The Importance of Setting Parameters

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A disgruntled postal worker upset about the state of democracy chose April 15 to deliver a set of letters and petitions calling for changes to the capital lawn. He decided to make a spectacle of it by flying a gyrocopter, which he launched from Northern Virginia and flew over the Potomac. And the radars didn't see it because they filter stuff out or else you get everything and you don't have information. A lot of what we see with UFO sightings is we have tools that are not designed to capture them. It's an old problem. In the 1950s, the Air Force went to Kodak and said, can you help us develop a camera we can put on planes to take

Paris Marx is joined by Kelsey Atherton to discuss the renewed interest in UFOs, where the conspiracy theories of aliens in the sky came from, and whether flying saucers might really be watching us.

Kelsey Atherton is a military technology journalist. He contributes to Popular Science and has written for Slate. Follow Kelsey on Twitter at @AthertonKD.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Kelsey has written about how the military’s culture of secrecy breeds UFO conspiracy theories, why sensors are an important aspect to consider, and the truth of Area 51.
A U-2 pilot took a selfie with the Chinese balloon shot down earlier this year.
The military later confirmed the Chinese balloon was not actually spying on the United States.
One of the balloons that were shot down likely belonged to a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.
In 2019, a bunch of people online planned to hold a “Naruto run” at Area 51.

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