Play Labs @ MIT founder Rizwan Virk ponders a long-time question, one he thinks especially apt considering the UFO subject's recent increased respectability. Virk lists potential personal and societal benefits beyond military preparedness for both balking groups to investigate UFOs. Micah Hanks regards that martial and intelligence aspect from the historical standpoint in Estimating the Situation: UFOs and Government, Then and Now. Coincidentally, for the title of his post he's used half the title of a related work published by Anomalist Books, UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry. And that volume happens to begin with Graeme Rendall's topic in The Foo Fighters: Today's Pilots Encounters With UAP Are Nothing New. Rendall reports findings for a book on the strange WWII phenomena. Given that bellicose background, one can understand why a Philosopher UFOlogist Says Humans Are Not Ready To Make Contact. Adrian Rudnyk's The Assessment: The Arrival of Extraterrestrials does not "appeal to any UFO related data," making his judgement "that an advanced species would have good reasons to avoid making direct contact" all the more interesting. And maybe unfortunate, for Tim Binnall says due to the upcoming UAPTF government UFO report a Bookmaker Slashes Odds on ET Disclosure! (WM)

We've all read witness accounts of what surely must be Bigfoot encounters, only for them to be dismissed by authorities as run ins with bears. This story is for all the experiencers out there who doubt themselves, because unless the Hairy Man has gone on a bender and developed a beer pooch, there is no way in heaven or hell to mix up bears and Bigfoot. Plus bears aren't known for throwing things. Strange Cases of Stone-Throwing Bigfoot run the gamut between handfuls of of pebbles raining down on hikers minding their own business to boulders landing close enough to unwelcome visitors to cause embarrassing puddles. Luckily for everyone involved, Bigfoot has terrific aim. If you want to dive straight down the rabbit hole and really start thinking about the origins of Sasquatch, Paul Wallis has released a short Sasquatch Documentary 2021 exploring the similarities between biblical characters Jacob and Essau, and Humans and Bigfoot. As always, Wallis is both respectful and scientific in his approach, even as he upends traditionally held beliefs and plants ideas in our minds that just won't go away. It's a fascinating new Bigfoot origin theory and well worth the 26 minutes it takes to bend our minds in a different direction. (CM)

Here's the first of a three-part address summing up Keel's thoughts on Life, The Universe, and Everything. John attacks "wishful thinking" behind flying saucers and religion in general. Yet Keel sees hope, as he did in a 1970 speech for the Humanist Society, from "constant manifestations of some unknown force which...is now leading us into a great new adventure into the human mind itself." Keel confesses he's adopted Charles Fort's notions of a "universal mind," listing in this segment and in Speech for MENSA Convention, 10/29/72 (2) examples of its possible "insanity" from time immemorial. Again, parallels are drawn here with the saucer mythos and in Keel's concluding Speech for MENSA Convention, 10/29/72 (3). But here he suggests there just may be an overall pattern. As in his Humanist speech Keel predicts a "great global change." "The present psychic explosion is leading millions to consider cosmic questions they never even thought of before." Yet in this 1972 presentation he seems less confident of the timing or ultimate results from this comparative awakening. It's a stark, powerful speech, and reflective of the thinking in Keel's 1970 work Operation Trojan Horse, published by Anomalist Books. (WM)

"Push-back" on those Naval images of "unidentifieds" from March and July 2019. Tyler Rogoway argues what's behind all the excitement is nothing otherworldly. Rogoway offers that "America's prevailing cultural issues and the general stigma surrounding UFOs was successfully targeted and leveraged by our adversaries, which helped these [foreign drone and balloon] activities to persist far longer than they should have." And Rogoway's background warning is that the U.S. has allowed earthly potential adversaries to leverage these less-hi-tech means to seriously weaken our intelligence defenses. In Corbell Asserts but Fails to Report How Stories Vetted Jack Brewer attacks the unclear provenance and anonymous source verifications for the July 2019 imaging filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has been touting. Jack notes Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough's acknowledgement the stuff was "taken by Navy personnel" doesn't really clarify as much as Corbell promotes. And see John Greenewald's Why Are UFO Leaks Happening? A Flashback To A Theory On WHY Which Still Rings True Today. This and the video from which John's 10-minute piece is taken relate to points in both Rogoway and Brewer posts. Kevin Randle's The Latest NAVY UAP Video also considers the limitations in what was verified about specifically the "pyramid" video taken off of the USS Russell in July 2019. Kevin sets this in the context of previous governmental efforts to tamp down interest in UFOs, and highlights the Mick West "bokeh" analysis we reviewed on the 13th. And West now adds at a Tweet the identifications of two stars ("pyramids") in the USS Russell's video. (WM)

Language is the most important tool in the toolbox of science, and scientists are apt to coin new terms in order to present ideas in a clear and concise fashion. Oftentimes papers featuring such obscure terminology is all Greek to regular people and scientists in other fields. Katherine Kornei makes a strong argument that scientific papers often fail for being too specific, and links to a handy tool which can oversimplify the language in papers. (CS)

Oh boy. Who wouldn't love tripping on shrooms without the visuals? After all, non-alcoholic beer is the best thing since Jeremy Corbell UFO "documentaries". If you couldn't guess, this editor is being sarcastic. Yet the University of Maryland's School of Medicine is particularly earnest about their latest findings, explaining how they don't understand the mechanisms of psilocybin, but to truly appreciate them one should try it for themselves like shamans of old. In other news, Andrew Collins has his own big ideas about the origins of humanity and our cousins which are a far cry from Terrence McKenna's "stoned ape" hypothesis. Did Autism Make the Denisovans Savants of the Prehistoric Age? A recent survey of Denisovan DNA shows they bore the genetic precursors for autism which merits the question. And if they were autistic, it'd explain why they died out since they couldn't score chicks like modern autists. Snark aside, autism and similar conditions are far from being mistakes and may kickstart the next stage of humanity's evolution if science lets nature run its course. Doubtful? You won't feel that way after hearing out Zaria Gorvett's enumeration of The Genetic Mistakes That Could Shape Our Species thanks to the latest technologies. It'll make you wonder what exactly lay in store for humanity, and hopefully it's not this. (CS)

Oftentimes, clusters of anomalous illnesses are chalked up as a case of mere hysteria, but Suzanne O'Sullivan notes such dismissals often miss the cause behind these mysterious maladies. Often these curious symptoms are a symptom of a deeper sort of distress in the patient, and Suzanne proffers another method of treatment for these poor souls. What exactly goes on in the minds of those with "sleeping sickness"? Dreams probably, but most likely nightmares exacerbating their condition. Michelle Carr looks at the phenomenon of bad dreams, and illustrates Nightmares Becalmed, increasing the quality of life for dreamers through dream engineering. (CS)

New York state was just part of a nationwide burgeoning of UFO reports in 2020, say John Del Signore and Jake Dobkin. The two produce interactive visuals and the fact that "With the Covid thing, more people are looking up," per New York state MUFON Assistant Director Chris DePerno. Sarah Maslin Nir's New York Times piece They Are Not Alone: U.F.O. Reports Surged in the Pandemic complements the statistical displays with more focus on the human-interest background to the data. A short video of Starlink satellites cruising over The Netherlands underscores the fact that reports, while not necessarily "unidentified sightings," are what's rising again. People are seeing--or at least photographing--odd things elsewhere, as Paul Seaburn reports a Strange UFO Appears Over Venezuelan Military Base. But some of the articles we've seen appear to show one of Agustin Prado's "mundane" snapshots; for the one showing the weird image above the upper crane go through Paul's Hector Escalante blog link Ovnis en Venezuela: ¿Ave, dron?: Fotografían extraño cuerpo sobrevolando Fuerte Tiuna analysis page. And a rather poignant background story surrounding a dramatic anomalous "something" story concerns The Strange Object of La Bagliardi Beach (Berisso, Argentina). (WM)

There's a certain comfort in hauntings, if we can silence our chattering teeth and knocking knees long enough to think about it. Typically centered around locations where something dreadful happened, (Esoterx urges us to look at place names for hints eg Leap Castle, which was not a location where children played happily in the surrounding fields), real estate choices of spooks tend to be almost predictable and orderly. But truth be told, we have almost certainly imposed that order and chosen to ignore indicators that hauntings are potentially going on everywhere. Nowhere is safe from a good haunting, even when it's fortified with the best of intentions. A case in point is this Story Of "Poltergeist Activity" at the Local Pub. We might surmise that the murder by an angry husband of his not-so-pregnant wife following a shotgun wedding would result in a haunting of the murder location, or thereabouts. Instead, the corpse bride chose the pub that served as visitation center prior to her burial. That's a spook that's both unpredictable and ungrateful. Thankfully some paranormal goings on make sense: A Look at the Extremely Haunted St. Thomas Hospital. This place is quite simply the worst of the worst. A former workhouse, then later a psych hospital, one can only imagine the atrocities embedded in the very walls of the place. To that end, the extreme hauntings so often reported there add some predictability and logic to a situation which might be completely void of both if examined a little more closely. (CM)

As the search for energy efficiency grows ever more desperate, a group of Georgia boffins suggest that 5G might be "adapted to charge or power small devices embedded in cars, homes, workplaces and factories." It's only at the theoretical stage, but if developed might ultimately provide us greedy humans with "a wireless power grid." One to watch, perhaps. And staying with theoretical, but tantalizing possibilities, we find the EmDrive Propulsion Inventor Defiant in Face of Failed Tests. "Told ya so," is the gist of what Roger (not Robert) Shawyer reckons to the results of tests at the University of Dresden, which claim to disprove his idea of thrust without propellant. In fact, he believes the failed tests prove him correct because their design was flawed to begin with, as he advised them four years ago. There's still a long way to go to achieve Shawyer's ambition, but he's by no means discouraged and there may be further news, come May this year. Another one to watch. (LP)

Nick Redfern continues doling out evidence for a very disturbing "Roswell" alternative to what is, of course, the staggeringly paradigm-shifting notion of an extraterrestrial crash landing. This one's from Tim Cooper and may not have the cache of other accounts, but it's worth taking into account. Particularly when you pair it with Kathy Kasten's information about The Roswell Controversy of 1947 and a "Deformed Man". This also concerns "top secret, human experimentation." And then there's When a UFO Whistleblower Has a Fascinating Story to Tell. This was separate confirmation of a story before Nick published it in his Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story in June of 2005. "Thus was born the legend of the 'Roswell "UFO" Crash' of 1947," concludes Nick. This all is powerful stuff separately--and even more compelling when concentrated into one tome, Nick's 2017 follow-on book The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing a Shocking and Sinister Secret. (WM)

Charles Q. Choi says James Benford wants you to know about SETA (not SETI), and perhaps be introduced to "lurkers." Benford contends the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Artifacts may be a cheaper and more productive tack than listening for out-of-this world signals. And maybe there's already 'Oumuamua-like interstellar "probes" stashed somewhere within our own solar system. While we're at it, have we really thought out just Whom or What we may be contacting/contacted by/or finding their discarded soda bottles? Emily Cataneo offers a possibility in her Book Review: A Zoologist Imagines What Alien Like Might Look Like. And act, and think, and socialize, etc. With appropriate deference to the fact he's extrapolating from a Sample of One, Arik Kershenbaum marshals believable reasons supporting his musings. The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy sounds like a fun book also providing insights into how life works on our own planet. But some fear the prospect of communication in any form, as a Scientist Warns Alien Contact Will Be Like Montezuma and Cortez. Michio Kaku is not the first to voice this admonition, which Paul Seaburn discusses. So just in case They're not friendly--maybe too much like humans for humanity's comfort?--How Could We Build an Invisibility Cloak to Hide Earth from an Alien Civilization? David Kipping and his graduate student Alex Teachey (who sounds rather like Carl Sagan) tell us how to mask--or flaunt--our presence to possible other civilized sensors in the Cosmos. And consider that those other planetary civilizations may already have made that choice. The Universe may be a quite different place than we think! (WM)

Viewers of the television program Good Morning Britain were recently treated to a bit of mystery and mayhem when a live broadcast inadvertently recorded in the background what was variously described as an alien big cat, a wolf or wolfman, or a dog.  Whatever it was, the news crew had the good sense to be uneasy, although their search of the surrounding area makes us question their sanity. We're neither veterinarians nor are we zoologists, but if the creature captured on film is a dog, some breeder somewhere has some explaining to do. Those who considered werewolf a possibility might be forgiven: Mysterious and Frightening Cases of Dogman Attacks. The incidents described in this article indicate that, unlike other cryptids that prefer to avoid detection, Dogman goes out of its way to "interact" in the most vicious ways possible. It's not surprising then that the term "werewolf" gets thrown around, because the appetite for death and destruction seems more of a human quality than a wolf's. (CM)

On the lighter side of ufology, Tim Binnall reports on this strange event in a New Jersey state forest. Art installation, youthful creation, just plain "nothing else to do"--we may never know the answer to this mystery. We're not even certain what kind of soup had previously been involved. Duncan Phenix and George Knapp team up to inform us that the E.T. Highway Has Welcomed Earthlings for 25 Years. In conjunction with the appearance of the 1996 blockbuster movie Independence Day Nevada State Route 375 received the "Extraterrestrial Highway" designation, and the Mystery Wire folks give you at least everything you need to know about that event. And Now For Something Completely Different, The Onion reports the U.S. Military Accused Of Covering Up Hundreds Of Unexplained ELO Sightings. It's probably not just the American forces behind this; many in the field think this has been going on All Over The World! (WM)

Regardless of your stance on the recently deceased Prince Philip, problematic and entitled upper class twit or honorable royal, there's one thing folks often forget about him—the man was enamored with saucers. Almost as much as the redoubtable Red Pill Junkie who illustrates Phil's ardor and puzzles over its omission from The Crown. Note that RPJ namechecks Ward Kimball, animator and MUFON member, who was known as one of Disney's "Nine Old Men." What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Bianca Farmakis makes all clear with The Uncanny Coincidence of the Number 'Nine' in Prince Philip's Life and Death. While this may be a bit of ephemera, the themes associated with syncs and coincidences is strong enough to make the most hardened skeptic wonder if there's a connection twixt Phil and nine. (CS)

What's being described as "the second most important archaeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamen" and "the largest city ever found in Egypt" was discovered by a home-grown Egyptian expedition after years of failure by foreign efforts. Nevine El-Aref covers the story of the overall find, some individual surprises, and the possibility of further remarkable news. Exceptional, too, is the paper described by Greg Taylor in The Shining Ones: Did the Egyptian Pyramids Produce Reflections That Illuminated Other Sacred Sites? And though Donald E. Jennings offers his idea with the appropriate caveats as to the archaeological record, it would be, well, "logical." A "rediscovery" due to a Drought Reveals "Spanish Stonehenge" That Had Been Hiding In a Reservoir For Over 50 Years, per Madeleine Muzdakis. The monument is somewhat the worse for wear from a relatively short submergence. And there's something very moving in Tom Metcalfe's 100,000-year-old Neanderthal Footprints Show Children Playing in the Sand. (WM)

What if you could share in a loved one's near death experience? Michael Grosso explores this subject, describing the veils separating individuals' consciousness as something we might learn to cross at will. And speaking of separating consciousness, "Were ancient cave artists high?" The answer is that Oxygen Deprivation Led to Altered States for Subterranean Artists. This also perhaps explains why certain locations were focal points for these drawings, as the artists would come to recognize an individual cave as a sacred space where cosmic inspiration would be imparted. (CM)

Spanish journalist-ufologist Jose Antonio Caravaca addresses what he perceives as a "distortion" folks have regarding his "Distortion Theory" of Close Encounter experiences. One may still quibble with the theory, admittedly not aimed at identifying the "real phenomenon" but at its interpretation by the human element. But it's an honest effort. Having accorded Jose his say, Rich Reynolds assumes his UFO Conjectures podium to discuss Ripples of Reality. Rich grapples with whatever the ultimate value of understanding the UFO phenomenon(a) may be. In Intelligence and the UFO Myth Rich takes swipes at the ETH behind UFOs while dwelling more importantly upon the relatively low "mentality" of humans, particularly Americans, over time. A difference with one of their lot over 1890s airships here is followed by a consideration of UFO Skeptics!. Rich calls such thought "an ignorant and mad position, unacademic and just stupid in the face of the evidence for a UFO reality," which Rich defines as just what the three words "unidentified flying object" say, not invested with an interpretation of origin, animation, or meaning. (WM)