Mick West
How Do You Stage UFO Photos and Videos? Let us Count the Ways.
People keep sending me UFO videos, including old ones from years ago that were also figured out years ago. It struck me it might be useful to have a list of way in which UFO photos and videos can be staged without CGI.
A rough broad overview:
- Tossed in the air - Something thrown, like a hubcap, and photos taken until you get a good one. Photos only.
- Thing on a string - something suspended on string, like fishing line, that's too fine to see.
- Thing on glass - similar, but an object on a sheet of glass or perspex (maybe even a fine mesh?) allowing more detailed photos or videos. Upswinging attic window
- Reflections - Shot through glass, maybe close to the camera, maybe a window - showing a reflection of a light source.
- Balloon - Anything lighter than air, maybe on a string.
- Drone - can carry a light or an exterior shell that looks like anything - but 21st century only.
- Projection - Laser or...
Continue…
Explained: UFO Filmed With Telescope [Loon Balloon]
"UFO filmed with telescope" sounds ideal, as most UFOs are TFAs - Too Far Away to get a clear look. Unfortunately this one was not much better - it was filmed with a telescope, but seemingly with a phone camera held up to the eyepiece. The UFO itself was many miles away.
At first I thought it was lense flare, as it changed shape in the video with the phone focussing. But it was also claimed to be something visible to the naked eye. It also seemed to have and "antenna" coming from the top.
Then I remembered that many telescopes invert the image. So maybe was more like.
Now it looks like a ballon, and the obvious contender is a Loon Balloon, like.
The videos come from MUFON, case 114015. With description
...
Continue…
Debunked: Hovering Ship "Fata Morgana" or "Mirage" [False Horizon]
Tabloid media love to invoke the cool sounding "fata morgana" or "superior mirage" to explain images of things floating in the sky. The problem is that a real fata morgana superior mirage (above the boat) looks like this:
An inferior mirage (under the boat) looks like this:
In both cases there's distortion, and there's inversion.
It does NOT look like this:
Source: Science Channel
Despite the Science Channel's talking heads saying this is a Fata Morgana, it very obviously is not. The giveaway is the total lack of distortion, duplicated...
Continue…
Three Contrails "Descending" over Denver on Jan 31, 2021 [Military, C-17A Globemasters]
Source: https://twitter.com/skilldrick/status/1356341980922478592
Source: https://twitter.com/MickWest/status/1356348321862877184
They also show up in this video compilation:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg_v-rE0tT8
Info about the planes shows up on Radarbox:
COHO71 and COHO71 show up on FlightAware, TCM to CHS
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/COHO71/history/20210131/1601Z/KTCM/KCHS...
Continue…
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.
Continue…
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.
Continue…
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...
Continue…
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
...
Continue…
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:
SO FAR WE HAVE SCANNED 113,130 BALLOTS. WE ADJUDICATED OVER 106,000. THOSE HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED ON THE SITE. SO THOSE RESULTS ARE ALREADY POSTED. YOU CAN SEE, LIKE WE HAVE BEEN DOING ALL DAY, WE HAVE BEEN OPENING BALLOTS. WE OPEN THEM AT THESE MACHINES, THEN THEY GO OVER TO WHERE THEY ARE FLATTENED, AND THEN THEY GO OVER TO THE SCANNER. IT IS A TIME-CONSUMING PROCESS. ONCE THEY GET TO THE SCANNER, THERE IS A VOTE REVIEW PANEL OVER THERE, AND WE ARE ADJUDICATING THEM FROM THERE. THE ONLY BALLOTS THAT ARE ADJUDICATED ARE IF WE HAVE A BALLOT IN WHICH THERE IS SOME QUESTION AS TO HOW THE COMPUTER...
Continue…
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...
Continue…
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...
Continue…
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...
Continue…
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
Continue…
'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...
Continue…
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...
Continue…
Staff online
-
LandruModerator
Forum statistics
Tales From The Rabbit Hole
-
Episode 56: Robert Bartholomew – Havana Syndrome and Mass Psychogenic Illness
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 14:30:39 PDTRobert Bartholomew has a PhD in Medical Sociology, and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He’s an expert in Mass Psychogenic Illness...
-
Episode 55 – Professor Avi Loeb: The Galileo Project
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:22:31 PDTWhat is a University professor doing investigating UFOs? Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University heads the Galileo Project, which seeks (in part) to identify the nature of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by establishing a network of...
-
Episode 54 – Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko: Pastels and Pedophiles
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 18:00:54 PDTMia Bloom is Professor of Communication at Georgia State University with a PhD in political science from Columbia University. Sophia Moskalenko is a research fellow at Georgia State University and a researcher at the National...
-
Episode 53 – Jason Colavito – UFOs and the Invisible College, How Did We Get Here?
Thu, 24 Jun 2021 15:46:08 PDTJason Colavito is an author and journalist with a focus on “alternative archeology” and, more recently, the UFO cultural phenomenon. In May 2021, he wrote the article: “How Washington Got Hooked on Flying Saucers” in...
-
Episode 52 – Luis Elizondo – UFOs, UAPs, AATIP, and TTSA
Thu, 11 Mar 2021 15:06:06 PSTLuis Elizondo is a former senior intelligence official, a disclosure advocate, a national security expert, and the former director of the Pentagon’s UFO/UAP Program (AATIP). We talk about his work in those capacities and also...