Recently viral Buga, Colombia, "alien" metal balls

one would suspect Mausson was involved from the beginning.
I think your assessment is plausible. I carefully searched for Mausson's programs prior to this incident
1750473536555.png
Coincidentally, on March 8th, Mausson showcased another "metallic sphere" during a live interview program. This sphere was found years ago by Elizabeth Davila at Lake Bustillos in Mexico and was gifted to Mausson in 2023. During the program, Mausson claimed to have sent it to a university for testing. Ironically, the claims of self-changing weight and unusually high aluminum content are not unique to the Buga sphere—this original sphere shares the same characteristics.
1750498043757.png

Source: https://youtu.be/ZIJb7TvR-qo?t=366
Even in a 2023 interview with Davila, it was mentioned that the original spheres could make cacti they touched grow "heart shapes":

Later, in the March 10th episode, he revisited and showcased the investigation process related to the sphere

Source: https://youtu.be/LYZo4bzmzqc?t=165
1750475473016.png

However, this sphere has neither related flight videos, nor intricate patterns, nor the dramatic plot of being discovered during a treasure hunt with a "cyber dowsing rod" as an extraterrestrial object. As a result, this original mysterious sphere never gained much attention and failed to be hyped up.

On March 25th thereafter, a German company channel first released a video of the sphere in flight, and in the description, it mentioned for the first time the recoverer and filmer "Mr. José."
1750475114510.png



Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQDj7OLRLR0&ab_channel=tesorosysecretos


Until April 1st, Mausson first released a second video filmed on March 2nd by a woman using the pseudonym Maria (who has not appeared to this day). It was also the first time the location was mentioned as Buga, Colombia. The post further claimed there was another video of the sphere filmed by a Mr. Jose, that the sphere had been recovered for study, and that all those who came into contact with it experienced symptoms of nausea, vomiting, and hair loss (none of these individuals' medical records have been released to date). Additionally, the post referenced an "investigator David" (later revealed to be Daniel Vélez, a shareholder of a German company and the intermediary for the Buga sphere)
1750478906630.png


Therefore, it can be concluded that, in any case, before the release of the third video, Mausson was already aware of details unknown to others (having already been in contact with the German company). However, it is strange that in this episode, he merely glossed over such astonishing news and did not play Mr. José's video, which had been publicly released by the German company on the 25th. This is somewhat unusual for someone who pursues online traffic and popularity:
Source: https://youtu.be/oKn4oePuEWk?t=81
1750474270063.png

What's even more interesting: At the end of the video, Mausson once again tried to promote that original sphere, explicitly stating that research findings related to this lake sphere would be released in the coming weeks. However, this video, posted on April 1st, still gained little traction. So now everyone knows—even by mid-June, that poor, overlooked original sphere has been completely shelved, never to be seen again.:rolleyes:。。。


Source: https://youtu.be/oKn4oePuEWk?t=1128
1750477664451.png


On April 8th, a German company channel also followed up by releasing this video filmed by "Maria.":
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92mpJFSLVTA&t=16s&ab_channel=tesorosysecretos


A few days later on April 11th, the German company released a third video, which included footage of Mr. José retrieving the sphere, but still did not disclose the specific retrieval date

1750478294644.png

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zdfe4499xw&t=5s&ab_channel=tesorosysecretos


After the video went viral, the sphere finally gained attention, and Mausson officially aired a program about it for the first time on April 30. Interestingly, at 4:07 ,Mausson said in person: "Just a few days later, more footage shot by another witness emerged, a man..."
1750480779418.png

So who the hell was the photographer tracking Jose's recovery of the sphere at the time??? To this day, there's no conclusion—this person has vanished! Additionally, Also, why was the conversation between these two people obviously voice-modulated(6:46-6:55)? Are they afraid someone might recognize who the photographer is? in this episode, Mausson also publicly revealed for the first time the investigator named David mentioned earlier, along with his identity as a shareholder of the German company. By the way, I checked on Colombia's authoritative corporate registration information platform:Registro Único Empresarial y Social (RUES)以及Superintendencia de Sociedades – Sede Electrónica No information about this person or his "German company" or "tesoros y secretos" could be found.
1750479384213.png
In this episode, starting from 4:31 Mausson Finally, a more complete video has been released, and we can now confirm that the first and third videos previously published by the German company were actually shot at the same time—or rather, they were segments split from a single video. So why didn't they release the full footage earlier? Instead, they chose to break it apart and release it step by step. Is this a tactic to maintain hype?

In this episode, Mausson still did not mention the segment about Mr. José's fingerprints disappearing due to radiation. It wasn't until a later episode on May 5th that this information was first added. and the information that the sphere was recovered on March 2nd

Additionally, at 5:57, Mr. Jose, who clearly claimed to remain anonymous, suddenly revealed his identity for some reason. Why did he still wear the same hat and yellow T-shirt when attending the international press conference?
1750482558501.png

As for the many more flaws that can be found after this, I believe everyone can identify them on their own...
 

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I believed him... Oh.
emb.png
Admittedly I was very young (pre-secondary school, I think about 10). The local library had several von Däniken books, and others in similar vein.
Well, I'm older. ;) When the book came out, I was well into my twenties, and into the skeptical phase which has lasted the rest of my life. But up until my early teens, I loved tales of the bizarre and fantastic. Somewhat sadly, I "put away childish things" and bid goodbye to Nessie, to ghosts, to Velikovsky, to Bigfoot, and to ancient aliens.
 
Well, I'm older. ;) When the book came out, I was well into my twenties, and into the skeptical phase which has lasted the rest of my life. But up until my early teens, I loved tales of the bizarre and fantastic. Somewhat sadly, I "put away childish things" and bid goodbye to Nessie, to ghosts, to Velikovsky, to Bigfoot, and to ancient aliens.
Qui?
External Quote:
The causes of these natural catastrophes were close encounters between the Earth and other bodies within the Solar System — not least what are now the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars, these bodies having moved upon different orbits within human memory.
To explain the fact that these changes to the configuration of the Solar System violate several well-understood laws of physics, Velikovsky invented a role for electromagnetic forces in counteracting gravity and orbital mechanics.

Some of Velikovsky's specific postulated catastrophes included:[citation needed]

A tentative suggestion that Earth had once been a satellite of a "proto-Saturn" body, before its current solar orbit.
That the Deluge (Noah's Flood) had been caused by proto-Saturn's entering a nova state, and ejecting much of its mass into space.
A suggestion that the planet Mercury was involved in the Tower of Babel catastrophe.
Jupiter had been the prime mover in the catastrophe that saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Periodic close contacts with a "cometary Venus" (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c. 1500 BCE) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" (Joshua 10:12–13) incident.
Periodic close contacts with Mars had caused havoc in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky

Erm, thanks? :/
 
Instead, they chose to break it apart and release it step by step. Is this a tactic to maintain hype?

Nice job laying out the chronology! I would imagine they made one long video in one session and then cut it into sections for multiple releases. Less work, and less chance of people seeing what you're up to. It could be to maintain hype, but also just trying different versions to see what goes viral.

The course of events still leaves it a bit vague as to who is in control. Mausson may be behind it, in an effort to boost his previous sphere claims that no one seemed to care about. For Mausson, spheres are a safer fringe item than something like the Nazca mummies. No accusations of grave robbing or dealing with different government antiquities departments. No risk of x-rays and CT scans disproving the claims. Like the mummies, spheres can be constructed as needed, but without actual human remains.

The problem with spheres is they're just not that compelling, at least the way the previous ones were presented. It's the usual, here's an item and here's a crazy backstory without evidence. Videos of an actual flying sphere definitely ups the game and creates some much needed hype. Then throw in the disk suddenly being discovered and there is a whole narrative.

However, why use the German Company to film and release the videos from Colombia. If just a cover story, I would think a more random individual would be used. Maybe Mausson has financial interest in the German Co. Or, the German Co. guys, possibly inspired by Mausson's previous sphere, figured it's a simple and easy to construct UFO. They dressed theirs up a bit more and figured out how to make it fly. If it was a marketing stunt, sending a copy to Mausson would make sense and it seems they gave him the sphere or a copy of it. Once it went viral, Mausson took over.
Interesting that the sphere had artwork in the style of ancient painting /carvings in that general region.


I guess they were local aliens

Not quite. Some of the characters around the circuit are from the Indus/Harappian culture script, so some aliens from the present day Pakistan area must have stopped by for a visit ;).
 
Until April 1st, Maussan first released a second video filmed on March 2nd by a woman using the pseudonym Maria (who has not appeared to this day).

Ah, there is a Maria who has been seen in the company of Maussan...

20170621-140429-f1vm6.jpg

(Claim: Nazca Mummy Maria Was a Living Non-Human Creature).
She didn't have opposable thumbs after some creep had finished manipulating the remains so might have had problems operating a phonecam.

I feel Jaime Maussan should make all his announcements and video releases on April 1st, it takes a year to absorb the significance of the remarkable, paradigm-shifting discoveries that he shares with us.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I loved tales of the bizarre and fantastic. Somewhat sadly, I "put away childish things" and bid goodbye to Nessie, to ghosts, to Velikovsky, to Bigfoot, and to ancient aliens.

Much the same. I feel I understand the appeal of these things to some people. I wanted to be friends with the Kelly-Hopkinsville Hobgoblins, and to see Nessie proudly cruising along the loch.

Well, I'm older. ;)
But young at heart. And wiser.
 
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Another name to add to the list of regular faces sitting on the front row is Sid Goldberg. He used to be a producer for Gaia TV, working on their "Seeking Truth" topics. He more recently is listed on IMDB as producing third-eye-opening content such as "Code X - Ancient Wisdom Revealed" and "Divine Science - The Secrets of Consciousness".
I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if we soon learn that he's involved with making content/a documentary for Maussan about the Buga Sphere.
msedge_LA4sWdYpsL.jpg
 
(8) Clear imaging of the "symbols" on the sphere.
It is not plausible that German Company, or Maussan's tridactyl team, includes palaeographers/ semioticians/ cryptographers/ others who might have some chance of deriving any information- or assessing whether the symbols are likely to be from a representational system.

I stumbled upon a Facebook post from a guy named Hans Dietrich who claims to be a symbolist.
He says the etched symbols are the Standard Galactic Alphabet and were used in a 1990 game called Commander Keen.

Source:
Link to the FB post

External Quote:
The circular text around the microchip is written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet (SGA) – a fictional cipher alphabet originally from the Commander Keen games and famously used as the "enchantment table language" in Minecraft

...

This confirms the text is written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet.
Decoding the Message
Using the SGA cipher, the circular text can be translated into English. Decoding the sequence of symbols yields a well-known phrase. In fact, the text appears to spell out Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

This phrase fits the context of a microchip encircled by "magical"-looking runes, blending technology and magic. Each word of the quote can be seen in the cipher:
ANY – encoded with SGA letters (ᔑ A, リ N, || Y)
SUFFICIENTLY – (ᓭ S, ⚍ U, ⎓ F, ⎓ F, ╎ I, ᓵ C, ╎ I, ᒷ E, リ N, ℸ̣ T, ꖎ L, || Y)
ADVANCED – (ᔑ A, ↸ D, ⍊ V, ᔑ A, リ N, ᓵ C, ᒷ E, ↸ D)
TECHNOLOGY – (ℸ̣ T, ᒷ E, ᓵ C, ⍑ H, リ N, フ O, ꖎ L, フ O, ⊣ G, || Y)
IS – (╎ I, ᓭ S)
MAGIC – (ᒲ M, ᔑ A, ⊣ G, ╎ I, ᓵ C)
Notably, the parallel lines "||" appear multiple times, corresponding to the letter Y in "ANY," "SUFFICIENTLY," and "TECHNOLOGY." The translation aligns perfectly with the microchip's theme: advanced technology "indistinguishable from magic." In summary, the script is Standard Galactic Alphabet, and it encodes Clarke's famous adage – reinforcing the idea that highly advanced tech can seem magical
The Standard Galactic Alphabet:

17291632-krknacs_xl.webp
 
I stumbled upon a Facebook post from a guy named Hans Dietrich who claims to be a symbolist.
He says the etched symbols are the Standard Galactic Alphabet and were used in a 1990 game called Commander Keen.

Except, I think what he's decoding is not what's on the sphere. Photos from his page, rotated to put the "eye with a line" symbol at ~1:00-2:00 position:

1750694686318.png

Screenshot 2025-06-23 9.15.59 AM.png


They're not quite the same. The center circuit and line/dot motifs don't match, neither do some of the symbols. Note here if we go from the center of the circuit to a section containing the "eye with a line" symbol at 1:00:

1750694829784.png

Screenshot 2025-06-23 9.08.14 AM.png


The 3 symbols at the 10:00 position do not match. These 3:

1750695156509.png


Have been replaced with these 3:

1750695232430.png


Moving counter-clock wise to the 9:00 position we get these:

1750695654345.png


Written as these:

1750695713549.png


The 3 symbols at 10:00:

1750695156509.png


I thought might be Harappian:

1750695898185.png


The Facebook guy also says:

External Quote:

Notably, the parallel lines "||" appear multiple times, corresponding to the letter Y in "ANY," "SUFFICIENTLY," and "TECHNOLOGY."
Like this:

1750696066219.png


Where? Maybe I'm missing it. In fact, I don't think that symbol appears even once in the drawing. And since this is all for a Spanish speaking audience, why are the aliens using English?

Going back to the "eye with a line" symbol, where is anything like that in the Galactic alphabet? Or the backwards "9" next to the eye?

Lastly, there are approximately 26 symbols around the actual sphere, depending on how one interprets them and maybe 30 on the drawing. His decoded phrase from Clark is 40 letters long. There aren't enough symbols on the sphere to spell it out, unless he's mashing symbols together.

I'm not seeing it.
 

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I stumbled upon a Facebook post from a guy named Hans Dietrich who claims to be a symbolist.
He says the etched symbols are the Standard Galactic Alphabet and were used in a 1990 game called Commander Keen
External Quote:
Using the SGA cipher, the circular text can be translated into English. Decoding the sequence of symbols yields a well-known phrase. In fact, the text appears to spell out Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
As well as some symbols not matching, I don't think there are enough characters on the Buga sphere to spell out that phrase, if it is a simple one-for-one, symbol-for-letter substitution code as "Standard Galactic Alphabet" seems to be.

Start with the "A" under the yellow arrow, and read clockwise. I've tried to be quite liberal in interpreting what is an individual symbol on the sphere, to maximise the number of possible letters (ending up with 30). But there aren't enough to spell out
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."


Capture.JPG



(Edited to add: I've only just noticed @NorCal Dave had already made the same observation re. number of characters as above. Soz Dave!)
 
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Start with the "A" under the yellow arrow, and read clockwise. I've tried to be quite liberal in interpreting what is an individual symbol on the sphere, to maximise the number of possible letters (ending up with 30). But there aren't enough to spell out
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I'm assuming you just started with "A" at 12:00 just to show there aren't enough symbols to spell it out.

Dietrich makes the claim, but never explains it on the drawing or the sphere. Where is the symbol for "A" so that we know the starting point?

1750712461280.png


Even without knowing where to start, we should be able to find enough letters to figure it out. There should be 2 "O" separated by an "L", so something approximating this:

1750712608722.png
1750712655504.png
1750712622337.png


And 2 "F" side by side in "sufficient":

1750712789689.png
1750712791386.png


In fact, in the drawing, only 2 symbols have any kind of dot, while on the sphere they're kinda maybe, with a 3rd:

1750712868960.png
1750712886518.png
1750713089462.png
1750713112100.png
1750713152984.png


In addition to the 2 "F" requiring 6 dots total, and the "L" requiring 2 dots, the letter "E" appears 3 times, each needing a dot, the letter "C" appears 4 times, each requiring a dot and the "U" needs 2 dots:

1750713636023.png
1750713660732.png
1750713700529.png


There should be somewhere around 16 dots on the sphere or the drawing for a 1 to 1 substitution code, which is the claim on Facebook. There are 2, maybe 3.

And no, there doesn't appear to be a lower case version that might make this work:

External Quote:

This is the font used in the Enchanting Table's GUI when an item is able to be enchanted. When mapped to the ASCII layout, only the characters A-Z are textured. Lowercase a-z is an exact copy of the uppercase.
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Standard_Galactic_Alphabet

It just doesn't work.

I guess we can go to this little get-together in, wait for it... Sedona and ask Mr. Dietrich to explain it all:

1750714946122.png


Though I will confess to not knowing if I'm a Lightworker or a Star Seed :confused:
 
Though I will confess to not knowing if I'm a Lightworker or a Star Seed

You have to be really good at tennis to be a Star Seed. I guess one or two of us could get in as Lightworkers?

Capture.JPG


I've got a long rectangular strip of metal with a glass ampoule in the middle, which contains some oil with a bubble, so I could be a Spiritualist.

They might be able to channel the positivity waves from Epsilon Eridani, and spontaneously translate the Wisdom of the Space Brothers and Sisters. But due to their intense concentration on the transcendental, the voices from beyond and the Eastern Sciences, I expect a handful of us unenlightened ones are accepted to keep the air con going and to cook lunch.
 
I'm wondering if AI was used:
Hans Dietrich "I then ran this through my processes and here is the analysis"

I told ChatGPT the galactic alphabet from Commander Keen was used and it confidently translated the glyphs as saying
"UNIFIED SPECIES OF THE CIRCUIT"

When I asked ChatGPT to circle each glyph with its corresponding English letter it spells out "Unified Species of the cir..."

Is confident its solved the puzzle but when asked to demonstrate its results it clearly hasn't solved the puzzle and it seems completely oblivious to the fact that it's not even translated enough letters to arrive at the conclusion it reached.
SOQAb0gujA.png


https://chatgpt.com/share/6859e23c-786c-800c-96a8-70004e6e039f
 
You have to be really good at tennis to be a Star Seed. I guess one or two of us could get in as Lightworkers?

View attachment 81800

I've got a long rectangular strip of metal with a glass ampoule in the middle, which contains some oil with a bubble, so I could be a Spiritualist.

They might be able to channel the positivity waves from Epsilon Eridani, and spontaneously translate the Wisdom of the Space Brothers and Sisters. But due to their intense concentration on the transcendental, the voices from beyond and the Eastern Sciences, I expect a handful of us unenlightened ones are accepted to keep the air con going and to cook lunch.
You're going to have to work on your proper "mystic" name. Something vaguely pseudo-middle eastern, or nature-related. You're never going to get a date with "Ocean Sky" with a name like John. Something like "Thunder Crash" or "Parr Al-Axe", perhaps. I wanted to be "Sparkle Plenty", but Dick Tracy already had one of those.
 
I'm wondering if AI was used:
Hans Dietrich "I then ran this through my processes and here is the analysis"

I told ChatGPT the galactic alphabet from Commander Keen was used and it confidently translated the glyphs as saying
"UNIFIED SPECIES OF THE CIRCUIT"

When I asked ChatGPT to circle each glyph with its corresponding English letter it spells out "Unified Species of the cir..."

Is confident its solved the puzzle but when asked to demonstrate its results it clearly hasn't solved the puzzle and it seems completely oblivious to the fact that it's not even translated enough letters to arrive at the conclusion it reached.
View attachment 81802

https://chatgpt.com/share/6859e23c-786c-800c-96a8-70004e6e039f
If you scale up that image resolution by 150% and then use the code ChatGPT posted but shift all those circle coordinates 245 pixels to the right and 370 pixels down, the circle of red circles pretty much lines up with the circle of letters, at least. The circles don't seem to correspond neatly to symbols though. As you say it is missing some.
annotated_output.png
 

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You're going to have to work on your proper "mystic" name. Something vaguely pseudo-middle eastern, or nature-related.

Saddam Butterfly? Falafel Tsunami? I need guidance.

You're never going to get a date with "Ocean Sky" with a name like John.
Yeah, John is so 1st Century AD.
Admittedly I am incredibly shallow and she looks nice, but can you imagine the conversation over dinner?
She'd soon realise that we are on different astral planes, and I might not be ready for enlightenment.
 
You're going to have to work on your proper "mystic" name. Something vaguely pseudo-middle eastern, or nature-related. You're never going to get a date with "Ocean Sky" with a name like John. Something like "Thunder Crash" or "Parr Al-Axe", perhaps.

We are WAY off topic now, but I think I did throw out "Moonshade" and "Jadestar" in another thread. Workable, but it assumes John or the rest of us want to spend a large amount of time listening to Ocean Sky.

I wanted to be "Sparkle Plenty", but Dick Tracy already had one of those.

A bit further off topic, but I think I can circle back. There was a time at the Burningman event, that the very similar "Sparkle Pony" was a semi-derogatory title for people of either gender, that were overly concerned with their costumes and other appearance type things to the detriment of a camp's work needs. A Sparkle Pony would spend time organizing their costumes, decorating their bikes or just sitting around while others did the work of setting up camp, cooking and generally making things nice for the Sparkle Pony. Hence, the Pony's opposite, the hard working Sparkle Mule. Eventually the influx of "Broners", (hyper masculine bro dudes at Burningman) co-opted the term to often mean "hot chicks" in fancy costumes.

But, all of that did remind me of an art installation a number of years ago. It was a variation on the Stone Tape theory. A series of wooden containers filled with rocks that had "recordings" of various ancient cultures recorded/embedded in them. As one walked near each container they could hear the "recording" of ancient Sumerians, or Babylonians and others. It's hard to say what was actually being heard, beyond some low voices in a language no one understood. The creator just borrowed assorted cultural motifs and blended it with what we might think various cultures sounded like to create a compelling and immersive art work.

Same here. The symbols on the sphere are likely an amalgamation of various sources designed to convey a sense of wonder and antiquity, while in reality meaning nothing.
 
The symbols on the sphere are likely an amalgamation of various sources designed to convey a sense of wonder and antiquity, while in reality meaning nothing.
I think you'll fit right in at a conference like that, if you want to convince other attendees you are channeling the English bard!
"... It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

They may not agree with the sentiment, but who's going to call out a past-life regression, in that esteemed company?
 
And 2 "F" side by side in "sufficient":
...
It just doesn't work.

You've stumbled on the real reason it doesn't work. It doesn't work for it being *any* message. The distribution of symbols - flat, one each - doesn't satisfy a power law. Therefore it's almost certainly not a meaningful communication in any language.

Here's the explanation using words/morphemes as the tokens:
External Quote:
Zipf's law (/zɪf/; German pronunciation: [tsɪpf]) is an empirical law stating that when a list of measured values is sorted in decreasing order, the value of the n-th entry is often approximately inversely proportional to n.

The best known instance of Zipf's law applies to the frequency table of words in a text or corpus of natural language:

word frequency ∝ 1 / word rank

It is usually found that the most common word occurs approximately twice as often as the next common one, three times as often as the third most common, and so on. For example, in the Brown Corpus of American English text, the word "the" is the most frequently occurring word, and by itself accounts for nearly 7% of all word occurrences (69,971 out of slightly over 1 million). True to Zipf's law, the second-place word "of" accounts for slightly over 3.5% of words (36,411 occurrences), followed by "and" (28,852).[2]
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law

However, you get similar distributions if you take letters as the tokens instead of words,
External Quote:
Both the overall letter distribution and the word-initial letter distribution approximately match the Zipf distribution and even more closely match the Yule distribution.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency

The difference is minor (note, wikipedia is slightly sloppy with its language, and I was brief with my snippage above, there isn't a single Zipf's law, it's a closely-related family, hence the "its" below):
Yule-Simon_distribution.png

image link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Yule-Simon_distribution.png
via: "Plot of the Yule–Simon(1) distribution (red) and its asymptotic Zipf's law (blue)" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_distribution

This makes sense, as they're both examples of rank-frequency distributions:
External Quote:
The rank-size rule (or law) describes the remarkable regularity in many phenomena, including the distribution of city sizes, the sizes of businesses, the sizes of particles (such as sand), the lengths of rivers, the frequencies of word usage, and wealth among individuals.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank-size_distribution
 
I suspect (but cannot prove) that given any sequence of symbols it's possible to devise non-trivial (and probably very complex for long sequences) rules which transform the original sequence in any message one wishes. Finding some message in some language in any short sequence should be relatively easy.

Just for fun I generated a 10 characters random sequence here, which turned out to be UXBRIDPMMX

Now with some substitutions: X='space', M='E', R= 'L' and by anagramming the remaining letters I get the message "PIEDE BLU" (and I even get a spare space) which means 'blue foot' in Italian, which is probably a distinctive characteristic, or even the name, of the monopodial aliens who telepathically influenced the random number generator to utter the mystic word 'UXBRIDPMMX' :rolleyes:
 
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I suspect (but cannot prove) that given any sequence of symbols it's possible to devise non-trivial (and probably very complex for long sequences) rules which transform the original sequence in any message one wishes. Finding some message in some language in any short sequence should be relatively easy.
You have to take big leaps to do that, it would be a bit like numerology, but the study of written languages (as per @FatPhil's post above) shows there are patterns to scripts that are language that are mathematically discernable, so even if you don't know it what it says you at least know it says something.

Of course "aliens are different" dismissals are the obvious get out clause here.
 
You have to take big leaps to do that, it would be a bit like numerology,
Of course, it's exactly like numerology, or the Bible Code! What I meant to say is that by applying arbitrary transformations to symbol sequences one can find arbitrary 'meanings' (probably, many many different ones) from whichever sequence one starts, even random ones, injecting 'meanings' where there were none. And with a short sequence the rules may be simple enough to seem plausible (while they're just arbitrary).
 
Of course, it's exactly like numerology, or the Bible Code! What I meant to say is that by applying arbitrary transformations to symbol sequences one can find arbitrary 'meanings' (probably, many many different ones) from whichever sequence one starts, even random ones, injecting 'meanings' where there were none. And with a short sequence the rules may be simple enough to seem plausible (while they're just arbitrary).
This of course is the old OTP trick. Any message can be extracted from the cyphertext just by chosing the right OTP. Which of course means that no message can be reliably extracted from the cyphertext.
 
However, you get similar distributions if you take letters as the tokens instead of words,

I figured there was a more mathematical way of expressing my observations about counting dots.

What I don't get, or maybe I do, is what was this guy thinking? It's like he just pulled it out of his ass without really thinking about it. He includes a photo of the actual sphere, then a similar but a bit different supposed drawing of the sphere. Then he spells out a 1 for 1 substitution style cipher using a made up alphabet and English to produce a 40 character phrase. All from 26-30 symbols he has already presented, that has none of the required repetition and doesn't even look like the fake alphabet he's using. Did no one notice?

The comments are either telling him "good job" or UFO people complaining that he's an armchair skeptic that hasn't really seen the sphere. No one mentions that the decoding can't work. I thought about commenting on his post, but what's the point? The people that follow him and will go see him lecture in Sedona think they are Star Seeds and just go along with his claim of being a "symbol expert".
 
I figured there was a more mathematical way of expressing my observations about counting dots.

What I don't get, or maybe I do, is what was this guy thinking? It's like he just pulled it out of his ass without really thinking about it.

As a related-ish aside, there's precedent for looking at statistical distributions of symbols in order to detect actual real-world fraud, not just silly unimportant fakery. Specifically, digits in ledgers.

Totally random first search engine result for ``benford's law fraud'':
External Quote:
Benford's law is a mathematical tool and a method of determining whether investigated financial statements contain unintentional errors or fraud. Benford's law says that counterfeit numbers have a slightly different pattern than valid or random samples. Benford's Law is an effective method and analytical technique to help detect accounting fraud.
-- https://www.researchgate.net/public...ol_to_Determine_Fraud_in_Financial_Statements

With the expected huge level of handwaving and unstated assumptions, if you take numerical data that can have a wide (spanning multiple orders of magnitude) range of values, the likelyhood of getting a number with initial digit 1 (so in the range [1*10^n, 2*10^n) ) is about the same as getting a number in the range [2*10^n, 4*10^n) (so with initial digit 2 or 3). Similar logic applies to the range [4*10^n, 8*10^n), so initial digit 4-7, and likewise to [5*10^(n-1), 1*10^n), so initial digit 5-9. So you'd expect '1' to be massively over-represented as an initial digit, and 9 to be very uncommon, compared to the uniform distribution.

If you want to try it out, chose a random fraction between 1 and 2, and raise it to a random power, and look at the first digit:
Code:
$ for i in `seq 1 20`; do dc -e "1.1${RANDOM} ${RANDOM} 30% 30+ ^p"; done
140.512286
476.766340
81.358633
1092.38944
223.525471
255.677840
123.751219
139.240311
669.26804
2257.63392
182.91898
439.508511
48.913113
34.867517
100.814417
411.360802
426.185806
111.799772
28.934820
848.69006
(confession: the first time I ran that I got an absurdly improbable set of initial digits, the subsequent 10 runs were all perfectly normal, I think I count 7 out of the 20 starting with a '1' there.)

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law
External Quote:
Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small.[1] In sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. Uniformly distributed digits would each occur about 11.1% of the time.
...
It has been shown that this result applies to a wide variety of data sets, including electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, house prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, and physical and mathematical constants.
 
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As a related-ish aside, there's precedent for looking at statistical distributions of symbols in order to detect actual real-world fraud, not just silly unimportant fakery. Specifically, digits in ledgers.
Letters are a different matter, though I'm certainly not about to question your math-fu. Languages are intended to represent spoken words, and as such need to use vowel sounds in much greater proportion than consonants. It's not always true that each vowel has a defined symbol, of course, in the case of languages in which the consonants are implied instead of written, but I think those are fairly rare. (I used to commute regularly past a mailbox that had two last names on it and not a vowel in either, but that's the joy of living in the multi-cultural Cleveland area!)
 
Letters are a different matter, though I'm certainly not about to question your math-fu. Languages are intended to represent spoken words, and as such need to use vowel sounds in much greater proportion than consonants. It's not always true that each vowel has a defined symbol, of course, in the case of languages in which the consonants are implied instead of written, but I think those are fairly rare. (I used to commute regularly past a mailbox that had two last names on it and not a vowel in either, but that's the joy of living in the multi-cultural Cleveland area!)
If you saw 'r' and 'l', they were probably vowels.

The nice thing is that the Zipf's law observation applies just as well to syllabic languages, such as Japanese and Korean, and even logographic ones; it's not limited to alphabets and abjads.
 
Maybe a combination of a low camera, and the horizon being a bit tilted?
View attachment 81584
Can anyone explain this? I really don't understand, how they can point the camera up, without the lines getting distorted in the lower corners.
Look at the transmission tower to the left.

Google Maps 90 degree:
View attachment 81568

Google Maps 112 degree:
View attachment 81569

Blender recreation 90 degree:
View attachment 81571

Blender recreation 112 degree:
View attachment 81572

Video:
View attachment 81573


It makes no sense to me - every camera does that in wide FOV.
I don't think the POV is up. Those cane fields look to be in midseason so should be about 6-8 feet high. Does that change anything?
 
I don't think the POV is up. Those cane fields look to be in midseason so should be about 6-8 feet high. Does that change anything?
Not really, the ground is still very low in the video so the camera is pointing upwards, and the tower is not distorted - I don't get it.
 
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