OV9

I know it’s probably the pesky Chinese/Russians, but does anyone else find it slightly surreal/disconcerting to be getting semi-regular news notifications saying that the USA have shot down another UFO? What’s that, three in a day?

Are these a new phenomenon or are the US now just making a point following that balloon?

No, they're just shooting up instead of at each other, though they do have previous for it; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles

I think having intercepted one balloon they have cracked on to flight paths / radio signatures and been able to rapidly find more.

But yes other options include
- We’ve made a serious bollocks of first contact
- China and the US are about to have a barney

You are going to look right silly when you find out they're not insects, but jellyfish.

I have been watching this story with interest, but I don't think they'd have been quite so fast and loose with the media stories if it wasn't anything interesting.

In truth probably just surveillance, and while it's clever that they've seemingly been getting away with it for a long time, surely they can't do loads more than a military satellite or ultra high flying top secret spy plane we probably haven't heard of.

Only side note is that the Chinese surveillance balloon was very high and quite big, the other two were in the air traffic altitude so surely would have always been detected, which makes them a bit more of a conundrum.

There's also a massive chemical incident in Ohio reportedly caused by people cheaping out on hazardous material permits which is a damned sight more serious than 'woops, missed some baloons', but the baloons are eating airtime, usefully.

https://cen.acs.org/safety/Safety-quest ... ain/101/i6

Schwarzwaelder says people in the area have reported the death of chickens, fish, and other animals, including a domesticated fox, since the accident. “I got a call yesterday from a person who lives 1.5 miles away from the derailment area,” she says. “They let their 2-year-old healthy dog out to go to the bathroom, and the dog never returned inside. He was dead in the yard.”

So yeah, there's that.

Initial rumours were that it could be bhopal scale, but that rhetoric seems to have been dialled back.

I heard about only because some people on a Discord I'm on are relatively local to it.