Alora Fane

UFO disclosure seems to have progressed this week. Can't say the same about myself!

The UFO whistleblower thing continues to develop. Several more people from significant places are supposedly going to be coming out soon to corroborate the primary whistleblower's claims that some secret faction within the US military has in their possession a dozen alien craft that they've been trying to reverse-engineer (with about as much luck as someone from Biblical times might have reverse-engineering an iPhone, most likely).

r/UFOs - or at least one faction of it - is treating it as if the long-longed-for Disclosure is imminent.

Is it? I can't say, obviously, though I do get the impression things are a bit different this time due to the social status of the people involved and the channels they're going through.

I've been following UFO-related developments for a few years, and the impression I get is that there's been some disclosure efforts being slowly trickled out over the course of years. Maybe this is what it's all been leading to? Or maybe this is just another step in the process.

I find it all interesting, anyway.

(Though there's some stupid probably-a-hoax story about some teenager seeing ten-foot-tall ETs in his back yard, which is getting attention too, perhaps intentionally to throw people off, or perhaps just because minds are eagerly open to anything seemingly related at the moment.)

Though most people don't seem to care about any of this, in my experience. "Nutty conspiracy theorists have been claiming that for years, big deal. Still need to go to work tomorrow." Potentially-world-changing AI is demonstrably real already, though, and people in general don't care much about that either. I'm less shaken up by it all myself than I was a few weeks ago. I suppose we adapt, and find it difficult to care about these big, abstract, potential things when daily chores still need to be done or our friend's cat is sick or silly, or whatever.

The UFO topic has interested me since I was a child though, so it finally being validated - or whatever you want to call what this potentially could be - is a Big Thing to me, enough that it's made it hard to focus all week.

I say, as an excuse for why I've done next to no work... though it's not even the main reason.

I've been working on that Frayth/Belief Battles/whatever project for a few weeks now, though I felt bad about it because my main project is supposed to be Atonal Dreams, and I haven't touched that in ages. I wanted to spend this week trying to maybe address the reasons I'd redirected my focus.

But... they're mental-health related, and despite my efforts to just try and push through the mental barriers regardless, I didn't succeed. Worked myself into an anxious mess several times! But frustratingly it didn't amount to anything.

It all seems to boil down to the fear that I'll do something wrong due to ignorance and naivete, and that I'll face negative social consequences as a result of it. That seems to be the basic root of social anxiety in general, and in my case there are specific core memories like my experience with Fig Hunter that fuel the aversion.

I really wish I could see a mental health specialist to work through all this, since I clearly can't do it by myself. But it's not as easy as just making the decision. I just have to wait, for who-knows-how-long. If they haven't just completely forgotten about me or ceased to exist as a service or something.

Maybe next week I'll at least need to either contact the counselling service to determine whether or not I'm even on a waiting list, or look into alternate services or something...

One thing I wanted to do as part of that was finally sort out the Steam port of Clarence's Big Chance, but stupid mental barriers got in the way.

I have the files mostly ready and all I really need to do is upload it to Steam, then maybe share a link in my Discord to get some testers to ensure it all works as it should, but...

I could probably get it all sorted out in a day - an hour, even - but I just can't focus or motivate myself or get anxious about things like people deciding it's politically incorrect and I should be destroyed for being a bigot or things like that. Or I worry that I'm doing something wrong regarding money-related aspects that I'll come to regret because I don't understand the minutiae well enough due to not really living in the world and not knowing a ton of jargon people seemingly need to know to get by.

Some people commit crimes on purpose! So alien to me. I'm so paranoid about doing something I shouldn't by mistake. Avoiding doesn't help, but... well, ugh.

Loneliness is also a constant distraction, and I spend a lot of time just scrolling through Reddit, looking at several friend-finding or loneliness-related subs I've joined (put have never actually posted in), and feeling disheartened because 99% of the posts I see just seem so vapid, hopeless, and entirely uninteresting to me.

(What is a post which consists entirely of "im bored and lonely dm me" possibly going to lead to? Can meaningful bonds form based on absolutely nothing? I doubt it! Or maybe they're all just scammers anyway!!)

Or even in the 1% of cases I see someone who's written out something that even slightly piques my interest (by which I mean "they might be mentally ill in similar ways to me so they'd have a higher chance of being able to tolerate me, but they're female so I'd be motivated by something like a subconscious drive to impress rather than uncomfortable comparison either of life situations or to past unpleasant memories"), I end up feeling like some creepy, maladjusted old man who'd only be offending them by daring to reach out. Which is another Mental Health Thing - a maladaptive negative belief derived from past negative experiences - that I don't seem to be able to just shrug off without help.

So... I don't know. Will our alien overlords be giving a speech with President Biden by this time next week? Will I finally hear back re counselling?? Or magically manage to push through the issues myself enough to add the CBC port to Steam??? Who knows!!

(Also, it's too hot. Ugh. Only going to get worse, too.)

5 COMMENTS

Noppe5~1Y

How do you feel about the science community and the way they react (or lack of reaction) to UFO stuff? There's tons of science people passionate about outer space, wondering whether there's intelligent life out there and how to find it. Then you've got all these claims of UFO cases happening at earth. Are those people wilfully ignoring something they're passionate about? Are they somehow unable to find anything convincing themselves? How do you make sense of this?

Apparently a part of NASA is dedicated to researching UAPs. They say there's no evidence aliens are involved in UAPs.

Tobias 1115~1Y

I've heard that there's a lot of interest behind the scenes among scientists, but few are willing to stake their reputations on making statements that'd make them look like fools, which sounds about right to me.

IloveMardek7~1Y

Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian Doctor born in 1818, made the conclussion that hand washing is one of the most important things of public health.
People didn't believe him though, as they could not phyiscally see the germs, and Ignaz berated people who disagreed with him.
He got fired, and over the years, at the age of 47, Ignaz was commited to a mental aslyum, because he had developed a medical condition, possiblily syphilis.

Hand Washing is common nowadays, because it kills harmful germs, whereas in 1850 people would have called you a madman.

If you feel hopeless that no one agrees with you, you can find comfort in the off chance that many centuries later people would find out your theory was actually correct.

From what I have heard, finding new friends after college is difficult and challenging. a lot of people have kind of closed of their friend groups, and will most often then not be busy with works, our hanging out with their friend groups.

unless you have a friend who can introduce you to other friends, you usually have to friends yourself, which can be difficult and challenging, especially for introverted people.

For introverted people, connecting through games is in my experience easy. you both have a common interest you share, and through that you can develop a deeper friendship by getting to know each other better, but it can be a hit or miss of course depending on the other person.

Hand Washing is common nowadays, because it kills harmful germs, whereas in 1850 people would have called you a madman.

If you feel hopeless that no one agrees with you, you can find comfort in the off chance that many centuries later people would find out your theory was actually correct.

From what I have heard, finding new friends after college is difficult and challenging. a lot of people have kind of closed of their friend groups, and will most often then not be busy with works, our hanging out with their friend groups.

unless you have a friend who can introduce you to other friends, you usually have to friends yourself, which can be difficult and challenging, especially for introverted people.

For introverted people, connecting through games is in my experience easy. you both have a common interest you share, and through that you can develop a deeper friendship by getting to know each other better, but it can be a hit or miss of course depending on the other person.

Tobias 1115~1Y

I appreciate the historical anecdote. History's littered with those. When studying psychology, part of the taught course was about paradigm shifts, how science progresses less through openly accepting new discoveries and more by old adherents dying off, because scientists are human and they're as biased as anyone else, plus they're especially wary of looking like fools due to their role as guardians of knowledge.

I'm surprised though with the UFO thing that peolpe are still speaking about it as if it's some out-there theory that they exist at all, given all that's come out, especially in recent years. I suppose people who don't delve deeply into the accumulated ~lore~ just aren't aware, though, unfortunately. What the phenomenon is remains an open question, and it doesn't seem to be natural or man-made. Currently sci-fi ideas about aliens are probably as silly as these past predictions of the future.

Literally the only thing that worked for me re finding friends after school was going back to uni in my late twenties. All the other "join groups and clubs!" stuff everyone suggests didn't. Turns out a lot of women use dating apps to find friends, because they get hundreds of matches without effort, but being a not-hot male shut-in in his thirties is unlikely to lead to anything other than more evidence to be depressed were I to try that myself.

Though I make games, I've never really got anything out of playing them with other people. I always avoided multiplayer due to lack of interest.

Personally I prefer bonding over shared mental illness struggles with similarly-afflicted women, which is the only thing that's really worked for me in the past, but in my experience those women are all busy with their partners.

I'm surprised though with the UFO thing that peolpe are still speaking about it as if it's some out-there theory that they exist at all, given all that's come out, especially in recent years. I suppose people who don't delve deeply into the accumulated ~lore~ just aren't aware, though, unfortunately. /What/ the phenomenon is remains an open question, and it doesn't seem to be natural or man-made. Currently sci-fi ideas about aliens are probably as silly as these past predictions of the future.

Literally the only thing that worked for me re finding friends after school was going back to uni in my late twenties. All the other "join groups and clubs!" stuff everyone suggests didn't. Turns out a lot of women use dating apps to find friends, because they get hundreds of matches without effort, but being a not-hot male shut-in in his thirties is unlikely to lead to anything other than more evidence to be depressed were I to try that myself.

Though I make games, I've never really got anything out of playing them with other people. I always avoided multiplayer due to lack of interest.

Personally I prefer bonding over shared mental illness struggles with similarly-afflicted women, which is the only thing that's really worked for me in the past, but in my experience those women are all busy with their partners.

IloveMardek7~1Y

a wise man once said:
"It's easier to fool a man, then to prevent the man from being fooled"

Honest Guide, a Youtuber, made a video on tourist scams, where there were scammers that would change really high prices for highway tolls, even though tourists could actually pay the toll themselves by using an official website.

the Youtuber wanted to point this out to tourists, saying they could pay the toll themselves for a cheap price at the official site, but tourists were rellucant to use the official site since they though the scammers were legit, and thus paid a high fee to the scammers, even though all the scammers did was pay the toll for these tourists using the official site.

Humans are reluctant to accept ideas that goes against their beliefs, even if those ideas end up being right.

Depending on your country, it can be really difficult to find friends after school.

in my country, once people graduate from college, its incrediby hard to make friends, since people here keep more to themselves, and don't really open up to other people, making it difficult to make friends by going out.

From what I heard, people in Australia for example are more down to earth, and easier to approach.

In my experience, bonding over shared mental ilness struggles has certain problems which I'd rather not talk about publicly

a wise man once said:
"It's easier to fool a man, then to prevent the man from being fooled"

Honest Guide, a Youtuber, made a video on tourist scams, where there were scammers that would change really high prices for highway tolls, even though tourists could actually pay the toll themselves by using an official website.

the Youtuber wanted to point this out to tourists, saying they could pay the toll themselves for a cheap price at the official site, but tourists were rellucant to use the official site since they though the scammers were legit, and thus paid a high fee to the scammers, even though all the scammers did was pay the toll for these tourists using the official site.

Humans are reluctant to accept ideas that goes against their beliefs, even if those ideas end up being right.

Depending on your country, it can be really difficult to find friends after school.

in my country, once people graduate from college, its incrediby hard to make friends, since people here keep more to themselves, and don't really open up to other people, making it difficult to make friends by going out.

From what I heard, people in Australia for example are more down to earth, and easier to approach.

In my experience, bonding over shared mental ilness struggles has certain problems which I'd rather not talk about publicly