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Home » Open thread 9/14/23

Open thread 9/14/23

The New Neo Posted on by

I know this video is a lot like one I put up just a little while ago, but it’s got such crazy stuff on it that I just couldn’t resist. And the longer it goes on the crazier it gets:

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Open thread 9/14/23 — 51 Comments

  1. This was whack! I’m sitting on the patio, dog next to me, drinking my coffee… and this comes along? I LOL’ed three times, I think.

    I think the one that got me most was when the three young women are more or less standing in a line in just a bit of contact with one another and the little one on one end pumps her arm like a pump handle and the larger one on the far end does something with her – foot, I think? – like they’re a Rube Goldberg machine. Hilarious! And the music got me too.

  2. Just another open-thread comment about something I read.

    The California Assembly has voted to give unemployment benefits to striking workers. Next, the Senate must approve, and Newsom must sign (https://tinyurl.com/2h8vubrw).

    It’s news from California, so it might be a new cause for the Left. Will this tactic be used to recapture blue-collar voters? Will it reverse the trend away from unionization? Without the need to accumulate a strike fund, will it be easier to operate a union and to start new unions? Since taxpayers will be funding unions and strikes, will they be more likely to join a union? etc. etc. etc.

    Compared to hot topics like transsexual aliens, this may seem boring, but I have to wonder about the consequences, intended or not.

  6. Two hearty gals and a pixie, all incredible atheletes.

    Leroy Thomas (aka Lia) and Danny Mulvaney (aka Dylan) don’t have the skilz or talent or physiology to compete here. Like that ballerina guy.

  7. That is amazing! Thanks for sharing it.

    The athleticism is incredible and the choreography and execution were tremendous. I hope they won.

    Twice when they threw the little one towards the ceiling it looks like they barely caught her before she hit the ground. It must be an optical illusion because it seemed like her ankles should have shattered. And the two times one supported the other two were unbelievable. The poise, strength and balance of all 3 was amazing but how did the bottom one support that much weight on her legs and shoulders?

    How is this not an Olympic sport?

  8. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s been trailing Donald Trump in 2024 GOP primary polls, doubts that the former president can be re-elected if he’s convicted of a felony. “I think the chance of getting elected president after being convicted of a felony is as close to zero as you can get,” DeSantis said in an interview with CBS News. Anchor Norah O’Donnell asked DeSantis if he agreed with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, another Republican presidential candidate, who said Americans won’t vote for a convicted criminal.

    Ergo Ipso Facto
    DeSantis is not suitable to be president as he is accepting the kabuki show and hanging his hat on it. This means that he is ok with sham trials. Trials without cross examination, ability to produce evidence, etc. and he is ok with using obscure and tortured law to go after such (if he wins, may he be bombarded by the fruit of his own complicity)

  9. and on a continuing note, as to democide

    Not the same as beauty school dropouts: obscure reference

    we now have.
    Dating pool dropouts
    https://www.thefp.com/p/young-men-who-dropped-out-of-dating-pool
    Young men today feel they must be six feet tall, make six figures, and have six inches downstairs to get a girlfriend—so many have given up trying.

    Has the sexual revolution failed?

    heh…
    nope… it did what it was designed to do..

  10. RE: NASA and UFO research

    Just finished watching as much of the unsatisfactory NASA briefing on their “independent panel’s” outline of how they were going to approach analyzing UFOs as I could stand.

    It was, first of all, a self-congratulatory performance, with little in the way of specifics—they were “going to apply scientific rigor,” they were going to be “open and transparent,” they were going to “investigate the unknown, it was in our blood,” yada, yada.

    Yet, while announcing the already made appointment of an official to head up NASA’s investigations into UFOs, they refused to supply his name, because he might be harassed, and bad things might be said about him on social media—some openness and transparency.

    No hint at all of any doubt that perhaps the scientific method approach–as currently structured–was possibly not a system capable of addressing the UFO issue, and they were going to ignore all past UFO incidents, and apparently ignore, as well, reports by civilians, since they lacked the “scientific” rigor and level of data that they needed.

    It was a pretty smug performance all around.

    Administrator Nelson characterized Grusch’s testimony as, “someone told Grusch there was a UFO in a warehouse somewhere”—and that “Grusch was told by a friend someone held an alien body,” as Nelson smirked, as he said, “show me the evidence.”

    NASA is apparently going to be reporting whatever they find to AARO, but one of the presenters admitted that NASA’s sensor systems where neither calibrated to capture data on UFOs, nor designed to look for them, but that if some of their sensor systems happened to capture some UFO data, they would send it to AARO.

    NASA officials would not disclose what their budget for this new UFO initiative might be.

    Grusch, in his interview and testimony–you might remember–said that prior to his being appointed to head ARRO, Grusch had offered some of his information to Dr. Shaun Kirkpatrick, who he had known for many years, but that Kirkpatrick never took him up on his offer and that, moreover, Grusch said that Kirkpatrick and the AARO staff were not briefed into, and did not have a “need to know” about the particular classified programs which Grusch was briefed into, or aware of.

    Asked about Grusch’ claim that the UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs were extremely secret programs buried deep within DOD’s thousands of Special Access Programs, Administrator Nelson repeated several times that “NASA would be open and transparent with whatever it found,” but Nelson and the head of their “independent research panel” repeated several times that “there was no evidence for an extraterrestrial origin for UFOs” i.e. it seems that, at NASA, they have already “openly and transparently” made up their minds that UFOs could not possibly be of extraterrestrial origin.

  11. …how did the bottom one support that much weight on her legs and shoulders?

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    But what shoulders!

  12. ArtfldgrsGhost, DeSantis has condemned the “kabuki show.” All he said was that he thinks voters will not elect someone who has been convicted of a felony. Probably this is because large numbers of voters don’t realize the charges and trials are a sham. He’s not endorsing it, he’s just looking at the election realistically.

  13. P.S.–Apparently neither a lot of people in the “UFO community,” nor a lot of potential whistleblowers trust AARO, perhaps believing that–like all of the previous DOD organizations, down through the decades, supposedly trying to do an honest job of investigating UFOs–AARO is actually just a part of the DOD’s long term UFO disinformation campaign, and is–as these other organizations were–ultimately designed to just debunk, dismiss, defuse, and to rebury the UFO issue for many more decades to come.

  14. like project blue book, I remember the original series back in the 70s, with the guy that played colonel flagg on Mash, this mexican episode looks really sketchy

  17. Awesome video and performance. I winced watching the pixie climb up and do poses on the foot of one leg. The support leg’s knee was in full lock and bent a bit backwards. I hope that girl can still walk 20 years from now. There’s always knee joint replacements.

  18. He’s not endorsing it, he’s just looking at the election realistically.

    Well, he has hopes. But a lot of the voters whose ‘Trump’ choice was frustrated in 2020 will be on the flip side of all those millions of ‘righteous’ Dems who felt it must be Biden by all means necessary.

    For those Trump voters, a little thing like lawfare persecution of their candidate will just fan the flames. Conviction would be next to martyrdom, and the votes would pour in.

  20. Re: Naughty Scientists Dept

    Patrick Brown, climate scientist, admitted, even boasted, that he had left out relevant variables to get a paper published in Nature, which argued that climate change has increased wildfires frequency:
    __________________________

    A new study by a team of mostly San Francisco Bay Area scientists that found human-caused climate warming has increased the frequency of extremely fast-spreading California wildfires has come into question from the unlikeliest of critics—its own lead author.

    Patrick T. Brown, climate team co-director at the nonprofit Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley and a visiting research professor at San Jose State University, said his Aug. 30 paper in the prestigious British journal Nature is scientifically sound and “advances our understanding of climate change’s role in day-to-day wildfire behavior.”

    But Brown this week dropped a bomb on the journal—as well as his study’s co-authors who are staunchly defending the team’s work. In an online article, blog post and social media posts, Brown said he “left out the full truth to get my climate change paper published,” causing almost as much of a stir as the alarming findings themselves.

    Brown wrote that the study didn’t look at poor forest management and other factors that are just as, if not more, important to fire behavior because “I knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.” He added such bias in climate science “misinforms the public” and “makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”

    On Thursday, Nature shot back. “When it comes to science, Nature does not have a preferred narrative,” Editor in Chief Magdalena Skipper wrote in a statement to the Bay Area News Group.

    –“Scientist says he ‘left out the full truth’ to get climate change wildfire study published in journal”
    https://phys.org/news/2023-09-scientist-left-full-truth-climate.html
    __________________________

    This doesn’t look good for Brown or Nature.

    It continues to shock me how corrupt science and engineering have become. Sure, history and humanities got there first, but I thought better of the hard science types.

    Heigh-ho.

  21. he was a pretty good thriller writer, starting with agents of influence, but since he became comey’s sounding board hes become a hack,

    he’s post royalty, his father was an exec under catherine graham

  24. Re: Heigh-ho

    I picked up this expression from British television. I couldn’t tell you what it means, but I believe I know the feeling. I’m much interested in words these days, so I looked it up:
    ___________________________

    heigh-ho (exclamation) – used to express the fact that you cannot change a situation so you must accept it

    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/heigh-ho
    ___________________________

    I find that definition perfectly charming and accurate. Rather useful these days.

  25. Neo, you are legally trained and a strong communicator. Could you perhaps summarize the rules of evidence with respect to bribery and/or RICO prosecution?

    All I hear is Democrats pretending that unless we find a bag of money and thank-you note from a Russian oligarch under Biden’s desk, we are unable to say he benefitted from this bribery. I know there is a lot more sophistication to how his guilt can be established, but nobody seems to be laying it out for laymen!

  26. So the Lone Ranger was telling Silver “Look, horse, we can’t change the situation, so let’s get out of here?”

  27. Ray Van Dune:

    Those sorts of details are not something I would know, plus of course my law school days are a long long time ago and specific information is outdated. In general, though, a trial for bribery or any other offense follows the usual rules of evidence, plus of course the statute (whether state or federal). And the judges can interpret the law narrowly or broadly.

    The Democrats would, of course, be singing a very different tune had the supposed perp been Donald Trump and a son of his. Plus, the evidence needed in a court of law with its strong presumption of innocence is very different from what would be needed to impeach someone, or to judge them as guilty or not guilty in the voter’s own mind.

  28. Talking points. Something the Democrats do well.

    Republicans need to repeatedly list the evidence, over and over and over. Get to the same list, make it easy to cut and paste the highlights, and just keep hammering away with it.

    The Democrats are doing their ” No evidence” talking point just as they did over the 2020 election.

    The problem is , a lot of both cases were ” circumstantial” and not a true smoking gun, yet the sum of the lot should cause an honest person to suspect shenanigans in the 2020 election and criminality in the Biden family.

    Simultaneously, the list of Biden lies in his speeches should be played over and over.

    And go back and have Biden talking about the vaccine, both before he was President and afterwards. Compare and contrast.

  29. huxley, re: Heigh-ho

    You’ve never seen the 1937 version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? The dwarfs at one point sing a song as they return home from their daily work in a diamond mine; the chorus of the song begins with “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go . . . ”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI0x0KYChq4

  31. Re: Heigh-ho, Snow White, Lone Ranger

    CapnRusty, PA+Cat:

    Actually, in light of the recent Disney brouhaha (brou-ha-ha-ha!) over their new live remake of “Snow White,” I have been watching the dear old 1937 classic.

    Leaving aside the fairy tale original source and the magnificent animation, it has such wonderful life messages for children — loyalty, kindness, working together, keeping clean, and enjoying each other.

    The message in the remake is Snow White don’t need no Prince, no true love, she needs to be a powerful leader — a Girl Boss. Feh.

    As to “heigh-ho,” the Brits pronounce it “hay-hoe.” That’s what I hear in my head. There’s a whispery tone of regret to it.

    The dwarves sing it as “hi-hoe” and it’s quite cheerful. I asked ChatGPT and here’s what the Chat Dwarf told me:
    ______________________________________

    The phrase “Heigh-ho” is a traditional exclamation or call used by workers, often associated with miners or laborers. It’s commonly used to signal the start of work or to maintain a rhythmic pace while working. In the context of the famous Disney animated film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the seven dwarves sing “Heigh-ho” as they head off to work in the diamond mines. It’s a cheerful and rhythmic way for them to express their readiness to begin their day’s labor. The song “Heigh-Ho” is a catchy and memorable part of the movie and helps establish the dwarves’ personalities and daily routine.
    ______________________________________

    Thanks Chat Dwarf!

    However, the Lone Ranger’s call to his horse was ” “Hi-yo, Silver, away!”

  32. Neo, I read somewhere that bribery can be proven even without proof of a direct, tangible payoff to the briber.

  33. Ray Van Dune:

    It is my impression that that’s what the evidence about money going to other family members and shell companies is about.

  34. Of course, the problem with the Chat Dwarf as everyone is learning is that the Chat Dwarf sometimes makes stuff up.

    I experienced this on 9-11. I was trying to remember the guy who wrote a diet book, after he missed his doomed flight on 9-11, so I asked the Dwarf:
    ____________________________________

    The man you are referring to is likely Brian Clark. On September 11, 2001, Brian Clark was scheduled to be on American Airlines Flight 11, which was one of the planes hijacked by terrorists and flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. However, he missed his flight that morning due to a series of fortunate events, including a chance encounter with a childhood friend at the airport.

    After surviving the 9/11 attacks, Brian Clark decided to make significant changes in his life. He embarked on a journey to improve his health and lost over 100 pounds through diet and exercise. He also wrote a book titled “Long Way Down: A Hero’s Journey,” which recounts his experiences, including surviving the 9/11 attacks and his weight loss journey. The book is an inspirational story of resilience and transformation.
    ____________________________________

    Paydirt! I thought. Then I looked up Brian Clark and “Long Way Down.” I discovered that Brian Clark was the name of one of the last few survivors who barely escaped the South Tower and there is no book of that title.

    So close. The Dwarf had the right story but the wrong details. As a friend used to say, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

    Bad Chat Dwarf!

  35. RE: NASA as a dedicated research organization focused on UAPs

    A lot of people believe that NASA has made a career of airbrushing out a lot of images—still and video—which show UFOs, or evidence of alien activity.

    If this is true, how would you ever trust that NASA would honestly look for or report on any indications it might find of UFOs and Aliens.

  36. A lot of people believe that NASA has made a career of airbrushing out a lot of images—still and video—which show UFOs, or evidence of alien activity.

    Snow on Pine:

    I’m going to be condescending here. Sorry. I know. But really, how long have you been at UFOs? You don’t seem to know the history very well.

    I’ve been at the subject, since seeing one myself in 1965, with some seriousness and plenty of credulity until 9-11 gave me other things to think about.

    The trip down that rabbit hole has been exciting, confusing and finally repetitious. Sure the government is lying about something, probably many things, but that doesn’t mean the UFO community is any more trustworthy.

    I’ve concluded the UFO community is mostly crazy. The people who claim NASA is altering images are some of the craziest IMO. See Richard Hoagland’s totally wacked-out career from the “Face on Mars” forward, which included much conspiratorial whispering about NASA withholding or altering images.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Hoagland

    I have some sympathy with UFO community. The government lies about lots of stuff. Close Encounters in all their degrees are upsetting experiences.

    Furthermore, along with Jacques Vallee, the French scientist who has made the most serious and open-minded study of UFOs I am aware, I am persuaded the the UFO community has been a convenient target for psyops, including by governments.

    See Vallee’s “Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception.”

  37. huxley—Many decades ago, as one of my research assignments, I was asked to do some research on the UFO phenomenon, and as I started to compile open source information on a couple of key military sightings, it seemed to me that the witnesses seemed credible, and that there was something there, which could just not be chalked up to “mass hysteria” or “swamp gas.”

    In the several decades since then, it has become increasingly clear that our government lies about an ever expanding number of things.

    Thus, while several decades ago I would not have given any credence to someone who claimed that NASA would deliberately cut audio or video feeds, or doctor photos to hide inadvertently captured images of UFOs, or what appeared to be evidence off some Alien activity, given the evidence of increasing government lying, that claim about NASA has become a lot more believable.

    P.S. I note the very carefully worded statement out of the NASA briefing that,

    “To date, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP”

    This is moving the goal posts big time—as we’ve gone in the space of a year or more from no evidence, to no credible evidence, to now no conclusive evidence in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

    And, of course, there is no such peer-reviewed conclusive evidence in scientific literature.

    It would be a very brave academic today who would dare to try to get such research approved, funded, or published, while knowing that doing such research might derail their career.

  39. There used to be a popular bumper sticker reading “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!”
    _________________________________________________________

    Would it be wrong to pray for Snow On Pine to see a UFO? I’m guessing it would make his day!

    It *would* be wrong to pray for an Alien Abduction. Unless he would like one. 🙂

  41. Jordan Rivers–

    I am interested in answers.

    What I would like to have is confirmation of my suspicion/belief that Reality is actually a lot larger, much more complex, and more strange and weird than our current “consensus reality” paints it to be, and I would also like to have confirmation about whether we humans are alone or not in the Galaxy and Universe.

    However, as for becoming an “experiencer” and witnessing a UFO, coming face to face with an actual Alien, or being Abducted, these are things I am not interested in.

    This, since the evidence is that these are perilous things, events which usually totally upend and radically change the experiencer, his or her family, and that experiencer’s relationship to the world—sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse; reading some of the testimonies of experiencers, it appears that these experiences are a good way to end up with at least PTSD.

    Moreover, if the abnormal results, the damage Dr. Garry Nolan has seen on brain images are any indication, getting up close and personal with a UFO can leave you with permanent damage to both your brain and your health.

    Not interested.

  42. RE: The Mexican UFO Hearing, Supposed “Alien” Bodies, and Ryan Graves

    To judge from his facial expressions at the Hearing, and his later online statement, Ryan Graves was and is not happy, he is pissed.*

    He was a guest and presenter at this Hearing, and was supposed to talk about UFOs as a threat to aviation safety.

    I gather that he feels that he was taken advantage of, that his presence and credentials were used to add stature and legitimacy to the Hearing, and that he was made an unwilling participant in a “stunt,” in what he views as a hoax.

    However, the presentation of these supposed “Alien” bodies does present an opportunity.

    If these are supposedly irrefutably “Alien” bodies, let well qualified members of the world-wide research community have complete access to them plus the location where they were found, and let these scientists run whatever non-destructive tests they want. (I do realize that some source of funding must be found to pay for all of these, very likely, very expensive tests.)

    And then, we will have proof that likely all or most can accept, one way or the other.

    * See https://twitter.com/uncertainvector/status/1702023350803959988

  43. “A drive by” experience is desired it seems.

    Nowadays everyone wants some monetizable video.

    Keep your smart phone handy Snow. You never know when you might have an opportunity. Until then it is all just a leap of faith.

  44. On the subject of submarines: I went into the submarine EML “Lembit” at the Lennusadam Seaplane Harbor Museum in Tallinn, Estonia this summer:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EML_Lembit

    and

    https://meremuuseum.ee/lennusadam/en/

    “Lembit” was built and launched at the Vickers-Armstrongs shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness in 1935-1936 and commissioned into the interwar Estonian navy in 1937. She survived WWII and was the oldest submarine afloat until she was moved to the museum in 2011. The torpedo room was surprisingly spacious. The captain’s quarters had mahogany cabinetry with plush upholstery. Fascinating.

  45. on—

    Actually, at the recent NASA briefing on their approach to UFO research —despite the panelist’s general dismissal of civilian UFO reports as lacking necessary “scientific “ data—the dour head of their research team proposed creating new programs to upgrade the capabilities of ubiquitous cell phones to enable them to better capture data on UFOs I.e. “crowdsourcing.”

  46. Snow on Pine:

    And if the ap for smartphones is funded by the Feds and pushed out there let me predict what will happen.

    1. No UFOs are caught zipping around.

    2. No exterrestrials are caught alive or dead.

    3. The UFO “community” will seize on the absence of evidence as proof of a deep dark government conspiracy and coverup.

    Faith and hope for UFOs endures forever.

  47. om–Let me make a prediction.

    If such improved cell phones were to be put into the hands of citizens, no matter how anomalous whatever such citizens happen to record is–say, for instance, a triangular UAP that’s as big as a Walmart, staying stationary, or slowly and soundlessly gliding, at low altitude, over some location–the scientists will decide that whatever the camera recorded, it cannot be what it seems to be, and they will find some excuse to discard those images.

  48. Snow on Pine:

    It seems you have already confirmed my prediction.

    Am I a “UFO Denier?” The social stigma and shame must be out there. 🙂

    Like UFOs.

  49. I would think most intelligent aliens would have known to stay clear, specially by the 90s

  50. huxley–NASA has apparently just released the name of their new official in charge of UFO research.

    I’m guessing that the “optics” of touting–several times during the recent press briefing–their declared commitment to an “open and transparent” approach to researching UFOs, while, at the same time, keeping the name of the official who was supposed to be in charge of that research secret did not play well.

    I’m wondering if the old idea that NASA really stands for “never a straight answer” has more than a little truth to it.

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