Things that you are *strongly suspect* are true, but have no easy way of independently verifing

Give your examples, please!

- god exists, but they got bored and moved on to the next universe a very long time ago

verifying, even!

Melanie Williams is the only singer to have recorded records with two or more acts which both or all have names that consist of the same word repeated (Sub Sub and Temper Temper)

Natasha Kapinsky is the only former President of the Oxford Union to have competed on Strictly Come Dancing.

Aliens exist.

Ozzie Canseco regularly filled in for Jose without being detected.

Aliens exist but they're staying the fuck away from this quadrant of the galaxy (or dimensional plane) because of us

JFK wasn't supposed to be assassinated, he was supposed to be spooked into taking a harder line on commies/Cuba and get back onside with the CIA. The patsy got lucky, though.

In the early 50s, Philip K Dick got surreptitiously dosed with LSD at one of the CIA's MKUltra houses in San Francisco. PKD's "shifting realities" started soon after.

dick always claimed that he didn't take psychedelics, right? that just seems so wrong, i always assumed he was fibbing

It's not a strong suspicion but just by geographical proximity I think it's plausible and neat to believe PKD took guitar lessons from Kirk Hammett's guitar teacher. LSD may also be involved! In an alt-universe we would have had Dicktallica

His official claim is that he took LSD once and wrote "Faith of Our Fathers" for Dangerous Visions, but his literal inhaling of amphetamines all through his life shouldn't be discounted.

Our phones are always listening to us or what is around us and working with social media to target advertising in real time.

The "Bubble Yum is so soft because it has spider eggs in it" rumor was invented by another chewing gum company. A real kid would have said that it had snot in it.

My wife used to live in Pakistan, and she said one of the major soda brands (Coke?) would show up on the stands with signs or stickers saying "contains no pork."

So much happens behind closed doors in the world of government, politics, finance and anything else where my source of knowledge is dependent on what appears in the media, that almost everything I believe about them is based on *strong suspicion* viewed through a working knowledge of how humans often act and think. This differs from conspiratorial thinking mainly because my working knowledge of humans tells me that most of the evil in the world emerges directly from selfishness, stupidity, ignorance, irrationality, incompetence, and willful blindness and all these have a way of undermining our ability to create complex and successful conspiracies.

they are not made whole that reach the age of christ

no one in this world knows what they do

Aliens exist and are already here, but we don't notice because they're lichen, or those things that swim around in our eyeballs, or something like that. Something we wouldn't recognize as intelligent life.

....how would those be aliens in any sense

Not of terrestrial origin, but here...swimming around in our eyeballs.

Technically, everything you see is a projected image inside your head so the eyeball aliens have been controlling our accepted notions of reality for some time.

https://edibleanus.com/product/anus-casting-kit/

Not massively consequential but I think the Family Guy theme was supposed to say "effin' cry" not "laugh and cry" but Seth MacFarlane chickened out and re-recorded when he realised it was a family show not a new South Park.

That my most treasured and strongly held cultural tastes, fascinations and obsessions - which I consider important in helping to define me as a person - are almost completely arbitrary.

I also believe that Bob Six's most treasured and strongly held cultural tastes, fascinations and obsessions - which he considers important in helping to define him as a person - are almost completely arbitrary.

Lol

Aliens exist and are already here, but we don't notice because they're lichen, or those things that swim around in our eyeballs, or something like that. Something we wouldn't recognize as intelligent life.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Sunday, October 13, 2024 3:48 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Republicans?

I think that there was some kind of coordination between Nestle and Cadburys when the Caramilk was introduced and the Caramac discontinued in the same year.

Aliens exist and are already here, but we don't notice

I agree with this too but - I mean, look at an octopus. They dont even have any similar DNA!

Also sometimes I suspect modern homo sapiens might not originally be From Here, and it might explain some missing link shit.

Something really off about Vance's marriage, like he's really aggressive and controlling probably.

Madison Cawthorn was telling the truth about Grand Ol' sex Parties.

Boris Johnson voted Remain.

That no one, apart from psychopaths and the senile, really believes the familiar cliche that “the one good thing about old age is you no longer care what anyone thinks” is true.

Yeah, that one has never rung true for me. If anything it feels like the opposite.

It's there so that old bullies can insult young people into submission.

the one good thing about old age death is you no longer care what anyone thinks

fixed

there are hundreds of thousands of AMABs between the ages of 40 and 50 whose quality of life would be immeasurably improved were they to start taking estrogen

i also strongly suspect aliens are already here. my theory is that our biology and technology confine us to a tiny sliver of reality, and we just don't have an adequate means to grasp their presence / intelligence

The universe is infinite so there are probably other civilizations, but I think if aliens were here on earth we would have some inkling of their presence. I strongly suspect we are still alone in our corner of the universe

Is there a counterpart to the drake equation where the chance of extinction approaches 100% the more technologically developed and varied a civilization gets (basically it becomes too easy for a random alien to supernuke/greygoo-ize everyone else)?

This astrophysicist thinks we're probably alone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcInt58juL4

We're alone, but with each other <3

I suspect Grandpoint Genie wanted to make an aliens thread but knew it wouldn't catch on if it was too obvious. With some quick thinking and a dash of social engineering, they created this thread instead

I suspect Grandpoint Genie wanted to make an aliens thread but knew it wouldn't catch on if it was too obvious. With some quick thinking and a dash of social engineering, they created this thread instead

This one is at least easily refutable - no I didn't intend that at all! Although *now* I can see completely why you might be drawn to that conclusion, given that I *did* start an aliens thread, not too long ago but v. differently phrased, which as iirc correctly fizzled out quite quickly! So now I am very pleased to see people talking about aliens here.

All that said, a contribution on that theme of my own: I strongly suspect aliens aren't here but have developed their remote-sensing capacities themselves about things we do and say too, just like this well-remembered TV commercial from the 1970s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gLCj9qXfp4

sorry, *meant* to say

developed their remote-sensing capacities to such a degree that they are observing us all the time from a afar, know a lot of about us and are having a good ol' laugh among themselves about things we do and say too, just like this well-remembered TV commercial from the 1970s!

Aliens probably existed or will exist but not at the same time as us. Even if they did unless they’re sentient jellyfish or something no species is solving the zero-g/radiation/eating problems of space travel to ever contact each other in the flesh/goo.

Aliens is a documentary and a Xenomorph drooled on JFK's head from atop a secret building, Oswald was innocent

enjoyed that video, ZZ - particularly the part where it shows that yes, life seems to have started pretty early on earth, but it took a long-ass time for humans to come along, and the earth will become uninhabitable after only another 1B years.. so if humans represent a kind of bog-standard intelligence that the universe is capable of, there’s not that big a window for us to thrive. if life got going only 1B years later than it did (not a huge delay in the scheme of things) we wouldn’t have had time to get here

that said, you’d think 1B years would be enough time for us to figure out a way off this rock

I strongly suspect that humans developing intelligence has no ulterior meaning other than it being an evolutionary curiosity, given that no other species on Earth has ever done so in any true sense of the word. So if life does exist elsewhere in the universe (debatable) then it's not a given that one species would have become brain-dominant in the way we have here. In other words, there's probably a lot of fungal life-forms out there.

The Unknown Comic on The Gong Show was Alice Cooper.

No.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Comic

The rules were you guys weren't going to fact-check.

Elephants holding grudges seems like human or at least Trumpian level of intelligence! My bet is that the uncalculable odds that we'll find and communicate with cultures that evolved in deep oceans to be maybe 1000-1000000 times that of offplanet.

Basically The Abyss is more likely than Aliens.

The only "wisdom" that most people gain as they age is the "wisdom" to avoid situations and behaviors that might kill them. So if you see someone really old, chances are they stopped taking chances when they were younger and have been fearful of death ever since. so don't ask them the meaning of life. but revere them if you wish. old things are kinda cool!

developed their remote-sensing capacities to such a degree that they are observing us all the time from a afar, know a lot of about us and are having a good ol' laugh among themselves about things we do and say too, just like this well-remembered TV commercial from the 1970s!

Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Trilogy to thread?

on the topic of aliens, i suspect the fact that certain factions of the government have been trying to push some kind of 'disclosure' in the past few years was/is some sort of psy op for an unknown purpose. cover for nut-and-bolts military tech is too pat an explanation IMO. i think it's something else, perhaps to give folks a more 'safe' and less concrete conspiracy to dig into? (versus qanon which actively erodes the social fabric and proves legitimately dangerous)

granted, one could be driven mad by an alien conspiracy mindset. but that ALSO could be the point, to further spread outlandish shit using the credibility of 'the military'- the most "trusted" institution in America, I think is what periodic polls say) among the population to foster distrust and madness, etc. OR it could be used to provide data on the memetic spread of a conspiracy and how it affects people of different ideologies?

my last (and probably correct given that I've clearly spent way too much time thinking about this) conclusion is that certain factions in the government genuinely believe in it and are wondering wtf is going on

if it was to inculcate woo-woo into the social discourse, it definitely worked on me. i'm way more open to woo-woo shit after digging more into the topic and now fully *suspect* some kind of ultra-terristrial/earth-based nonhuman intelligence interacts with us and/or our dimension. or something. sad it had to be a literal counter-intelligence agent and GITMO torturer (lue elizondo) to seed to awaken my latent spirituality but w/e

partially it's all just fun- it evokes pondering and a sense mystery I haven't felt since I was a kid. and it hasn't been too psychically damaging for me... yet

Jacques Valle has always claimed the aliens were already here, not from outer space

Octopuses are those aliens. Given that our last common ancestor with them is a microscopic worm, they represent a completely different experiment in intelligent life forms.

xp yeah! he’s great. he is so cool- enjoyed some of his books

although “jose chung’s from outer space” might be all anyone needs re: the “UFO” topic

I asked ChatGPT - that unimpeachable fount of factual accuracy - how close a civilisation with comparable technology to ours would have to be for us to be able to detect it. It said we can detect radio signals from a 100 light years away, and lasar beams from 1000 years away, as long as they were pointing in our direction. Given that the nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light years away, that limits us to our own galaxy. But given that even our own galaxy is over 100,000 light years across, that limits us to only a small corner of our galaxy. And given there are 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, there could be literally trillions of civilisations out there and we'd never find them.

that's what I'm thinking

except, isn't it spelled 'civilizations'? ;)

Some snowflakes are indeed alike.

If you ever plan on robbing a bank, but get worried about a train blocking your getaway path on some nearby tracks, clamp some jumper cables down on the rails right before you go in.

you can predict, with a fair bit of accuracy, which creatures would be most likely to have survived the K/T extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous and the beginning of the Tertiary, when the asteroid slammed into Yucatan and led to the end of all of the non-avian dinosaurs, half of the avian dinosaurs, and 90% of the life in the sea.

The animal would need to be 8kg or less in mass, capable of burrowing, an obligate or facultative carnivore, and be living in or near the polar regions. It would be more likely to have been land-living and if it was marine, it would be less likely to have a shell.

if there is a god, then it's the thing that is responsible for all life, i.e. DNA. All the variety, complexity and intelligence here on Earth are merely DNA's successful attempts at replication.

and if one primordial soup of nucleotides plus enough time can do it here, it/others can do it everywhere.

Just Stop Oil is a deliberate strategy by Big Oil to make their opponents look bad and unlikeable

(I don't actually believe this myself but I know an amazing number of people who do)

Humanity will only be saved until we try communism again.

dyson airblades somehow make your hands have more bacteria on them or are otherwise worse for reducing the spread of germs

lol totally

the germs are removed from your hands and turned into a fine aerosol mist for the whole bathroom to enjoy

apart from the people who spend a whole minute washing their hands first, if such people exist.

i sing the national anthem three times

Which nation?

that I'm the first person to abbreviate 'whatever' to 'whatev'

that I was the first person to abbreviate 'can't be arsed' to 'CBA' (it was a 2000s blogging thing, I made significant efforts to popularise it)

I support your assertion

We used to say "ceebs" all the time, on that note. Not that long ago but like 10 years back.