> And then people who hate Trump like the media want to make it seem like Trump himself is being duped and is personally directing the investigators.
It sure sounds like Trump himself is being duped:
"On April 15, a question about the missing or dead individuals came up at a White House press briefing and by the next day Trump said he had met with advisers and the issue was being investigated. FBI Director Kash Patel reiterated the importance of looking for connections in these cases Sunday on Fox News. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is conducting its own investigation."
When I was very young (around 3 or 4) I woke up in the middle of the night and went downstairs to climb into my parents' bed.
After some time, I could see a small-scale but very extensive science fiction space base on top of the bed covers, as if the bed covers were the surface of a moon or planet.
It was populated, and in motion - rockets launching from gantries as I watched, etc. I know it wasn't a dream, because my parents remember me describing it to them as it happened.
I've never experienced anything like that again, and never heard of anything like it until reading about these mushrooms last year.
It definitely seems like an odd quirk of the brain that it apparently has a ”1990s god video game" (e.g. Populous) visualization mode.
There's some neat sci fi novel potential there, though, like it being a remnant of some kind of distant ancestor with a hive mind that could synthesize the visual input of multiple members into a disembodied third-person camera point of view.
Same thing here. About 8, Mickey Mouse, 2D, 3-4" high, dancing on the back wall of a tent (in the middle of the forest). Have never had another hallucination--that I know of.
It was an interesting thoery, but IMO his habit of making similar claims every time an interstellar object is discovered cast doubt on that original theory.
I note that article seems quite biased against Loeb. For example, they cite USA Today strongly criticizing him, which is not a reputable source in this debate. Wikipedia also doesn't mention that many other astrophysicists think that his 'Oumuamua theory is unlikely but not crazy. They only cite very negative criticism, but not the many more neutral responses. They also don't mention that he is far from the only one believing that 'Oumuamua appears to have a highly unusual shape. Wikipedia tries to paint him in the worst light possible.
I've got no horse in this race, but the great thing about Wikipedia is that you can edit the article[0] to fix anything that you feel is incorrect and/or not adhering to the encyclopedia's policies. You could also bring up your concerns on the talk page[1].
My edit would be reverted, and my talk page complaints would take a large amount of effort that likely ultimately goes nowhere when it's up against established editors. Instead I was telling you here that Wikipedia is not automatically unbiased just because it could theoretically be edited by anyone.
> Also, the "can't radar, plz don't ITAR" is horseshit.
My assumption is that they're trying to avoid crossing a legal line, as opposed to being personally invested in the idea of preventing radar use by a determined hobbyist.
ITAR feels a lot like Bernstein v. US all over again. Until very recently, everyone who can do anything that would be covered by ITAR was a giant corporation that likes the moat that regulations create, so it's unthinkable to challenge it. But that is changing, just like cryptography was in the early 90s.
RTL-SDR-grade fleet doing passive radar (using radio/TV OTA broadcasts) isn't actually that new; but pretty much any detailed reports have caught self-censoring after TLA visitors came by.
> Where it lost its way however is Microsoft actually cared about Windows
I agree with you, but I feel like they've stopped caring about most of their software. Windows is just the most egregious, high-impact example.
SharePoint and Teams were the first ones I noticed. I used to run an enterprise SharePoint farm for a big company. Under the covers it was a Rube Goldberg machine. Microsoft has some of the best database-related developer knowledge in the world because of SQL Server, but SharePoint was storing its data in giant XML blobs instead of using proper, efficient table schemas.
That lazy "it works (most of the time), and it's cheaper for us to offload the cost onto our customers' devices" approach was even more pronounced in Teams, and now Office and Windows itself each spawn about a million Edge WebViews for the same reason.
I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the Microsoft of the mid-2000s.
> giant XML blobs instead of using proper, efficient table schemas.
Prior to SharePoint 2013, Microsoft used sparse columns. It made for massive tables and was poor design.
Moving to XML blobs for user-defined schemas was the correct choice. The table schema became significantly smaller and user-defined schemas (for Lists/Libraries) could become much more complex.
> A launcher for a climbing rope or grappling hook. Have you ever tried getting a rope up over a branch on a very tall tree?
You might look into arborist's throw line launchers and line guns. They come in slingshot and pneumatic varieties. With a little (mostly fun) practice, they can be pretty accurate and reach limbs over 100' up.
> Soldiers now can even see thermal figures through walls or solid materiales
I have a thermal imager. They can't see through walls in the sense you're imagining. If there's an electric heating element inside a wall or a ceiling, you could get an image of that. If there's a camera or other active electronics hidden in a wall or object, you can see the heat from that.
You wouldn't be able to see a person in an adjacent room through the wall between the two rooms, unless the wall was made specifically of thermally-transparent material.
I've heard rumours of "see through walls" equipment in the US military before. If they really have something like that, it would have to be using technology other than thermal imaging.
> At least in America, high-tech scans are treated as a cash cow. And cheap & reasonable tests, if done, are merely an afterthought - after the patient has been milked for all the scan-bucks that their insurance will pay out.
Maybe it's a regional thing, but that hasn't been my experience. I've had one MRI and one CT scan in the 25+ years that I've been a full-time employed adult with insurance.
I'd have been happy to sign up for more so I could have proactive health information and the raw data to use for hobby projects.
If I ever have a house built to my own specs, I want to get the best of both worlds by using drywall, but with most/all of the interior walls being maintenance corridors accessible via concealed doorways. A modern version of the way the dormitory in Real Genius was constructed.
Just make the house itself ~10% larger than it would be otherwise, so the usable floorspace is the same.
Adding/repairing wiring and plumbing would be easy. Every wall could have two layers of thermal/sound insulation. And who doesn't love secret passages?
It sure sounds like Trump himself is being duped:
"On April 15, a question about the missing or dead individuals came up at a White House press briefing and by the next day Trump said he had met with advisers and the issue was being investigated. FBI Director Kash Patel reiterated the importance of looking for connections in these cases Sunday on Fox News. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is conducting its own investigation."
https://apnews.com/article/scientists-missing-dead-conspirac...
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