Pat @Pat@qoto.org

spoiler - explaining the joke...

*** spoiler ***
I don't mean to make fun of Carol, or of people from New Hampshire, but really, there's no "R" in "media".

(meteor outlets)

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NASA needs to launch a project to investigate the sources of these meteors.

(punchline is at the end of the video)

#NASA #space #word #planet #meteorite #cspan #telescope #joke

(meteor image CC-BT-3.0, Navicore; cspan clip fair use)

* "were", not "we're"

There's a huge plot hole in this episode. The whole point of the thing is that the word "serve" has two different meanings in English but the aliens don't speak English. So in their language the same word wouldn't have the two different meanings, so the whole point of the plot twist doesn't make any sense. Also they are using cryptographers to try to decode the alien language which is stupid because the aliens wouldn't use cryptography to write their book, it would just be encoded in their language, not encrypted.

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Twilight Zone, To Serve Man (1962)

A lot of people rate this episode as one of their favorite Twilight Zone episodes. It's about a first contact with an alien species that comes to Earth. I recently found out that this was based on a short story of the same name written by Damon Knight a dozen years earlier and it pretty much follows very closely to that story, accept in the short story the aliens are humanoid pigs while in the Twilight Zone episode they're just tall, 350-pound humanoids called Kanimits.

The Kanimits don’t talk like humans, they use a voice synthesizer. They promise the people of Earth that they will share their advanced technology with humans for the betterment of humanity. But people are skeptical and they give the alien representative a lie detector test which the alien passes.

This episode is highly recommended.

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Accessible video description:

a black and white video of one of the aliens who is seated with wires hooked up to him taking a lie detector test, the alien is dressed in a white robe and has a large, bald head with dark circles under his eyes, two humans are in the room operating the equipment which shows the needles of the chart recorder on a polygraph machine.

(fair use clip from the episode in which the alien demonstrates how to pass a polygraph test.)

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #ET #extraterrestrial #firstcontact #epicurian #UN #crypto #LostInTranslation #TruthBeTold

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Wouldn't it be ironic if COVID-19 was actually 100% fatal and that these initial infections during the first few years of the pandemic we're just the infection phase of a virus that goes into a dormant stage for about a decade, only to re-emerge and kill every single person who got infected?

Wouldn't that be ironic?

#COVID19 #respirators #N95 #pandemic #irony #vax #masks #CDC

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For those of you who are not familiar with the story discussed in this thread, here's a link...

https://thehill.com/opinion/4038159-stunning-ufo-crash-retrieval-allegations-deemed-credible-urgent/

#TruthBeTold #craft #weaselalien

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#TruthBeTold

All of these quotes that I have just tooted out under the hashtag #weaselalien were the exact quotes that that guy, David Grusch and others have said that the media have picked up on and assumed meant that space aliens had landed on earth and that the government had taken their spaceship and are hiding it somewhere and not telling anybody about it.

All of those quotes are innocuous, they're just carefully worded and placed together to make everyone believe that they're talking about space aliens.

That's right, this guy, David Grusch, and the media are doing a big Truth-Be-Told on the whole country! 😂

#craft
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#TruthBeTold = A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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#TruthBeTold

The International Space Station and other space vehicles were assembled in space, so we are already making space vehicles in space.

Here's another quote...

... he had briefed Defence Department officials, regarding objects from "off-world vehicles not made on this Earth."

#craft #weaselalien

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#TruthBeTold

It would be foolish to assume that the US Defense Department does not have plans for capturing enemy satellites and analyzing them or to use them in some manner to our own advantage.

Here's another quote...

... he knew of a secret government program "involving the analysis and exploitation of materials recovered from off-world craft."

#craft #weaselalien

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#TruthBeTold

The Joro spider (Trichonephila clavata), is a large species of spider from Japan that has come to the US. They have exceptionally strong silk and create unusual webs.

Small, young Jobo spiders may use ballooning to disperse themselves. Ballooning is when a spider releases a long strand or strands of web to catch the wind and float away for long distances. The spiders are little pilots flying their vehicles. It would be incorrect parlance to call those spacecraft.

This exotic spider silk and the ballooning have been studied for a variety of applications.

It is likely that the US Defense Dept. has studied this for possible military applications, such as for dispersal of listening devices or for use in quickly extricating soldiers from a battlefield.

As part of this research, scientists would need to recover those little spider crafts to study them.

Here's another quote...

"These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, it’s probably not the right parlance, but no-kidding, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed."

#craft #weaselalien

#TruthBeTold

"My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone."

This quote was made in reference to the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

An overwhelming majority of scientists believe this. There is nothing extraordinary about this statement.

#craft #weaselalien

#truthbetold

"There is a sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. populace, which is extremely unethical and immoral."

This statement doesn't seem extraordinary. I can imagine that there is some foreign government or entity somewhere who is probably doing this.

#craft #weaselalien

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#truthbetold

"Well, naturally, when you recover something that's either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots and, believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it's true."

That statement sounds 100% true to me.

#craft #weaselalien

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It's still rough out there. Please remember to wear your respirator.

#COVID19 #pandemic #N95

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#TruthBeTold

Virginia Caroline Rappe died at the young age of 30 under suspicious circumstances. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was falsely accused of her death in a widely publicized Hollywood scandal, but was later completely exonerated by a jury. Had she not died at such a young age, today she would be 131 years old.

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#TruthBeTold = A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

#hollywood #scandal #silent #film #death #injustice #old #age #movies #celebrity #immortality

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

This is one of the better-made films that I've seen in a while. The acting in this film is world class starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in the lead roles, with Anthony Mackie in the primary supporting role. John Slattery gives a good supporting performance as one the antagonists and character actor Terence Stamp delivers a stunning performance as the evil guy. The writing is very good with regard to the characters and dialogue and there's great chemistry between Damon and Blunt as the romantic couple. Overall it's very well made.

There are not a lot of technology devices shown in this film. In fact almost all of them are shown in this unauthorized trailer attached this toot. One of the issues that people might have with this film is that the technology that is demonstrated in the movie is done in a manner that makes it look like it's magic or supernatural because there aren't devices that are associated with it. (kind of hard to explain without spoilers)

In any case this film requires a little bit more suspension of disbelief than your typical scifi just because of the mode in which it's done.

I highly recommend this one.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #film #movie #time #lobotomy #reset #micromanage #senate #extortion #chairman #aliens
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accessible video description:
fade in Emily Blunt's character as a ballet dancer with Matt Damon's character watching her, Terence Stamp’s character walks up and makes a comment to Damon about Blunt, then Damon and Blunt are on a bus flirting, the bus pulls up to a stop and Damon spill some coffee on Blunt's lap, cut to Damon walking into an office where some of the people are frozen in place, there are men in helmets with devices that are scanning the people who are frozen in place, the men look startled by Damon, there's a man in a suit, John Slattery, who orders others to grab Damon, cut to Damon walking through a medium-sized crowd of people to give a speech as a candidate for Senator with the Brooklyn bridge in the background, then Anthony Mackey is sitting in a very large opulent library looking pensive as music plays, he gets up to leave and walks through the large library, then cut to Damon and Mackey talking in a bar, Damon is wearing a baseball cap, Mackey is wearing a suit, then a woman bartender asks them if they need something, then Mackey's character says that they can’t talk there, and to meet him later and he leaves, then Damon and Mackey meet on a boat in the harbor, cut to Damon and Blunt dancing in a large crowded dance club with flashing lights, then cut to two men in suits looking at a book that is displaying animated graphics and looks very high tech, they are talking about inflection points, then Damon and Blunt walk out of a subway onto a city street as tense music plays, they are moving quickly then a quick cut to men in suits busting open a door, then cut back to Damon and Blunt running through the city, Blunt stops running and looks visibly confused and distressed Damon convinces her to keep running, so they continue running and almost get hit by a car but continue running, then fade out and fade in to the movie title The Adjustment Bureau, in a gold typeface.
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**** Content warning: flashing lights ****

@freemo

I have a user interface suggestion for Mastodon.

Currently, the little box where you enter your toot text is on the left side of the screen. This means that the information from that little box goes into your left eye (mostly) and is transferred to the right hemisphere of your brain. The problem is that for most people language processing is in the left hemisphere, which means all that information has to cross the corpus callosum to get to the left side of the brain to get processed. For someone like me with dyslexia that really screws things up and causes me to drop words and makes it very difficult to use.

So my suggestion is to put the little box on the right hand side of the screen or in the middle, or give the user an option as to placement and size of that little box.

That's my suggestion.

(Sometimes I write stuff in a separate window using a word processor and then copy it over to the little box, but that is kind of tedious, especially for short, quick toots.)

#mastodon #development #UX #UI #fedi #software

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is an avid history buff. He studied history at Harvard and probably would have been a history professor if he had not chosen law as a profession.

Here he gives a brief, careful analysis of the US Civil War.

#civilwar #scotus #history #law #satire #oboe

In case you're wondering, Congress choose #4. They just decided to cut food for poor people; and they kept politician's salaries, bombs, and tax loopholes for the rich.

Put nobody ever pays attention and we're more than a year from the next election so voters will forget by then and those fuckers will get re-elected again.