Okay, another UFO article from the New York Times, by the same duo from previous installments: Ralph Blumenthal (a former Times reporter) and Leslie Kean (a freelance UFO-phile).

How 'bout a fun thread? https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1286466924461920256

Firstly, "UFO" does not automatically mean "alien."

2ndly, Harry Reid says that he BELIEVES that "crashes of vehicles from other worlds had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades." K, fine. He's in a better position to believe that than me.

There's context that the Times doesn't include in their stories about UFOs. Which is why I wrote this story in 2018.

There's something happening in the sky, & there's a lot of people (some rich, some connected to media) that want to believe it's alien. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ufos-are-suddenly-a-serious-news-story-you-can-thank-the-guy-from-blink-182-for-that/2018/05/30/8fce7100-441b-11e8-ad8f-27a8c409298b_story.html

Leslie Kean, who co-bylines these NYT stories, has made a career of researching UFOs. She's also written a book about the afterlife, she's connected to a former researcher of mystic Uri Geller, & she's praised an otherworldly "academy" by former blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge.

I'm not disputing the Times's reporting. I'm just hungry for details & context. For example, they quote an astrophysicist named Eric W. Davis, who talks about "vehicles not made on this earth.” Davis worked for parapsychologist Hal Puthoff, who studied Uri Gellier.

Davis once produced a report for the gov't called "Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy," which urged federal research into interstellar travel & included this bracing illustration of a dinosaur greeting Einstein thru a rip in the space-time continuum. cc: @OKnox

When I see these Times stories — which I don't doubt are accurate! — I go "But, but, but." Because there are people & connections involved that deserve mentioning. It's weirder than you think, but in an TERRESTRIAL way!

Anyway, here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ufos-are-suddenly-a-serious-news-story-you-can-thank-the-guy-from-blink-182-for-that/2018/05/30/8fce7100-441b-11e8-ad8f-27a8c409298b_story.html

P.S. My fave thing about working on that story was talking to SETI astronomer Jill Tarter, the inspiration for the main character in Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" (played by Jodie Foster in the movie). Every time one of these NYT stories comes out, she thinks "Here we go again."