Metabunk
Debunked: Biden signing "Blank" Executive Orders
In the C-Span footage, the bright lights and the low resolution of the video made it look like Biden was signing blank executive orders. This led some of the more imaginative QAnon holdouts to suggest they were actually blank (and hence part of some kind of fake Presidency). However, a higher resolution photo shows the text.
The text is also briefly visible in the video as he closes the document folder, so the sheet is briefly not being directly lit.
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Debunked: Biden in "Fake" Oval Office
Unwilling to accept that Biden is now President, several people have been sharing memes suggesting that recent photos and video of Biden in the Oval Office are fake. The evidence presented seems large to be things like noticing the wallpaper was different years ago, or that when viewed from a low angle you see more trees, and from a high angle you see people and cars. There's also a claim that German TV released a photo of the "set"
Source:Reddit.
This is indeed a backstage image of a fake oval office from Germany. It's the set used by the German program Bilt, for their election night coverage. Note the four people in the image above, here they are on German TV.
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Explained: 9:33 AM ET Time on NPR Story about Storming the Capitol
A "Live Update" page on NPR keeps the same URL, but the content changes at the day progresses. This allows people to keep tabs on a story by refreshing the page, or by the page auto-refreshing. The original story was posted at 9:33 AM ET, with the headline "Diehard Trump Supporters Gather In The Nation's Capital To Protest Election Results".
Through the day the story was updated, with the last update at 3:08 PM ET, shortly after rioters were photographed on the Senate chamber floor. The headline for the final version of the story was...
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Blue UFO Over Hawaii
A UFO seen in Hawaii looks similar to an LED kite to me, appearing as a curved line of light that changes shape.
The loop above has been stabilized, the apparent jitter comes from a combination of motion blur (from camera motion, not the object moving) and loss of focus.
Here it's compared to another LED kite:
Article: Misitina Sape told Hawaii News Now she captured the image at 8:26 p.m. near Haleakala Avenue in Nanakuli.
Not long after, a woman named Moriah spotted what looked like the same object passing over Princess Kahanu Estates.
Here's some LED kites
...
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Debunked: 94% of Fulton County Ballots Manually Adjudicated [It's a Process all Batches go Through]
https://www.c-span.org/video/?477819-1/fulton-county-georgia-election-update
The false claim that 94% of Fulton County ballots needed manual review and adjustment comes from a misunderstanding of what Richard Barron, the director of elections in Fulton County, said on Nov 4, 2020 (the day after the election). It's right at the start:
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Debunked: "Missile Strike" caused Nashville Explosion
The idea that a city of 700,000 people would somehow fail to notice a missile being fired a an AT&T building, or even the idea that some powerful and secretive cabal would think that nobody would notice, is pretty obviously ridiculous. But missiles are a common target for conspiracy theorists and so it should have been un surprising that some people say that the explosion in Nashville was not only from Anthony Warner's RV, but was augmented, or perhaps caused, by a missile.
The evidence presented for this is tenuous. Firstly there's the idea that the explosion happened across the road from the RV, an idea that took hold because of video showing a the central fireball being obscured by a dust cloud - discussed and debunked in another thread.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/de...sion-was-across-the-street-from-the-rv.11516/
The second piece of evidence is what looks like a trail of smoke that appears very shortly...
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Debunked: Nashville Explosion was "Across the Street" from the RV
The following video is a cropped and slowed version of the official Metro Nashville PD video of the RV explosion. I've also corrected it for the camera motion from the blast, so you can more accurate see where things are before and after.
Some people have claimed that the explosion comes from "across the street". This is an understandable mistake. If you overlay a before and "during" shot, you see a portion where the fireball is visible on the right, but the RV was on the left.
However even in this comparison, it should be obvious what is going on. The fireball is there, but it's blocked in the center by...
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Is Falun Gong Behind Seth Holehouse's "The Plot to Steal America"? It looks like it.
A slickly produced video titled "The Plot to Steal America", which regurgitated many election conspiracy theories and pointed the finger at China, was shared in a tweet by Donald Trump on December 23, 2020.
The video is narrated and ostensibly created by Seth Holehouse and his web site "Man in America." Holehouse is a member of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa), a "new religious movement" that many people have described as being a cult. Several people have noted this connection and suggested that the video is simply disinformation, propaganda from Falun Gong. Falun Gong has a long history of attacking the communist government of China, and more recently of strongly supporting Trump.
It appears that attempts have been made by Falun...
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Explained: 82nd Airborne: "A Storm Is Coming" - Operation Devil Storm
"'Storm coming" is a joke I use whenever the the weather looks a bit dark. It's an old Yorkshire reference (like "there's trouble at 'mill"), a folksy comment meant to invoke the idea of a gruff old farmer looking out over the field at oncoming clouds.
It's also a very common metaphorical phrase used in movies and books. A search of the movie/TV data base QuoDB returns over a thousand results.
It also represents a foundational belief in the QAnon theory, dating back to a random comment Trump made about "The Calm Before The Storm" in 2017
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'Fast Movers' and 'Transmedium' Vehicles
In an article that was widely anticipated by the UFO community, Tim McMillan of The Debrief provides several nuggets of stories and information that will surely excite many, and provide a welcome distraction for some reporters, but ultimately does not advance the quest for actual physical evidence. The sources were either anonymous, vague, or speculative.
Article: Given the report’s classification and their discussion of a “sensitive intelligence matter,” the officials we spoke with did so only under strict conditions of anonymity.
There are descriptions of two photos (but not the actual photos)
Firstly a silver...
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Burst Pipe Conspiracy Theories, Fulton County's State Farm Arena, Georgia
Article: Statement Regarding Absentee Ballot Tabulation at State Farm Arena
NOV 3, 2020
At approximately 6:07 a.m., the staff at State Farm Arena notified Fulton County Registration & Elections of a water leak affecting the room where absentee ballots were being tabulated. The State Farm Arena team acted swiftly to remediate the issue. Within 2 hours, repairs were complete. No ballots were damaged, nor was any equipment affected. There was a brief delay in tabulating absentee ballots while the repairs were being conducted.
Tonight Fulton County will report results for approximately 86,000 absentee ballots, as well as Election Day and Early Voting results. These represent the vast majority of ballots cast within Fulton County.
The above statement was posted on the State Farm Arena web site on Oct 3, but it's...
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Debunked: Trump's Claim of "1,126,940 votes created out of thin air" in PA
This false claim was Tweeted by Trump yesterday:
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332552283553476608
In one of the most factually inaccurate Presidential tweets of all time, Trump retweeted an image posted by PA State Senator Doug Mastriano, and claimed it shows that 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. Or course if this were true then something would be terribly wrong with the election, but of course it's not.
Here's the image in questions:
The numbers in the table are mostly correct (for the time, they are all slightly higher now, on 11/28), but for some reason report Trump's election-day votes are listed as higher than they were. Here's the official figures:
Or in a similar...
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332552283553476608
In one of the most factually inaccurate Presidential tweets of all time, Trump retweeted an image posted by PA State Senator Doug Mastriano, and claimed it shows that 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. Or course if this were true then something would be terribly wrong with the election, but of course it's not.
Here's the image in questions:
The numbers in the table are mostly correct (for the time, they are all slightly higher now, on 11/28), but for some reason report Trump's election-day votes are listed as higher than they were. Here's the official figures:
Or in a similar...
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Debunked: Crowder's "Fraud Week" Title Graphic (and Why it Matters)
Steven Crowder, a political comedian, has a logo currently being used to introduce segments of his show where he promotes false or unproven claims of election fraud. It shows a red line for Trump and a blue line for Biden. Red is safely ahead, but then blue suddenly jumps up into the lead with no change in red.
This graph is based mostly on actual data, but with a little twist that makes it into a lie.
Have a look at the actual graph that spawned this theory, back on Nov 4.
Same graph? Have a closer look:
The red line used to make the bar of the F is missing in the actual data. Where did it go? It went up. Trump's vote actually went up at the same time as Biden's, just not as much...
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Debunked: Democratic senators complained about 'vote switching' by Dominion voting machines in 2019
In social media and fringe news sites, claims resembling the following are popping up:
Source: https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1327305801824940047
Screenshot:
Here is the bunk in short:
Source: https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1327305801824940047
Screenshot:
Here is the bunk in short:
- It was a letter requesting information, not a formal complaint
- It went to all three major voting systems manufacturers (or rather to their largest shareholders), not just to Dominion
- The primary concern is "about the spread and effect of private equity investment in [...] the election technology industry", namely by cost-cutting
- It does not single out Dominion...
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Explained: Trump's Claim of Suspicious Early Morning Michigan Bump [It's Detroit]
Trump Tweeted two graphs today from the NYT data.
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1329602736053252107?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1329602736053252107%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Ftrump-makes-new-unverified-claim-about-michigan-votes-after-meeting-state-republicans-1548896
The Wisconsin one was already discussed, and is generally agreed to be the Milwaukee City mail-in returns.
The 149,772 number seems wrong in the Michigan example. But the 96% figure is correct based on the data. This comes from:
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1329602736053252107?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1329602736053252107%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Ftrump-makes-new-unverified-claim-about-michigan-votes-after-meeting-state-republicans-1548896
The Wisconsin one was already discussed, and is generally agreed to be the Milwaukee City mail-in returns.
The 149,772 number seems wrong in the Michigan example. But the 96% figure is correct based on the data. This comes from:
Code:
...
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Election 2020
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Explained: 9:33 AM ET Time on NPR Story about Storming the Capitol
- Started by Mick West
- Replies: 0
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Tales From The Rabbit Hole
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Episode 47: Sarah – Conspiracy Casualty
Tue, 08 Dec 2020 13:19:06 PSTSarah’s ex-partner seemed like a normal person, but a few years ago he discovered conspiracy theory videos. Starting with claims that the Moon Landing was fake he quickly progressed to Flat Earth and eventually ended...
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Episode 46: Ryan – Growing Out Of 9/11
Sat, 29 Aug 2020 12:20:59 PDTRyan became a conspiracy theorist at age 15. He spent five years solidly down the 9/11 conspiracy rabbit hole, believing that the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed with pre-planted explosives. As he grew older...
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Episode 45: Brandon Fugal: The Owner of Skinwalker Ranch
Fri, 29 May 2020 18:44:03 PDTBrandon Fugal is a prominent business leader based in Utah and is the current owner of the mysterious Skinwalker Ranch, which is the focus of a wide variety of reported strange phenomena, from supernatural visitors...
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Episode 44: Steven Hassan – Cults and Conspiracies
Thu, 14 May 2020 22:26:51 PDTSteven Hassan is an expert on cults. A former high ranking member of the Unification Church, aka the “Moonies”, he’s been helping people escape the rabbit hole since his own escape in 1976. Now he’s...
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Episode 43 – Tim McMillan: The Challenges of UFO Investigations
Fri, 08 May 2020 15:32:03 PDTInvestigating UFOs presents a number of challenges, many of which are not immediately obvious, but swiftly rear up to impede progress. There are straightforward issues, like military secrecy and people being afraid to talk because...