The Agents of F.L.A.S.K.

Harp said:

Toxicology reports are still out and until these are in I am discounting all other possibile cause for now. Certainly a perplexing case, but while lightning retains strong suit its fatality statistics are low and outside probable cause...

Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought it was odd that in the same article, hell nearly in the same paragraph, the author mentions how rare it is for a lightning strike to cause death, but that they're almost willing to cite that as the cause in four deaths.

It is indeed rare for someone to get struck by lightning. It is even more rare for a strike to cause a death now that most people know CPR and AEDs are pretty common. In most cases where lightning "strikes" people, it's not a direct hit causing massive burns or trauma - it's usually the electrical charge itself from a near-miss that disrupts the normal heart rhythm. It doesn't take much of an electrical potential through the body to cause this in the right circumstances, which is the reason you're always taught to squat with your feet together if caught out in a lightning storm - you con't want to provide a conduction path with widely-spread feet. So especially if witnessed, the "strike" victim stands a good chance of recovery if CPR and/or an AED are applied.

It's not uncommon to hear of multiple people injured, or multiple cattle killed, because they all took shelter under one tree that was hit by lightning. I'm picturing a family ill-prepared for a day hike (as this couple seemed to be) overtaken by a sudden squall in the mountains, huddling together under a rock outcropping, with a strike close enough to stop their hearts and ultimately kill them. But again, we don't know how they were found, and this is just my best guess based on what I understand from news reports. I certainly won't discount anyone else's reasonable ideas, and I still think that the folks on the ground would have at least considered this right off if they thought it were a possibility. But I also bet those folks aren't the ones talking directly to the reporters, either. Usually there are PIOs involved who may be good at talking to reporters but who may have less technical knowledge or training.

For me, the dog is the ringer here. You're not going to kill most healthy dogs (or their family/"pack") without some kind of fight. I wouldn't think a suicidal couple would take their dog along on an adventure just to poison it too, but crazier things have certainly happened and there's no one who fully understands all the things a twisted human mind can conjure up.

Interesting discussion here, thank you!

Update, for what it's worth, as reported in The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/us/california-yosemite-family-death.html
A spokeswoman for the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office said in an email on Wednesday that there were no new updates in the investigation. In an interview with The Fresno Bee, Sheriff Jeremy Briese said that he had never encountered such a mysterious case.
“It’s frustrating, and we’re not going to rest,” Sheriff Briese said. “Our biggest mission is safety, but also the family and bringing closure, and being able to support them through this tragic time.”

On Aug. 19, the California State Water Resources Control Board, using a water quality reporting map on its website, warned the public to “stay away from algae and scum in the water” near the south fork of the Merced River in the Sierra National Forest. An incident description said that the agency had received a report of a “suspected illness” in the area. The warning previously made reference to a fatality, but was changed to say illness, The Bee reported.

Harp said:

Stargate is a probable active station. Perhaps reduced due in part to publicity generated from inception
to active intelligence status, or shuffled downgrade further below radar; which, should have been done earlier.

Click to expand...

As late as November 2001 the Ministry of Defense engaged psychics to try to find Osama bin Laden.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/psychic-hunt-osama-bin-laden/

So it would seem that intelligence agencies still dabble in this from time to time.

The above article roundly mocks the whole business and gives a concrete example of the bad results achieved.

To balance this a bit, the following link gives a example of an occasion when “remote viewing” reportedly worked. (Admittedly from a very biased source.)

https://rviewer.com/Remote_Viewing_...ple-of-an-operational-remote-viewing-session/

I can’t help but agree with you that these experiments are probably still going on, somewhere in the classified labyrinths of power.

Tiki Tom said:

As late as November 2001 the Ministry of Defense engaged psychics to try to find Osama bin Laden.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/psychic-hunt-osama-bin-laden/

So it would seem that intelligence agencies still dabble in this from time to time.

Click to expand...

The US Defense Dept directed remote viewing of the Third Secret of Fatima, assigned USAF Lt Col psychic.
Said document held by Vatican; supposedly in a safe kept inside the papal apartments. USAF officer
psychic remotely viewed this document, written by the sole surviving seer whom is believed to have received
these secrets from the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal 1914. A laicized Roman Catholic priest,
Malachy Martin (?) a former Jesuit and trusted papal counselor known to have read the Third Secret while in
Vatican service is rumored to have confirmed the retrieved psychic memoranda generated by this exercise.

Stargate is probable active station status.
Psychic abilities exist, though exceptional and some more capable with requisite batting averages.
Major League psychic baseball isn't Little League leaked out dribble drabble pickup play. Serious game.

Interesting stuff. Thanks. Got a link regarding the Fatima docs? I haven’t heard that story before!

Operationally, I suppose the main problem would be sorting the good results from the bad results and knowing which is which. Especially if there is no corroborating evidence from more traditional sources.

People are biased by personal prejudice. It exist. It's a part of human nature.

As an investigator, I'm from the old school. Don't try to build a case, then collect evidence to prove your theory. It's like saying "OJ DID IT!", then trying to point all the evidence at OJ. Without checking to see if the bloody glove fits, you declare it to be OJ's glove. Let the evidence prove itself. Follow the evidence. You can't assume every wildfire is caused by "global warming", just because British Broadcasting published an opinion that California fires are caused by climate change. People set those fires. Was climate change the motive for all the people who were arrested for setting the fires? If every fire investigator believed that global warming was causing fires, then those people would never be arrested for setting the fires.









Sometimes, the evidence leads nowhere. Or there is just insufficient evidence. The evidence that you do have, is insufficient - it proves nothing. That's why so many homicides are unsolved. You have a victim with a gunshot wound. You have a bullet recovered at autopsy. You have a crime scene with bullet holes and shell casings. You have tire tracks. You have blood. Every city has a ton of those unsolved shootings. As an investigator, you must view every case with "fresh eyes". Can someone handcuffed in police custody commit suicide by shooting himself in the head?



The only thing that we know for certain, is that the family died without signs of trauma, and that toxicology has ruled out whatever the lab tested for. There could be other things which the lab did not test for. And because it's an active investigation, most of what the investigators do know, would not be released to the press for you to know. Let you imagination run wild.

Tiki Tom said:

Interesting stuff. Thanks. Got a link regarding the Fatima docs? I haven’t heard that story before!

Operationally, I suppose the main problem would be sorting the good results from the bad results and knowing which is which. Especially if there is no corroborating evidence from more traditional sources.

Click to expand...

Ex-Special Forces inside baseball, so no linkage to Fatima; other things will forever keep quiet.
Paranormal exists but as I commented earlier it is more exceptional than mill run pocket fluff
bandied about hither-and-yon on television or online, and its official usage is sustained by successful
application.

Latest clues. If I am reading this correctly, it sounds like they most likely died of respiratory paralysis. To me, pond algae still seems like a long shot. But it sounds like they are hedging their bets and not completely ruling anything out. Let me know what you get out of this.

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article254080593.html

The family toxicology reports have not been released. Until these are available and a cause
or causes determined with explanation, case remains open.

Who needs to hunt for legendary cryptozoological beasts when you can simply whip up a Woolly Mammoth? This effort seems fairly serious. But just because we CAN do it, does that mean we SHOULD? Still, how cool would that be?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-from-extinction

Tiki Tom said:

Who needs to hunt for legendary cryptozoological beasts when you can simply whip up a Woolly Mammoth? This effort seems fairly serious. But just because we CAN do it, does that mean we SHOULD? Still, how cool would that be?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-from-extinction

Click to expand...

I would think the Imagineers at Disney could whip up a Wooly Mammoth in a few months, and when the fascination wore off they could simply turn it off and dismantle it without having to torture a living being while learning about it. So, yeah, in this case I'm definitely in the "SHOULDN'T" camp.

This was discussed many pages ago. Update: it still seems that pterodactyl sightings are occurring in the skies above middle America.

https://www.enidnews.com/news/state...cle_01fd1fa8-c8fe-5ea2-a012-aa142fe37a6d.html

I like these stories. There is a lot of open territory out there. Who knows? Perhaps a small breeding population still survives in the high desert country of the great west. Unlikely indeed; yet these stories keep popping up.

P.S. - I wish I lived in a place named “Pumpkin Hollow.”

Tiki Tom said:

I like these stories. There is a lot of open territory out there. Who knows? Perhaps a small breeding population still survives in the high desert country of the great west. Unlikely indeed; yet these stories keep popping up.

Click to expand...

Bigfootits strikes again. On any slow news day, camera/reporter teams can be sent out to a local
airport for a TSA checkpoint screening/Covid travel passenger numbers story or run something about
flavor-of-the-month stuff like pterodactyl sightings, all unconfirmed second hand of course, but still
serviceable for the 6.00 Eyewitness News evening broadcast. Creature-features.

Another mystery.....

Another mystery is solved.




https://twitter.com/i/status/1438183898358366208

Harp said:

I believe psychic ability is real for personal reasons beyond this forum

Click to expand...

Agreed. A popular modern myth is that there is no scientific evidence that supports the existence of ESP.

When Cornell University professor, Dr Daryl Bem, published a peer reviewed paper in a prestigious journal claiming that ESP existed, all hell broke loose in academia. Critics crawled out of the woodwork to say that his study must be flawed, the methodology was wrong, his results dishonest, and that the results were not replicatable.

That was in 2011. Fast forward. From today’s vantage point, it looks like none of those criticisms were valid. In fact, the experiments were replicated over 90 times in 33 labs in 14 countries. A meta analysis of the results supports Dr Bem’s original results.

https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/psi-phenomena-precognition-study/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706048.1/

https://paranormaldailynews.com/skeptics-lost-minds-precognition-experiment/3896/

His findings simply indicated that there is a likelihood that ESP does in fact exist, at least to a small degree.

This is all fun stuff. But none of these articles even mentions the bigger picture. If these findings are indeed correct, then our whole framework regarding how consciousness and reality works needs to be seriously reevaluated. In other words, it is a very big development that really shakes up the standard worldview.

Which is precisely why it’s being ignored, I guess. Your thoughts?

Noah’s Ark site scanned with ground penetrating radar. But —surprise!— this one is not on Mount Ararat, but at another location.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/3725022/noahs-ark-buried-turkish-mountains-experts-3d-scans-prove/

Not mentioned in the story, but this location kinda sort-of aligns with speculation that the flood myth might go back to the actual flooding of the Black Sea which happened very quickly and left archaeological remains of man made structures at the bottom of the sea.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6199827

That said, it will take more than ground penetrating radar to convince me that they have found the lost ark.

But it’s fun to think about.

Tiki Tom said:

But none of these articles even mentions the bigger picture. If these findings are indeed correct, then our whole framework regarding how consciousness and reality works needs to be seriously reevaluated. In other words, it is a very big development that really shakes up the standard worldview.
Which is precisely why it’s being ignored, I guess. Your thoughts?

Click to expand...

Consciousness, reality, shakes up the standard worldview....probably precisely why it's being ignored....
This could apply to a lot of things. Like the White House press corps.

Woman has a pet dog who was a loyal companion for almost a decade. The pet passed away in August. Not long afterwards, the couples security camera picks up a picture of the woman with a dog (the dog?) next to her, when there was no dog around. She claims it’s the ghost of her beloved dog.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1498489/teamdogs-dog-ghost

picture is fairly clear, as far as these things go. It makes for a good story that most people can relate to. But… do dogs have souls/spirits? Are there other stories that support this? Where do you draw the line? Do most mammals have “spirits”? Cats? (I’m sure Lizzie has an opinion about cats.). How about that cow that contributed to last night’s hamburger? The further you go down this theoretical rabbit hole, the stranger it gets. I suppose I lean towards humans being somehow special in this regard. But why? No good reason. …of course, everything is simplified if there simply are no such things as ghosts.