Malazan Empire: Maark Abbott - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Kakushigoto is (so far) the best anime series since Shirobako. Change my mind.

As someone who enjoys watching Ancient Aliens and UFO Hunters to laugh at them, I generally fall in the camp that reckons nothing with the ability to travel to our planet from far, far, far away has either: ever been here or: has ever been caught on camera.

Nothing in that footage suggests alien technology to me. They're poorly focused FLIR images and from my limited knowledge of aviation, don't demonstrate any behaviour not attainable by current levels of technology here on earth.

Hell, UFO Hunters used to have a decent scientist on the show - they looked into some FLIR footage captured by the crew of a police helicopter. Looked like some weird, oval shaped object that was spinning.
They spent most of a 40 minute episode on this. It was "compelling", the witnesses in the helicopter were "trained to observe" and were sure it was aliens, or at least unexplainable - the footage was analysed by an expert who couldn't be sure what it was, but he was confident it wasn't a helicopter or plane.
In the last ten minutes of the episode, the on-show scientist is like, "I want to try something..." and goes and gets a FLIR camera, and has a helicopter fly around a bit while he films. He brings the footage back, and is like, "back when I was flying imaging missions for NASA, I used to see things like this if the focus was wrong".
Loads up the footage, and sure enough, helicopter engine looks almost identical to the footage that kicked off the episode, if a bit higher quality. Because the engine is the only part of the helo that shows up on thermals at distance, especially if the focus is off.

Of course, the other guys on the team (who frequently declare "it's exactly the same!" When looking at one triangle and one oval) were not sure it was 'exactly' the same. Let me tell you, it was pretty much fucking identical.

The point being, FLIR footage is hard to interpret, and is dependant on the right settings to get a clear image. If it's not focused right, you pick up the outline of the engine only, and engines tend to have rotating parts, and look really weird. At least one of those clips, I'm like 99% confident that's what we're seeing, and the others I'm in the 90% confidence range. Of course, it's "unidentified", because with just that footage you can't tell if it's a drone, a jet, a helicopter, or what, let alone which specific type that aircraft is.

Sadly, despite our technology advancing leaps and bounds since the 40s, we still have nothing remotely close to evidence of alien life or technology, and in a lot of cases, the footage has not got better along with the technology improvements. And even things like FLIR, have made it easier to be confused by footage, because people don't know that what they're seeing is so heavily influenced by the camera as to be unrecognizable as the standard aircraft it is.

Yup I definitely don't trust the Tories not to sneak some extra little bits into emergency Covid legislation...

With Imperial Guard they're meat bags that can hurt and die so much easier