What the hell is going on, is it Chemtrials ?

Chemtrials? Is that what they do to see if Chemtrails are going to work?

UCT is partnering with NASA who (perhaps unsurprisingly) have some really amazing scientific equipment, in order to survey and map out the incredible biodiversity of the Western Cape.

They’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, as this July 2021 story attests:

And then, when it was closer to the six week period mentioned in the article, there was plenty in the local news about it. From NASA, from the Daily Maverick, from Times Live, from News24, and other local sites.

But that hasn’t stopped the tinfoil hat brigade from assuming that they’re here looking for gas (it’s ok, we know where the gas is already) or controlling the weather (?!?) or doing “Chemtrials”. Ugh:

“Specifically Mossel Bay”, she states, then showing all of the places that they flew, which very specifically doesn’t include Mossel Bay.

“Need to see if their planes were flying in GP [Gauteng Province] before the hail,” she adds, referencing a recent hailstorm in Johannesburg, before not doing anything about actually looking to see if their planes were flying there at any time. Which they weren’t, and which she could have looked up on any flight tracking system, since this not exactly hush-hush classified NASA mission is being shared across all of those platforms.
Of course, their planes are residing at a clandestine underground villains’ lair on the tarmac at Cape Town International Airport.

It’s like the worst top secret mission ever.

@_iduchess above describes herself as “a critical thinker” (actual lol), but despite the multitude of replies on her tweet telling her about the joint UCT/NASA collaboration, she is doubling down on the tinfoilery.
Oh, and she’s anti-vax as well.

Same whatsapp group, every time.

And then there was this dream [screenshot here] that our erstwhile “critical thinker” shared, and then declared:

“Many people have been having dreams lately but as always umlungu [white people] will say “it’s climate change” and the sheep will believe umlungu over us.”

Ah yes, the casual racism slips in. We’d been missing that, and:

“The dream clearly states that the Melikans are not here for a good cause but rather for their own depopulation agenda ..”

Of course they are, dearie. Now, here’s a nice cup of tea and your evening medication.

But there is one thing that you can see from her “is it Chemtrials ?” tweet, and that is that her “news” comes from Tiktok – see the screenshots she shares. This seems an unusual place for a critical thinker to obtain high quality knowledge and information, but as recent surveys have shown, more and more young adults are getting their news from that app, and that’s quite worrying, mainly because it’s often absolutely full of shit like we can see above.

There is a school of thought that says that the loonies have always been there; it’s just that they never had a platform before, so we never noticed. But the problem is that they have clearly found a platform now, and they’re still loonies.

What can we do about this, given that these people will also likely base their election choices on what they read there? I’ve said this sort of thing before, but it really does belittle the democratic process when someone who believes in “Chemtrials” has the same voting rights as a sensible human being.

Eish.

Day 63 – Thursday thoughts

Day 63, eh? Into 10 weeks of lockdown tomorrow then…

Winter has certainly arrived in the Cape this week. A second cold front today with 13mm of rain already this morning (it’s 9:30am). I went out and had a run in the fresh air and the precipitation, but there were some issues.

I’ve never had a problem with getting wet. When you are born and dragged up in Sheffield, rain is a very regular thing and being annoyed about it would result in a very stressful existence. (Ironically, Summer has arrived in Sheffield this week and it’s lovely over there.) However, I’ve never run in a facemask in the rain before.

Not nice.

I would imagine that it’s something akin to being waterboarded. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but it really wasn’t very pleasant and I found myself involuntarily blurting out the coordinates to a clandestine terrorist base in network of caves in the Drakensberg.

I survived and made it back inside for a hot shower and a hot coffee.
Well deserved.

Talking of weather, we were one of many families who were watching the live stream of the first rocket launch from American soil in 9 years last night, until it was postponed at just “T minus seventeen minutes” because of a “strength of electrical field in atmosphere violation”.

One of the commentators mentioned “well, this is Florida in the Spring, and the risk of thunderstorms was always going to be a factor.”

And that got me thinking: why don’t they launch from somewhere else then – somewhere less likely to have a strength of electrical field in atmosphere violation?

Like Kazakhstan.

Right. I have quiz questions to write, some maths homework to do and I need to cook dinner (Uber Eats last night was such a treat – love me a night off cooking).
I think a slow-cooker sausage casserole will fit the bill for today’s ugly weather.

More on those horrendous Amazon forest fires

So much more awful than ever before, fueled by wood Bolsenaro’s policies and utterly cataclysmic for what’s left of the environment.

Or… er… pretty much the same as the last decade and a half.

As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data.

It’s blatant hyperbole.

Again.

Once more for those at the back, I’m not saying that the fires are a good thing, or that we shouldn’t be concerned at the damage they are doing. I’m merely saying that what the green-leaning environMENTAList media are telling us isn’t exactly the gospel truth. The fires they should be more anxious about are the ones in their pants.

Asteroid death “not certain”

Great news! This learned writer (no: this one, not me) seems to suggest that humankind might actually have the technology and ability to prevent an asteroid strike which would likely end all life on earth.

As long as we have a few decades of warning time.

But: Great news! NASA is tracking loads of these potential planet-devastating lumps of rock (when they’re at work, at least), and so we’re likely to get quite a bit of lead time before all life on earth is wiped out.

The bad news is that because we’re probably going to have a few decades of advance warning, there will almost certainly be no need for desperate measures like the inevitable big nuclear bomb. Thus any thoughts of a photo op of a massive extra-atmospheric firework display are, in all probability, wholly over optimistic.

Which is sad.

Do click through for some technologically amazing – but actually rather dull – ideas on how the-powers-that-be might protect us from certain death.

Sentences like:

We could blast it with a laser, for example.

do get the hopes up, only for them to be dashed with the follow up:

But since we don’t currently have a giant space laser, this method requires a bit more planning.

Leaving us with this riveting alternative:

In space, friction ceases to exist. Bodies move about as dictated by gravity. So, if you put something heavy near an asteroid, you can pull it off track.

This method happens slowly. It would only change the asteroid’s course at a rate of millimeters or centimeters per second per year.

BOOORRING!

It is, of course, recognised by all parties involved that any attempt to divert or blow up an incoming asteroid must be accompanied by an Aerosmith soundtrack. Understandably.

Now: DRONES ON MARS!

If there’s one thing that everyone on Earth can clearly agree on, it’s that there can never be such a thing as too many drones.

And it seems that NASA are now planning to start the drone craze on Mars as well with a new helicopter device:

The US space agency said Friday it plans to launch the first-ever helicopter to Mars in 2020, a miniature, unmanned drone-like chopper that could boost our understanding of the Red Planet.

I’m not sure how they plan to get a GPS lock, given that there are no S’s around Mars, but this is NASA, and if they faked the moon landings, well, then they can do most anything. And that likely includes coming up with a superb name for this craft, just like they did with ApolloChallengerDiscovery and Titan.

And that name is… [drum roll]…

The Mars Helicopter

[sad trombone] Oh.

And they’re starting small:

Its first flight calls for a brief vertical climb of 10 feet (three meters), followed by hovering for a half minute.

Wow. 10 feet. 30 seconds. Hold the front pages.
Don’t push yourselves, NASA.

I clearly need to get my Mavic out there, stat. I’d be buzzing Olympus Mons, shooting high quality 4K video and doing dronies on Curiosity while NASA’s rookies were still putting the paperwork and requisition forms together, wondering if they could maybe risk trying a gentle turn to the right.

If you’re reading this, NASA, I am available for this kind of thing (in between my lab antics with TB). I’ve flown over the Northern Cape: I know what desolation looks like.

But I don’t think I need to be in Texas or Florida or California or wherever you’re running your circus from at the moment. If you can control a drone on a planet 55 million kilometres away, I really don’t think it matters if I’m across a bit of sea from your place.

And I’m certainly not going to Mars.

Have drone, won’t travel.