So to make sure I'm understanding right, the authorities think it's gold miners trying to scare off locals by dressing as aliens? Anyone else getting Scooby Doo vibes? That's literally the plot of...
So to make sure I'm understanding right, the authorities think it's gold miners trying to scare off locals by dressing as aliens? Anyone else getting Scooby Doo vibes? That's literally the plot of Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders.
Semi-jokes aside, I'm pretty skeptical of jetpacks since that's just so expensive. Definitely not aliens, but jetpacks are just as bizarre and unlikely. There's likely some other trick involved. But I'm actually way more alarmed by the mention of the attempted kidnapping of the 15-year-old girl. Scaring people is one thing, kidnapping is another. I tried looking up if there's any more details, and other articles I find mention she was grabbed from behind and her neck got slashed in the encounter.
It's tricky to find details due to the language barrier and the salacious nature of this case. Most English articles seem to just be repeating each other, so hard to verify how true each detail is. Apparently there was a picture of a guy with a mutilated face circulating that people claimed was attacked, but was actually from an earlier video and linked to a piranha attack. So can't be sure how true it is that the girl got her neck slashed in the encounter, though there was a photo of a girl holding a bloody towel to her neck with her face pixelated. So that might be from one of the videos.
Either way, whatever is going on, if they tried to kidnap a teenage girl, that raises all sorts of alarms and concern.
If there was really any kind of incident as described, the most likely scenario seems to be someone using a modified drone in an attempt scare the villagers away. Drones are cheap and can be had...
If there was really any kind of incident as described, the most likely scenario seems to be someone using a modified drone in an attempt scare the villagers away. Drones are cheap and can be had nearly anywhere in the world. It wouldn't be that hard to modify a drone to be in the shape of a flying alien or demonic creature.
I mean it would, as you note, literally be a Scooby Doo plot, but it's not that implausible. Miners want to take over land, they figure the villagers on the land are superstitious, idiot country bumpkins. So they rig up a few drones to look like aliens, demons, or similar. An illegal mining operation might try this, not even expecting it to work. It's a cheap option that costs almost nothing. If not, you're out a few hundred bucks. It's worth doing even if you figure there's only a 5% chance of it working.
Make up a terrifying alien statue out of Styrofoam, hang it from a line, suspended from a drone. If you make the tether long enough, the noise from the drone can become much less noticeable. Fly through the town at night, so people won't be able to get a real good luck at it.
Or maybe, the report that it looked like it was and alien dressed in a Green Goblin outfit was because it literally WAS dressed in a Green Goblin outfit. Maybe the illegal miners were too lazy to make a sculpture, so they found a novelty blow-up alien decoration and strapped the parts from a Green Goblin children's costume onto it. Then they hung that thing from the drone and flew it around the village at night.
What if you get caught? What exactly is the law you might charge someone with for this? A municipal charge of disturbing the peace? You're an outfit of illegal miners; your entire career is an endless string of felonies. And you've probably done far, far worse things to get people off their land in the past. This is a foot note on their rap sheet if they're ever caught.
I lived in a small town/village near Iquitos for a couple years, and there's a lot of "don't go too far down that path, because the narcos work there." Unfortunately kidnapping young women and...
I lived in a small town/village near Iquitos for a couple years, and there's a lot of "don't go too far down that path, because the narcos work there." Unfortunately kidnapping young women and terrifying local communities just trying to get by is all too common, and about them getting caught - most of the cops I met there were openly corrupt.
So it sounds like the criminals have drones, and one of the articles in Spanish came to the same conclusion: that it's a plot to terrify folks. They're preying on a general cultural predilection for oral tradition and mythology.
A lot of old timers I met talked about snakes they saw that were a hundred meters long, dolphins that transform into men and drown young women, and how howler monkeys will grow in size and break shotguns in half with their bare hands. Since those kinds of stories are fairly common (obviously not believed by all, but some deeply religious/spiritual traditions and belief systems persist), it seems like a good bet that narcos/poachers/illegal miners/loggers would take advantage of that and dangle some creepy shit from drones. Nasty fuckers.
I initially saw this because of the funny headline, but after reading the article, I'm legitimately curious about what this could actually be. Clearly it's not aliens, but jetpacks are nowhere...
I initially saw this because of the funny headline, but after reading the article, I'm legitimately curious about what this could actually be. Clearly it's not aliens, but jetpacks are nowhere near the level of armored Peruvian miner gangs being able to harass villages and try to kidnap 15 year olds.
I know, this seems so weird and odd! Jetpacks run like $100k and I certainly wouldn't want to use one to navigate into, over and through the Amazon jungle. Why wouldn't these illegal gold miners...
I know, this seems so weird and odd!
Jetpacks run like $100k and I certainly wouldn't want to use one to navigate into, over and through the Amazon jungle. Why wouldn't these illegal gold miners just use the old tricks and methods that cost a lot less than jetpacks to scare people, bombs, firefights, heavily armed cartels etc?
But on the other hand I certainly don't believe it's aliens flying around like the Green Goblin from Spider-Man either!
I have zero belief that aliens are doing this (I believe they're out there, I just don't think they're pranking us while on Galactic spring break), but the jetpack thing seems so rectally extracted...
I have zero belief that aliens are doing this (I believe they're out there, I just don't think they're pranking us while on Galactic spring break), but the jetpack thing seems so rectally extracted...
Ugh, videos of this are no better than bigfoot footage. Miners makes more sense than aliens, they're probably filthy rich given the price of gold. This was probably just a bunch playing with their...
Ugh, videos of this are no better than bigfoot footage. Miners makes more sense than aliens, they're probably filthy rich given the price of gold. This was probably just a bunch playing with their new toys. Only problem there is they don't have much range and are really loud, so I'm surprised they couldn't find them and I couldn't hear a jet in the videos.
This made me lookup where we are on jetpacks and we actually have options now! Not that anyone can afford them. I'm guessing they used the flyboard air, it's the real life green goblin board.
As an aside on the Jetpacks, my company are the company that print the casings for them before they're sent to the company (Gravity) for assembly. They're surprisingly simple in terms of design -...
As an aside on the Jetpacks, my company are the company that print the casings for them before they're sent to the company (Gravity) for assembly. They're surprisingly simple in terms of design - the real skill comes in piloting them and getting used to the inputs and outputs.
It wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing similar concepts on hobby grade printing systems, which will bring down the costs from tens of thousands to just thousands, maybe less. I give it about 5 years.
No, this is bad. We're already too close to "Back to the Future 2" for comfort....you're telling me we have hoverboards now? What is this fever dream I call life?
No, this is bad. We're already too close to "Back to the Future 2" for comfort....you're telling me we have hoverboards now?
An earlier casualty to the jetpack race is the Martin Jetpack https://martinjetpack.com/ Poor guy spent over 30 years and probably millions of dollars developing it, but I dont think its ever been...
Poor guy spent over 30 years and probably millions of dollars developing it, but I dont think its ever been commercially successful. Not even sure they sold one and the website seems to be unchanged for years. The problem seems to be finding a use case that justifies the huge cost.
So to make sure I'm understanding right, the authorities think it's gold miners trying to scare off locals by dressing as aliens? Anyone else getting Scooby Doo vibes? That's literally the plot of Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders.
Semi-jokes aside, I'm pretty skeptical of jetpacks since that's just so expensive. Definitely not aliens, but jetpacks are just as bizarre and unlikely. There's likely some other trick involved. But I'm actually way more alarmed by the mention of the attempted kidnapping of the 15-year-old girl. Scaring people is one thing, kidnapping is another. I tried looking up if there's any more details, and other articles I find mention she was grabbed from behind and her neck got slashed in the encounter.
It's tricky to find details due to the language barrier and the salacious nature of this case. Most English articles seem to just be repeating each other, so hard to verify how true each detail is. Apparently there was a picture of a guy with a mutilated face circulating that people claimed was attacked, but was actually from an earlier video and linked to a piranha attack. So can't be sure how true it is that the girl got her neck slashed in the encounter, though there was a photo of a girl holding a bloody towel to her neck with her face pixelated. So that might be from one of the videos.
Either way, whatever is going on, if they tried to kidnap a teenage girl, that raises all sorts of alarms and concern.
If there was really any kind of incident as described, the most likely scenario seems to be someone using a modified drone in an attempt scare the villagers away. Drones are cheap and can be had nearly anywhere in the world. It wouldn't be that hard to modify a drone to be in the shape of a flying alien or demonic creature.
I mean it would, as you note, literally be a Scooby Doo plot, but it's not that implausible. Miners want to take over land, they figure the villagers on the land are superstitious, idiot country bumpkins. So they rig up a few drones to look like aliens, demons, or similar. An illegal mining operation might try this, not even expecting it to work. It's a cheap option that costs almost nothing. If not, you're out a few hundred bucks. It's worth doing even if you figure there's only a 5% chance of it working.
Make up a terrifying alien statue out of Styrofoam, hang it from a line, suspended from a drone. If you make the tether long enough, the noise from the drone can become much less noticeable. Fly through the town at night, so people won't be able to get a real good luck at it.
Or maybe, the report that it looked like it was and alien dressed in a Green Goblin outfit was because it literally WAS dressed in a Green Goblin outfit. Maybe the illegal miners were too lazy to make a sculpture, so they found a novelty blow-up alien decoration and strapped the parts from a Green Goblin children's costume onto it. Then they hung that thing from the drone and flew it around the village at night.
What if you get caught? What exactly is the law you might charge someone with for this? A municipal charge of disturbing the peace? You're an outfit of illegal miners; your entire career is an endless string of felonies. And you've probably done far, far worse things to get people off their land in the past. This is a foot note on their rap sheet if they're ever caught.
I lived in a small town/village near Iquitos for a couple years, and there's a lot of "don't go too far down that path, because the narcos work there." Unfortunately kidnapping young women and terrifying local communities just trying to get by is all too common, and about them getting caught - most of the cops I met there were openly corrupt.
So it sounds like the criminals have drones, and one of the articles in Spanish came to the same conclusion: that it's a plot to terrify folks. They're preying on a general cultural predilection for oral tradition and mythology.
A lot of old timers I met talked about snakes they saw that were a hundred meters long, dolphins that transform into men and drown young women, and how howler monkeys will grow in size and break shotguns in half with their bare hands. Since those kinds of stories are fairly common (obviously not believed by all, but some deeply religious/spiritual traditions and belief systems persist), it seems like a good bet that narcos/poachers/illegal miners/loggers would take advantage of that and dangle some creepy shit from drones. Nasty fuckers.
I initially saw this because of the funny headline, but after reading the article, I'm legitimately curious about what this could actually be. Clearly it's not aliens, but jetpacks are nowhere near the level of armored Peruvian miner gangs being able to harass villages and try to kidnap 15 year olds.
"Aliens" is actually more believable than "Peruvian Miner Skypirate Jetpack Raiders"
I know, this seems so weird and odd!
Jetpacks run like $100k and I certainly wouldn't want to use one to navigate into, over and through the Amazon jungle. Why wouldn't these illegal gold miners just use the old tricks and methods that cost a lot less than jetpacks to scare people, bombs, firefights, heavily armed cartels etc?
But on the other hand I certainly don't believe it's aliens flying around like the Green Goblin from Spider-Man either!
I have zero belief that aliens are doing this (I believe they're out there, I just don't think they're pranking us while on Galactic spring break), but the jetpack thing seems so rectally extracted...
Ugh, videos of this are no better than bigfoot footage. Miners makes more sense than aliens, they're probably filthy rich given the price of gold. This was probably just a bunch playing with their new toys. Only problem there is they don't have much range and are really loud, so I'm surprised they couldn't find them and I couldn't hear a jet in the videos.
This made me lookup where we are on jetpacks and we actually have options now! Not that anyone can afford them. I'm guessing they used the flyboard air, it's the real life green goblin board.
Flyboard (jet hoverboard): https://youtu.be/WQzLrvz4DKQ?si=hBtdwWn_-htTkr1R
Jetpack (jet backpack): https://youtu.be/P1PfWR-NxuI?si=C58D1hQT-HlwaxVa
As an aside on the Jetpacks, my company are the company that print the casings for them before they're sent to the company (Gravity) for assembly. They're surprisingly simple in terms of design - the real skill comes in piloting them and getting used to the inputs and outputs.
It wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing similar concepts on hobby grade printing systems, which will bring down the costs from tens of thousands to just thousands, maybe less. I give it about 5 years.
Edit - feel free to mark as noise.
No this is cool. Terrifying but cool.
No, this is bad. We're already too close to "Back to the Future 2" for comfort....you're telling me we have hoverboards now?
What is this fever dream I call life?
We have hover boards now.
And they're boring.
What does that tell you about life?
That movies make really crappy things like Trump being in charge seem glamorous and exciting instead of just shitty.
An earlier casualty to the jetpack race is the Martin Jetpack https://martinjetpack.com/
Poor guy spent over 30 years and probably millions of dollars developing it, but I dont think its ever been commercially successful. Not even sure they sold one and the website seems to be unchanged for years. The problem seems to be finding a use case that justifies the huge cost.
I swear this timeline is getting more and more weird.