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Another year has passed us by, and it seems that each one is somehow a little bit darker than the one before. I’ll be honest: I had a hard time bringing myself to write this year-end wrap-up this year. It’s been a hard twelve months. At the beginning of the year, the release of generative A.I. completely destroyed my career, wiping out virtually the entire industry of business writing that was my bread and butter. It happened so quickly and so destructively that CBS’s 60 Minutes came out to Albany to interview me about losing my job to a machine, and then I experienced a double humiliation when the venerable newsmagazine called me a few hours before my interview was scheduled to air to tell me that they cut me from the story and replaced me with an interview with a generative A.I. chatbot.
The recent National Defense Authorization Act, nearing passage, contains a watered-down UFO provision that eliminates many of the most dramatic and controversial elements of the Senate amendment pushed through by majority leader Chuck Schumer. The resulting legislation, and the more limited windfall it provides to UFO contractors and think tanks like Garry Nolan’s Sol Foundation, prompted so-called UFO whistleblower David Grusch, an executive at Sol, to tell News Nation this week that stripping the government’s ability to seize any materials ufologists deemed “alien” was “the greatest legislative failure in American history.” I imagine that would be a surprise to, say, those who died as a result of the Indian Removal Act. But Grusch’s comments were far less interesting than offhand remarks conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson made about UFOs.
The History Channel has canceled the semi-annual Alien Con after nearly a decade. A representative told New York Post journalist Steven Greenstreet that the company would instead focus on its Ancient Aliens and Secret of Skinwalker Ranch touring live shows because they make more money. “We make money on the tours,” a spokesperson for History’s parent company, A+E Networks, said. And of course they do. The traveling shows feature a few guys sitting in chairs, and even orthopedic chairs cost less than all the overhead that goes into putting on a full convention with all the trimmings, especially as the shows’ ratings decline and the incentive to travel a thousand miles to a convention declines. It’s much easier to get casually interested audiences to go to a local show.
Ufologist Michael Salla presented an interview with “JP,” who allegedly serves in the United States military, about the discovery of a dimensional portal to an ancient temple housing the slumbering body of a dead-but-dreaming red-haired, presumably white-skinned, Giant. Here’s how Salla describes JP’s claims:
Ancient Aliens is taking the week off for the holiday, and I spent part of this week at work finalizing a project, which will be announced next week. I am taking the next few days off to enjoy the last week of my son's summer vacation before I get back to the grind next week. In the meantime, enjoy George Knapp's bizarre speculation about the space aliens' evil agenda and its connection to conservative efforts to promote Intelligent Design, from yesterday's Joe Rogan Experience. It doesn't tell you much about aliens but tells you a lot about the mindset of the people pushing bizarre claims about space aliens. What could be so terrible that they can't tell us about it? Let's say, these aliens, wherever they're from, made us, that we're a genetic experiment. That they created our religions, our religious figures. That we are an agricultural product that somehow they harvest us. That our time is limited, that once the experiment is over, poof, we go away. […] Be careful what you wish for because you might find out that the intelligent designer isn't God that you're thinking of, it might be some alien science project or something like that. You can imagine a lot of different things that would be really disturbing to people to come out.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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