I just had a thought like “What if some UFO aduction experiences people claim to have are actually people being kidnapped by the CIA” thinking-about-it

The kind of stories I’m thinking about often go like: “I was driving on an empty road in the middle of nowhere. I saw a bright light,” and then either “I remember nothing but had lost time” or “I remember being experimented on by aliens and then put back in my car.”

My tinfoil hat side is thinking like, these stories started happening around the time the US admitted to experimenting with abuse, torture and psychoactive drugs in Project MK-Ultra. Alien abduction stories were the most prevalent during this time. (CW: Just a heads up. If you want to read the rest of this post or anything else about MK-Ultra, be warned that it’s pretty horrible, and involves some of the most disgusting torture I have ever read about. Death to America.)

Of the surviving documents released to the public about MK-Ultra, the CIA admits to: “kidnapping people it deemed “expendable” to undertake various types of torture and human experimentation on them. The prisoners were interrogated while being administered psychoactive drugs, electroshocked and subjected to extremes of temperature, sensory isolation and the like to develop a better understanding of how to destroy and to control human minds.”

Part of me wonders how many of these alien abduction stories are just people being kidnapped, drugged with powerful hallucinogens, experimented on and then released with the suggestion conditioned into their mind that it was aliens.

The most famous alien abduction story is that of Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple that were both civil rights leaders, definitely people that the CIA would want to fuck with, especially during rising tensions with the Soviet Union, the US government was suspicious of minorities and anyone interested in their rights.

  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    40·
    1 year ago

    Technology Connections just put a video out about this!

    TL;DW

    Popcorn manufacturers don’t know what kinda microwave you have–one with a good popcorn button or not–so they err on the side of caution.

    There are three types of popcorn buttons:

    1. Purely timer based: these suck and should generally be avoided. A telltale sign is if they ask the size of the bag prior to popping.
    2. Moisture sensor based: these can work pretty well. They detect the puff of moisture that escapes from the bag once it pops open and then use a short timer from there. Depending on where the moisture sensor is, it might slightly overdo it, but it’s probably still fine.
    3. Microphone based: might find these in fancier microwaves–these do exactly what it says on the bag, listening for a gap over greater than two seconds between pops before stopping. The gold standard!

    The main takeaway from the video is that there’s no harm in trying the popcorn button (and other such features) on your microwave. Just press it and see what happens–if it sucks, well, you can stop it before it burns the popcorn, and now you know. Experiment! Maybe even read the manual if you’re so inclined. You might just find some neat features you paid for that are actually worth using!