This is a fascinating paper about authority figures in UFO discourse.
"The implication is that the researched discourse promotes distrust of authorities—both traditional scientists and governmental bodies."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
And an archived version of Shermer's opinion piece, if you're curious:
archive.ph/snukc#select...
Ugh. Looks like the Washington Post is platforming Michael Shermer.
Every few years this creep makes inane comments about UFOs to drum up attention to whatever project he's currently flogging.
But the real story is the many allegations of his sexual harassment.
www.buzzfeed.com/markoppenhei...
For sale: 119th congress, never legislated.
"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop!"
It can be hard to cope with alienation in an increasingly digital, polarized society.
But I take solace in the fact that the future A.I.s poised to govern our lives will--in some small part--be trained on my own ill-considered contributions to social media.
Years ago, I saw a manhole cover shoot thirty feet into the air and land in one of few empty spots in a crowded intersection.
Everyone froze, processing this brush with disaster. But only for a moment.
Even after an explosion revealed the violent pressure beneath us, we just went about our day.
It’s a big, big stretch to say these are “far above the horizon”.
Even after the camera operator zoomed in, the UFO is in the same frame as objects on the ground (around 1:45-1:50) in the video.
The witness says they “lost it behind a streetlight,” so again, clearly not far above the horizon.
Not much info, but very good news.
www.berkeleyside.org/2025/10/24/i...
I sure hope I’m wrong, but I doubt the reprieve for SF is going to extend to Oakland and Berkeley.
Stay safe, East Bay.
You’re making a good point, but I would frame it in a different way:
Did entertainers who objected to McCarthyism marginalize themselves?
They sacrificed a platform that they might have used for good, just to avoid being part of a destructive force.
And it was the right thing to do.
"People who perceive ChatGPT as intelligent, or capable of perceiving reality and forming relationships with humans, may not understand that it is essentially a machine that predicts the next word in a sentence."
www.wired.com/story/ftc-co...
To honor what would have been her 96th birthday, here's one of my favorite Ursula K. Le Guin works, a 1983 commencement address at Mill's College during which she tells the graduates she hopes they won't be successful.
What a legend.
www.ursulakleguin.com/lefthand-mil...
Are we, perhaps, under reacting?
Our ghoulish seizer hasn't just crossed the Rubicon, he's pissed in its riverbed and grabbed it by the delta.
He's currently stuffing a blockchain down its river mouth while screaming incoherently about "Purity of Essence" and our "Precious Bodily Fluids."
"Tump-loving" has replaced "God-fearing" in the American vernacular.
It's bad luck Chicago.
We're hurtling toward catastrophe because of a slouching, rapacious thug so willfully ignorant and irrationally hateful that he'd set his own house on fire to spite the neighbors.
As I wrote it in the alt text, the artist is Josh Kirby.
It's feeling very Germany-in-the-1930s out there today, with a slight chance of the Spanish Civil War.
You’re not overreacting.
Shit is fucked.
New mantra:
“Continue without disabling”
The photograph "Flower Power" by Bernie Boston showing a demonstrator placing a flower into an M.P.'s rifle barrel in October, 1967.
Once again, America is threatened by its most dangerous and fanatical foes: Americans.
I Have No WiFi, and I Must Stream
AARO's STAG "TERMINATED"
🧵A thread
1) When he became director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick formed an advisory group, the membership of which he refused to make public (or even provide to congressional offices).
www.defense.gov/News/Release...
