Losing the plot

What strikes me about the last ten years isn't just the slow slide into fascism, the grift, the corruption, the attempted codification into law of misogyny and bigotry and homophobia and transphobia, but just how fucking weird these people are.

I swear, if I time-traveled back a decade and presented a manuscript to my publisher that was a verbatim transcript of everything that has happened since 2016, he would reject it out of hand on the basis of being ridiculously implausible.

Let's start with disgraced former Representative Matt Gaetz, who this week came out with the announcement that the United States government is forcibly mating humans with aliens to produce "beings capable of communicating with extraterrestrials."  

"I had someone come and brief me who was in a military uniform, worked for the United States Army, that was briefing me on the locations of hybrid breeding programs where captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race that could engage in intergalactic communication," Gaetz said. "An actual uniformed member of the United States Army briefed me on that."

There are six of these breeding programs scattered across the country, Gaetz said.

And the person who was interviewing him, ultra-conservative talk show host Benny Johnson, nodded sagely instead of saying what I would have, which is, "Maybe you should consider getting back on your meds, Matt."

Gaetz has said some outrageous things before, but this one has to take the prize.  On the other hand, considering the fact that he has about three acres of forehead, perhaps he knows about all this from first-hand experience:

Then we had the Vice President himself, J. D. Vance, blathering on about aliens as well, but explaining that they're not visitations from intelligent extraterrestrials, they're actually demons from hell.

Because that makes ever so much more sense.

"I don’t think they’re aliens," Vance said, once again apparently in complete seriousness.  "I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a long discussion.  When I came in, I was obsessed with the UFO files, and you start getting really busy worrying about the economy and national security, and things like that.  But I’ve still got three years left as vice president.  I have not been able to spend enough time on this to really understand it, but I am going to.  Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.  I’m more curious than anybody, and I’ve got three years of the very tippy top of the classification."

Sure, J. D.!  Whatever you say!  I bet you have a whole filing cabinet full of stuff labeled "Tippy-Top Secret"!

If all that weren't enough, enter Gregg Phillips, who has been tapped to lead FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery, claiming that he was once teleported to a Waffle House.

"I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House," Phillips said.  "And I ended up at a Waffle House – this was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like fifty miles away from where I was.  And they said, ‘where are you?’ and I said, ‘a Waffle House.’  And: ‘a Waffle House where?’  And I said: ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’  And they said: ‘That’s not possible, how can you be at a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, you just left here a moment ago.’  But it was possible.  It was real."

Or maybe he was just trying to beat a record for the number of times someone said "Waffle House" in one conversation.

I'll admit I've often wished we had Star Trek-style transporters, so I could do stuff like beam over to Tokyo for a nice sushi lunch every so often, but according to Phillips, it's not the joyride you might think.  "Teleporting is no fun," he said.  "You know it’s happening, but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride.  And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was."

Yeah, I'm sure it was, Gregg!  *backs slowly away, keeping my eyes on him at all times*  I hope you really enjoyed your waffles in the Waffle House in Rome, Georgia!  Waffle House Waffle House Waffle House!

*once there's enough distance between us, turns and runs like hell*

You know, this stuff would all be high comedy if these weren't the people currently influencing policy in the United States, people who have held (or are still holding) public office, and who have the amazingly-regenerated ear of Donald Trump.  And the scary part is that Trump, who is not exactly Rhodes Scholar material himself, is remarkably easy to sway as long as you stroke his bloated ego, which explains how certifiable wingnuts like RFK Jr. ended up in cabinet-level positions.

But it's not just him, of course.  The entire administration, and their hangers-on and cheerleaders and sycophants, appear to have completely lost the plot.

One of the criticisms of Joe Biden was that he appeared bland and boring -- people called him a "do-nothing" because most of what he accomplished wasn't accompanied by horns blaring and all-caps self-congratulatory posts on Truth Social.  But you know what?  I liked bland and boring.  I liked not having to worry when I turn on my laptop over my morning coffee what the latest lunatic pronouncements from Washington D. C. were going to be.  I would love it if we had leaders who just calmly, quietly, and intelligently did their jobs, instead of violent nutcakes like Pete Hegseth, who appears to believe it's his sacred duty to usher us into the End Times so that Jesus will come back, presumably wearing camo and toting an AR-15.

Deus vult, baby.

On the other hand, to go back to my starting point, I have to wonder... is any of this believable?  There's an element of surreality to the entire world right now that brings back to mind a comment I've made before; that maybe we're all in a computer simulation, and the aliens in charge have gotten drunk and/or stoned, and now they're just fucking with us. 

Or as Mark Twain put it, "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable."

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Pet warp

In recent posts we have dealt with the Earth being invaded by giant alien bugs, the possibility that Bigfoot and other cryptids are actually ghosts, and a claim that some soldiers in World War I were saved by the appearance of either an angel or else St. George, depending on which version you go for.  So I'm sure that what you're all thinking is, "Yes, Gordon, but what about pet teleportation?"

At this point, I should stop being surprised at the things that show up on websites such as the one in the link above, from the site Mysterious Universe.  In this particular article, by Brent Swancer (this is not his first appearance here at Skeptophilia, as you might imagine), we hear about times that Fido and Mr. Fluffums evidently took advantage of nearby wormholes to leap instantaneously across spacetime.

In one such instance, Swancer tells us, a woman had been taking a nap with her kitty, and got up, leaving the cat sleeping in bed.  Ten minutes later, she went back into the bedroom, and the cat was gone.  At that point, the phone rang.  It was a friend who lived across town -- calling to tell her that the cat had just showed up on their doorstep.

Another person describes having his cat teleporting from one room in the house to another, after which the cat "seemed terrified:" 

All the fur on his back was standing up and he was crouched low to the ground. He looked like he had no idea what just happened, either.  That was about ten minutes ago.  He won’t leave my side now, which is strange in itself, because he likes independence, but he is still very unsettled and so am I.

And Swancer tells us that it's not just cats.  He recounts a tale by "the great biologist... Ivan T. Sanderson," wherein he was working with leafcutter ants and found sometimes the queen mysteriously disappears from the ant nest.  "Further digging in some sites within hours," Sanderson tells us, "brought to light, to the dumbfoundment of everybody, apparently the same queen, all duly dyed with intricate identifying marks, dozens of feet away in another super-concrete-hard cell, happily eating, excreting and producing eggs!"

However, in the interest of honesty it must be said that Sanderson might not be the most credible witness in the world.  He did a good bit of writing about nature and biology, but is best known for his work in cryptozoology.  According to the Wikipedia article on him (linked above), he gave "special attention to the search for lake monsters, sea serpents, Mokèlé-mbèmbé, giant penguins, Yeti, and Sasquatch."  And amongst his publications are Abominable Snowman: Legend Come to Life and the rather vaguely-named Things, which the cover tells us is about "monsters, mysteries, and marvels uncanny, strange, but true."

So I'm inclined to view Sanderson's teleporting ants with a bit of a wry eye.

What strikes me about all of this is the usual problem of believing anecdotal evidence.  It's not that I'm accusing anyone of lying (although that possibility does have to be admitted); it's easy enough, given our faulty sensory processing equipment and plastic, inaccurate memory, to be absolutely convinced of something that actually didn't happen that way.  A study by New York University psychological researcher Elizabeth Phelps showed that people's memories of 9/11 -- surely a big enough event to recall accurately -- only got 63% of the details right, despite study participants' certainty they were remembering what actually happened.  Worse, a study by Joyce W. Lacy (Azusa Pacific University) and Craig E. L. Stark (University of California-Irvine) showed that even how a question is asked by an interviewer can alter a person's memory -- and scariest of all, the person has no idea it's happened.  They remain convinced that what they "recall" is accurate.

Plus, there's the little problem of the lack of a mechanism.  How, exactly, could anything, much less your pet kitty, vanish from one place and simultaneously reappear somewhere else?  I have a hard time getting my dog Rosie even to move at sub-light speeds sometimes, especially when she's walking in front of me at a pace we call "the Rosie Mosey." In fact, most days her favorite speed seems to be "motionless," especially if she has her favorite plush toy to snuggle with:

Given all that, it's hard to imagine she'd have the motivation to accomplish going anywhere at superluminal velocity.

As intriguing as those stories are, I'm inclined to be a bit dubious.  Which I'm sure you predicted.  So you don't need to spend time worrying about how you'll deal with it when Rex and Tigger take a trip through warped space.  If they mysteriously vanish only to show up elsewhere, chances are they were traveling in some completely ordinary fashion, and the only thing that's awry is your memory of what happened.

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Time-traveling Martian tourist for president!

I know that a lot of us have been pretty distressed by the people who have successfully been elected or appointed to positions in the federal government.  (Hell, the state governments, too, given that nearly half of voters in Alabama voted for an ultra-right-wing alleged pedophile who was removed as the state's Chief Justice for failing to follow the law, and thinks the bible should replace the Constitution.  Oh, and that only the first ten Amendments should count, thereby legalizing slavery and disenfranchising everyone but white Christian males.  I could go on and on.)

So the situation is discouraging, to say the least.  But I have good news for you, apropos of the 2020 presidential election:

Andrew Basiago has thrown his hat into the ring.

Basiago is one of those people who looks perfectly sane.  I mean, check out his official election campaign photograph:

He looks like the kind of guy you could immediately trust, right?  Basiago is a Seattle lawyer, but if you recognize his name, it's probably not because of his law practice.

If you're a long-time reader of Skeptophilia, the name will ring a bell because he's been something of a frequent flyer here.  Back in 2012, he claimed that he and President Obama had participated in "Mars training classes" in the early 1980s, and that shortly thereafter he ran into Obama on Mars.  Oh, and they got there by teleporting.  Later that year, he informed the public that not only had he teleported, he was able to time travel, and in fact had zoomed back to the 1860s so he could hear President Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address.  He stuck around until 1865 so he could see Lincoln get shot in Ford's Theater, which must have been pretty upsetting.

The following year, Basiago teamed up with noted wingnut Alfred Lambremont Webre to issue a dire prediction: the planet Nibiru, which makes more unscheduled public appearances than Kim Kardashian, was going to make a near pass of the Earth in the summer of 2013, causing "electrical discharges" which would fry most of humanity.  He knew this, he said, because he'd developed a tool called a "chronovisor" which allowed him to see into the future.

Well, I lived through 2013, and I don't remember any electrical discharges.  Sounds like his "chronovisor" needs recalibration.

So this guy is going to run for president.

Basiago says he's going to run on the platform of putting money into developing better time travel and teleportation technology.  There's already such a program in place (obviously, since he says he's used it), called "Project Pegasus," and he's not only going to fund it, he's going to reveal its marvels and secrets to the general public.

If he's elected, that is.  If not, I guess it'll be "fuck everybody" and he'll be back to his law practice in Seattle and writing articles about Martians for Before It's News.

Me, I'm all for him.  We've proven already that America is resilient enough to survive for a year under the questionable leadership of a man who is either demented or insane, so I'm sure we could make it for four years with a president who claims to have been to Mars.  His press release sounds so... normal:

Today, Andrew D. Basiago is running for President of the United States with a New Agenda for a New America. He has vowed that if elected President, he will lead the American people into a bold, new era of Truth, Reform, and Innovation as great as they are great. Join us in supporting Andy in his quest to establish a Presidency as honest, just, and ingenious as the American people.

Which is easily saner than any of Donald Trump's tweets.

So my general view is: "Basiago 2020!"  At least we could be sure that NASA wouldn't be defunded.  And consider some of the other people who've run for president, and the one who actually won the office.  We could do a hell of a lot worse.

Pet warp

In recent posts we have dealt with sending a binary message to extraterrestrial intelligence, helicopters in ancient Egypt, and a creature in southern Africa that looks like some bizarre three-way cross between a human, a bat, and a pig.  So I'm sure that what you're all thinking is, "Yes, Gordon, but what about pet teleportation?"

At this point, I should stop being surprised at the things that show up on websites such as the one in the link above, from the site Mysterious Universe.  In this particular article, by Brent Swancer (this is not his first appearance here at Skeptophilia, as you might imagine), we hear about times that Fido and Mr. Fluffums evidently took advantage of nearby wormholes to leap instantaneously across spacetime.

In one such instance, Swancer tells us, a woman had been taking a nap with her kitty, and got up, leaving the cat sleeping in bed.  Ten minutes later, she went back into the bedroom, and the cat was gone.  At that point, the phone began ringing.  It was a friend who lived across town -- calling to tell her that the cat had just showed up on their doorstep.

Another person describes having his cat teleporting from one room in the house to another, after which the cat "seemed terrified:"

All the fur on his back was standing up and he was crouched low to the ground.  He looked like he had no idea what just happened, either.  That was about 10 minutes ago.  He won’t leave my side now, which is strange in itself, because he likes independence, but he is still very unsettled and so am I.

And Swancer tells us that it's not just cats.  He recounts a tale by "the great biologist... Ivan T. Sanderson," wherein he was working with leafcutter ants and found sometimes the queen mysteriously disappears from the ant nest.   "Further digging in some cities within hours," Sanderson tells us, "brought to light, to the dumbfoundment of everybody, apparently the same queen, all duly dyed with intricate identifying marks, dozens of feet away in another super-concrete-hard cell, happily eating, excreting and producing eggs!"

However, in the interest of honesty it must be said that Sanderson might not be the most credible witness in the world.  He did a good bit of writing about nature and biology, but is best known for his work in cryptozoology.  According to the Wikipedia article on him (linked above), he gave "special attention to the search for lake monsters, sea serpents, Mokèlé-mbèmbé, giant penguins, Yeti, and Sasquatch."  And amongst his publications are Abominable Snowman: Legend Come to Life and the rather vaguely named Things, which the cover tells us is about "monsters, mysteries, and marvels uncanny, strange, but true."

So I'm inclined to view Sanderson's teleporting ants with a bit of a wry eye.

What strikes me about all of this is the usual problem of believing anecdotal evidence.  It's not that I'm accusing anyone of lying (although that possibility does have to be admitted); it's easy enough, given our faulty sensory processing equipment and plastic, inaccurate memory, to be absolutely convinced of something that actually didn't happen that way.  A study by New York University psychological researcher Elizabeth Phelps showed that people's memories of 9/11 -- surely a big enough event to recall accurately -- only got 63% of the details right, despite study participants' certainty they were remembering what actually happened.  Worse, a study by Joyce W. Lacy (Azusa Pacific University) and Craig E. L. Stark (University of California-Irvine) showed that even how a question is asked by an interviewer can alter a person's memory -- and scariest of all, the person has no idea it's happened.  They remain convinced that what they "recall" is accurate.

Plus, there's a little problem with lack of a mechanism.  How, exactly, could anything, much less your pet kitty, vanish from one place and simultaneously reappear somewhere else?  I have a hard time getting my dog even to move at sub-light speeds sometimes, especially when he's walking in front of me up the stairs at a pace I can only describe as a cross between a "plod" and a "waddle."  In fact, most days his favorite speed seems to be "motionless."

Given all that, it's hard to imagine he'd have the motivation to accomplish going anywhere instantaneously.

As intriguing as those stories are, I'm inclined to be a bit dubious.  Which I'm sure you predicted. So you don't need to spend time worrying about how you'll deal with it when Rex and Tigger take a trip through warped space.  If they mysteriously vanish only to show up elsewhere, chances are they were traveling in some completely ordinary fashion, and the only thing that's awry is your memory of what happened.