Metabunk
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:
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Debunked: Suspicious "Biden Only" Ballots in Georgia
Steve Cortes, claims that if you subtract the number of votes cast for senator from the number of votes cast for president, then this gives you votes that were ONLY cast for that presidential candidate. He then claims that in the Georgia race, this number is suspiciously high for Biden, and this is "far too wide to be believable".
He does the math with Georgia, and comes up with 818 votes for Trump (claiming these are people who voted for Trump only), and +95,801 votes for Biden (claiming these are people who voted for Biden only.)
The simple math checks out, although now with updated numbers, it's -789 for Trump and +99,868 for Biden
But wait, LESS...
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Trump's Claim that "THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS."
Trump has been claiming a bunch of things, but one that seems to be foundational to his argument, and repeated by Giuliani at the Four Season Total Landscaping press conference is the one about observers not being allowed in the counting rooms.
This is, of course, false. And so it has been addressed many times by different outlets. So I thought it would be useful to gather those analyses here:
The best account is the one from the Detroit Free press, which tells of far TOO MANY challengers, of both parties, and disruption of the process coming from some of those challengers.
Article: "Help needed now," Tweeted a group called Stand Up Michigan. "Go as soon as possible. We are attempting to mount...
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Election Fact Checking Resources and Tips
It was inevitable that this was going to be a race characterized by rumors, bunk, lies, and disinformation. The closeness of the race makes fact-checking all the more important. Here are some resources that can be used to figure out what's real and what's not.
Tip: many of these sources will be viewed as being partisan, or being run by a "deep state." Where possible dig down and find the most neutral source (such as the state election commission), or a source that's more likely to be accepted by your friend.
GOOGLE - Google should be your first step. Because of the huge amount of attention on this subject, any disinformation is being very quickly exposed as such, often in great detail by multiple sources. Just type in a few key words regarding the subject, include the...
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Debunked: "Tip Top" as a QAnon Clue from Trump [He's said it before]
In the recent media coverage of the "QAnon" conspiracy theory that followed some Q supporters showing up at a Trump rally, one of the pieces of evidence that the Q supporters gave on camera was the idea that Trump said "tip-top" because a Q made him do it.
This actually seems quite compelling as a sound bite on TV. There's the post on 4Chan with an anonymous user asking Q to work "tip-top" into a Trump speech, this is immediately followed with a clip of Trump saying "tip-top". There's even a bonus white rabbit (a reference to the "rabbit hole" in "red-pill" modern mythology).
But it all falls apart when you look at the actual context. Here's a timeline of Trump saying "Tip Top" (or "Tippy-top") and 4Chan/QAnon talking about it. Note the dates...
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Twitter's October Outage
Twitter has been broken for about 30 minutes.
https://downdetector.com/status/twitter/map/
Normally this would be chalked up to random failure, and quite possibly it is. But it comes at a time where the role of Social Media in the public discourse, and in particular the election, is increasingly contentious. Twitter suspended the Trump Campaign's twitter account for posting a link to a dispute New York Post article regarding Joe and Hunter Bider, and the conservatives have been highly critical. Possibly someone has decided this is the right time for a cyber-attack.
Or maybe just someone messed up. We'll see. But the atmosphere is certainly going to lead to a variety of speculation.
https://downdetector.com/status/twitter/map/
Normally this would be chalked up to random failure, and quite possibly it is. But it comes at a time where the role of Social Media in the public discourse, and in particular the election, is increasingly contentious. Twitter suspended the Trump Campaign's twitter account for posting a link to a dispute New York Post article regarding Joe and Hunter Bider, and the conservatives have been highly critical. Possibly someone has decided this is the right time for a cyber-attack.
Or maybe just someone messed up. We'll see. But the atmosphere is certainly going to lead to a variety of speculation.
Continue…
Explained: Unburned trees next to burned down structures as evidence of secret "energy weapons"
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkH5I0lXiFs
Why do you sometimes see unburnt trees next to a burnt down house?
Conspiracy theories would say that this is because the houses were actually vapourize with beams of energy from space. But the actual reason, as many people have pointed out, is simply that the wood in the houses is dry, and the wood in the trees is wet.
If you don't use a wood fire in your house this might be a bit hard to understand, so I set out to do an experiment to demonstrate this.
First stop was my attic, which, like most new houses in California has an internal frame of 2 by 4s.
There was a bit of scrap wood left over from construction. The same wood as the frame of my house, so ideal for testing...
Why do you sometimes see unburnt trees next to a burnt down house?
Conspiracy theories would say that this is because the houses were actually vapourize with beams of energy from space. But the actual reason, as many people have pointed out, is simply that the wood in the houses is dry, and the wood in the trees is wet.
If you don't use a wood fire in your house this might be a bit hard to understand, so I set out to do an experiment to demonstrate this.
First stop was my attic, which, like most new houses in California has an internal frame of 2 by 4s.
There was a bit of scrap wood left over from construction. The same wood as the frame of my house, so ideal for testing...
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The Dumbing Down of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri_vlLaCkNM
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a group that promotes the idea that the World Trade Center was destroyed by pre-planted explosives on 9/11 and that the plane impacts and fires were just a cover.
After years of telling people that they should believe them because they are architects and engineers, they have changed tactics. They now promote the idea that it's OBVIOUS that explosives are used, and that anyone can see this. They promoted this idea over the last month with a series of increasingly silly memes.
This prompts a question: if it's so obvious, then what was the point of AE911Truth? What was the point of funding a complicated study of World Trade Center Building Seven for $316,000? What are all those long technical documents on their web site for...
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a group that promotes the idea that the World Trade Center was destroyed by pre-planted explosives on 9/11 and that the plane impacts and fires were just a cover.
After years of telling people that they should believe them because they are architects and engineers, they have changed tactics. They now promote the idea that it's OBVIOUS that explosives are used, and that anyone can see this. They promoted this idea over the last month with a series of increasingly silly memes.
This prompts a question: if it's so obvious, then what was the point of AE911Truth? What was the point of funding a complicated study of World Trade Center Building Seven for $316,000? What are all those long technical documents on their web site for...
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What does "Off-World" mean to the US Military?
Article: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program has been using unclassified slides like this to brief government officials on threats from Advanced Aerospace Vehicles — “including off-world” — and materials retrieved from crashes of unidentified phenomena.Credit...Leslie Kean
When asked about the words "off-world" in the above slide, writer Ralph Blumenthal said:
Article: Ralph Blumenthal
Contributor, former Times reporter
July 28
@leadingfrombehind Off-world means not of this earth. We and our sources refrain from speculating on other questions beyond that.
But what does "not of this earth" mean? Regardless of the meaning, where does this definition come from? If we search the .gov and .mil domains for usages of the term "off-world" the most common usage seems to be, essentially "not on this Earth"...
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Fast moving object "intersecting clouds" in Hungarian YouTuber's video [Insect]
A Hungarian YouTuber by the name of Andras Horvath, who focuses on car and technology reviews, claims to have caught a strange object while filming drone footage.
His analysis of the footage is here: UFO Csobánka egén - his own calculations find that the object is travelling at approximately 1,800 km/h. He has also provided the original 4k footage, it's linked in the description of the YouTube post, direct link here.
This looks very like similar videos that turn out to be a bug flying near to the camera ... except for the fact that it is disappearing and reappearing from the distant clouds. It probably wouldn't be a difficult thing to hoax this aspect, however, for someone familiar with video production tools like After Effects etc.
There is some discussion on a...
His analysis of the footage is here: UFO Csobánka egén - his own calculations find that the object is travelling at approximately 1,800 km/h. He has also provided the original 4k footage, it's linked in the description of the YouTube post, direct link here.
This looks very like similar videos that turn out to be a bug flying near to the camera ... except for the fact that it is disappearing and reappearing from the distant clouds. It probably wouldn't be a difficult thing to hoax this aspect, however, for someone familiar with video production tools like After Effects etc.
There is some discussion on a...
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Black UFO At Skinwalker Ranch (A Fly)
In episode 7 of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, an unfortunate cow dies of natural causes. The team of scientists on cast study security camera footage for clues. As the cow is laying there dying small black object whizzes by.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11WVUQ7Lmg8
It's only visible for two frames on the footage, meaning it travels between the two positions in 1/30th of a second. Possible more, as security camera footage is often a low framerate. But let's assume 1/30th.
How fast is it going? That depends on how big it is, or to put it another way, is it small, or far away?
The cast members choose to interpret the object as being at the same distance as the cow is - mysteriously flying over it as it dies, presumably with some intent. I think it's actually much closer to the camera.
[ATTACH type="full" alt="Metabunk 2020-05-22...
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Mysterious Helicopter at Skinwalker Ranch (Power Line Survey)
In Episode 7 of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, a suspicious helicopter is spotted flying over the ranch. Despite having binoculars they failed to identify it, and said it did not show up on the ADS-B scanner.
[Update] I contacted Corporate Helicopters. Ivor Shier, the director of operations, called me back and confirmed it was their helicopter and that they were just doing a LIDAR powerline survey. This is looking for things like defects in insulators and encroaching vegetation - anything that might be a fire hazard. He said that's all it was. He said they don't turn off the ADS-B, but that area has very poor receiver coverage. They don't rely on only FlightRadar24 style ADS-B, but also have TracPlus monitored from the head office, and also by the powerline company. He sent me some photos:
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Debunking Correlations Between 5G deployments and Coronavirus
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0SP53tCqw
There's a false theory that there's some correlation between the location of deployments of 5G networks and outbreaks of the COVID-19 coronavirus, at that location.
To demonstrate that this theory is false, I'm going to use the COVID-19 tracker on bing.com, and the Ookla 5g deployment map on speedtest.net. This will allow us to identify areas of high and low density for both 5G and COVID-19.
Let's start at the starting point, Wuhan, in Hubei province in China. There's a huge difference between Hubei and the rest of China with Coronavirus. Is this reflected in 5G coverage? No, in fact, there's plenty of other provinces and cites with similar or higher deployments of 5G, and hardly any COVID-19. So no correlation there.
Just over the ocean, there's South Korea. They have WAY more 5G deployments than...
There's a false theory that there's some correlation between the location of deployments of 5G networks and outbreaks of the COVID-19 coronavirus, at that location.
To demonstrate that this theory is false, I'm going to use the COVID-19 tracker on bing.com, and the Ookla 5g deployment map on speedtest.net. This will allow us to identify areas of high and low density for both 5G and COVID-19.
Let's start at the starting point, Wuhan, in Hubei province in China. There's a huge difference between Hubei and the rest of China with Coronavirus. Is this reflected in 5G coverage? No, in fact, there's plenty of other provinces and cites with similar or higher deployments of 5G, and hardly any COVID-19. So no correlation there.
Just over the ocean, there's South Korea. They have WAY more 5G deployments than...
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Why Were There Contrails Today, But Not Yesterday? It's the Weather!
Today (Thursday Oct 6th, 2016) marked the first significant contrail morning for several months here in El Dorado County, Northern California. The above photo on the right of criss-crossing contrails was taken at 7:30AM, and planes continued to leave trails for the next few hours. I took photos of the jets, and they were just regular air traffic, mostly Alaska or other regional jets flying north or south, often to or from Los Angeles. They were all in the range 36,000 to 39,000 feet.
But it's Thursday, and the air traffic on Wednesday was pretty much identical. So why were there trails this morning, but not yesterday morning?
The answer is quite straightforward. It's the upper air weather!
Upper air weather is different to the weather on the ground. At 35,000 feet up it's very cold (usually below -40°F/-40°C)...
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Tales From The Rabbit Hole
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Episode 48 – Accidentally Dating a Conspiracy Theorist
Fri, 29 Jan 2021 15:04:14 PSTMy guest this week thought all was well when she started dating a handsome intelligent man. But then a few things he said, particularly about “the Jews” started to seem like something more than just...
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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...