If We're Going To Meet Aliens I Hope It's Soon

"I want to believe" takes a whole new meaning

Dec 04, 2020

There is a running joke among my friends and I that January 1st, 2021 might actually turn into December 32nd, 2020. Like many of you, I’ve simply suspended all my remaining faith in a “normal” day, not just when I observe the world we live in, but in my own life as well.

This is why I feel prepared on every level possible for the most impossible thing, perhaps one of the most under-discussed developments of the year.

Alien contact.

Ridiculous, maybe, but is it really? Let’s look at nothing else but the last couple of months alone.

From the failing New York Times in July:

In 2017, The New York Times disclosed the existence of a predecessor unit, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Defense Department officials said at the time that the unit and its $22 million in funding had lapsed after 2012.
People working with the program, however, said it was still in operation in 2017 and beyond, statements later confirmed by the Defense Department.
The program was begun in 2007 under the Defense Intelligence Agency and was then placed within the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, which remains responsible for its oversight. But its coordination with the intelligence community will be carried out by the Office of Naval Intelligence, as described in the Senate budget bill. The program never lapsed in those years, but little was disclosed about the post-2017 operations.

Renewed interest in UFO’s this year came in April when released video footage of Navy F/A-18 pilots came out showing them following a UFO that appeared to defy the laws of physics that all aircraft are bound to.

The fanfare regarding this footage even forced an official response from the government. According to ABC News:

The Navy declassified three previously leaked top-secret U.S. Navy videos in late April in an effort "to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that had been circulating was real or whether or not there is more to the videos," said Susan Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson.
"The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as 'unidentified,'" the spokesperson added.

You can read the official Department of Defense statement here

Now if the UFOs seem strange, let’s go ahead and discuss the weird monolith straight out of 2001: Space Odyssey that came out of nowhere in Utah last week. According to NPR, the “metallic monolith of unknown origin, discovered more than a week ago, has vanished from the Utah desert as mysteriously as it appeared, according to the Bureau of Land Management's Utah division.”

Movie prop? Outdoor art piece put out by some eccentric Mormon artist? Alien artifact? Your guess is as good as mine, I’ll believe basically anything in the realm of possibility (and impossibility) at this point.

It seems, however, the mystery continues to grow stranger- with another near-identical monolith appearing (and then somehow disappearing) this time in Romania. The fun just doesn’t seem to end.

If they come, they’ll have plenty to see- all the good, bad, and in between. Give us something new to fear, give us something to strive to discover, give us something we can all agree is either a genuine existential threat or a unified effort we should attempt to understand.

Maybe when we begin to aim our sights at the stars, we’ll become less likely to aim them at each other so menacingly.

Featured image from Unsplash.com

It’s that time of the year to splurge on and spoil the fans and nerds in your life! Here are ten of the most interesting gifts I found online to consider getting for those special people (or maybe yourself) this season! From comics to games, movies, and merch, there is something on this list for everyone!

Read the rest at SecondPrintComics.com

The dumbest thing I read

This came out the day before Thanksgiving, but it’s worth sharing just to remind us all again (as if we needed another reminder) that Buzzfeed News is absolute garbage:

You probably know that the best thing to do is not to travel or do a big family Thanksgiving. The CDC says you shouldn’t do it. Epidemiologists say you shouldn’t do it. BuzzFeed says you shouldn’t do it. Even if your heart is crying out for human connection, your brain knows you shouldn’t.
This post isn’t about if you should (you shouldn’t). This post is about how to reach out to family and loved ones this holiday via that most American of ways — faded celebrities.

Read the rest at Buzzfeed News if you need a good laugh.