site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Dept of War has released a new batch of UAP documents at https://war.gov/ufo/

This is supposedly the first in a series of releases that will come out in the coming months. Trump has made repeated comments that he intends to declassify what the government has in UAP and that the public can make up its own mind.

There are many pages of documentation being sifted through this morning. The initial reaction seems to be that this is largely more of the same grainy video that we’ve previously had - with a few key exceptions. The big on being reporting by Peter Doocey is NASA records (picture and communications logs) from the Apollo missions. NASA astronauts reporting and confirming observations of very bright luminescent angular objects tumbling in the moons atmosphere. Also appearing formation in some videos. The NASA comms logs seem significant. Trained military and science professionals of the highest order. Reporting that they see a bogey out the window. Ground control asks “is that the booster?”. Astronaut says “it’s a bogey”.

From a culture war perspective, it’s going to be interesting to see how politics impacts this. Already the /ufo/ subreddit is completely fixated on the fact that Trump is behind this and that it’s a bit distraction from the Epstein files. While there is no smoking gun here, it’s obviously an escalation of the disclosure trend that started nearly 10 years ago. There are reports that subsequent release will include the infamous 46 HD videos that congress has seen. Also reports of potential anomalous (ET?) bodies.

We’re also in a very unfortunate position where conspiracy, uap, and other paranormal phenomena have been politicized. It’s impossible for me to believe that ScienceTM will take any real interest in this. I wonder when that dam will break. They are so invested in the pre-disclosure narrative that they will not update without something truly shocking being released.

It’s understandable that people remain skeptical. That being said, there is now an overwhelming amount of evidence out there that something is going on outside of what mainstream science will recognize. There are countless government insiders that have told their stories.

I personally don’t claim to know what to make of all of this. But I continue to update my priors on the following:

  1. There are NHI entities or technology regularly interacting with earth.

  2. There are one or more ET civilizations that are currently on earth and have formal relationships with various states.

  3. There are public and private organizations that have advanced technologies beyond conventional energy and aerospace tech.

  4. There are terrestrial breakaway civilizations from the deep past or present with otherwise unknown technology.

  5. There are paranormal phenomena and metaphysical entities that are the source of all of these events.

How about you all? Anyone else adjusting lately?

Edit. Link to nasa logs.

https://x.com/the_astral_/status/2052729234435481632?s=46

I think you're excessively negative on mainstream science in this case. The VASCO survey people put out a study of pre-Sputnik glints around geostationary orbit. These are respected scientists and it's a finding that is, uh, hard to explain without invoking aliens.

John Michael Godier did a video on this(and a good collection of study links). He not only offers a potential solution(nuclear testing), but also points out independant comfirmation of the VASCO study. Amoung other interesting tidbits.

That said, imo, it's never aliens.

I think my negativity is warranted.

The VASCO stuff is fascinating and those people deserve our utmost respect for doing this work in public.

The VASCO findings, along with everything else released by DoW will be ignored. It seems to me that certain people will not update their priors on this topic. They’ve not considered VASCO and will not consider other evidence that’s been released over the past few years. The rebuttals have not changed in 30 years.

There is a certain institutional arrogance at work here. Opinions have been cemented and mockery has been the protocol. /u/self_made_human made the case against ETs quite clearly. In some people’s mind, we have learned all there is to know about the material world. If we don’t, well the. Surely someone would have published a peer reviewed study on it somewhere and we therefore have incorporated it into the corpus of scientific knowledge.

It’s certainly possible that all of the testimony from government and military personnel is a mass hysteria or a scam. It’s possible the hundreds or thousands of pictures and sensor readings are just mistakes, visual artifacts, or frauds.

I’m rooting for more to be released though. If for no other reason than to see the increasingly absurd contortions that certain people will go through rather than admit they were wrong.