Editing 2786: UFO Evidence
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | + | {{incomplete|Created by an ANATOMICALLY INCORRECT CAT WITH A NEED THAT WILL NOT BE SATISFIED. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | |
− | + | [[White Hat]] (presumably a [[wikipedia:Ufology|ufologist]]) accuses [[Cueball]] of being unwilling to listen to his claims for extraterrestrial life. UFO stands for "unidentified flying object" but is used in common parlance to mean a spaceship carrying beings from another planet. The term "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" (''UAP'') has been more recently adopted in official investigations (that might wish not to be instantly associated with "little green men" and their "flying saucers") and was in the news during the weeks before this comic due to the coverage of official releases (and senate hearings) regarding the official monitoring of observation reports. In these, various supposed sightings were given mundane explanations, while a few others were not but were generally considered insufficient proof of extraterrestrial visitations. A devout UFO-believer is likely to be somewhat disappointed by this, having more personal willingness to believe that the more ambiguous sightings are truly flying saucers. And possibly even that some or all of the 'explained' ones are being officially misinterpreted or misrepresented in a denialist manner for the government's/authorities' own purposes. | |
Cueball counters this common pushback by admitting that he once spent an entire day trying to confirm the existence of a version of [[wikipedia:Cats_(2019_film)|the 2019 film adaptation of ''Cats'']] which allegedly gave the eponymous anthropomorphic felines anatomically-correct rear ends. | Cueball counters this common pushback by admitting that he once spent an entire day trying to confirm the existence of a version of [[wikipedia:Cats_(2019_film)|the 2019 film adaptation of ''Cats'']] which allegedly gave the eponymous anthropomorphic felines anatomically-correct rear ends. | ||
− | The ''Cats'' movie was widely panned, in part because of the unappealing design of its CGI cat characters. On March 18, 2020, Twitter user @jackwaz claimed a friend of a friend had been hired as a VFX artist to "[https://www.avclub.com/world-unites-over-need-for-cats-producers-to-releaseth-1842396923 remove CGI buttholes]" from the digital cats, meaning that there was a version of the movie where the characters all had anatomically correct | + | The ''Cats'' movie was widely panned, in part because of the unappealing design of its CGI cat characters. On March 18, 2020, Twitter user @jackwaz claimed a friend of a friend had been hired as a VFX artist to "[https://www.avclub.com/world-unites-over-need-for-cats-producers-to-releaseth-1842396923 remove CGI buttholes]" from the digital cats, meaning that there was a version of the movie where the characters all had anatomically correct buttholes. There was a wide clamor on the internet for the release of "the butthole cut," which was never confirmed to exist. |
− | Cueball | + | Cueball was apparently willing to lend enough credence to such an absurd and entirely inconsequential claim to spend time researching it. The idea that he would research those claims while refusing to even entertain evidence for something as important and scientifically interesting as extraterrestrial life is implausible. The only reason why most scientists would reject such claims is a total lack of even faintly compelling evidence. As [[Cueball]] points out, if someone ever managed to present evidence of alien life that was even slightly plausible, most scientists would enthusiastically spend a great deal of time and effort trying to verify it. |
− | + | The comic probably pertains to U.S. Air Force veteran and former {{w|National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency}} member [https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/lawmakers-react-to-whistleblowers-ufo-claims/ David Grusch], who is seeking whistleblower status for his claims that the U.S. government is hiding crashed alien spacecraft and corpses.[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36216745] It continues a common XKCD theme of mocking dubious claims, including [[Alien Observers|UFOs]], [[Health Drink|pseudoscience]], [[The Economic Argument|paranormal phenomena]], and [[Conspiracy Theories]], which are presented without plausible or verifiable evidence. [[Randall]]'s general attitude toward these claims is that, if any of these things were true, we would expect evidence for them by now. Complaints that there is evidence, and scientists won't look at it are utterly implausible, because such evidence would be of enormous interest to scientists, if it had even a hint of being plausible. | |
− | The title text may refer to [https://phys.org/news/2015-01-aliens-tv.html the idea that aliens could be watching our old TV] | + | The title text may refer to [https://phys.org/news/2015-01-aliens-tv.html the idea that aliens could be watching our old TV]. Because radio and television signals travel at light speed, aliens light years away could theoretically receive earth entertainment years after it was originally broadcast. The idea that they are learning about us from ''Cats'', which is thought of as {{w|List of films considered the worst#Cats (2019)|one of our worst films of all time}}, is not the view of humanity most people would want to present. |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
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[[Category:Fiction]] | [[Category:Fiction]] | ||
[[Category:Aliens]] | [[Category:Aliens]] | ||
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