7 ms·

Rubio Says He’s Heard Shocking ‘Firsthand’ Accounts of UFOs

30 points by miobrien 3y ago

ftxbro 3y ago
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.
jonny_eh 3y ago
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?
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  we are living in a post-secret world. any actual secret will just drown in the noise. and if not it will be labeled a conspiracy theory. snowden and assange released secrets - the majority neither knows nor cares. mkultra stuff - tell this on a party and 90% will immediately label you a nut case. then you say - well, just read about it on wikipedia. nobody will care about that, they won't bother checking. but you'll be greated next time with "seen any ufos lately? lol"
  - soupfordummies 3y ago
    well I care buddy! Got any of the weirder stuff to share? I only really know about the extended warrant-less tracking and spying on US citizen. Ya know... the totally normal not-weird-at-all nothing-to-see-here stuff :P
- Grum9 3y ago
  [dead]
curiousllama 3y ago
Rubio willing to say “whatever is necessary” to get a headline
ekam 3y ago
I just want to see pictures of the aliens frankly. The hearsay is getting boring
Jolter 3y ago
If he heard it from someone who saw the UFO, doesn’t that mean the account was second-hand for him? First-hand would be reserved for the person who saw the UFO, wouldn’t it? (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.
- pqdbr 3y ago
  You are changing the reference from the whiteness to Rubio. Rubio didn’t claim he saw first hand accounts himself; the ones that talked to him did.
  - Jolter 3y ago
    I'm not changing anything, I'm quoting the headline: "Rubio Says He’s Heard Shocking ‘Firsthand’ Account..."
- recursive 3y ago
  When he heard the account, it was first hand. He heard first hand accounts.
- imgabe 3y ago
  The account was firsthand when Rubio heard it. We are hearing it secondhand from Rubio.
- filoleg 3y ago
  Yeah, I hate imprecise wording like this too, but I think the title is technically correct. The title says that Rubio heard [someone else's] first-hand account of the situation. That would make it a second-hand account for Rubio, yeah. But it is still correct to say that Rubio was told by someone their first-hand account.
- wccrawford 3y ago
  Him telling us about it is second-hand. The original teller of the account was first-hand. I suspect they were trying to spin it to make him look like a fool, but they should probably stick to things he's actually being a fool about.
pazimzadeh 3y ago
Isn't the whole point of UFO's that they are unidentified? Don't they stop being UFO's the minute we find out what they are?
- chomp 3y ago
  A UFO could be a drone, or small aircraft. There have been a lot of UFO encounters by our armed forces, including those with novel capabilities, and capabilities we do not understand. It is beyond unlikely that any of these are alien to Earth.
schappim 3y ago
It appears that something is happening. It could be a disclosure or a psychological operation (PSYOP) to divert people's attention away from something.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Or just mass hysteria like the satanic panic[1]. Politicians are not immune. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
andrewstuart 3y ago
There's no aliens anywhere near earth. There really aren't. 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. 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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk
- jrflowers 3y ago
  That’s precisely what an alien would post
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- philipkglass 3y ago
  The hypothetical aliens don't need to be mortal biological creatures. An advanced probe "crewed" by artificial intelligence could take thousands of years to send copies of itself from one star to the next using propulsion concepts from the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls... They could have have arrived in the solar system 100 million years ago, just running maintenance routines and sending observations back home ever since. They don't need to know anything about human culture to stay largely unobserved, any more than human bird watchers need to know bird culture. I don't think that this is particularly likely but known physics permits alien visitors if you assume that they are stealthy (not acquisitive) and very patient.
  - phs318u 3y ago
    To be honest, the hardest thing for me to believe with this hypothesis is the possibility of a society that can not only survive for 100 million years, but maintain an interest in a subject for that long.
likeabbas 3y ago
To try to catch hacker news up to the situation: 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. 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. 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. Marco Rubio amplifying Grusch's allegations by confirming that other whistleblowers who have first hand knowledge of the programs have also testified to the fact. Here is the article that broke the story: https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/ https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-re... Here is the interview he did with Ross Coulthart: https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the-ufo-whistleblower-speaks/ https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the...
- behrlich 3y ago
  > 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. This is what is so frustrating about everyone dismissing this so off hand. Don't you at least want to get to the bottom of how large numbers of high ranking government officials have been convinced - or convinced to lie to us about - the US government being in possession of craft. _Something_ is happening. Why don't we find out what?
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    Was _something_ happening with "Havana Syndrome"? In the end, doesn't seem so. In both cases Occam's Razor points to a bunch of people simply being fooled by their senses and doubling down on that time and time again. Meanwhile we'll waste a whole bunch of money chasing phantoms.
AlexandrB 3y ago
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.
- krapp 3y ago
  It does. It's called a "UFO flap." Right now it's riding the wave of virality from the Chinese balloon/UAP stuff from earlier this year and last year.
threeseed 3y ago
I really think we need to distinguish between UFOs and Aliens. 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. Aliens however is a different story as surely the conspiracy needed to cover something like that up over decades would be impossible.
maclombardi 3y ago
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.
celtoid 3y ago
"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] [0] https://www.texasoutlawwriters.com/the-last-card/ https://www.texasoutlawwriters.com/the-last-card/
- jprd 3y ago
  A story written by someone who is relating an interview conducted by Dr. Steven Greer, of the former spokesperson of a Nazi who was dying of cancer. I want to believe, but not like this.
ttctciyf 3y ago
I noticed Josh Hawley shoring up the Grusch allegations recently[1], and now Rubio (TFA links his name to Why Are Florida Republicans Paying a White Supremacist Goon? The saga of Marco Rubio and the Proud Boys[2], BTW) Is UFO credence starting to split along party lines? 1: https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-ufo-whistleblower-report-1807735 https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-ufo-whistleblower-repor... 2: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/marco-rubio-christopher-monzon-proud-boys-florida-white-supremacist-republican.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/marco-rubio-christop...
- caladin 3y ago
  No. Kirsten Gillibrand has been active in it alongside Rubio. See https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibrand-secures-full-funding-for-uap-office-in-senate-defense-bill-markup/ https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibr...
  - ttctciyf 3y ago
    Well, ok, but she isn't coming out of the UFO closet in quite the same way; where Rubio directly bolsters, Gillibrand has "no idea" of the veracity of Grusch's claims[1] and seems to be more focused on getting oversight on "rogue Special Access Programs": > “We need to just look into whether there are rogue SAP programs that no one is providing oversight for,” says Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who led the Senate’s April UAP hearing. “The goal for me will be to have a hearing on that at some point so that we can assess if these SAP’s actually exist.” This has quite a different thrust to the statements of Hawley and Rubio, IMO. 1: https://www.wired.com/story/ufo-whistleblower-us-congress-investigations/ https://www.wired.com/story/ufo-whistleblower-us-congress-in...
    - likeabbas 3y ago
      Gillibrand's actions are speaking louder than what she's saying. https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/senate-intelligence-bill-gives-holders-of-non-earth-origin-six-months/ https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/senate-intelligence-bill-giv...
ray__ 3y ago
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. 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.
- themodelplumber 3y ago
  Isn't this why it's claimed that people employed by the government were told to intentionally spread some really wild stories? So that it seems like everybody's got a leak to share, reducing the impact of any other legitimate leaks of that nature?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
themodelplumber 3y ago
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. 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.) 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! Result: At high zoom it was obviously wedding-style white balloons in a bundle, resembling a morphing UFO. 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! 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.
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  >>But maybe they don't realize it unless someone brings up that specific question Valid take you've got, I think. What were some of these questions?
  - themodelplumber 3y ago
    There were a bunch, including objective descriptions, day of the week, time of day, and also subjective things like how had life changed recently. Plus things like how long had you been living in the area / driving the vehicle you saw it from if applicable.
fwlr 3y ago
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 n, no p-hacking, you name it - truly unassailable papers whose results are antithetical to common sense and reality. In the discussions following those papers, one comment stuck with me, though I forget where I read it. It goes like this: “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’” 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. (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?)
lusus_naturae 3y ago
This weather phenomena is something that might be of interest to this thread: https://earthsky.org/earth/best-photos-beautiful-lenticular-clouds-around-the-world/ https://earthsky.org/earth/best-photos-beautiful-lenticular-... 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.
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Christian fundamentalist domestic terrorism is an imminent threat. Whatever this nutter is on about is having a laugh.
krapp 3y ago
>Rubio, a longtime advocate for transparency on the alien issue (...) Person who already believes in aliens and flying saucers finds stories of aliens and flying saucers credible. Film at 11. 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.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]

30 points by miobrien 3y ago

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.

jonny_eh 3y ago

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?

2-718-281-828 3y ago
we are living in a post-secret world. any actual secret will just drown in the noise. and if not it will be labeled a conspiracy theory. snowden and assange released secrets - the majority neither knows nor cares. mkultra stuff - tell this on a party and 90% will immediately label you a nut case. then you say - well, just read about it on wikipedia. nobody will care about that, they won't bother checking. but you'll be greated next time with "seen any ufos lately? lol"
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  well I care buddy! Got any of the weirder stuff to share? I only really know about the extended warrant-less tracking and spying on US citizen. Ya know... the totally normal not-weird-at-all nothing-to-see-here stuff :P
Grum9 3y ago
[dead]

curiousllama 3y ago

Rubio willing to say “whatever is necessary” to get a headline

ekam 3y ago

I just want to see pictures of the aliens frankly. The hearsay is getting boring

Jolter 3y ago

If he heard it from someone who saw the UFO, doesn’t that mean the account was second-hand for him? First-hand would be reserved for the person who saw the UFO, wouldn’t it? (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.

pqdbr 3y ago
You are changing the reference from the whiteness to Rubio. Rubio didn’t claim he saw first hand accounts himself; the ones that talked to him did.
- Jolter 3y ago
  I'm not changing anything, I'm quoting the headline: "Rubio Says He’s Heard Shocking ‘Firsthand’ Account..."
recursive 3y ago
When he heard the account, it was first hand. He heard first hand accounts.
imgabe 3y ago
The account was firsthand when Rubio heard it. We are hearing it secondhand from Rubio.
filoleg 3y ago
Yeah, I hate imprecise wording like this too, but I think the title is technically correct. The title says that Rubio heard [someone else's] first-hand account of the situation. That would make it a second-hand account for Rubio, yeah. But it is still correct to say that Rubio was told by someone their first-hand account.
wccrawford 3y ago
Him telling us about it is second-hand. The original teller of the account was first-hand. I suspect they were trying to spin it to make him look like a fool, but they should probably stick to things he's actually being a fool about.

pazimzadeh 3y ago

Isn't the whole point of UFO's that they are unidentified? Don't they stop being UFO's the minute we find out what they are?

chomp 3y ago
A UFO could be a drone, or small aircraft. There have been a lot of UFO encounters by our armed forces, including those with novel capabilities, and capabilities we do not understand. It is beyond unlikely that any of these are alien to Earth.

schappim 3y ago

It appears that something is happening. It could be a disclosure or a psychological operation (PSYOP) to divert people's attention away from something.

AlexandrB 3y ago
Or just mass hysteria like the satanic panic[1]. Politicians are not immune. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic

andrewstuart 3y ago

There's no aliens anywhere near earth. There really aren't. 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. 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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk

jrflowers 3y ago
That’s precisely what an alien would post
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
philipkglass 3y ago
The hypothetical aliens don't need to be mortal biological creatures. An advanced probe "crewed" by artificial intelligence could take thousands of years to send copies of itself from one star to the next using propulsion concepts from the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls... They could have have arrived in the solar system 100 million years ago, just running maintenance routines and sending observations back home ever since. They don't need to know anything about human culture to stay largely unobserved, any more than human bird watchers need to know bird culture. I don't think that this is particularly likely but known physics permits alien visitors if you assume that they are stealthy (not acquisitive) and very patient.
- phs318u 3y ago
  To be honest, the hardest thing for me to believe with this hypothesis is the possibility of a society that can not only survive for 100 million years, but maintain an interest in a subject for that long.

likeabbas 3y ago

To try to catch hacker news up to the situation: 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. 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. 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. Marco Rubio amplifying Grusch's allegations by confirming that other whistleblowers who have first hand knowledge of the programs have also testified to the fact. Here is the article that broke the story: https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/ https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-re... Here is the interview he did with Ross Coulthart: https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the-ufo-whistleblower-speaks/ https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the...

behrlich 3y ago
> 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. This is what is so frustrating about everyone dismissing this so off hand. Don't you at least want to get to the bottom of how large numbers of high ranking government officials have been convinced - or convinced to lie to us about - the US government being in possession of craft. _Something_ is happening. Why don't we find out what?
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Was _something_ happening with "Havana Syndrome"? In the end, doesn't seem so. In both cases Occam's Razor points to a bunch of people simply being fooled by their senses and doubling down on that time and time again. Meanwhile we'll waste a whole bunch of money chasing phantoms.

AlexandrB 3y ago

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.

krapp 3y ago
It does. It's called a "UFO flap." Right now it's riding the wave of virality from the Chinese balloon/UAP stuff from earlier this year and last year.

threeseed 3y ago

I really think we need to distinguish between UFOs and Aliens. 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. Aliens however is a different story as surely the conspiracy needed to cover something like that up over decades would be impossible.

maclombardi 3y ago

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.

celtoid 3y ago

"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] [0] https://www.texasoutlawwriters.com/the-last-card/ https://www.texasoutlawwriters.com/the-last-card/

jprd 3y ago
A story written by someone who is relating an interview conducted by Dr. Steven Greer, of the former spokesperson of a Nazi who was dying of cancer. I want to believe, but not like this.

ttctciyf 3y ago

I noticed Josh Hawley shoring up the Grusch allegations recently[1], and now Rubio (TFA links his name to Why Are Florida Republicans Paying a White Supremacist Goon? The saga of Marco Rubio and the Proud Boys[2], BTW) Is UFO credence starting to split along party lines? 1: https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-ufo-whistleblower-report-1807735 https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-ufo-whistleblower-repor... 2: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/marco-rubio-christopher-monzon-proud-boys-florida-white-supremacist-republican.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/marco-rubio-christop...

caladin 3y ago
No. Kirsten Gillibrand has been active in it alongside Rubio. See https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibrand-secures-full-funding-for-uap-office-in-senate-defense-bill-markup/ https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibr...
- ttctciyf 3y ago
  Well, ok, but she isn't coming out of the UFO closet in quite the same way; where Rubio directly bolsters, Gillibrand has "no idea" of the veracity of Grusch's claims[1] and seems to be more focused on getting oversight on "rogue Special Access Programs": > “We need to just look into whether there are rogue SAP programs that no one is providing oversight for,” says Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who led the Senate’s April UAP hearing. “The goal for me will be to have a hearing on that at some point so that we can assess if these SAP’s actually exist.” This has quite a different thrust to the statements of Hawley and Rubio, IMO. 1: https://www.wired.com/story/ufo-whistleblower-us-congress-investigations/ https://www.wired.com/story/ufo-whistleblower-us-congress-in...
  - likeabbas 3y ago
    Gillibrand's actions are speaking louder than what she's saying. https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/senate-intelligence-bill-gives-holders-of-non-earth-origin-six-months/ https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/senate-intelligence-bill-giv...

ray__ 3y ago

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. 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.

themodelplumber 3y ago
Isn't this why it's claimed that people employed by the government were told to intentionally spread some really wild stories? So that it seems like everybody's got a leak to share, reducing the impact of any other legitimate leaks of that nature?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

themodelplumber 3y ago

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. 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.) 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! Result: At high zoom it was obviously wedding-style white balloons in a bundle, resembling a morphing UFO. 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! 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.

soupfordummies 3y ago
>>But maybe they don't realize it unless someone brings up that specific question Valid take you've got, I think. What were some of these questions?
- themodelplumber 3y ago
  There were a bunch, including objective descriptions, day of the week, time of day, and also subjective things like how had life changed recently. Plus things like how long had you been living in the area / driving the vehicle you saw it from if applicable.

fwlr 3y ago

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 n, no p-hacking, you name it - truly unassailable papers whose results are antithetical to common sense and reality. In the discussions following those papers, one comment stuck with me, though I forget where I read it. It goes like this: “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’” 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. (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?)

lusus_naturae 3y ago

This weather phenomena is something that might be of interest to this thread: https://earthsky.org/earth/best-photos-beautiful-lenticular-clouds-around-the-world/ https://earthsky.org/earth/best-photos-beautiful-lenticular-... 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.

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Christian fundamentalist domestic terrorism is an imminent threat. Whatever this nutter is on about is having a laugh.

krapp 3y ago

>Rubio, a longtime advocate for transparency on the alien issue (...) Person who already believes in aliens and flying saucers finds stories of aliens and flying saucers credible. Film at 11. 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.

DueDilligence 3y ago

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