I just had a thought like "What if some UFO aduction experiences people claim to have are actually people being kidnapped by the CIA" 
The kind of stories I'm thinking about often go like: "I was driving on an empty road in the middle of nowhere. I saw a bright light," and then either "I remember nothing but had lost time" or "I remember being experimented on by aliens and then put back in my car."
My tinfoil hat side is thinking like, these stories started happening around the time the US admitted to experimenting with abuse, torture and psychoactive drugs in Project MK-Ultra. Alien abduction stories were the most prevalent during this time. (CW: Just a heads up. If you want to read the rest of this post or anything else about MK-Ultra, be warned that it's pretty horrible, and involves some of the most disgusting torture I have ever read about. Death to America.)
Of the surviving documents released to the public about MK-Ultra, the CIA admits to: "kidnapping people it deemed "expendable" to undertake various types of torture and human experimentation on them. The prisoners were interrogated while being administered psychoactive drugs, electroshocked and subjected to extremes of temperature, sensory isolation and the like to develop a better understanding of how to destroy and to control human minds."
Part of me wonders how many of these alien abduction stories are just people being kidnapped, drugged with powerful hallucinogens, experimented on and then released with the suggestion conditioned into their mind that it was aliens.
The most famous alien abduction story is that of Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple that were both civil rights leaders, definitely people that the CIA would want to fuck with, especially during rising tensions with the Soviet Union, the US government was suspicious of minorities and anyone interested in their rights.
the CIA backs and boosts absolute nonsense conspiracy theories like flat earth, tin foil hats, and Obama being a lizard to discredit the notion of conspiracy theory entirely
I absolutely believe this. It's a low cost move that pays huge dividends in convincing "smart" people that conspiracies never happen.
I remember seeing this described as a strategy in one of those declassified docs. This one is legit.
Sometimes I wonder whether some of the very popular conspiracy theories are also this. The conspiracy theorists are super attached to 9/11 and the JFK assassination, but not to the incredibly suspicious shit that happened right after (Iraqi WMDs, Lee Harvey Oswald murder).
There IS evidence of that lol. All the domestic counter-intelligence and psyop point to exactly that. And they literally have memos saying they planned on turning the term “conspiracy theory” to mean “crazy nonsense”. Like actual documents saying: we’re doing this!
CIA literally created the UFO conspiracy and drove people to mental breakdowns making them chase lights in the desert for decades to give cover for weapons testing
I mean I wouldn’t say that…. They certainly helped push the most crazy and less credible people and stories. Also discrediting the more credible ones. But I have seen shit that cant be easily explained, and I’ve read and heard many more stories as well.
I think it’s part of their tactic. Just like the “evil pedo satanists” conspiracy, where actual regular evil pedos actually do run the world. Not for their pedophilia, or because of it, it’s still capitalism in the end. But like, push a crazy conspiracy to hide a real one y’know?
I mean, I can tell you but you have to promise not to look at me like I’m crazy lol
Back in late 2020 I was living on the last floor of an old building with my girlfriend. We were getting ready to go to bed, which means my last cigarette of the day. So I went outside to a little area we had, like a miniscule terrace.
I was smoking and looking over to the dark horizon, to a bridge near our home. The clouds that day were REALLY weird. They completely blanketed the sky and were really low and dense. But the night was not that dark, almost with a brownish light.
Anyways, after a bit, I saw over the distance after the bridge a thing. It was far, but at first it looked like a bunch of black balloons floating. And the “balloons” got nearer and nearer.
I’m terrible at measuring distances, but when it was maybe 100-150m away (I won’t convert to American measures soz), it started to shift in a weeeird way. The small roundish forms that were circling each other (like balloons) started to gather into a single shape. When this happened I ran and screamed for my girlfriend.
I quickly went back to observe the “thing” and I saw the singular black blob continue to move closer. I could now see it wasn’t a shiny black sphere as I thought, it really looked more like a hole in the clouds. Like an endless black hole. It wobbled and shifted a bit, never a perfect sphere.
Soon after my girlfriend arrived (both of us silent, mouths opened just freaking out), the blob “spit” out a smaller sphere. The smaller sphere started to perfectly orbit the bigger blob. And both continued to move closer.
Eventually the two blobs were right above us, maybe 50m above. And THIS is where it starts to get really weird.
The bigger blob shifted shapes again. And it looked like a human. Head, arms and legs. Then the smaller blob became a smaller human shaped thing. To highlight, my girlfriend is much shorter than me. In any case, after they shifted into human shaped holes, they started to dance. They held hands and danced around in a circle. Honestly seemingly very happy.
The only thing on my mind at this moment was “this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen”. I really think I was smiling.
After maybe a minute, the shapes stopped dancing. The bigger one seemed to look directly at us. And then it waved. I waved back. I felt this was maybe the most momentous moment of my life. But I looked back, at my girlfriend, and she was crying in shock. That brought me down real quick and I was worried for her. I tried to calm her down. Then I looked back at the shapes.
They looked defeated, arms and shoulders down. They slowly became spheres again, and the smaller one went “in” the bigger one. The now one sphere seemed to go up and up, slowly. But it really only looked like a small hole getting smaller. I kept looking at it for maybe 20 minutes as it disappeared completely.
I asked my girlfriend why she was so afraid at that moment, and she said she felt they were going to take me away. I think I kinda felt that as well… but they didn’t want to make her sad I guess.
Idk man, I really searched and researched for months after that. I still have absolutely no fucking clue what it was. I don’t think “aliens” in any way other than “non-human conscious intelligences”.
Damn thanks for sharing I asked because some people have these experiences but I never have. This is such a unique story you have as well. Really wild
All I can say is look more at the sky dude. I look at the sky a lot and I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit. I also feel if you “want” to see them(?) they appear more. Idk. I really feel the problem of consciousness and UFOs (or the phenomenon) are related.
But yes this was by far the craziest thing that has ever happened to me.
I meant that they created the concept of UFO conspiracy, the people researching UFOs were already there but CIA took advantage of them to discredit any sighting as ramblings of crazy conspiracy theorists
Going as far as keeping active contact and feeding "leaked information" with prominent UFO researchers, sending literal men in black to their doors, and orchestrating UFO contacts
Tbh most of this is shit I've picked up over the years from blog posts and youtube videos, but I'm like 75% certain this had actual sources, I'm just too high to verify anything
I'm fully aware how that last paragraph sounds like, but this is the one stereotype I don't mind representing
Ah we 100% agree then hahaahah
And yes, even the stuff picked up from getting high and falling into rabbit holes. Tbh, after sometime it gets kinda easy to spot bullshit and psyops.
I’m sure the truth about the phenomenon is not at all what the mainstream and even the “main” conspiracies portray it to be.
What I always go back to is the foo fighters and similar phenomena, crop circles and the nuke orbs. Those are the hardest to explain away imo, and I feel they mean something more than other shit.
But my personal experience also makes me think back to the ancient texts, the Vedas, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian texts etc. And idk, maybe the phenomenon is “angels and demons”. Or how I see it, weird non-physical or material stuff, in “higher” dimensions or consciousnesses. And not “aliens” with starships from other worlds.
Could you post a link to something on the nuke orbs you mentioned? I was not able to find anything that sounded similar from a quick search
You can search for “Robert Salas UFO” to start the rabbit hole, but basically there are a lot of military personnel that worked near nuclear facilities or even transported nukes that say orbs appeared and disassembled or deactivated them. Sometimes even doing this to missiles mid-flight during testing.
There was video of this, I remember seeing it years ago. I tried looking for it, but just found dead links to deleted YouTube videos…
The thing that gets me is how many US UFO sightings were made in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War. There has to be at least some "what if the Soviets have superweapons" type of thinking there.
I think it has more to do with nukes tbh. The concentration of sightings around areas related to nukes is much greater (research facilities, test sites, where the nukes themselves are stored etc.).
anyone with examples of the CIA funding or pushing weird conspiracy theories, please post them, I would love to read about that
I also think they boost right wing propagandists like Pragur
the trudeau castro thing, it doesnt effect anything really but the idea is pretty funny
Wrong thread, there is enough evidence for that one to be highly plausible.
Also not harmless, this is highly harmful to Fidel's legacy just like his other fail-children
Dude had 11 children with an uncountable number of women. He never was a family man.
Isn't the timing off? I thought his mom only ever met Castro after he was born, or something like that
Correct. There is sufficient evidence to prove against it, and not really any in favour other than Fidel being charismatic as hell and Trudeau kinda looking like him a bit
Is there? I've not seen anything which counters this version of events: https://medium.com/@leibowitt/of-course-fidel-castro-is-justin-trudeaus-dad-nobody-has-debunked-anything-4db6fc8a9042
Yeah, and really, PET, Justin and Castro just all look like each other.
Add another point to the "french canadians are actually latinos" pile
I think there's probably a lot more human experimentation going on than any of us would like to think.
I've always similarly assumed the number of human clones running around is higher than is known or acknowledged.
Not like, body double shit or anything like that. Just people out in the world who happen to be cloned from someone else. If they could do it with a sheep decades ago, there's no way some obscure billionaire freak hasn't at least tried to bankroll the creation of unregistered human beings for dubious purposes.
Cloning has a very high failure rate particularly among large animals. That and humanities long gestation period and slow growth rate make it unlikely. But maybe, I wouldn't put it past them
A clone would still need to be in someone's womb to gestate, so why would it be any less registered than a regular baby? Just fuck people and enslave your own babies at that point, it's an American tradition. If anything clones would just draw more suspicion.
I'm sure Musk or some other billionaire tried to recreate the the 6th day, and got the perfect cloning part done, but gave up and had their clones killed after they couldn't get the memory uploads working.
Oh yeah it's no secret that Australia is a huge cuck for America at the very least.
It is too late for me to dive further, and I would want more firm evidence than WSWS, but I was under the belief that it was known the US was behind it.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/24/coup-j24.html
The reason movie theaters switched from reel projection to digital projection was to undermine the projectors' union since digital projection can just be automated.
Popular media whether it's music or film or whatever is decided by studios and labels as opposed to organic popularity. (Obviously not all cases are true, but I feel there's a lot of cases where it is true.)
music definitely. radio stations have always been paid to put songs on the air.
It was called 'payola' back in the day. Probably still is.
Wikipedia has a section for its current practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola#Criticism_of_U.S._laws
Since returning to reddit a few months ago after a hiatus of a few years I’ve definitely started to wonder. So much of that site is so circle-jerky, they just talk about the same shit over and over again. Is it because they’re just redditors, they’re bots, or is it a little of both?
You know how cheap electronics (like a lot of Halloween decorations) specify not to use rechargeable batteries? I think that's just a ploy by Big Battery to sell more batteries.
Rechargeable AAs and AAAs do have a lower voltage, although IME there's no real difference in operation.
i always had to recharge gamepad batteries more often than i "should" have compared to how often disposables needed replaced
I've been using the same pack of rechargeable AAs in my Steam Controller for years, though now that you mention it it does seem like I have to change them out pretty frequently.
That 99.9% of the time social media "virality" is just admin from YouTube and TikTok manually choosing which of their favorite influencers are forced upon users. I'm not even talking execs here, just low-ranking code monkeys and paper pushers on a power trip.
That most Meta workers abuse their power and read users' DMs. Pretty sure this has been confirmed, though not by Zuck and the gang—just random ex-employees. I knew a guy who worked for Facebook who my gut-instinct says was cyber-stalking me. He let a piece of really personal info about me slip during a convo. It wasn't a dark secret, just something that I'd barely told anyone. I assumed that maybe my friend had told him, but she said she'd hardly spoken to him.
That most Meta workers abuse their power and read users' DMs
Btw this is workers in like every industry with access to user data. Tesla workers sharing car video recordings amongst each other for laughs https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/6/23672760/tesla-employees-share-vehicle-recordings-privacy
One of my friends while working for our university also looked up the transcripts of her friends and even took requests for lookups on anybody from her friends
This is so wild to me. I used to be a sadmin (a sysadmin with more depression) and the culture of the trade where I worked was extremely rigid. We had the power to read everyone's emails, spy on financials etc whatever we wanted but if you didn't diligently practice the art of unseeing when digging around to fix something, or ever mentioned something you should not know you were instantly a pariah and fired shortly afterwards.
Even the goofiest people that liked to laze around and play office pranks would become rigidly formal and serious if it seemed like someone's privacy might be about to get violated. Similar to doctors/lawyers clamming up.
Idk if that was just the culture of the past, when the position was more of an estoteric thing you were inducted into? or if the company I worked for was uniquely good about it. Everyone I met at conferences was like that too though.
One of my friends while working for our university also looked up the transcripts of her friends and even took requests for lookups on anybody from her friends
Not surprised. My university had to redact the addresses from its student directory cause creeps were going to people’s houses and doing other weird, predatory shit. It was interesting looking up rich kids’ houses though. However, I now realize that Zillow stalking is a creepy violation and I regret taking part even though I wasn’t physically going anywhere. Too many people were using class division as an excuse to prey on women (and some men) who they found hot.
Remember when iRobot admins leaked a video of a random women naked on the shitter? No doubt people dig through that shit when bored.
At my job i get access to addresses and phone numbers and names, so i always call my coworkers over when someone has a funny surname or odd street for their address
Imo, late-2000s YouTube was organic compared to what it’s become.
There is a reason the government wants intelligence assets on the boards there. Everyone is getting a taste
i'm convinced kurt cobain was transfem. for more on this, read the excellent piece kurt cobain will have his revenge on the straights
I made an offhanded comment about Kurt being trans in a transmasc subreddit once and it did mot go down well lol
This is a fact, Kurt Cobain was trans. Nobody is allowed to debate this, lest they reveal themselves to be "cringe"
Love this post <3
How microwave ovens often have a “popcorn” button, only for most microwave popcorn brands strongly warning against the use of the popcorn button. Makes me think the oven manufacturers have an irrational hatred for popcorn enjoyers and made the popcorn button activate a secret overpowered microwave mode to slowly kill the innocent popcorn enjoyers, and the popcorn brands are fighting back by quietly warning the popcorn enjoyers of the evil microwave oven manufacturer’s evil plot to kill them
Power to the popcorn 🤘
Technology Connections just put a video out about this!
TL;DW
Popcorn manufacturers don't know what kinda microwave you have--one with a good popcorn button or not--so they err on the side of caution.
There are three types of popcorn buttons:
- Purely timer based: these suck and should generally be avoided. A telltale sign is if they ask the size of the bag prior to popping.
- Moisture sensor based: these can work pretty well. They detect the puff of moisture that escapes from the bag once it pops open and then use a short timer from there. Depending on where the moisture sensor is, it might slightly overdo it, but it's probably still fine.
- Microphone based: might find these in fancier microwaves--these do exactly what it says on the bag, listening for a gap over greater than two seconds between pops before stopping. The gold standard!
The main takeaway from the video is that there's no harm in trying the popcorn button (and other such features) on your microwave. Just press it and see what happens--if it sucks, well, you can stop it before it burns the popcorn, and now you know. Experiment! Maybe even read the manual if you're so inclined. You might just find some neat features you paid for that are actually worth using!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
No music becomes popular organically on tiktok. I believe that every song that becomes popular thought tiktok is either tailor-made to be easy to put in to tiktoks (like having some very widespread, easy to use message or a dramatic transition), or record label pay tiktok to push videos that include their songs. My reasons for believing this is that nearly every song that becomes popular on tiktok is garbage and no one can genuinely like that shit
objectively correct, met someone who's job it is to select stuff to give to the higher ups to promote on featured
I don't know about tiktok per se, but that "Rich Men North of Richmond" song that was a thing a few months back was 100% pushed by right wing funders to make it happen the same way as they do with NYT best sellers.
tailor-made
Taylor Swift-made
Also wtf are you talking about, Planet of the Bass is the song of our time.
Planet of the Bass unironicially slaps, and maybe that's just because it's made to appeal to me but I love it
My tiktoks are unironically somehow all stuff like Duster, car seat headrest, sweet trip, lil peep, slowdive
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US intelligence knew (if not made possible) what was going to happen on 9/11
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Isreal intelligence knew (if not made possible) what was going to happen on 10/7
And both of those things were the result of US intervention to "stop the spread of communism"
ok going full tinfoil now... but in the second case I think it's more likely that the escalation was wanted cuz Israel is aware of the downfall of the US; which will eventually lead to them not being able to deliver the needed support at a later time.
is this referring to Israel funding and fostering Hamas as a counterbalance against the PLO?
I was more reffering to the founding of Israel by the West in order to give themselves a foothold in the Middle East
Not using RFC 3339? Unfortunate, but not the end of the world
Mixing date formats in the same post? Immediate
Isreal intelligence knew (if not made possible) what was going to happen on 10/7
Is this even a conspiracy theory? I thought it was confirmed that Israeli intelligence told Bibi something was going to happen and he just ignored them.
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When Blizzard was gearing up for the original release of Overwatch, they discretely funded a ton of porn as part of their marketing for the game. There's no other explanation for why those characters were so prevalent and then dropped off so hard.
Dead Internet Theory is at least partially true. Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook all have scores of bots pumping engagement numbers with algorithmically generated content that is nearly undetectable in part because it's so prevalent that we've all learned to think that that's just how people on the internet talk. Most of the twitter weirdos people get mad at have just been bots going off on a weird word-association tangent.
I think they were just high-quality models of hot women and the game was highly publicized so they were popular targets. As the popularity of the game waned and new models from other games were released, you saw a drop off of porn of the Overwatch cast.
Second part is 100% true.
Reddit literally has bots that copy entire posts, comment threads, and rough upvote ratios. You can't tell it's fake because it's an exact copy of an actual human-generated conversation
We can't say for sure that they were releasing it to juice to numbers. However you know the guys drinking human milk out of the lactation fridge were making it and probbaly selling old versions to the models to porn studios.
I too enjoy the lore of the traditional UFO stuff. It interests me because of it's development coinciding with birth and growth of the leviathan-like American national security state at the beginning of the Cold War. I want to try writing some sci-fi around it for my own enjoyment, specifically on the present generation of politicians fascination with it.
I want to someday share some ideas for the world building with my fellow Hexbears, since I want to explore the political economy aspect of this scifi topic in the story. I thought that would be interesting idea to look at in a community of materialist thinkers.
The story would look at the intersection between defense industry capitalists and the national security state on the topic, as it's often a revolving door. Not so much informal gatherings like those discussed in conspiracy theory lore.
No problem. I was a bit confused but, replied to be polite.
