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Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

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Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today from Russian media: "All NATO decision-makers from countries that provided military assistance to Bandera Ukraine are participating in a hybrid or conventional war against Russia… All these individuals can and should be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian state,” Medvedev said" Every media outlet in Nordic countries talk about a Russia-NATO war within the near future or whether Russia and NAT…

There is talk about necessary defensive preparations for a larger conflict. The primary goal of which is to deter such a conflict from starting in the first place. But that is not the same as saying that "war is being planned". The latter implies an actual intent/desire to start a war, the former does not. Today from Russian media: "Bandera Ukraine, blah, blah" That phrase on its own should indicate that what you are…

All I can say is that I regret taking your previous comment in good faith. I wasted my time.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is talk about necessary defensive preparations for a larger conflict. The primary goal of which is to deter such a conflict from starting in the first place. But that is not the same as saying that "war is being planned". The latter implies an actual intent/desire to start a war, the former does not. Today from Russian media: "Bandera Ukraine, blah, blah" That phrase on its own should indicate that what you are…

All I can say is that I regret taking your previous comment in good faith. I wasted my time.

There's no bad intent. I just don't think you're reading the tea leaves right.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also NJ police report the anomalous drones give off no heat signature like normal drones... These are the same people who have panic attacks when they think they've been exposed to fentanyl (which usually involves them describing symptoms not consistent with opiate exposure, and mysteriously the officers never seem to test positive for it in the hospital). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8810663/ In realit…

> pure, liquid, lab-grade fentanyl ... just washes their hands. Your description is a little hyperbolic! That pubmed paper referenced "10 microgram fentanyl citrate base per ml" approx 0.00001% fentanyl "over a large skin surface area". Pharmaceutical form for injection is fentanyl 50µg/mL (as citrate). https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/Datasheet/f/Fentanylinj.pd...

American cops pass out when they see a salt crystal thinking it’s fentanyl. Even the ones who didn’t touch it. Pouring a bunch of it in liquid form onto unprotected skin in a lab does nothing. Draw conclusions accordingly.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#274
post #140
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be better to say that it was a case of a collective shattered delusion, where the delusion was "my windshield normally is not pitted". In modern parlance, it was a collective "can't unsee" moment. A delusion would imply that people were claiming their windshields were pitted and they weren't... but I'm sure they were.

Don't be splitting hairs. The delusion is that the pitting happened recently and wasn't there before.

It's an important hair to split when people are trying to use this as an example of a whole bunch of people just spontaneously believing something false. It's not that. It's actually a case of people spontaneously realizing something true, and if we're going to apply that to the drone story blindly, that changes it quite significantly. That's why the hair split. "Mass" does not imply "delusion"; that's a thought-terminating cliche.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What prevents me from lighting a regular-wing RC plane with the same lighting configuration? If I’m not mistaken, the FAA does (unless RC planes aren’t covered?). Are you really positing that I saw an intentionally misconfigured RC plane flying in the middle of nowhere at 2 AM? You’re right that I’m making a leap with the trans-wing part. I said that because it’s my understanding that some of the sightings have inc…

> If I’m not mistaken, the FAA does (unless RC planes aren’t covered?). Are you really positing that I saw an intentionally misconfigured RC plane flying in the middle of nowhere at 2 AM? So the FAA prevents me from using the scheme you described, but the drones you think you observed are exempt? I still don’t see how you can draw any conclusion from the lighting, unless the lighting you saw is only permitted for a s…

Well turns out I was wrong about the pattern I saw being distinctive of trans-wing drones, it’s the pattern used by all drones.

The conclusion I draw from that is it’s not a plane. And I didn’t hear a helicopter, so only a few possibilities remain.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people, on the whole, vastly underestimate the degree to which humans are animals.

It took me around 20 years to kind of key into that, but then it took almost another 20 for it to properly click. I find it pretty hard to get on the same wavelength as most people about it. A lot of us feel distinctly human as opposed to, I don’t know, like a smooth ape that is neurotic enough to develop space travel. I’m half joking. I’ve found the revelation made me love animals a lot more than I had. It brings a…

This is more broadly held than you might think. Just look at the outcry about Harambe.

My sense of kinship is weak with arthropods. Vertebrates are clearly kin. Birds and mammals are so clearly fellow beings, that I simply can't imagine caring about people if the concept of people must be narrowed to exclude them.

It goes the other way too. I find it easier to love my fellow human animals when I remember they are neurotic hairless apes wearing hats. Our intelligence is so new (in an evolutionary sense), we are just barely smart enough to pull this all off.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. Agriculture, animal husbandry, arts, warfare, engineering were all very sophisticated, limited by the materials science available (firearms, for instance, need very strong metals not to explode). The scientists that existed before the industrial age in the West were upper class, bored…

> More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. That is partially true. There is no incentive, for example, for slaves to make any improvements. I cannot think of any technology developed by slaves. That meant the few people in power were not enough to think of much new stuff. You could say free markets were the greatest invention…

> I cannot think of any technology developed by slaves.

No thinking needed. A quick search turns this up:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/with-patents-or-wi...

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#278
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why someone would see lights in the sky and jump to anything other than "domestic/commercial aircraft". Why would aliens or foreign powers light their vehicles up for easy spotting? I would really start to worry if I spotted an aircraft at dusk/night with no lights on it.

There are without a doubt large drones with nav lights flying around multiple states at night now. There are a lot of people seeing drones where they aren’t, too, and it would be odd if that weren’t happening. But to take that and say “nothing to see here” is ignoring the mass of solid video and official non-statement evidence to the contrary. I myself saw a drone, and tried to paint it as a plane or helicopter at fi…

What exactly makes a drone "mysterious" or "omonious[ly]"?

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unlit one or one with blinking or few lights, sure. This had four constantly illuminated nav lights, and I was in a car so I was able to see the parallax relative to the clouds. I couldn’t tell if it was 500 feet or a mile, but I could tell that it was either close enough to be audible, or many times bigger than the largest jetliners. > If you saw an unknown object and it seemed closer to you than normal aircraft,…

Parallax relative to the clouds doesn’t tell you anything unless you know how fast it’s moving or how far away it is. Given all the rest, I have to say I’m not super confident in your estimate of angular size.

Not to mention how fast the clouds are moving!

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me around 20 years to kind of key into that, but then it took almost another 20 for it to properly click. I find it pretty hard to get on the same wavelength as most people about it. A lot of us feel distinctly human as opposed to, I don’t know, like a smooth ape that is neurotic enough to develop space travel. I’m half joking. I’ve found the revelation made me love animals a lot more than I had. It brings a…

This is more broadly held than you might think. Just look at the outcry about Harambe. My sense of kinship is weak with arthropods. Vertebrates are clearly kin. Birds and mammals are so clearly fellow beings, that I simply can't imagine caring about people if the concept of people must be narrowed to exclude them. It goes the other way too. I find it easier to love my fellow human animals when I remember they are neu…

I totally agree. Coincidentally my son keeps some isopods as a sort of hobby in a terrarium, and yeah, I do find it hard to see them as quite the same.

Your latter point is a very important one. I think of intelligence as a very tenuous, fragile thing. We can barely utilize it the ways we intend to, and it isn't a guard-rail against all kinds of bad behaviour. It's almost useless to us in all kinds of common scenarios, or barely accessible. We get enraged, drunk, turned on, depressed, etc. and suddenly these faculties are barely function in the ways we need them to be.

So, it becomes much easier to forgive people for making mistakes. You begin to realize we're holding onto this potential by a thread most of the time, not wielding it like a trusted tool. The more you observe this, the more it's a wonder anything works at all.

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