Your comment is all certainty, and the thread has rewarded that. People are seeking definite answers - seems proportional to the uncertainty they sense. Do you really feel qualified to provide that? Seems a big responsibility to take on, sort of like a public Explaining influencer lol.
Your idea that gossip enriches mundane with magic is unnecessary here, because the media themselves are 'unexplained' (if we remove your certainty).
It can be compelling and attractive to fill the silence or the unknown with an invention of certainty - sort of like a prophet or shepheard - but the edge of known demands more curiosity and wonder for an honest approach.
For example, If I take a blurry photo of something I see outside on a full moon that's probably a raccoon and proclaim its a photo of the elder god Nug, spawn of Azathoth, the Lord of All Things, and someone points out that its probably a raccoon but the photo is so bad there's really no way to ever tell the right attitude isn't to say:
"It can be compelling and attractive to fill the silence or the unknown with an invention of certainty - sort of like a prophet or shepheard - but the edge of known demands more curiosity and wonder for an honest approach."
The truth is that when we see photos of Nug the mind-bending eldrich horror of the sight disturbs the vision part of our brain. The photos are all perfectly clear, but simply too terrible for our tiny minds to ever percieve.
The color it appears on infrared footage depends on the other pixels in frame. It uses dynamic ranges to map infrared values to a visible light spectrum. If the rest of the frame was ice, or you were looking up into space, a bird would probably be rendered as very warm.
If the rest of the frame is a warm ocean surface and warm wind turbines, then a flying bird may be rendered as cold relative to those pixels.
Balloons can also show up as a different temperature than the background of the frame depending on what the balloon is made of, altitude differences (ambient temp at high altitude is colder than at the surface), etc.
But here is a paper showing penguins photographed with a temperature-sensing IR camera, showing the majority of the surface of their body being around -21ºC thanks to the highly insulating plumage.
https://x.com/The_Astral_/status/2052922220486205496
Please tell me your feelings on the big picture. I feel it's imbalanced if you provide such certainty to some examples but refrain from a larger perspective. It's okay if you don't want to tho, I just want to know where you're coming from I guess.
IR imagery can be flipped between black=hot or white=hot. These systems are about creating contrast to aid visualization, not recording scientific data.
>> What sort of balloons show up as contrast instead of neutral?
A hot air balloon? Any balloon that has recently changed altitude? Any reflective balloon reflecting sunlight (Mylar is common). Or, in thin air, a non-reflective balloon absorbing sunlight and warming faster than it can dissipate that heat.
If I am presented with two options, I am going to defer to the more likely option, particularly when aliens are involved.
Is it more likely that you don’t understand artifacts in digital imaging of visible light or the infrared spectrum; or that it’s aliens?
When “aliens did it” is one of the possible options, skeptical people will never assume it’s aliens, given there is no evidence of aliens visiting Earth. If we had evidence of aliens visiting Earth, I would maybe consider that option.
About the 8-pointed - I reject the idea that my approach, by being in disagreement with yours, somehow indicates that I am deficient in understanding - this insult is the refuge of the orthodox and uncurious. You probably responded to me because I challenged the certainty of the other. Indeed, it leads your comment as a quote.
If you bring a conclusion, you find a binary: one reasonable choice (which you already took), and one ridiculous one. If you bring questions, you find something else.
You want your belief, and I want the truth. It makes me more courageous and more curious. You can also choose that. Or not: there's no shame in your opinion and no badness in it as long as you don't expect others participation nor impose against them.
I will explain the mechanism of how stigma is operating in your case, and how it's designed to stymie thinking and investigation.
Your focus on "aliens as the only alternative" is mostly ideological inflexibility, and blinds you to exploring by mis-associating exploration with an ideologically forbidden outcome: "aliens". You are supposed to be scared of it being aliens, and scared of sounding stupid by suggesting that, and to mislabel any deviation from orthodox "it's nothing" explanations as that, to disable thinking. You are supposed to try to propagate the stigma by shaming others with it, via suggesting they are nuts for violating its constraints, just as you try to insinuate here. Of course, I reject that insult, it has nothing to do with me. Yet, the stigma is working in your case. There's no shame in that. You can free yourself when you want. The stigma was used and has worked on millions for decades.
It does not work on me, I am already out of it. "If we had evidence I would investigate" - is not scientific, it's finality implying certainty, when in reality there's mystery and science is the way. Saying there's nothing worth looking at, so I won't look is safety masquerading as rationality, but is neither really. But it's perfectly okay for you to personally adopt that. All have their own timing. No need to rush or change. To avoid badness just don't impose it on others nor expect them to participate. Hopefully that is clarifying. It's not meant as insult or insinuation and there's no shame in it.
I'm grateful for the entertainment and the sense of "gov't doing something people want/revealing something they lied about" tho. Restores confidence in the big system. I'm really curious to see what comes next :)
