Hobbyists

Having lived for half a year in New Jersey, the recent mysterious drone sightings across the state has had me curious as I can relate to many of the places mentioned. While Swedish media coverage has been limited, the short story is that many people, including law enforcement and local government officials, have seen multiple strange unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAPs) in the skies over the Eastern seaboard basically every night for weeks now while the White House has been sending conflicted messages, saying that what appears to be drones are, on one hand, “entirely legal and lawful” and, on the other hand, yet to be fully identified. Suggesting that many observations may in fact be commercial airplanes or drones belonging to “hobbyist”, this media strategy has left local politicians frustrated and sparked a new wave of speculation on the Internet about possible non-human intelligence. While I prefer not to jump to any conclusions, I am still open to the possibility that there is more to this story than the official line suggests, so it will be interesting to follow this going forward.

Thrilled to have reached my annual goal of running 3,660 kilometres two days ago, I am otherwise spending this week grading and writing feedback to students. On Monday in Halmstad, Eddie and I made it back to the train with one minute to spare but with all the quantitative methodology exams marked (sadly, more than half of the students failed this first attempt so there will be plenty of exams to mark again in January). Today, the rain has been pouring down all morning but, eventually, I plucked up the courage to challenge the weather and went down to the gym for 30 hobby minutes on the elliptical.