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Color me skeptical. Whenever I see this come up in a social media feed it's a UFO influencer. It's leaked out into the legacy news presenters who have great hai

by Zigurd 6mo ago

Color me skeptical. Whenever I see this come up in a social media feed it's a UFO influencer. It's leaked out into the legacy news presenters who have great haircuts and no critical thinking skills.

baq 6mo ago
[flagged]
- Zigurd 6mo ago
  "There's no basement at the Alamo."
- walletdrainer 6mo ago
  Pizzagate is still a (particularly nutty) conspiracy theory, if you genuinely believe otherwise you should seek urgent treatment.
  - gruez 6mo ago
    Unfortunately the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files has added fuel to pizzagate and adjacent "pedophile elites" conspiracy theories.
- OutOfHere 6mo ago
  Pizzagate still is a nonsense conspiracy.
- mikeyouse 6mo ago
  Michael Hastings was on DMT, smoking weed, and having a manic episode. His family was so worried about his erratic behavior that his brother had flown out to try to get him to check into rehab.. His brother met with Michael the day before he died and realized he was going to need more help, so he called his other brother to fly to LA to try to convince Michael to go to rehab or check into an inpatient psych ward. Michael snuck out in the middle of the night while they were waiting for their other brother and crashed his car into a tree. In his brother's own words, "I really rule out foul play entirely. I might have been suspicious if I hadn't been with him the day before he died. After all, he definitely was investigating and writing about a lot of sensitive subjects. But based on being with him and talking to people who were worried about him in the weeks leading up to his death, and being around him when he had had similar problems when he was younger, I was pretty much convinced that he wasn't in danger from any outside agency." It's an exceptionally dumb conspiracy theory among many other exceptionally dumb ones. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-hastings-interview_b_4261386 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-hastings-interview_b_...
  - b9apratus 6mo ago
    [dead]
    - k12sosse 6mo ago
      Go watch gangstalked people on YouTube. It is as close to 100% mental illness as you can get. They light holograms on fire. Find me one that doesn't look and act cuckoo and link it here.
      - b9apratus 6mo ago
        [dead]
walletdrainer 6mo ago
Same legacy news presenters which have a track record of pushing UFO conspiracy theories? CNN was one of the biggest pushers of this hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_drone_sightings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_drone_sight...
- HauntingPin 6mo ago
  CNN is basically on the same level as Fox News now. I'm not surprised. Here's a more substantial take on the whole thing that doesn't just blindly repeat everything without question: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientists/686885/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientis... You know, what journalism is actually supposed to be like. This BBC article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyw9rpdl4po https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyw9rpdl4po also has this tidbit: > "The US Top Secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce is ~700,000 people," science writer, investigator and pseudoscience debunker Mick West wrote on 16 April on his Substack. > "Ordinary mortality over 22 months predicts ~4,000 deaths, ~70 homicides, and ~180 suicides. The list has 10 … The deaths are real. The families' grief is real. The pattern is not."
  - OutOfHere 6mo ago
    If you are going to rudely link to a paywalled articles without an unpaywalled link to read each, then people can't be motivated to read them.
    - HauntingPin 6mo ago
      I guess being an asshole is just the standard now on HN? How is this attitude acceptable? What did I do to you? I didn't even realize it was paywalled until you mentioned it. But don't let that stop you from being a dick to somebody who's just trying to help fight misinformation. I guess I'll just go fuck myself. But here, your paywall free link: https://archive.is/KNECz https://archive.is/KNECz
      - 6mo ago
OutOfHere 6mo ago
The critical thinking skills you need are that they were connected to nuclear research. UFO is a distraction. The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether the deaths are connected.
- wat10000 6mo ago
  The critical thinking skills you need are the understanding that people die sometimes, and the question is how it compares to the normal rate of death among this population.
  - notahacker 6mo ago
    And not just rates, but also how they died and whether malicious actors were particularly likely to bother about disappearing them in ways which are actually really much harder to stage than happen naturally like disappearing someone trailwalking in mountains with friends, or whether someone so incompetent they were arrested on the retired professor's property a couple of months before he was shot and then caught still driving a car full of the victim's stuff after the murder was discovered is particularly likely to be part of a big cover up. An disappearance of a retired major general without his personal possessions and someone committing suicide whilst due to testify in court, sure those things warrant an investigation even though those things happen as the result of mundane crime or mental breakdowns as well as conspiracy. But another thing entirely for the "nothing much to see in those Epstein files" FBI to spin the grand narrative that connecting all these dots is a legitimate question because UFOlogists on YouTube.
petre 6mo ago
Maybe he wants to frame it as the scientists being abduced by aliens. We now know that the whole UFO narrative of the 90s was a government psy ops to distract people from stealth fighter testing and dismiss the sightings as 'aliens'.

by Zigurd 6mo ago

Color me skeptical. Whenever I see this come up in a social media feed it's a UFO influencer. It's leaked out into the legacy news presenters who have great haircuts and no critical thinking skills.

baq 6mo ago

[flagged]

Zigurd 6mo ago
"There's no basement at the Alamo."
walletdrainer 6mo ago
Pizzagate is still a (particularly nutty) conspiracy theory, if you genuinely believe otherwise you should seek urgent treatment.
- gruez 6mo ago
  Unfortunately the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files has added fuel to pizzagate and adjacent "pedophile elites" conspiracy theories.
OutOfHere 6mo ago
Pizzagate still is a nonsense conspiracy.
mikeyouse 6mo ago
Michael Hastings was on DMT, smoking weed, and having a manic episode. His family was so worried about his erratic behavior that his brother had flown out to try to get him to check into rehab.. His brother met with Michael the day before he died and realized he was going to need more help, so he called his other brother to fly to LA to try to convince Michael to go to rehab or check into an inpatient psych ward. Michael snuck out in the middle of the night while they were waiting for their other brother and crashed his car into a tree. In his brother's own words, "I really rule out foul play entirely. I might have been suspicious if I hadn't been with him the day before he died. After all, he definitely was investigating and writing about a lot of sensitive subjects. But based on being with him and talking to people who were worried about him in the weeks leading up to his death, and being around him when he had had similar problems when he was younger, I was pretty much convinced that he wasn't in danger from any outside agency." It's an exceptionally dumb conspiracy theory among many other exceptionally dumb ones. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-hastings-interview_b_4261386 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-hastings-interview_b_...
- b9apratus 6mo ago
  [dead]
  - k12sosse 6mo ago
    Go watch gangstalked people on YouTube. It is as close to 100% mental illness as you can get. They light holograms on fire. Find me one that doesn't look and act cuckoo and link it here.
    - b9apratus 6mo ago
      [dead]

walletdrainer 6mo ago

Same legacy news presenters which have a track record of pushing UFO conspiracy theories? CNN was one of the biggest pushers of this hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_drone_sightings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_drone_sight...

HauntingPin 6mo ago
CNN is basically on the same level as Fox News now. I'm not surprised. Here's a more substantial take on the whole thing that doesn't just blindly repeat everything without question: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientists/686885/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientis... You know, what journalism is actually supposed to be like. This BBC article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyw9rpdl4po https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyw9rpdl4po also has this tidbit: > "The US Top Secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce is ~700,000 people," science writer, investigator and pseudoscience debunker Mick West wrote on 16 April on his Substack. > "Ordinary mortality over 22 months predicts ~4,000 deaths, ~70 homicides, and ~180 suicides. The list has 10 … The deaths are real. The families' grief is real. The pattern is not."
- OutOfHere 6mo ago
  If you are going to rudely link to a paywalled articles without an unpaywalled link to read each, then people can't be motivated to read them.
  - HauntingPin 6mo ago
    I guess being an asshole is just the standard now on HN? How is this attitude acceptable? What did I do to you? I didn't even realize it was paywalled until you mentioned it. But don't let that stop you from being a dick to somebody who's just trying to help fight misinformation. I guess I'll just go fuck myself. But here, your paywall free link: https://archive.is/KNECz https://archive.is/KNECz
    - 6mo ago

OutOfHere 6mo ago

The critical thinking skills you need are that they were connected to nuclear research. UFO is a distraction. The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether the deaths are connected.

wat10000 6mo ago
The critical thinking skills you need are the understanding that people die sometimes, and the question is how it compares to the normal rate of death among this population.
- notahacker 6mo ago
  And not just rates, but also how they died and whether malicious actors were particularly likely to bother about disappearing them in ways which are actually really much harder to stage than happen naturally like disappearing someone trailwalking in mountains with friends, or whether someone so incompetent they were arrested on the retired professor's property a couple of months before he was shot and then caught still driving a car full of the victim's stuff after the murder was discovered is particularly likely to be part of a big cover up. An disappearance of a retired major general without his personal possessions and someone committing suicide whilst due to testify in court, sure those things warrant an investigation even though those things happen as the result of mundane crime or mental breakdowns as well as conspiracy. But another thing entirely for the "nothing much to see in those Epstein files" FBI to spin the grand narrative that connecting all these dots is a legitimate question because UFOlogists on YouTube.

petre 6mo ago

Maybe he wants to frame it as the scientists being abduced by aliens. We now know that the whole UFO narrative of the 90s was a government psy ops to distract people from stealth fighter testing and dismiss the sightings as 'aliens'.