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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29395 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Reposting another post from last week which @Blueberry put up right before the CW thread switched over:

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So any opinions on the drone sightings in New Jersey? Is it just mass hysteria and people mistake airplanes for drones? Are they aliens? Supernatural phenomenon? Just a distributed prank by drone owners?

So far the confusion and appeal to the government is bipartisan:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/15/politics/mysterious-drone-sightings-lawmakers-criticize-response/index.html

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum on Sunday criticized the federal government’s response to mysterious drone sightings in the Northeast, as officials emphasize there is no evidence of a security threat.

Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, also expressed frustration with the administration’s response to the public. “The government has a real responsibility to put more information out there so people better understand what the real dangers are,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump said Friday that the government needs to convey more information and shoot down the drones.

Asked Sunday about the president-elect’s post calling on the government to shoot down the drones, Mayorkas said, “We are limited in our authorities.”

What drives me crazy is that only phone videos seem to exist and phone cameras suck for faraway objects in the night. Is there not one good camera with a zoom in New York/New Jersey?

Edit:
This orb ABC News was puzzled over is really an out of focus Venus:
https://x.com/MatthewCappucci/status/1868052013164134899

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I know many Mottizans think this is all just deep state weapons testing or something, and I’m curious for theories in that vein along with more esoteric ones?

What does the U.S. gain from this? Will Trump meaningfully increase what we know about these drones or muddy the waters?

How much do we not know still about what the spooks are up to?

Like most UFO’s, these are almost certainly mundane flying objects getting misidentified by onlookers. That should be our default assumption in a ‘see Bigfoot think black bear’ type way. This case is bolstered by the sheer number of sightings which are clearly identifiable as planes.

It would be very exciting and cool for this to be ayys, but each of the videos I've seen ends up looking either like a regular drone, a commercial airliner, or something else that happens to have FAA red-green lighting (which wouldn't make sense for a military stealth drone experiment or for alien aircraft).

So yes, I think you're right. We are seeing mass hysteria possibly coupled with people just not having taken the time before to notice just how many flying objects are actually in your typical American night sky. And really, I can relate to this (at the risk of typical minding I suppose) because over the last year, my toddler has become obsessed with planes and seeing them at night so I didn't have any idea myself how active and busy aircraft are at night until we started watching them all the time.

something else that happens to have FAA red-green lighting (which wouldn't make sense for a military stealth drone experiment or for alien aircraft)

Seems like a decent disguise, though.

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