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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1138 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 28, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I recall there were some users here really into UFOs. Are they still on the forum? I’m ~80% sure that I saw “UFOS” the other day, which I assume is always just some weird government drone exercise. If they’re still here I’d like to upload the video somewhere to get their opinion.

I’m one of those users, but I’m in no way qualified to tell you what any kind of aerial phenomenona are.

I'm happy/would find it fun to look at videos, though as much as the Half-Life apocalypse sounds more fun than the AI apocalypse I'm pretty convinced at this point that no real UFOs have been sighted and we are doomed to be #foreveralone.

https://vimeo.com/1205617393

These things were moving incredibly fast in and out of clouds, very high in the air, maybe a mile up, and a mile or two in front of me. I suppose it could be a searchlight / spotlight plus strange atmospheric conditions, but it did not seem to be reflecting off of the clouds as much as passing through them, there was no beacon leading up to the light source, and it was changing its altitude consistently. The day before I took this a plane near me encountered a drone and then three days later a plane hit a drone. At the end of that video, when they stall in unison, that’s not an artifact of the video but just what they did. But maybe it really is just a searchlight and weird visual tricks because of overcast weather? I don’t know.

I'm no expert either, but it strikes me as being 4 spotlights doing some kind of light show, and I'm assuming the shifting of the center point around in the frame is due to the camera moving around. It's hard to see the details you describe from that video, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cloud conditions as far as altitude and density made it reasonable for ordinary spotlights to look like that. I'd more wonder whether it seemed reasonable for there to be some event in an appropriate location to have a spotlight show like that.

There's also the obligatory nerdy gotcha that it stands for Unidentified Flying Object, so it is a UFO by definition if you don't know what it is, but that doesn't make it an actual alien spacecraft or anything.

Cool video, thanks for sharing it. I don't really have much to say about it and I'm not an expert at all, I'm mostly responding to boost engagement and hope someone with some good theories/explanations responds to your video.

To me it does look like a sort of four-pointed beam of light from a spotlight situation because otherwise I don't know how four "crafts" could so quickly move out from a central point like that. I have a hard time making out details in dark videos- did you splice together multiple clips, or is this the same clip slowed down/zoomed in several times? Was it over land or sea?

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