It has ice and it has a tail. Comets get a longer “tail” as they get closer to the sun, when heat and radiation cause them to disintigrate and off-gas.

ATLAS’s speed and origin are what make it interesting. It’s a speedy guy for a comet at its location/trajectory. And, it’s interstellar in origin, meaning it came from outside the solar system. Most of what we see in our solar neighborhood was all made from the same big space glob a long ass time ago. Interstellar objects are rare… ish. We’ve been seeing more since we have big space telescopes now. So who knows.

Anyway, when ATLAS gets closer to the sun and burns off more tail, we can analyze those bits of rock and gas to figure out what it’s made of and maybe where it’s from.

The title is, arguably, exactly what happened. A comet went by. A harvard professor suggested it could be alien.

Journalism doesn’t require a consensus of ideas, it reports what happened.

I’m no expert, but I did take a few astronomy and physics courses in university. And I’ve been a member, on and off, of astronomy clubs since highschool. Did you know we legitimately discuss the possibility of alien life in real science classes in university? You can take whole, serious courses on it. Real scientists have come up with lots of interesting theories.

This discussion began by calling Abraham Loeb an idiot who didn’t understand logic, to criticizing the journalist, to criticizing the title, to criticizing me, personally, to saying the subject itself is absurd. Are we not supposed to discuss anything outside of “common sense?”

I’ve gone through enough moving goalposts for one discussion, so I’m disengaging and will not respond. Feel free to have the last word if you want it.

Scientists do treat extraterrestrial life as a real possibility.

Source: Above, a harvard professor and astrophysicist who treats aliens as a real possibility.

But I donno man, one of the only rules here is to be cool to each other. I’m being pretty cool to you, but you’re not acting so cool to me.

A difference of opinion is one thing. Trolling for a reaction is not. Do I have to ban you or do you actually care about the subject?

I sure do.

That’s why I scanned through about twenty articles on the subject to find the most recently updated and reliable source that offered a unique and balanced perspective, one that’s well-sourced with minimal bias.

It’s why I picked a journal owned by a non-profit with free articles and minimal ads.

The article title is precisely what the article is about, an expert in astrophysics giving their opinion on a recent astronomical event, and even then I added (It is not) to the title.

Do you know what clickbait is?

You mean the one who provided the above quotes in the article?

It’s okay to admit you didn’t read it.

These are his quotes from the article:

Loeb said 3I/ATLAS “is probably a natural object” but thinks it’s important to consider the possibility that it’s technological.

“We have the duty to consider a low probability event,” Loeb said, “just because the implications are huge.”

He’s just a curious guy who understands the probability but doesn’t shy away from testing a hail mary hypothesis. Let people be creative.

If someone doesn’t know what the issue is about, why does their opinion matter?

This is the internet, literally anything can be misconstrued. Someone on here called me a nazi yesterday. If you check my modlog I was banned from a community for fascism.

Criticizing a valid, informed statement about an issue that’s challenging people’s identities because of how it might appear is like clutching pearls while your house is on fire.

Knowledge of sperm teamwork is a threat to individualism.

AOC is right and that quip does attack the shifting of responsibility.

In one simple statement AOC pointed out that Riley wouldn’t have won the race she used to build her anti-trans platform. The swimmer has been careful to present herself as a champion, when in reality she started her campaign after tying for fifth place with a trans woman.

They hold the gender pendulum over your groin to see whether it swings in a manly arc or a feminine circle.

This is the only community I have blocked.

It’s just weird. CLM, PTB or a bot.

And why the hell is he calling people “scam” and “spam” for disagreeing?

My only fears are the Flesh Eating Disease and Unexpected Phone Calls.

This is a real world example of why media literacy matters.

Most common reasons for being woke:

• Gay people
• Gay people getting married
• Player can be gay or trans
• Non-white people
• Player is non-white
• Strong women
• Socialism

Their “non-woke” approved games include Bayonetta, Tropico, The Witcher, and Final Fantasy XII.

It’s interesting to bring up air traffic controllers because they (in most countries) have strictly regulated work hours. The research into fatigue and safety problems is pretty extensive, and the last person you want working overtime because someone got sick is the controller telling a dozen or more planes where to fly at once.

While not all jobs have the same stakes, that goes to show how it’s an employer’s responsibility to account for reality.

What happened to his landing gear you sick fuck?

No but this is a safe space to talk about it.

How do you know which corn is which shit? Do you switch up the colours?

I’d vote for you.

Take it from someone who grew up in a multi-generation military family and lived on base, I wouldn’t hold his record, the tattoo or his old reddit posts against him. I still don’t buy that he never found out the tattoo was a nazi death’s head, but I can believe he didn’t know it at the time.

Military service is a black hole of a religion, providing structure, community, money and ideology. It throws people into the most horrendous situations with the brightest promises and leaves them unable to function outside of that structure. I’ve watched friends join before their brains are even fully developed because of school or work or lack of purpose or genuinely thinking they can make a difference, ship off, come back saying exactly this kind of shit, and struggle for years to get out and make a different kind of life.

One of my buddies went to Afghanistan as an IT guy, who was told he wouldn’t see combat, and he ended up doing “crowd control” against civilians. He’s never expressed remorse in public, just thinking about it triggers him. He saves it for therapy. It took him five years to extricate himself while they kept trying to push “Just one more tour!” offering more money and a discharge when he got back, only to up the pressure when he returned.

And that’s just one of many stories I have about friends and family. My dad tried to leave about a dozen times, didn’t make it out until he retired with severe hearing damage and PTSD.

So, with Platner, I’m going with more recent evidence. He condemned the US military actions in the middle east, recognized the Palestinian state, called out the genocide, supports free healthcare and housing for everyone, and LGBTQ+ rights.

At least that’s what he says. We don’t have a voting record or much information about him, except what he says. So, if we’re going off just his statements, I would rather judge him by who he seems to be now, what his friends and family say about him, and how well he can stick to his convictions.

I have my reservations. But if military service, a handful of old reddit posts and a questionable tattoo make this guy a genocidal nazi, the bar is pretty fucking low.

Who’s to say the person making $150,000 is living better?

Anecdotally, I just moved from a city with a median rent of $1600/month to a town where I just pay for utilities, to watch someone’s second home. I make the same amount of money.

I used to live near a low income grocery store that reduced my food expenses by 75%.

When I have access to a garden I can cut down my yearly food costs by a few hundred dollars.

I have no children. My friend with two kids makes twice as much as me and has less disposable income.

I still say give everyone the same amount. If it ends up making them disproportionately wealthy, tax the wealth.