't really change the shape or size of the image, they just make it blurry.
Yeah fair enough - both things are subject to atmospheric distortion changing the way they look. I am thinking in the context of ufo-ology though - planets are large enough that distortions in the atmosphere between the viewer and the planet can make the planet look like it's doing stuff - different shadows and warbles on the disc of the planet can look like shit changing form. a star will shift with atmospheric distortion but because it's only a single point of light instead of a disc, it'll appear to move a little in position but there isn't the same intra-object change.
But have you taken in to account my unique mutant trait; Astigmatism!
no bro, Tik Tok is telling me it's Angels and Plasmoids...like living beings made of Plasma.
Do they even know what plasma is? Or does it just sound fancy to them because its a special state of matter
No, the common wisdom is definitely that stars twinkle and planets do not.
Even more so, some of the recent videos of Sirius show wild fluctuations in color because stars are active plasma with light passing through many interstellar structures while planets are far more stable, they are reflective only, and there's very little between us and them.
I don't think we need to invoke covid brain fog for this, Americans have called every fuzzy dot in the sky a UFO since the 50s.
There's definitely a non-zero chance that the DoD brass tells Trump "Yes, we know about the drones. They're top secret military equipment that we're testing", followed by him tweeting "THE DRONES ARE TOP SECRET MILITARY EQUIPMENT THAT WILL STOP CHINA BY describes exactly what they're supposed to do".
stupidiest country that ever existed, can't believe they are the world's biggest superpower lmfao
T minus XX days until Trump orders the New Jersey Air National Guard to shoot down UA 1992 flying out of Newark
I'm personally hoping a true patriot with a decommissioned anti-aircraft gun gets a good shot on a "drone" that's actually airforce 1
We would jump to an alternate timeline that we weren't supposed to be in, it would trigger a false vacuum decay and instantly destroy the universe.
Just call up the NYPD, they have a bunch of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, I'm sure they'd be willing to help a friend out
But like, a regular recreational drone that just came out the portal real hard
There are going to be very long books written about this whole event in the future.
Assuming there aren't (and probably never were) any drones, everyone panicking about this will never get the answers they want. I hope that doesn't result in innocent people dying because Jim Bob from West Milford got a lucky shot off and depressurized the cabin of a 737 on approach to Newark.
I feel like people are gonna forget like they forgot about the Chinese weather balloon panic
I hope so, but I'm at ground zero over here and it seems like there's a lot more people freaking out about this than the balloon panic.
I do think the more normal people are starting to lose their patience already, though. The amount of "very clearly an airplane" videos being posted is quickly delegitimizing the whole thing for everybody except the most extreme conspiracy-minded. All it would take is one clear video of a big scary drone, it's been weeks and still nothing.
What's wild to me is A) how few people have actually looked at a plane for more than a second prior to last month, and B) how easily people will see what they want to see, even when they are looking at something that is very obviously not that thing.
most extreme conspiracy-minded.
That's like 25% of the US population
It's a sobering reminder that most of the population are, just beneath the skin, screeching and terrified apes throwing rocks at the full moon.
it's incredibly funny that we are supposed to go at war with china in the next 5 years when 80% of the population is brainrotted into thinking angels float over the new jersey turnpike or some shit.
These things happen. There have been lots of utterly bizarre panics throughout history. I think it's mostly evidence that people really just don't know much outside of their day to day work and core interests. Even a pretty banal unknown unknown can smash in to the general public much the say way the Chixilub asteroid smashed in to the dinosaurs.
He is really good at saying that exact same thing every time, then doing nothing about it and having his audience still somehow believe that he cares when he says it next time.
I'm pretty sure the president elect gets briefed on the same matters of national security as the president; so why doesn't he say what it is?
There's probably specific instructions to not tell Trump about a lot of things.
You know it just occurred to me how comforting those words probably are to someone with a very hierarchical worldview, like most reactionaries have.
They just pulled off woke ISIS is going to make Syria progressive give them time to recharge
Isn't Trump in charge of "the government" just order them to disclose what they know smh
Can you imagine if he somehow manages to become even less popular by being the president that covered up aliens at the end of his term.
