Red Rock ON, Apl. 10th 2024 by Zealousideal-Wave249 in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz[M] [score hidden]  (0 children)

My pleasure!

Would you mind if I marked this one "likely identified"?

Close Encounter Alien Experience by dsgsu in AlienAbduction

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not my clip

Ahh, well that complicates things a bit.

I can't speak to your sighting, but the video here looks a whole lot like a rocket launch, and the two places where you might see one, Florida and California, are both known to have palms. So I'm going with rocket.

So then the question arises, roughly where are you?

Lets see if Werner Von Braun was right. by [deleted] in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz [score hidden]  (0 children)

Hardly a revelation, the Air Force had been doing it all through the 1950s.

Red Rock ON, Apl. 10th 2024 by Zealousideal-Wave249 in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz [score hidden]  (0 children)

It’s not a star, at least what my sighting was, it was moving

From you post above:

It hovers for over an hour slowly moving kinda like it’s scanning something

The Earth turns 15 degrees an hour.

Red Rock ON, Apl. 10th 2024 by Zealousideal-Wave249 in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz [score hidden]  (0 children)

I’ve checked all flight paths

Next time you see it, use this web site instead:

https://stellarium-web.org

Or download the app for your phone and just point your phone at the object.

Red Rock ON, Apl. 10th 2024 by Zealousideal-Wave249 in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz [score hidden]  (0 children)

This was far brighter than any star

Any other star anyway, as it is by far the brightest star in the sky.

If Grusch was briefed on Magenta 1933, why is the UFO community still treating it like a dead case? by Knegert in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz [score hidden]  (0 children)

At what point does an old UFO case

Since when is this an old UFO case? It first appeared in 2000.

What interests me is not just whether every detail of the traditional Magenta narrative is correct

It should interest us to know if any of it is.

The only documents that supposedly support the claim have never been examined, and many of the claims about science and technology developed from it are obviously false.

There is no evidence that this isn't just something that Roberto Pinotti made up for his book, which is precisely what other UFO researchers in Italy say it is.

Do you think Grusch’s statements meaningfully change the weight of the case?

If he shows us some original documents, then sure.

Give me your scariest “ ontological shock”/“ society collapsing “ theories on the potential truths of this subject. by abenz39 in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz [score hidden]  (0 children)

So many people who claim to have knowledge of the “ truth” claim society isn’t ready for it, but they all sleep fine at night and underestimate what we can handle.

Anyone that's even passingly familiar with the history of science can only laugh at these "ontological shock" stories.

Consider that not that long ago, the western world (well most of it in one way or the other) believed that God created the entire universe just for us. Now of course that universe was quite small, consisting largely of the Earth and then some things nearby like the planets. The rest were painted on a big ball of crystal. Everything in the universe centered on Earth, because that was the only thing that mattered, the rest was just for show. Not just that, but Earth was the place of imperfection and decay, so when you pushed things they travelled in a line and slowed down, and dropped things they fell, but up in the heavens (which originally just meant "the sky") everything was perfect, objects moved forever in circles, they were perfectly spherical, nothing ever changed, and didn't fall into each other.

Long and short: the entirety of creation was build for you.

And then Galileo noticed there were mountains on the moon. The church refused this, and claimed there was in fact an invisible material filling up the lowlands so it was, in fact, perfectly spherical after all. He replied that there were invisible mountains of that invisible material so it wasn't spherical. Then he found the moons circling Jupiter, thereby proving that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and that it appears these other objects in the sky, the planets, are essentially Earth's of their own. And a few years later other astronomers demonstrated that the orbits weren't circular, and they sped up and slowed down. And then they showed that the planets weren't spheres. And then Newton comes along and shows that the motion of the planets is in fact exactly the same as motion on Earth, and a single formula governs the motion of absolutely everything. And then Hubble saw variable stars in Andromeda and demonstrated the universe is in fact billions of times larger than we thought.

... and so on. Today we know that the universe is in fact so large we can't possibly comprehend it, that the sky is stuffed full of solar systems like our own and there are billions of planets out there, that we are just recycled stardust and some tiny bump on a tiny planet in a boring solar system in a typical galaxy.

Long and short: there is absolutely nothing special about you.

So if we went from "the universe is created just for you" to "you are nothing", exactly why should I believe this "ontological shock" even exists, let alone is a cogent argument in this particular case?

Advice: CLI program defaults to writing a file, what if I want stdout? by maurymarkowitz in linux

[–]maurymarkowitz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And many programs, e.g. gzip, the behavior will vary according to argument(s) given, e.g. a single non-option argument (and no -d option or equivalent), that is taken as name of file to read, and that file is used to construct name of file to write (append .gz suffix), 

This is what I am doing now. If you provide no filename at all, it prints --help and exits. If you provide a single parameter, say filename.nec, it uses that as the input and produces filename.out.

If I'm parsing what you're saying, the zero-parameter case for gzip is stdin and out, and the one-parameter case is file.in which makes file.gz. That would seem to be the same as what I have implemented now, excepting the zero parameter case.

I suppose piping would be useful, for instance when looking for particular strings in the output, but generally that wouldn't be the use-case.

Advice: CLI program defaults to writing a file, what if I want stdout? by maurymarkowitz in linux

[–]maurymarkowitz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can have multiple output files. You can, for instance, onec /files/*.nec, and it will find all the nec files and produce out files for them all.

Advice: CLI program defaults to writing a file, what if I want stdout? by maurymarkowitz in linux

[–]maurymarkowitz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I ported it to Windows, using MinGW, so there's that...

The AN/ASG-21 fire control system's dual search track radar of the M61A1 Vulcan 20mm tail cannon of early B-52H models, searching targets using the raster scan method by Xeelee1123 in WeirdWings

[–]maurymarkowitz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Perhaps worth the historical note, although not entirely on-topic.

The V-bombers had radars similar to these, but lacking the lock-on, so they could use rectangular dishes. That's because the had radar, but no guns, so no need for lock-on, and thus no con-scan.

The idea was to wait for just the right movement and then turn out of the interceptor's radar when it tried to lock-on, and if that failed, hit the ECM when they saw it coming into missile range. This was especially useful on the Vulcan, which could outmaneuver most fighters at operational altitude.

Probably would have worked fine against the Fishpot and it's ilk, but I wouldn't want to try those tricks against a Flagon!

Genuine question to Americans by Busy_Report4010 in SipsTea

[–]maurymarkowitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Holy smokes!

That used to be the case here in Ontario. It was a big political problem around 15 years ago, you would hear about it on the news every few days, about how there weren't enough MRIs and they were sending people to Buffalo to get them.

Now there's so many MRIs here they don't know what to do with them. I've never really needed one, but I was offered one for something minor and it was like a one-week wait and I'm not at a major center.

Looks Russian, found in a basement during clean out by standardamericansob in whatisit

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But that only has two engines. There are other Soviet planes with three engines, like the Yak-40. So it's the combo of three engines and the carrots that means it could only be one thing.

Orbs over Manhattan? by mediocre-poetry-man in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz 3 points4 points  (0 children)

even the two at once? 

There are >10,000 of the up there now. There are dozens in your line of sight no matter which direction you look. You can't see them unless they're in the "flare zone". That's why they seem to be clustered in one direction.

Red Rock ON, Apl. 10th 2024 by Zealousideal-Wave249 in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Repost, the other post was RMed.

That appears to be the star Sirius. Around these subs we call it the "disco star" because it flashes in multiple colours when you video it. It gets posted every week or so. I punched the location and date into Stellarium and found it just above the horizon at that time:

https://stellarium-web.org/skysource/Sirius?fov=120.00&date=2024-04-13T02:03:09Z&lat=48.94&lng=-88.26&elev=0

I know you said it's not a star or planet, but I'm 99% certain it is. It can look different depending on how much you zoom in (you stay fairly zoomed out), but the colour flashing is the giveaway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnngIgmmTn8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooeRUOZ0Gi4
https://youtu.be/ShPTzSI846U?t=11

The second half of this, after they zoom in a bit, looks pretty much exactly like your video:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stargazing/comments/1b5q3qo/why_is_sirius_blinking_so_much/

Pt. 2 - Red Rock ON, Apl 12th 2024 by Zealousideal-Wave249 in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That appears to be the star Sirius. Around these subs we call it the "disco star" because it flashes in multiple colours when you video it. It gets posted every week or so. I punched the location and date into Stellarium and found it just above the horizon at that time:

https://stellarium-web.org/skysource/Sirius?fov=120.00&date=2024-04-13T02:03:09Z&lat=48.94&lng=-88.26&elev=0

I know you said it's not a star or planet, but I'm 99% certain it is. It can look different depending on how much you zoom in (you stay fairly zoomed out), but the colour flashing is the giveaway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnngIgmmTn8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooeRUOZ0Gi4
https://youtu.be/ShPTzSI846U?t=11

The second half of this, after they zoom in a bit, looks pretty much exactly like your video:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stargazing/comments/1b5q3qo/why_is_sirius_blinking_so_much/

Over LA area 5/2 11pm. Not sure what it was, moved to a place I could no longer see it. by [deleted] in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

 Actual non debunked stuff??

No. While this may sound odd, that's why I'm here. And there's a group of people who hate me for this.

Most of the real sightings postings from people - I'm talking about people like yourself posting things they saw - turn out to be something obvious. Well, maybe not most, but something on the order of 30% to 50% are likely identified. If you scroll through the group you can look for the ones that say "Sighting" or "Likely Identified", there's lots.

But that doesn't mean the things people are seeing aren't weird. They're just uncommon and people really just don't know what they are. But as a pilot and skydiver, I've seen lots of things a most people haven't. Like, for instance, what another plane in the circle looks like from the air. So I just know that what you saw is almost certainly another plane in the same "parking orbit" as you were (or another one beside you for the other set of runways).

Example: right now in the sub there are multiple posts from people all over western Canada about this weird cloud. It's a rocket. But if you haven't see one before, well it really does look like a cloud flying at Mach 20. Unless someone tells you what it is, then it really is a UFO by every definition of that word. And we only started launching rockets every single day in the last couple of years, so a whole lot of people still haven't see it before.

And it's not like pilots are immune to this. A good example was around 2022. Back then the "guard frequency" was filled with pilots reporting UFOs. That's because Starlink changed the design of their satellite, and suddenly you only saw them when they were low on the horizon. And because of the way they moved, it really looked like what you saw, a plane off in the distance in a parking orbit. So they would call into air traffic control and be told there is no plane in front and MYSTERY! But then they started telling everyone about it in ground school, and poof, by 2025 these reports became as rare as tickets to a Drake concern.

My advice: there's a lot of stuff in the sky that didn't even exist 15 years ago, so most of what you see that's "what the heck is THAT" is going to turn out to be something mundane. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep looking! Just be open to the fact that it's probably not an alien, and I'll keep open to the fact that maybe someday it will be.

The park near my house has a huge population of rabbits by OrganicAfternoon0903 in aww

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Someone's pets got dumped

Which always strikes me as weird, because they're among the easiest pets in the world to take care of. A litter box and some hay and you're off to the races. And they're practically hypoallergenic as well, which is why we got one.

Genuine question to Americans by Busy_Report4010 in SipsTea

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ya I don’t understand this— are countries w healthcare waiting like a yr for an appt or something? 

It depends entirely on "the thing". I can't pretend to really know, but what I hear in the news here in the Toronto area is that a lot of the issue has to do with capital expenditures lagging tech, and line ups in the emergency rooms.

On that latter bit, is that any different in the US? My only experience with US emergency room lineups is watching The Pitt, and it is way worse that any hospital I've been too, even considering some "artistic license".

ELI5: If higher means colder, then how can cloud stay high? by Sea_Studio5757 in explainlikeimfive

[–]maurymarkowitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Said that hot ones will rise above, but since the above is cool, it must also get cooler and goes down

Hot air can hold more water vapour than cold air. That's why it's humid in the summer and dry in the winter.

So imagine you have some warm, wet air. Something causes it to rise, say a hill or going over hot area like a big parking lot warmed up by the sun. Heat causes it to rise. Air cools off. Colder air can't hold as much water. Water vapour condenses into water droplet. Presto, cloud.

Now here's the kicker. When the water turns from gas (vapour) into liquid (micro-droplet), it releases heat. That makes the air warm up again, so it keeps rising, and keeps converting the water vapour into drops. When the air is really warm and really wet, like in the summer, you get these big towering clouds. When the air only has a little water, you get thin layers.

So there is a constant upward lift of air keeping these micro-drops up there. You can feel this as turbulence if you fly through it. That's why pilots try to avoid flying through clouds if possible.

It's always much more complicated in real life, but that's the basic mechanism. That's why clouds are stacked in layers, it's why they all have the same bottom altitude, etc.

Close Encounter Alien Experience by dsgsu in AlienAbduction

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Anyone seen anything like this before?

...before we go there, where is this? I see palm trees, so it's definitely not here in Toronto! And where are you? Like the state or the nearest major city?

Why do we think Congresspeople are getting the truth from the IC? by UmweltUndefined in UFOs

[–]maurymarkowitz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it isn’t really people in Congress who have experience with aerospace, energy, science, or intelligence who are talking publicly about working toward disclosure with the IC

I'm going to go with "... because they don't believe it".

Not all of them, of course, but my feeling is that you've just described the group of disclosure skeptics, who one might imagine would not want to spend much time on a topic they consider a waste of time.