pharmakos
Bluelighter
All we know is what they told us. Perhaps they did do this for an extensive period before taking action. The public has very limited details as of now.
🌟🌟 Social 🌟🌟 PD Social Thread 2022-2025 v. Year of the Phenethylamine
- Thread starter arrall
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unodelacosa
Bluelighter
As I understand it, they did observe, and thankfully there was a discussion about the potential dangers of shooting down that balloon over Montana. So they waited. The POTUSA took criticism for this of course, but criticism is inevitable. Given the desire to learn more about the nature of these instances of spying, I would guess the US govt. employed the least amount of force necessary to bring down the balloons. To my civilian mind, firing missiles at them seems … a little dramatic and overboard, but then I remind myself: what the fuck do I know about spy balloons, aviation, and military tactics? (A: far, far less than any country's air force, let alone the USAF). I'll leave it to the pros.
That's my take on it so far. But I'm totally open to new facts, opinions, and ideas. How do you think it should've been handled?
Xorkoth
Bluelight Crew
Pretty wild stuff. They still have no idea what they are, or where they came from. Seems to be an entirely different thing from the spy balloon, though I am just going on what I've been hearing on the radio.
I tend to agree, though of course I was not involved in any way, shape or form. So, here's the thing... I heard some wild stuff from a military person they interviewed when this was breaking news. He said that they had no idea how it was being propelled because they saw no signs of propulsion, and also, it was messing with their sensors when they were near it. The people I heard interviewed at the time seemed shaken up, and one of them said "we have enough problems, the last thing we need right now is aliens". There has been this possible alien narrative underlying the whole thing, and they're now trying to say it's not, but I heard that someone in a press conference early on was asked about aliens and said that we can't rule anything out, then later they came in and retracted that statement.
It's certainly more likely that it's some unknown technology from China or Russia or something. But like, imagine if it was aliens. Shooting it down seems like a bad decision...
pharmakos
Bluelighter
I believe we are just watching the same.old spy games that have always happened spill out into the public eye due to social media and the internet. Check this article out, China is also shooting down similar objects that they claim came from America. It's just one big game of "I see what you're doing!" but both are effectively breaking the rules and so we are still at stalemate.
www.cnn.com
China definitely is pushing aggression in general lately tho. Check this from a month and a half ago:
www.nbcnews.com
China accuses US of 'illegally' flying balloons across its airspace | CNN
China has accused the United States of "illegally" flying high-altitude balloons into its airspace more than 10 times since January 2022, claims that drew an immediate rebuttal from the White House, as bilateral tensions flare in the fallout from a Chinese balloon that was shot down by American...
China definitely is pushing aggression in general lately tho. Check this from a month and a half ago:
U.S. military plane in evasive maneuvers after Chinese jet flies near
The encounter reflects what the U.S. calls a concerning trend of unsafe intercept practices by the Chinese military.
www.nbcnews.com
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And then poke em! See if they bleed green! (in Alabama drawl)
unodelacosa
Bluelighter
On the radio? You’re not talking about those late night conspiracy theory shows are you?
You don’t believe in aliens, do you?
Here’s what suspect to me: at first China claims it was an off-path weather balloon. They double-down and fire the guy in charge. At the same time, they claim the U.S. has had as many as ten balloons floating above China. That response is guilty AF. They got caught is what happened, plain and simple. I think swatting it down was probably the right thing to do.
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Cream Gravy?
Bluelight Crew
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I do it literally every time I trip. Have loaded handguns in several locations of my house.
But I never think about self harm either. I've met guys who do end up thinking about self harm on acid when they get stuck in loops and they definitely shouldn't have a firearm laying around. An old coworker told me of a time he wanted to shoot himself to end a loop, I recall just thinking, "Damn this dude can't handle his acid."
Sometimes I'll unload the revolver and play with it while I watch movies and trip, like I'm Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. It's fun to be honest. "You talkin' to me?"
It's important to be able to judge your own mental state, and even more important to practice safe firearm handling when in altered states. I quadruple check the revolver is empty before I go dicking around with it, sober or otherwise.
Who doesn't believe in aliens? Who in their right mind, knowing the vastness of the universe, thinks that we are the only life forms in the entire galaxy, let alone universe? The chances are so slim that only a dogmatically religious individual could deny the existence of extraterrestrial life, in my opinion.
Also this is technical, but I have some aviation history background thanks to my father; the F-22 Raptors they've been sending are designed as intercontinental missile interceptors. They have dual engines (unlike the single engine on the F-35, designed for dogfighting at slower speeds) that allow them to travel at extremely high speeds using very little fuel, and as such, they don't carry anything but missiles designed for engaging targets at high velocities from large distances. Their sole purpose in our air force is to rapidly approach targets of uncertain nature and take them down fast before they can do anything.
Pfafffed
Bluelight Crew
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Apparently, they tried bullets vs the one over Lake Huron, but couldn't hit it. They then opted to use a missile. Which missed and is unaccounted for. (Big yikes there.) The second missile hit. These are the first public "kinetic actions" taken vs mainland US airspace violations in history.
Yeah, the only thing from White House has said so far is that they're saying it's not extraterrestrial.
They also insisted the spy balloon was a civilian weather research balloon home astray, so lets be real. Speech is political. I would be hard-pressed to believe that the USA wasn't spying on China in every conceivable way, but we should take all claims by nation states with a whole shaker of salt. Wow, Bluelight, I guess we're going to type this whole message in italics now? Lol
Given the size and age of universe, it would be surprising if life had formed on earth and nowhere else. I also think that space is a vast and largely empty place, making the odds that many other species would ever want to go to the immense trouble of venturing embodied into the cold abyss just for shits and giggles.
Buzz Lightbeer
Bluelight Crew
All I've seen from the pro's is that they act like children, how many of these dumb sagas have we had in the past years between US and China. They don't act in good faith with respect to what they should do to serve the citizens and it is my opinion that many are way too trigger happy, for many reasons.
I have no new facts nor ideas, I was being slightly ironic but I'm just cynical tbh.
The alien angle is yeah, well... as always.
Buzz Lightbeer
Bluelight Crew
South Chinese Sea my dude, if thats a prime example of pushing agression...China definitely is pushing aggression in general lately tho. Check this from a month and a half ago:
U.S. military plane in evasive maneuvers after Chinese jet flies near
The encounter reflects what the U.S. calls a concerning trend of unsafe intercept practices by the Chinese military.
In the meantime:
US, Papua New Guinea Hold Talks on Military Agreement - News From Antiwar.com
The US and Papua New Guinea just wrapped up talks on signing a military agreement as the Biden administration is looking to expand military ties in the Asia Pacific as part of its strategy against China. "The United States and Papua New Guinea held negotiations on February 6 – 10…
news.antiwar.com
And that's recent weeks, you dont wanna hear about recent years.
Over the past few years, these two powers have been getting us closer and closer to an all out war. They almost refuse to talk entirely, and all you'll hear out of Western mouths is that it's all China. They act like children and we should all stop falling for their stupid games. It's maddening.
Xorkoth
Bluelight Crew
No, it was NPR both times. It was late at night, though.
Do I believe aliens exist, and we're not alone in the universe? Yes, absolutely. Obviously I can't know for sure, but the size of the universe is absolutely staggering... at last reckoning, there are ~125 billion galaxies in the observable universe (and keeping in mind that that's what we can observe... we can observe stuff in a 13.57 trillion year light year sphere around us... but certainly we are not the center of the universe. If not, then there is more that we can't see because the universe hasn't existed long enough for that light to reach us. Each of those galaxies has anywhere from a hundred million to more than a billion stars. From what we can see now in the stars close enough to observe planets via transit across the star, earth-like rocky planets in their stars' habitable zones are quite common. So, unless our galaxy/local galactic neighborhood is somehow special and different from all the other galaxies, the number of planets that could conceivably have developed life is so immense as to be, for all intents and purposes, infinite.
Obviously life doesn't form on all such planets, and if life developed, it might not have developed to intelligent life. It's even less likely that such life would be able to explore space. And the time frame is important, too... for Earth, it existed for 4.5 billion years before life evolved to the point of being able to send out signals or go into space, which has only been happening for less than 100 years. It remains to be seen how long we will survive or how far we will evolve in our technology.
It also remains to be seen whether faster than light travel is even possible. if it isn't, then the only traveling to another planet that is possible is in your local neighborhood of stars in your own galaxy. It takes light 4 years to travel to the nearest star... assuming you could develop a spacecraft that could move just under the speed of light, that's still a LOT of travel time to go anywhere else. But I'm not prepared to say that it's definitely not possible to travel in some non-physical way, perhaps by bending spacetime.
Do I believe that we're being or have been visited by aliens? I don't know. Probably not, it's much more likely we haven't been/aren't. But it's also possible. Do I believe that aliens exist in the universe? I am as close to 100% certain as it's possible to be that they do, in uncountable varieties. What makes us so special that our planet alone developed life in all of the vastness of the universe? On the order of 10^20 stars in the universe is a HELL of a large number of chances for life to develop.
Xorkoth
Bluelight Crew
And as far as people saying "we've been looking for some sign of them since the 1960s and haven't found anything yet, there's not there", that's just, frankly, a silly argument. The signals we're looking for (radio waves - which themselves are only one type of signal) travel at the speed of light. So our signals we've sent out have only managed to travel about 60 light years, and any signals that got sent out have only had a chance to travel that long since we've started listening, too. For some intelligent civilization to have received our signal and also sent it back and for us to have received that signal they sent back, they would have to be within 30 light years. There are only a few stars that are within that distance.
Buzz Lightbeer
Bluelight Crew
There's this one guy that I follow on Twitter, smart dude, who recently got very deep into everything UFOs. He's smart and sure as hell knows a lot more about these things than I do. Then there's also this other pretty smart guy that doesn't seem to give a shit.
My personal opinion is that it's all just so incredibly unlikely, many zeros after the comma!!
My personal opinion is that it's all just so incredibly unlikely, many zeros after the comma!!
pharmakos
Bluelighter
It's the internet era. How could we?
pharmakos
Bluelighter
It's not necessarily the location, but more the fact that they flew literally 10 feet away from another country's supersonic aircraft. Like a game of chicken!South Chinese Sea my dude, if thats a prime example of pushing agression...
In the meantime:
US, Papua New Guinea Hold Talks on Military Agreement - News From Antiwar.com
The US and Papua New Guinea just wrapped up talks on signing a military agreement as the Biden administration is looking to expand military ties in the Asia Pacific as part of its strategy against China. "The United States and Papua New Guinea held negotiations on February 6 – 10…
And that's recent weeks, you dont wanna hear about recent years.
Over the past few years, these two powers have been getting us closer and closer to an all out war. They almost refuse to talk entirely, and all you'll hear out of Western mouths is that it's all China. They act like children and we should all stop falling for their stupid games. It's maddening.
pharmakos
Bluelighter
And the expansion of the universe causes those signals to decay such that, for large enough distances, even inside the light cone, the signal would be very difficult to distinguish from the background radiation.
The real "where is everybody?" question is "where are all the Von Neumann probes?"
pharmakos
Bluelighter
The recent military videos of unexplained aerial phenomena witnessed by trained pilots are quite hard to explain
Buzz Lightbeer
Bluelight Crew
Maybe.
If you know the Bayes theorem, try to apply it, it's a fun thought exercise
lots of assumptions but still . It still comes to a lot of zeros, unless you assign a high probability to aliens being able to visit us (importantly: right now), which I don't.
Buzz Lightbeer
Bluelight Crew
I was writing it all out, a little rusty, but apparently it's been done and explained before.
theconversation.com
I even like the parameter choices. The point is, the chance that you can't explain the evidence through any other non alien means has to be so small to have any real effect on the main factor, which is P(Aliens exist and can reach us right now). Now it's like at most a very generous 1/10. So all comes down to the P(A), let's focus on that...
UFOs: how to calculate the odds that an alien spaceship has been spotted
One in a million or one in ten? Mathematics can help us work out the odds of whether recent sightings of UFOs are really alien spaceships.
theconversation.com
I even like the parameter choices. The point is, the chance that you can't explain the evidence through any other non alien means has to be so small to have any real effect on the main factor, which is P(Aliens exist and can reach us right now). Now it's like at most a very generous 1/10. So all comes down to the P(A), let's focus on that...
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