We have a visitor

 

A new "´Oumuamua" has entered the solar system! 

NASA confirms new interstellar visitor

Interstellar secrets

 

Does the federal government classify information about interstellar objects as HORRENDEOUS as they are SQUAMOUS to stop a RUGOUS UNIVERSAL PANIC from ENGULFING Homo sapiens (sensu stricto) as we know it??? 

Well, at first I almost thought so, but naaah, it was just standard military secrecy (and red tape). When Avi Loeb (yes, *that* Avi Loeb) and some co-workers studied the trajectory of a certain meteorite which had impacted the sea off New Guinea in 2014, they suspected it may have been the first ever interstellar object observered within our solar system (and on Earth). Their study was published in 2019. However, to conclusively confirm the above, they needed data from military telescopes...but the US Space Command wasn´t very keen on sharing it. Obviously. No conspiracy here, just good ol´fashion security clearence! Which you don´t have, sorry. 

In 2022, the military published their own study, pretty much confirming the civilian science team´s original conclusions. Note that in 2017, another interstellar object had been confirmed: ´Oumuamua. Which Loeb argued could have been a UFO/UAP. So now you can go ahead and spin a conspiracy theory about it! At the time, The Scout was regarded as the first interstellar object ever to be observed inside our solar system, but if Loeb & Co (and the Space Command) are right, then the nameless meteorite has the primogeniture...     

An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, classified info reveals

Secret government info confirms first interstellar object on Earth

Not enough evidence, plz check in at White House

 

Copilot dreams about the Annunaki again...

The pushback against "disclosure" continues...

Professor Avi Loeb (who claimed that ´Oumuamua was an alien scout) supposedly made a silly mistake when searching for crashed UFOs in the Pacific Ocean. 

Meanwhile, both the Pentagon and NASA says there is no evidence for ETs ever visiting our tried and tested blue dot, but NASA nevertheless remains agnostic as to the exact genesis of the "UAPs" (i.e. UFOs). Pentagon blames misidentification of classified US spy balloons and ditto planes. I suppose *they* should know. 

The fourth link below goes to Live Science´s section on Extraterrestrial Life, which is continuously updated.

I´m about 70% sure that the "typical" UFOs are indeed military balloons, airplanes or drones. It´s still down from 100% until recently. However, given the highly contentious nature of these claims, I feel the aliens would have to land at the White House lawn and check in with ol´ uncle Cornpops before the majority of the high IQ population will believe in them.

If they check out The Donald at Mar-a-Lago, everyone will assume it´s a publicity stunt! Or start Star Wars for real...   

"Alien technology" or passing truck? 

Pentagon says no evidence for UFOs, aliens

NASA says no evidence for aliens, but can´t explain UFO origins

Extraterrestrial life

Two, three, many ´Oumuamuas

 

"Damn, they are on to our secrets.
Time for Alien Space Command to destroy that
 telescope of theirs. And where *is* Adamski
when you finally need him??"

I´m (of course) not saying that the JuMBOs are aliens. But they are aliens.  

Physics-breaking "rogue" objects emitting radio signals science can´t explain

James Webb telescope spots dozens of physics-breaking rogue objects

The vibe of skepticism

 

I recently discovered this YouTube content-creator, Emerson Green. He is something as unusual as an atheist who isn´t a materialist. Rather, he seems to be a kind of ontological pluralist. Several of his videos feature long interviews with non-naturalist moral realist philosopher Michael Huemer. His book "Ethical Intuitionism" made a brief guest appearence on this blog years ago. 

In the clip above, Green explains why he left the Skeptical community. His criticism speaks for itself, but I can´t help making a brief summary here. While I disagree with Green´s radical leftism (he supported Sanders in 2016 and seems to be a kind of leftist conspiracy theorist), he does make several good points and pertinent observations. 

The most obvious is (unsurprisingly) that the Skeptics aren´t particularly skeptical to begin with. They are pseudo-skeptics, uncritically beholden to a dogmatic atheist-materialist worldview. Nay, more: they aren´t simply atheists or materialists, they are enamored with the *aesthetics* of "Science", "Rationality" and "Skepticism". Things like parapsychology, conspiracy theory or UFOs simply *must* be wrong, since they have the wrong "vibe", and no further investigation into the matter is needed. The Skeptic (TM) *knows* that X is wrong...since the Establishment he is so fascinated by and wants to emulate says so. Everyone else is simply psychologically irrational, and that´s that. 

The "skeptical" attitude of these people is often of a lazy armchair variety, with no actual research being done. Even established scientists can come under attack, if they take the "wrong" side. Green points to the case of ´Oumuamua, which the Skeptics insisted simply *couldn´t* be an alien craft of some kind, despite Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb having published research to that effect. Them vibes are all wrong, dude!  

Green wonders why the Skeptics aren´t skeptical of the establishment, of power structures in society, and so on. Isn´t it strange that they never, even by chance, criticize the official narratives? Most Skeptics according to Green are "socially liberal but fiscally conservative", which I assume would make them centrist Democrats or liberal Republicans. Very often, the Skeptics spend considerable time debunking topics Green considers downright silly, such as Bigfoot, but they never seem to probe more important topics pertaining to politics or the economy. 

Green discusses conspiracy theory at some length, and plays an interesting clip featuring "honest Skeptic" Michael Shermer (not to be confused with Michael Huemer) and UFO researcher Nick Pope. Both point out the fallacy of the common anti-conspiracist argument "all conspiracies are exposed" or "it would take too many people". And while Green doesn´t explicitly endorse 9/11 Truthers, he holds that their motives are more complex (and in a sense more understandable) than Skeptics give them credit for. In Skeptical books, Truthers are usually depicted as irrational "anomaly-hunters" who simply can´t accept that a few discrepancies might exist in the official version. But according to Green, many Truthers have a left-wing background of well-founded skepticism towards the military and the political establishment. The US vice president at the time of 9/11, Dick Cheney, had a longstanding interest in pushing through something like the Patriot Act, there were forces which for geopolitical reasons wanted to start more foreign wars, and so on. So is 9/11 Trutherism really completely irrational? 

All things considered, Emerson Green seems to be an interesting maverick. I might continue watching this channel in the near future. 

Of course, it´s also important to be skeptical of left-wing establishments and Russian disinfo operations! :P    

Cargo cult

 

Avi Loeb, the Harvard professor who believes that the mysterious object ´Oumuamua was an interstellar space ship, claims to have discovered new evidence for UFOs and alien visits. More specifically some kind of metallic droplets found in the ocean off New Guinea. 

In the second clip, he speculates that aliens could use dark matter and ditto energy to traverse the great expanses of the universe.

Yeah, sure. Or maybe it´s just disinfo as usual, right? 

The chase is better than the catch

 Credit: bladerunner8u

Originally posted on July 12, 2021. 

Some stray reflections in the middle of a long hot summer...

It just struck me that the cyclical worldview would, in a sense, "prove" materialism or naturalism. It´s therefore quite ironic that the materialists don´t believe in cyclical history, preferring instead a more linear view, with humans (the only intelligent species) emerging quite late...and then on to the stars. The point, presumably, is that this strongly suggests that humanity is the result of a blind fluke. However, it also sounds an awful lot like teleology! 

A cyclical worldview, in which intelligent species appear, disappear and reappear, wouldn´t be what modern materialism expects to find, since it suggests that intelligence is part of the deep structures of the universe. However, it would be *more* compatible than linear crypto-progressive evolution with the denial of teleology. In such a cyclical world, intelligence doesn´t look like a mysterious and very meaningful insertion from without (in other words, dualism and theism), but like just another property of the cosmos, a cosmos that is fundamentally meaningless, with "intelligence" pointing nowhere. 

Science would have to become panpsychist to adopt such a perspective, but they could keep the rest - the denial of teleology, of any deeper meaning to existence, and so on. So why haven´t science made this? "Because that´s not where the evidence is pointing". Maybe. Or maybe scientists secretly want evolution to be progressive and teleological, with Homo deus as the endpoint...

Does anyone *really* think scientists take any of that crap about humans just being a bunch of robotic gene complexes, no better than cyanobacteria, seriously? LOL.

Instead, the cyclical scenario is associated with the alternative milieu, where it is part of a worldview often based on spirituality, meaningfulness and even teleology (!). But what would actually happen if somebody finds Atlantis? Nothing much, spiritually speaking, since "Atlantis" would just be another ruin submerged under the Irish Sea. Soon, the alternative crowd would get sick and tired of it, and start chasing after something else. Lemuria, perhaps. Or the man in the Moon. I sometimes suspect that for many of these people, the chase is better than the catch. Am I just wrong, or has the interest in UFOs actually *gone down* after `Oumuamua and the recent USAF disclosure? Mysteries on the verge of getting solved just aren´t that exciting... 

Personally, I´m not sure whether the cosmos is cyclical or contingent. Maybe it´s both? However, this is true only on the "horizontal" plane. On the "vertical" plane...well, that´s another story!

Some good news at last

 

Credit: ESA 

They found a ring around Qu...Qu...Quaorar...Quaoar, or something. That pesky little dwarf planet that robbed Pluto of its planetary title (and made all astrologers reel even more than the astronomy nerds). 

Well, at least *some* good news this side of the Wyrms Of Andromeda!

The universe, it seems, is fine tuned for Quo...never mind.  

Under investigation

The Australian TV news show "60 Minutes" recently discussed the UFO disclosures made by the US military last year (see clip above). Under the monikers "Under Investigation" and "The Unidentified", reporter Liz Hayes interviews a number of talking heads about this strange new development (almost stranger than the actual UFOs). For decades, the US military denied any knowledge of or interest in UFOs. Now, they made a sudden volte-face, and claim that the UAPs (as they have chosen to call the flying saucers) are real and probably of earthly origins, although an extraterrestrial explanation can´t be ruled out.

I admit that I haven´t really looked into this (yet), and that I´m skeptical to the UFO phenomenon in general. Some kind of intelligence community psy-op certainly can´t be ruled out, and if so, the present "disclosure" might simply be another wave of disinformation. Maybe its a deliberate hoax directed at the Russians and the Chinese? No idea, frankly. Or maybe *that´s* the point. Nobody is supposed to have any clue as to what is going on. Sounds familiar...?

"60 Minutes" claims that the mysterious objects closely follow American military aircraft during large scale exercises, as if they were monitoring US defenses. The UFOs have not just been spotted on radar, but also on infrared cameras (confirming they are solid) and even visually. One UFO looked like a cube within a sphere! One of the talking heads finds this to be perplexing in the extreme - why would somebody place a non-aerodynamic object (the cube) inside an aerodynamic one (the sphere)? Well, why would anyone place a human inside an aircraft? The idea that Russia and China has developed advanced drone technology is mentioned, but UFOs with similar bizarre patterns of flight were observed already during the 1950´s. Were they also Russian (Soviet) or Chinese? Interestingly, the former fighter pilot interviewed assumed that the UAP´s he observed were some kind of secret American military project! Unless, of course, he has been instructed by his superiors to say precisely this...

A more tantalizing possibility, of course, is that the flying saurcers really do come from another world. "60 Minutes" have interviewed Avi Loeb, the Harvard scientist who believes that the weird interstellar object called ´Oumuamua wasn´t a comet or asteroid, but an artificial craft (or strictly speaking a "solar sail") built by an alien civilization. So far, support from his scientific collegues have been lukewarm at best. 

Maybe I´m out on a limb here, but for some reason, I´m not particularly interested in UFOs and aliens. It feels to "retro" somehow. My guess is that we are dealing with a some kind of complex psy-op scenario, and that nothing will happen. We will still be at exactly the same spot in 2032 as we are now. More blurred pictures, military mixed messages, ghost stories...

But sure, I could be wrong. We *do* live in "interesting times"! 

Where´s the flux?

 

Another Sabine Hohenstaufen extravaganza. This time she takes on my favorite alternative claim: that the mysterious object with the "woke" name ´Oumuamua was an alien space probe. Apparently, it was just a big shitty chunk of nitrogen?! 

Alien nitrogen, hopefully. 

Other claims debunked in the clip are the canali on Mars, the little green men who turned out to be a pulsar, and...the ridiculous "Dyson sphere" which people take seriously only because Progress is their Religion (but since Dyson spheres are "material", that somehow makes them alright). 

Nothing about Roswell, Mothman or the Jersey Devil, but maybe next time? 

NIBIRU IS REAL, RUN FOR COVER!!!

A mysterious "brown dwarf" has been soaring through the Milky Way galaxy for 10 billion years (sic). Scientists call it The Accident. I call it Nibiru. And now, run for cover before it enters our solar system and carries out its TRUE MISSION OF WHICH YOU HAVE ALREADY HEARD IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION!!!

Kidding.

I hope... 

The Accident

The chase is better than the catch

Some stray reflections in the middle of a long hot summer...

It just struck me that the cyclical worldview would, in a sense, "prove" materialism or naturalism. It´s therefore quite ironic that the materialists don´t believe in cyclical history, preferring instead a more linear view, with humans (the only intelligent species) emerging quite late...and then on to the stars. The point, presumably, is that this strongly suggests that humanity is the result of a blind fluke. However, it also sounds an awful lot like teleology! 

A cyclical worldview, in which intelligent species appear, disappear and reappear, wouldn´t be what modern materialism expects to find, since it suggests that intelligence is part of the deep structures of the universe. However, it would be *more* compatible than linear crypto-progressive evolution with the denial of teleology. In such a cyclical world, intelligence doesn´t look like a mysterious and very meaningful insertion from without (in other words, dualism and theism), but like just another property of the cosmos, a cosmos that is fundamentally meaningless, with "intelligence" pointing nowhere. 

Science would have to become panpsychist to adopt such a perspective, but they could keep the rest - the denial of teleology, of any deeper meaning to existence, and so on. So why haven´t science made this? "Because that´s not where the evidence is pointing". Maybe. Or maybe scientists secretly want evolution to be progressive and teleological, with Homo deus as the endpoint...

Does anyone *really* think scientists take any of that crap about humans just being a bunch of robotic gene complexes, no better than cyanobacteria, seriously? LOL.

Instead, the cyclical scenario is associated with the alternative milieu, where it is part of a worldview often based on spirituality, meaningfulness and even teleology (!). But what would actually happen if somebody finds Atlantis? Nothing much, spiritually speaking, since "Atlantis" would just be another ruin submerged under the Irish Sea. Soon, the alternative crowd would get sick and tired of it, and start chasing after something else. Lemuria, perhaps. Or the man in the Moon. I sometimes suspect that for many of these people, the chase is better than the catch. Am I just wrong, or has the interest in UFOs actually *gone down* after `Oumuamua and the recent USAF disclosure? Mysteries on the verge of getting solved just aren´t that exciting... 

Personally, I´m not sure whether the cosmos is cyclical or contingent. Maybe it´s both? However, this is true only on the "horizontal" plane. On the "vertical" plane...well, that´s another story!

En helt vanlig dag i världsrymden

Det här är strängt taget "gårdagens nyheter", men nu har Harvard-astronomen Avi Loeb tydligen gett ut en bok om sin teori, att det mystiska objektet Oumuamua faktiskt var en uomjordisk rymdfarkost av något slag. Min vilda gissning är att det var ett exotiskt naturligt objekt (det måste finnas hur många som helst), men tanken på att det skulle kunna vara ett UFO är faktiskt fascinerande... 

Utomjordingar passerade genom vårt solsystem

Is there life on Earth?

I'm sure this is completely normal...

Although I'm not a science geek (no, really), I admit a certain fascination with this kind of stuff, perhaps because I un-scientifically assume that this somehow proves that *everything* is ALIVE. 

Nanobes: Alien life forms from Mars?!

Monolith mystery continues

Funniest diversion this year...

Yes, it's that monolith again, LOL.

Monolith mystery continues

Why is this even news?

Any relation to 'Oumuamua? Will our old Irish friend Thomas Sheridan comment on this...?

Mystery monolith in Utah removed

Under an alien sky

Thomas Sheridan discusses the "alien" aspects of the current corona crisis. He proposes the following scenario... 

A parallell civilization to our own, a kind of fairies, exist on Earth. Just like us, they have space rockets and similar high tech gadgets. Since they are intensely jealous of humanity, the fairy have sent a space ship to knock an asteroid of course...in order to smash our civilization to pieces. 

Luckily for us, Donald Trump´s space force is standing by and is ready to counter-attack. That´s why all flights have been banned. It´s to give the space force clear skies. In order to forestall panic, the coronavirus is used to justify a near-complete lock down of the world. The real truth would be too frightening to most people. The attack will happen on April 30 (Walpurgis Night). 

At the end of the film, Sheridan says that time travelers from a futuristic China might be behind the attack. The aliens look Chinese, after all...

He also says that we are living through a real life "Quatermass" episode. 

I don´t believe a word of it, and I´m starting to suspect that Sheridan doesn´t believe it, either. It´s some kind of high level trolling, connected to his practice of Chaos Magick. 

In three days, we will know whether I´m right, or whether both me and Bro Sheridan will have to join Catfish at a secluded location near the Unabomber´s cabin in west freakin Montana... :-) 

Is this really protected under the First Amendment?

I admit that I don´t understand "Chaos Magic"... 

In this clip, Thomas Sheridan argues that the coronavirus is our new god, and that Chaos Magicians should therefore invoke it?! He claims to have invoked the mysterious astronomical object ´Oumuamua and caused a huge UFO flap in Ireland! The man also says that Cthulhu used to be the most powerful deity, that he was connected to SJWs, but now the coronavirus can save us from his wrath...

Eh, wtf????

OK, further into the clip, Sheridan (or is this the *real* Catfish?) says that corona isn´t literally a god but a "chaos force". So that makes it alright then?

I always assumed Israel Only Full Preterism was the strangest religion out there, but here is another possible contender!

This is what the Coronavirus does to a man

End it already, look at the guy who warned us about ´Oumuamua, this is how he ended up after the Coronavirus hit his hometown in County Connacht! 

Lost in Buddhist space

“Aniara: En revy om människan i tid och rum” is a poetic work by Swedish writer Harry Martinson. A shorter version was published in 1953, a longer variety (the canonical one) in 1956. Martinson got the literature prize in 1974 to a large extent because of “Aniara”. The choice was controversial, since Martinson was a member of the Swedish Academy, the very exclusive club which awards the literature prizes! Four years later, Martinson suffered a breakdown and committed suicide, apparently triggered by all the negative reactions. Yet, his work “Aniara” has survived and is still considered a masterpiece by many, being turned into an opera (sic) and a feature film (which I haven´t seen). Since I haven´t read any official analysis of “Aniara”, the following review is somewhat tentative. Nor have I read the English translations – translating the poem into another language must be quite the challenge, since every other word is a neologism coined by Martinson himself. I´m almost tempted to call the language Martinsonese or Aniarish!

Poetry never made me excited, so I only managed to digest about half of “Aniara”, and skimmed the rest. (Imagine skimming poetry.) One important clue to the immensely pessimistic work is that Martinson claimed to be a Buddhist. Another is that it was written during the 1950´s. The existential threats to humanity mentioned in the poem include nuclear war, environmental destruction and totalitarianism. Interestingly, another thing that influenced “Aniara” was a shamanistic trance experienced by Martinson when looking at the Andromeda Galaxy through an amateur telescope! This could explain why the author chose a science fiction back story to his poetical musings. It might perhaps also explain why the poem feels so “spaced out” at times (pun intended).

The “plot” of “Aniara”, the little there is of such, is set in a not-too-distant future in which humanity has mastered space flight and controls the solar system. In an ironic reversal of the cornucopian dreams about space colonies solving human overpopulation, “Aniara” describes a dystopian society which does indeed transfer humans to both Venus and Mars to lessen the pressures on a dying Earth, but it´s not clear whether the colonists are appreciably better off at their new locations. Probably not, since Mars is referred to as an enormous tundra where almost nothing ever grows, while Venus is a vast swampland. Our destiny in the stars turns out to be “more of the same”. Nor is it entirely clear whether the “emigrants”, as they are called, are really voluntary. Originally, Mars seems to have been a dumping ground for criminals (or perhaps thought-criminals?) from an increasingly totalitarian Earth, but later waves of colonists are presumably volunteers or perhaps chosen by lot. Some have experienced nuclear warfare. Indeed, the wars seem to continue throughout the evacuation, since a later “song” reveals that an entire city on Earth, or perhaps Earth itself, has been completely destroyed.

The narrator of “Aniara”, called Mimaroben in Martinsonese, serves onboard one of the spaceships, named Aniara, which for years have traveled between Earth and Mars. This time, something goes wrong. Aniara collides with an asteroid named Hondo (apparently another name for Honshu – supposedly a hidden reference to Hiroshima) and goes off course. It soon finds itself outside the solar system, propelled towards the far-away constellation of Lyra by a mysterious force. (The last thing the crew sees before being forced off course is a gigantic torus.) The crew and the emigrants have to cope with being forever lost in space, with zero chance of ever being rescued or getting out alive. The rest of the poem deals with various strategies the lost emigrants use to cope with their situation. 

It´s obvious that Aniara is really a symbol of human existence in general, with Martinson criticizing essentially every human endeavor as being ultimately futile in the face of death and destruction: religions both pagan and Christian, sexual hedonism, belief in progress, mysticism, political fanaticism, and what have you. Somewhat unexpectedly, science isn´t attacked. Perhaps the reason is that science is pictured as strictly objective when confronting the human condition. It never offers any false hope or illusions, just brute facts. Mimaroben is secretly in love with Isagel, the cold and otherworldly female pilot of Aniara, who is also a scientist. At one point, Isagel tells Mimaroben that a mathematical analysis has proven that so-called miracles are really just chance events!

The most interesting entity onboard Aniara is called Miman in the poem´s garbled Swedish. Miman is a kind of super-computer with almost miraculous powers. The emigrants worship Miman as a god, and run amuck when the computer eventually self-destroys. The name obviously refers to Mimir in Norse mythology, the all-knowing deity who guarded the font of all wisdom. Miman has the power to record and/or remember all historical events, and also picks up alien transmissions from other solar systems, turning everything into holographic pictures for the enjoyment of the emigrants. The closest religious equivalent would be the so-called Akashic chronicle many occultists believe in. Martinson clearly regards Miman as a gigantic distraction. This would square with his Buddhism: *all* human actions, indeed all actions of sentient beings anywhere in the cosmos, are ultimately meaningless.

The last songs of the poem sound like a peculiar blend of atheism, theism and Buddhism. As punishment for turning the earthly paradise into hell, the emigrants are doomed to die in outer space, under Law (karma?) rather than under Grace. God is said to be left on Earth, hurt and insulted. Eventually, everyone dies and is turned into sinless dust, but Aniara nevertheless continues its flight towards Lyra for another 15,000 years. The very last line is that “the wave of Nirvana” swept through everyone, but we are left to wonder whether this is good or bad...

I readily admit that I don´t vibrate with the pessimistic perspective of “Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space”. As already indicated, the work essentially suggests that nothing we do is meaningful. But perhaps there is one little escape clause even in Samsara according to Harry Martinson. It is the character of Nobia or Nobby, who lives a life combining ethical self-sacrifice, aesthetic enjoyment and love. Nobby has the ability to see beauty even on the near desolate Martian tundra, she is unaffected by the brutality of the human colonists, and tries to help the refugees onboard the spaceships as much as she possibly can. Her detractors claim that she can´t possibly have been that saintly all her life, but the temporary narrator replacing Mimaroben who tells her story (presumably Nobby´s lover), insists otherwise. Perhaps Nobia is a true Buddhist castaway in this samsaric universe. It´s also interesting to note that Martinson constantly implies that humanity is being punished for its sins by God. At one point, the poet exclaims that God is inside the nuclear blast that destroys a certain city on Earth. But this, of course, is illogical unless there *is* a meaning behind everything, after all. There must also be a meaning to Nobia´s saintly life.

It´s interesting that Martinson, when describing that meaning, had to resort to the anthropomorphic picture of the Biblical God, either the wrathful deity of the Old Testament (or the Apocalypse) or the long-suffering Christ of the Gospels.

With that reflection, I end my review of “Aniara”.