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US Government releases first batch of UAP documents and videos

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Re: US Government releases first batch of UAP documents and videos

#382

Several of these look like balloons and birds. Two of them have already leaked before. Both of those are missiles being viewed with an infrared camera. One of them shows a missile passing through the field of view rapidly with a motion blur streak behind it. The other shows a missile performing maneuvers and a camera artifact showing a star-like diffraction+aperture artifact around the bright IR light source. None of…

What kind of birds are cold in black-hot imagery? What sort of missiles don't have an exhaust but a "ghost shell" trailing behind? What sort of balloons show up as contrast instead of neutral?

Your comment is all certainty, and the thread has rewarded that. People are seeking definite answers - seems proportional to the uncertainty they sense. Do you really feel qualified to provide that? Seems a big responsibility to take on, sort of like a public Explaining influencer lol.

Your idea that gossip enriches mundane with magic is unnecessary here, because the media themselves are 'unexplained' (if we remove your certainty).

It can be compelling and attractive to fill the silence or the unknown with an invention of certainty - sort of like a prophet or shepheard - but the edge of known demands more curiosity and wonder for an honest approach.

Re: US Government releases first batch of UAP documents and videos

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't seem to explain the recently popular "transients" though.

I think it takes time. I can only imagine the hours required to research, develop and shoot such well-evidenced explanations, given that part of his audience is true believers searching for any gap through which they can sustain their beliefs. But look at his website: https://www.metabunk.org . A quick search there for "Transients" returned several pages of posts, some from Mick himself. Frankly, I don't follow it th…

>Rational, evidence-based skeptics like Mick are doomed to Sisyphean toil because even after they've resoundingly explained a hundred vague claims, UFO (and Chem-Trail, Flat Earth, etc) true believers will always find a new one to hitch their belief to.

Right. And I do think that meticulous effort is invaluable because it heightens the cost of cognitive dissonance which can be important to reaching people on the sidelines.

But it makes you wonder if the debunking community should be a bit more intentional about intercepting whatever these psychological processes are that make people immune to evidence-based correction, and target those mechanisms the same meticulousness in patients of a debunk.

Although obviously I think the trouble with that is such a task would amount to helping steer such people into a fabric of social and cultural connectedness that's more valuable to them than the conspiracies are. Which seems a tall order. But maybe engineering an alternative psychological virus that crowds out the conspiracies in favor of something else is a more efficient option.

Re: US Government releases first batch of UAP documents and videos

#384
post #145

This is so cool. For instance the asset FBI SEPTEMBER 2023 SIGHTING - COMPOSITE SKETCH indicated that “Actual site photo with FBI Lab rendered graphic overlay depicting corroborating eyewitness reports from September 2023 of an apparent ellipsoid bronze metallic object materializing out of a bright light in the sky, 130-195 feet in length, and disappearing instantaneously.” https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1…

> This is so cool. "cool" is not the word that comes to mind looking at this image.

da bomb, phat, dope?

Re: US Government releases first batch of UAP documents and videos

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The star one kind of reminds me of the kill vehicle: https://youtu.be/KBMU6l6GsdM?si=O1jl4aQfaX_POY4T

That's interesting but that's not what this video is. The star shape in the DoD video is a camera artifact. Just a really bright source of infrared light.

It doesn't look like artifacts look: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/a-gimbal-glare-explainer.12... tho it still might be.

This theory is the one of yours least easily dismissed, but requires further evidence to be more convincing, I believe.

Re: US Government releases first batch of UAP documents and videos

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The star one kind of reminds me of the kill vehicle: https://youtu.be/KBMU6l6GsdM?si=O1jl4aQfaX_POY4T

That's interesting but that's not what this video is. The star shape in the DoD video is a camera artifact. Just a really bright source of infrared light.

At this point, I would dismiss every image of anything that shared symmetry with any part of the camera taking the photo.

In the 90s there was a wave of diamond-shaped craft in Europe. All were taken by cheap disposable cameras with four-bladed aperture. The current trend now is fuzzy moving images. They are fixed points like stars and the "motion" and color changes comes from the digital camera's algorithm trying to make sense of a one-pixel signal from the ccd. (See flat earth videos claiming that stars/planets are actually spotlights.)

Re: US Government releases first batch of UAP documents and videos

#388

For anyone else who has a UFO-crazy uncle, I've found Mick West's YouTube channel to be invaluable https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest . Mick is a retired video game programmer (Spider Man, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk), who does extremely well-researched videos analyzing UFO claims. He's not flashy or trying to be entertaining, just thorough, evidence-based and scientifically rigorous. He'll even do controlled experiments,…

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