261–270 of 593 posts
I was not expecting the 99 Luftballoons song to happen so literally. This is definitely the darkest timeline.
I guess they meant red in the sense of "communist" though...
If an agitator puts up a balloon and payload, one of which contains a potentially dangerous substance, and a nation in question shoots it down, thus releasing and activating that substance, who is responsible? And who does the public deem responsible? (I don't think this is realistic, just musing about other schemes that could be going on.)
The agitator, indubitably. I don’t see how that’s even a question, respectfully. Otherwise you’re following the logic of the Stop hitting yourself! defense.
e.g., if the dangerous substance in question was a gas mix for the balloon or cooling liquid for the payload, or "Whoops, how did those fruit fly capsules get in there and accidentally drift over California?!"
I'd say the balloons are chosen for a reason. Send surveillance craft over the USA and a huge percentage of the population would see it as an intrusion. Let balloons float over and some of the population will be: just weather balloons, we're wasting missiles; I haven't seen the balloons so they're making this up so China looks bad; what if the wreckage lands on a school, etc. Surveillance and destabilisation, is my guess.
The US Senator for Michigan reports that the object was “octagonal” and flying at 20,000ft: https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&...
I've stopped trusting when politician tweets describe the objects. They are getting the details second-hand if not more and seem to be relaying it immediately. Press conferences at least have some time to collect accounts and organize them. We also don't know who is providing the details; I would trust the F-22 pilot. Like this could mean that there was only octagonal object, the balloon was octagonal, or the payload…
>The object was shaped like an octagon with strings hanging off it and no discernible payload, according to [a senior administration official] and another source briefed on the matter.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/object-shot-down-lake...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A balloon that requires a missile to be brought down has to be really big, like soccer field big. In which case it won’t cost just $10k.
What would they cost? $10k seems reasonably close given the price below. https://weatherscientific.com/collections/weather-balloons/p...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the Blue Helmets have had a de facto quasi-blanket immunity when committing war crimes, and have some pretty horrifying history" First, I don't think calling them "blue helmets" has the negative connotation you think it does. Second. What's the difference between the UN peacekeepers and any other army? All have a mixed history and I'm pretty sure have let's say a high amount of immunity. People do bad things, especi…
As you stated you don't know much about their details, it wasn't meant to be pejorative: they're actually called Blue Helmets (and Blue Berets). I would wager their most defining visual characteristic is their helmet color, which is quite terrible as camouflage and wholly unsuitable for a conventional military force. Their Rules of Engagement are also significantly different from those of a conventional military forc…
The PRC reminds me of a lot of youtube videos I have seen: There's one or more young men who are enjoying the fuck around portion of the evening who then discover how fast it can turn into the find out portion of the evening.
I was going to say something about this being a ridiculous reason for conflict, but then again the US does have a history of starting wars over fantasies and fabrications. So consider curbing your moronic jingoistic attitude.
On the one hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon >Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. On the other hand, weather balloons are not silver-gray and cylindrical. A Google image search shows them almost always white and spherical to teardrop shape and pretty much unmistakably a balloon.
> Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. Are the electronics in these balloons recovered eventually? Or is it just basically e-waste?
I was not expecting the 99 Luftballoons song to happen so literally. This is definitely the darkest timeline.
99 knights of the air Ride super high-tech jet fighters Everyone's a superhero Everyone's a Captain Kirk With orders to identify To clarify and classify Scrambling the summer sky 99 red balloons go by Only got the season wrong …
What do you mean the eastern part of the US has just had a Phosphene release causing potentially millions of cancer deaths in the years to come? Look aliens!!!!!!!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which has been taken off the front page remarkably quickly, given its large number of votes in a short time. Perhaps there’s some system where downvotes encourage a post to be taken off the front page quicker. But I suspect moderator involvement. Which is misguided if so: people will simply post dupes and continue to upvote them. Thus, the story is still on the front-page, but in a fragmented manner.
It set off the flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it. Normally we'd merge the comments into the earlier post, but since this article has more information, I'll merge them hither instead.