• It's Maddie!
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    1821 year ago

    Lol no one would’ve told Trump any of that even after he was elected

      • @PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee
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        381 year ago

        That’s why he still had classified documents after he left office. He couldn’t figure out what the big red letters “Top Secret” meant.

      • ditty
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        111 year ago

        If the documents didn’t say his name in the first couple of sentences, he wouldn’t read them.

    • @Dave@lemmy.nz
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      531 year ago

      Yeah I’d be pretty sure the team around him would have been very careful about what information they gave him.

    • @Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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      281 year ago

      In order to learn anything about it, Trump would have had to have been curious about it, and since the subject is Area 51 and not Donald Trump you can be certain that it didn’t cross his mind even once.

    • @tjarod11@lemmy.world
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      561 year ago

      The Roswell Incident was declassified as well. It was a weather balloon with a microphone attachment that was meant to listen to a certain layer of the atmosphere where nukes are loudest. I don’t have the link as I’m on mobile.

      I don’t think the government would deny any extraterrestrial claims by the news during the cold war because it would scare the commies shitless if they thought the United States had alien technology.

      • @Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        251 year ago

        The US government has been caught spreading alien conspiracy theories. They were the ones supplying Paul Bennewitz with his bogus info to muddy the waters on the stealth craft they were working on at the time.

      • Jay
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        1 year ago

        If I remember the story correctly the balloon was, as you said, to detect nuke detonations. When it crashed the government lied because they didn’t want anyone to know what they were up to.

        That method of detection wasn’t very effective anyway, we figured out much more reliable means of detecting nuclear explosions right on the ground using resonance, but it was pretty obvious the government was lying, so of course peoples imaginations went wild with conspiracies and the ufo thing was born.

        It was (and still is) a great thing for the US government, it deflects from what’s really going on and keeps the idiots busy chasing bullshit, and the enemies guessing as to what kind of tech they may really have. Toss them a bone once in awhile to keep the frenzy going and you have a reliable means of obfuscation for little to no effort.

      • @CeruleanRuin
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        61 year ago

        They used to. They moved that to a different base. 51 is little more than a convenient decoy for lookyloos now.

    • @agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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      31 year ago

      Yeah. Groom lake. Outside of Vegas. Not much to see unless you draw attention by trespassing. So I hear. I drove out there once but didn’t get all that close. Anyway that facility was the base for the CIA A-12 planes, their version of the SR-71 Blackhawk.

  • @s_s@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Bros, this is really easy: The US Air Force was developing all sorts of secret stuff during the Cold War, to keep it secret from, you know, the Russians.

    When a secret spy balloon crashed in a public place in Roswell, the Air Force didn’t answer any direct questions and when someone asked if it could be aliens, their reply was, “it can be whatever you want!”

    Part 2: Everyone forgot all about the whole event for 30 years, because it was completely unremarkable. Then, after the Watergate scandal, everyone was super suspicious of the government, because one conspiracy had just turned out to be true. And one guy got on the radio and was like, “yeah well the government even has aliens, remember Roswell?” And nobody did, so then they retold the story in the most suspicious way possible and he sold a ton of books.

    And that’s where aliens come from.

    • @bratosch@lemm.ee
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      161 year ago

      And that’s where aliens come from.

      When a mommy alien and a daddy alien love each other,

    • Marxism-Fennekinism
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      11 months ago

      And if we’re being really honest, the government probably doesn’t mind the alien conspiracy theories at all because by having a fake reason to hate the government you’re distracted from the real reasons to hate them. People that focus on the fact that the government might be withholding information about aliens from them have a higher chance of forgetting about the government withholding things like healthcare, food security, student debt relief, public transportation, consumer rights, survivable minimum wages, etc etc.

    • @CeruleanRuin
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      201 year ago

      This I can absolutely believe. You really think the entrenched MICC is going to give him access?

    • @Madison420@lemmy.world
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      101 year ago

      Correct, Truman was not allowed to know about the Manhattan project until it was already viable and needed to be known.

      • @diverging@lemmy.ml
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        1211 months ago

        Truman became president on April,12 1945. He was given a full briefing on the Manhattan project on April 24,1945. That doesn’t seem like he was being kept in the dark.

        • @Madison420@lemmy.world
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          711 months ago

          It was one of the most important and costly projects of the war, 12 days is a lifetime during a war quite literally. That’s also ignoring the fact that the vice president was kept in the dark until after FDR died and Truman took office.

            • @Madison420@lemmy.world
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              511 months ago

              That’s dated April 24.

              It’s not, the administration by in large knew FDR was dying and would likely die before leaving office. Truman effectively was a president in waiting rather than a vice president.

                • @Madison420@lemmy.world
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                  111 months ago

                  Yes that he needed to speak about something important. Draw your own implication but it doesn’t actually say what your implying it says.

    • Did it need it?

      At least alien life is a statistical near certainty. Intelligence, FTL, and a general willingness to be sneaky assholes about existing, not so much, but it’s probably somewhere out there, compared to a prophet that makes 100 predictions and gets 1 right.

        • @agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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          301 year ago

          The incomprehensible enormity of the universe. There are about 100,000 million stars just in the Milky Way galaxy. Two trillion galaxies lie in the observable universe. Based on Hubble ST observations, an estimated 6.25×10^18 stars have planets. If there is only a 1 in 1 billion chance of these planets supporting life, that’s still 6.25 billion planets. Of course we haven’t observed life outside earth yet despite such an high probability of it existing—that’s the Fermi Paradox. But anyway it is fairly widely accepted that life didn’t just evolve here on earth. When other life evolved is another question. Also there’s no guarantee we could detect it with telescopes (of any EM spectrum).

          • @KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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            -71 year ago

            It’s not “fairly widely accepted”. The Fermi Paradox is based on the Drake Equation, which has a long chain of assumptions about how rare it is for life to form and grow. Life can easily be a one-off in general, since we don’t have good ranges for those measurements.

            Our planet is perfect for life to form and, as far as we know, it only happened once here in billions of years.

            • Dale
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              91 year ago

              Given how life started on earth almost immediately after it cooled down it is fairly widely accepted that there’s life out there. What level of complexity is up for debate. Also, if the universe is infinite and the laws of physics are the same everywhere, there is a 100% chance that there is an infinite number of exact replicas of earth and its history out there.

              • @KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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                -71 year ago

                It’s not “fairly widely accepted” because there’s literally no evidence for it. Anything can happen once. Something happening once is not evidence of how common it is. For that, you need to count how often it happens. We have only the vaguest ideas about how common certain requirements are, and less information about potential hurdles.

                That’s the point of the Fermi Paradox: if the Drake Equation estimates are right, we should see life everywhere in the universe. The fact that we see no life indicates that our assumptions are wrong.

                • @Nythos@sh.itjust.works
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                  111 year ago

                  It is incredibly arrogant to think that in something as unfathomably large as our the universe that humans are the only form of life.

                  Whether other life forms are advanced enough to be detected by us or even for space travel is an entirely different matter.

          • @Jorgelino@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            I’ll give you that the existance of simple life such as microbes is pretty widely accepted. But the existance of intelligent life besides us is absolutely NOT a statistical certainty.

            The likelyhood of the circumstances that allowed us to exist repeating is simply that small.

            Besides, there is the matter of time. No matter how many planets are out there, you need a fuck ton of time to get to intelligent life.

            It took earth about 4 billion years to go from a heaping ball of fire to having humans in it. That’s almost 1/3 of the age of the fucking universe!

            It doesn’t matter how many planets with life there are if they didn’t exist for long enough to reach the point we’re at.

  • @Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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    2211 months ago

    There never were aliens at Area 51.

    It was all just a ruse to cover up even more dark shit.

    Think of things banned by the Geneva convention, like biological weapons, torture techniques, war crimes, …

    Making people think it is aliens makes it seem innocent by comparison.

    • @lud@lemm.ee
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      1811 months ago

      torture techniques, war crimes,

      Wouldn’t that be Guantanamo Bay?

      The reason that people belived it was aliens is that people are stupid. Area 51 was a secret but not so much anymore. Now we know it was useful for secret projects like A-12. It’s a convenient place to do test flights of secret shit.

  • @OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
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    2111 months ago

    The same Trump who didn’t read intelligence briefings? They probably handed him one on day one that explained aliens and Area 51 are all real and he used it to wipe burger grease off his mouth while he was writing a Tweet with his other hand in all caps.

  • @Chefdano3@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Woah, I forgot about least I could do. I used to read that all the time In high school.

    • Penny arcade is apparently also around, I saw something about them a couple months ago. And questionable content. Can’t say I like the way any of their art styles developed but I’m impressed they kept any sort of readership for this long.

      • @Chefdano3@lemm.ee
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        11 year ago

        Of course Penny Arcade is still around. They host some of the biggest video game expos that still run: PAX.

      • deweydecibel
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        1 year ago

        What “questionable content”? I mean, they’ve always had that, I’m just curious what specifically you’re talking about.

        As for the art style, yes, Mike has purposely refused to stick to any specific style and just kind of does what he wants. Which has resulted in some art a lot of people aren’t fond of (myself included) but at least he’s still trying new things. I mean, in a world where most comics that gain notoriety are deliberately bad or simplistic art that often isn’t even colored, it’s nice that PA is still trucking along actually drawing real art.

        Honestly, Penny Arcade has kind of just become like any comic strip: you read it every now and again, you aren’t checking in regularly. And it’s only partially the comics, the other half are Jerry’s attached blog posts which are usually worth a read.

        I keep coming back to it because it’s interesting seeing these guys grow up. There was one recently where Gabe tells the reader “if you were reading early Penny Arcade in college, it’s time to get your prostate checked”.

        • Ech
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          61 year ago

          What “questionable content”? I mean, they’ve always had that, I’m just curious what specifically you’re talking about.

          Pretty sure they mean Questionable Content, the webcomic.

        • As someone else said, questionable content was another welcoming from the same time period as the other two which I also learned recently is still publishing.

    • sik0fewl
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      31 year ago

      I stopped reading it (and a few other web comics) when Google Reader went away.

  • @yojimbo@sopuli.xyz
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    611 months ago

    Well - didn’t he try? If I am not wrong - the latest string of UFO / UAP reports started during the Trump presidency. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump was the one who asked the Pentagon to “show the people the aliens” - in hopes that it will change the nations focus from his own mental or moral disabilities. And the Pentagon has obliged - and showed people the aliens in all their glory. 👽

    The result is that now we know much more about various optical illusions that happen in military binoculars, telescopes and such - than we did ever before.

    • @CaptnNMorgan@reddthat.com
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      111 months ago

      Wait, so you’re attributing things that were seen on scanners and with the naked eye of military pilots were optical illusions? Has this been confirmed with any credibility? Or are you using your “common sense”

      • @yojimbo@sopuli.xyz
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        311 months ago

        Well - the videos don’t look very persuasive to me, I am not an expert though. But judging from the same wikipedia article experts weren’t impressed either… I mean even Pentagon itself comments that

        “UAP probably lack a single explanation”, and proposed five possible categories of explanation: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, US government or industry development technology, foreign craft, and an “Other” category

        When you say aliens - I am thinking something like the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” - and all I got was learning about bokeh and paralax 😇

  • @LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Presidents don’t get that information. It’s on a need-to-know proprietary basis only. I was in the Army in military intelligence and there was indeed a portal in our computer system regarding UFOs and aliens but I did not have access to it because it was not part of my job. The closest we’ve heard of Presidents knowing about aliens is when Bill Clinton pontificated about it on some late-night talk show.

    https://youtu.be/lQNevl2BuxM?si=LQTbGL2MyFozchIH?t=5m21s

    https://youtu.be/Y4Pr9Zjxja0?si=V_40d2G8iTACzkdc

  • @ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
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    411 months ago

    Alien conspirarcy theories worked as a baseline test for the CIA to track how effective propoganda and misinformation is before they rolled out the same techniques in places that it mattered for US foriegn policy interests.