TIME and Ally Financial Name 2025 Dealer of the Year

Raymond Farabaugh, president of D-Patrick Inc. in Evansville, Ind. wins 56th annual award that recognizes industry accomplishments and community service 108th National Automotive Dealers Association Show.

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 25, 2025 – Raymond Farabaugh, president of D-Patrick Inc. in Evansville, Ind. was announced as the 2025 TIME Dealer of the Year at the 108th National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show. Now in its 56th year, the TIME Dealer of the Year award is one of the auto industry’s most respected and highly coveted honors.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Farabaugh was selected for his outstanding achievements in the auto industry and his unwavering commitment to making a positive impact in his community. He is a strong supporter of the Automobile Dealers Association of Indiana, where he has served as president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and currently on the board of directors. Additionally, Farabaugh’s auto group has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in direct contributions and sponsorships, supporting an array of local organizations such as the Ark Crisis Children’s Center, Boone County Cancer Society, Boys & Girls Club of Evansville, Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Ohio Valley, Special Olympics Indiana, Tri-State Food Bank, Walk to End Alzheimer’s Southwest Indiana, and many more.

Jessica Sibley, CEO of TIME, and Doug Timmerman, Ally’s President of Dealer Financial Services, announced Farabaugh as the winner at a ceremony in New Orleans that honored all 49 nominees. Farabaugh was chosen from a field of more than 16,000 franchised dealers across the country.

“At TIME, our commitment to recognizing the exceptional contributions of automotive dealers remains as strong as ever,” Sibley said. “The TIME Dealer of the Year award continues to celebrate those who not only excel in their profession but also make a meaningful impact in their communities. We are thrilled to continue this legacy in partnership with Ally.” 

“The TIME Dealer of the Year award celebrates the country’s top dealers who understand that their businesses thrive when they give back and help their communities grow, and Raymond truly embodies those qualities that make this award so special,” Timmerman said. “Raymond and all of the TIME Dealer of the Year nominees stand out for doing it right in their industry and investing in their communities and dealership teams.”

The TIME Dealer of the Year winner and finalists are chosen by a panel from the Tauber Institute for Global Operations at the University of Michigan. The panel selects finalists from each of the four NADA regions, and, ultimately, a national winner from those finalists.

In addition to Farabaugh, the 2025 TIME Dealer of the Year finalists include:

• Sean P. Baxter, Kayser Ford Inc., Madison, Wis.
• George Haddad, Haddad Toyota, Pittsfield, Mass.
• Con Paulos, Con Paulos Chevrolet, Jerome, Idaho
• Cathy Stender, Woody Anderson Ford, Huntsville, Ala. 

As the exclusive sponsor of the TIME Dealer of the Year program for the 14th year in a row, Ally will provide grants to eligible 501c3 charitable organizations selected by the nominees, finalists, and winner. Ally has made donations in connection with the program, totaling nearly $1 million. This year, Ally will give $10,000 to the charity of Farabaugh’s choice and $5,000 to each of the nonprofit organizations selected by the finalists. In recognition of their achievements, Ally also will give $1,000 to the charities of choice for each of the 49 nominees.

For more information on the nominees, finalists, and winner, please visit: https://www.ally.com/go/allydealerheroes/nominees.

About TIME

TIME is the 101-year-old global media brand that reaches a combined audience of over 120 million around the world through its iconic magazine and digital platforms. With unparalleled access to the world’s most influential people, the trust of consumers and partners globally, and an unrivaled power to convene, TIME’s mission is to tell the essential stories of the people and ideas that shape and improve the world. Today, TIME also includes the Emmy Award®-winning film and television division TIME Studios; a significantly expanded live events business built on the powerful TIME100 and Person of the Year franchises and custom experiences; TIME for Kids, which provides trusted news with a focus on news literacy for kids and valuable resources for teachers and families; the award-winning branded content studio Red Border Studios; the sustainability and climate action division TIME CO2 and more.

About Ally Financial

Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a financial services company with the nation’s largest all-digital bank and an industry-leading auto financing business, driven by a mission to “Do It Right” and be a relentless ally for customers and communities. The company serves approximately 11 million customers through a full range of online banking services (including deposits, mortgage, and credit card products) and securities brokerage and investment advisory services. The company also includes a robust corporate finance business that offers capital for equity sponsors and middle-market companies, as well as auto financing and insurance offerings. For more information, please visit www.ally.com. 

For more information and disclosures about Ally, visit https://www.ally.com/#disclosures. 

For further images and news on Ally, please visit http://media.ally.com. 

About the NADA Show 

The annual NADA Show brings together more than 20,000 franchised dealers and their employees, industry leaders, manufacturers and exhibitors to learn about the latest auto industry tools, trends, products and technologies.

source https://time.com/7209532/time-and-ally-financial-name-2025-dealer-of-the-year/

How We Connected One Billion Lives Through Digital Technology

In an increasingly digital world, connectivity is a necessity. Yet, nearly a third of the global population remains offline, unable to access the services vital to participating in our global digital economy and society. The Edison Alliance at the World Economic Forum has worked to change that by delivering digital connectivity and access to financial, healthcare, and education services to those who need them most. Our partnerships with governments, industries, and non-governmental organizations drive lasting systemic change.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The World Economic Forum played a pivotal role in launching and guiding the Alliance’s work, providing a platform for stakeholders to come together and commit to a vision with actionable ideas and plans. CEOs, ministers, and heads of international organizations harnessed the power of public-private partnerships and gathered to discuss the barriers to connectivity and identify scalable solutions.

The 1 Billion Lives Challenge, achieved by the Edison Alliance in 2024, one year ahead of schedule, exemplifies what can be achieved when diverse stakeholders work toward a common goal. Through partnerships with telecom providers, financial institutions, technology companies, and policymakers, the Alliance delivers impactful programs worldwide. In India, we are using digital tools to connect rural communities to vital health services. In Africa and the U.S., mobile banking solutions empower millions of unbanked individuals with access to financial services. In Latin America, digital literacy initiatives opened new educational opportunities for often underrepresented populations.

Each of our efforts underscore the profound impact of digital connectivity. For the rural farmer in Kenya, it means access to real-time market information that can increase yield and revenue. For the student in a remote village in Peru, it means access to online learning platforms and global educational resources. For the small business owner in Indonesia, it means the ability to reach new markets and grow. Connectivity, quite simply, is the key to unlocking potential and reducing inequality.

Achieving the 1 Billion Lives Challenge is not just a milestone, as every life touched is a life improved and a call to further action. It demonstrates that global challenges—no matter how complex—can be addressed when we come together with purpose and determination. But our work is far from over. While one billion people have better and more comprehensive access to our digital world, billions more still lack access to these critical digital tools. And, the adoption of AI and Generative AI tools threatens to further widen that gap. The digital divide remains one of the most pressing issues of our time, and the Alliance is committed to continuing its efforts to close it.

The World Economic Forum will remain a critical organization for advancing our work. It is a place where leaders are not only inspired to think big but are also held accountable for delivering on their commitments. The Forum’s unique structure, which emphasizes multi-stakeholder collaboration, ensures that progress is not just discussed but achieved. It is in this spirit that the EDISON Alliance was born, and this is the spirit that will launch further efforts to expand access to vital resources and opportunities. Our work will continue through new initiatives like the World Economic Forum’s AI for Prosperity and Growth in Africa, launched at this year’s Annual Meeting.

Looking ahead, we see a world where connectivity is available to all who want it. This vision requires sustained effort, innovation, and investment. It requires us to address the structural barriers that perpetuate the digital divide, from affordability and infrastructure to digital literacy and policy frameworks. It requires us to keep asking tough questions and pooling our resources to push the boundaries of what is possible. We call on the public and private sectors to increase their collaboration so we can meet these bold ambitions. Together, we will build a world where no one is left behind in the digital age.

source https://time.com/7209794/edison-alliance-digital-technology/

Breaking Down the Haunting Twist at the End of Steven Soderbergh’s Presence

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Presence.

Presence may not be your typical horror movie, but that doesn’t mean it won’t leave you a bit shaken up.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Contagion) from a screenplay by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Panic Room), the haunted house chiller is shot entirely from the point of view of a spirit trapped inside a suburban home (i.e., Soderbergh with a handheld camera). Presence, now in theaters, opens with the ghostly entity observing as a family of four—married couple Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their two teenage children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang)—tour and subsequently move into the residence.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The presence initially makes itself known only to Chloe and appears to be drawn to her, suggesting it may be the ghost of her best friend Nadia, who died from an apparent overdose a few months earlier. As the spirit continues to observe increasingly tense family interactions, we watch as Chloe’s grief over Nadia and insistent talk of a ghost is met with derision and cruelty from her brother, contempt from her mother (who openly prefers star athlete Tyler to a near-creepy extent), and compassion from her sympathetic father, who is the first person to take her claims about the presence seriously.

Eventually, Chris calls in Lisa (Natalie Woolams-Torres), the sister of their real estate agent (Julia Fox), to investigate the mysterious goings-on using her supposed “second sight.” After looking directly into the camera, Lisa says she believes the presence is confused and doesn’t know why it’s there. In a major hint at what’s to come, she also explains that time works differently in the spirit world, meaning the ghost’s presence in the house could be tied to either a past or future event.

While all this is going on, Chloe begins secretly hanging out and hooking up with Tyler’s friend Ryan (West Mulholland), a sinister jock who worms his way into her good graces as a shoulder to cry on. We witness one nefarious incident in which Ryan drugs Chloe’s drink while she’s in the shower, presumably with the intention of sexually assaulting her, but is foiled by the spirit knocking the glass over. With Chloe unaware of Ryan’s true nature, she agrees to a plan he proposes to guarantee them some alone time while her parents are out of town for the weekend by getting Tyler drunk and slipping him something to make him fall asleep.

What is the twist in Presence?

On the night the plan is supposed to play out, Ryan does as he says and waits until Tyler is passed out on the couch before heading upstairs to Chloe’s room. After she tells him she would now prefer to just have a quiet night by herself, he convinces her to have one drink (that he’s already drugged) and she also passes out. It’s then that things really get scary.

After putting a piece of plastic wrap over her mouth and nose to obstruct her breathing, Ryan confesses that he was the one responsible for the deaths of both Nadia and another girl from their school who seemingly died from an overdose, and that he killed those two girls in the same way. However, he doesn’t account for the now-frantic spirit racing downstairs and doing everything in its power to wake up Tyler.

Once he comes to, Tyler seems to immediately understand his sister is in trouble and stumbles upstairs to her room. He tackles Ryan through the second-story window and they both fall to their deaths, saving Chloe in the process. In the movie’s final sequence, we watch as a grieving Rebekah, Chris, and Chloe prepare to leave the house for good. But as Rebekah takes one last look in the living room mirror, she sees Tyler staring back at her and screams in anguish.

The implication of this final reveal seems to be that Tyler was the presence all along, having been trapped in a paradoxical time loop of sorts where he had to die to save his sister but also had to already be dead in order for the events that lead to her rescue to play out. In any case, best not to overthink the logistics of all this if you want to fully take in what’s ultimately a pretty poignant gut punch.

source https://time.com/7209539/presence-ending-explained/

How Does Birthright Citizenship in the U.S. Compare to the Rest of the World?

Who gets to be an American? Since the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1868, the answer to that question has been cemented in the American psyche: anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen.

That is until Donald Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025—the first day of his second term as President—that would make birthright citizenship conditional on the legal status of one’s parents, targeting many of the hundreds of thousands of children born each year to immigrants. The order was immediately challenged as unconstitutional and is expected to be held up and potentially blocked by the courts before it can go into effect.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But just how radical is the idea of limiting who can be a citizen? The U.S. is one of around 30 countries that follows the principle of generally unrestricted jus soli, meaning “right of soil.” This has allowed millions of people each year to automatically become American citizens irrespective of their parentage. Under Trump’s order, which is set to take effect on Feb. 19, at least one parent must be either a citizen or a lawful permanent resident for their U.S.-born child to become a citizen.

Taking into account other new orders to enforce more stringent immigration restrictions, at least one lawsuit against the Trump Administration contends that the affected children of the proposed birthright citizenship revision risk deportation or detention, could lose access to public benefits, and may even be rendered stateless.

What does it mean to not have birthright citizenship?

Across the world, birthright citizenship is not considered the norm. Canada and Mexico have unrestricted birthright citizenship, as do a majority of Latin American countries. But across Asia, Europe, and Africa, almost none do—at least without similar restrictions to what Trump is proposing.

Most countries with restricted birthright citizenship have conditions that broadly depend on either the legal residency status of at least one of the child’s parents, the residency of the child, or both. In Australia, for example, a child born there can become a citizen either if at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident of Australia, or if the child resides in Australia for a decade following their birth.

Where countries don’t follow jus soli, they generally rely on jus sanguinis, meaning “right of blood.” Countries like Singapore and China require at least one parent to be a citizen in order for their child to become one. Whether or not the child is born in the country doesn’t matter—citizenship still follows their parents’ nationality. The U.S., like many other countries that follow jus soli, also applies jus sanguinis to children born to an American parent overseas.

If the practice of birthright citizenship appears geographically skewed—it’s much more common in the Western Hemisphere—sociologist John Skrenty told Politifact that might be because for many countries it was a tool of colonialism, used to quickly outnumber native populations. In the U.S., the 14th Amendment was adopted to address the legal status of freed slaves.

Have other countries changed their birthright citizenship laws before?

In recent years, several countries—including Pakistan, the Dominican Republic, and Ireland—have revised their citizenship laws to restrict or revoke birthright citizenship.

An Islamabad High Court heard the 2022 petition of a Pakistani-born Afghan who had not been granted citizenship despite Pakistan’s birthright citizenship. The Court ruled in favor of the petitioner, but in November 2024, Pakistan introduced restrictions that would mean a person born in Pakistan, to be a citizen, had to either have a parent who was a citizen or permanent resident, or reside in Pakistan for a decade after their birth. The change stands to impact many more Afghan refugees who may lack the documentation needed to stay in Pakistan.

One of the most severe changes occurred in the Dominican Republic, where the government abolished birthright citizenship in 2013, ruling that anyone born after 1929 who does not have at least one parent of Dominican blood would be considered to be in the country illegally or “in transit.” The restriction denationalized more than 200,000 children of immigrants, many of whom were ethnically Haitian, according to Reuters.

And in 2004, Ireland became the last country in Europe to end unrestricted birthright citizenship when 79% of voters in a referendum chose to amend their constitution to require at least one parent be an Irish or British citizen, permanent resident, or legal temporary resident (excluding students and asylum seekers). The change was brought about after a much-publicized “immigration loophole” was discovered when two Chinese nationals living in the U.K. traveled to Belfast to give birth, which (due to Ireland’s unique relationship with both the U.K. and the E.U.) gave them so-called “backdoor” access to permanent residence in the U.K. as parents of a dependent E.U. citizen.

In 2018, around when Trump earlier discussed ending birthright citizenship in the U.S., a proposed law to restore birthright citizenship in Ireland gained ground after a high-profile case of a nine-year-old Ireland-born boy who faced deportation along with his Chinese mother. A survey at the time found 71% of Irish respondents wanted to bring birthright citizenship back. However, while the boy was ultimately granted a reprieve from the government, the bill to restore birthright citizenship failed, though the Irish Labour Party continues to advocate for such a change.

—Chad de Guzman contributed reporting.

source https://time.com/7209363/birthright-citizenship-compare-us-world-restrictions-trump-jus-soli-sanguinis/

Fossil Fuel Billionaires Boost Wealth by $3 Billion After Trump’s Inauguration

President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 in Washington D.C. brought the world’s wealthiest people together to celebrate his return to the presidency, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, who have a combined net worth of nearly $900 billion, according to Forbes.

As Trump was inaugurated, longtime Trump supporter Harold Hamm—known for fracking and considered “America’s richest oil man” with over $18.5 billion in wealth running Continental Resources— hosted an exclusive inauguration watch party. Invitees included Trump’s pick to run the Interior Department, former Governor of North Dakota Doug Burnam. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The connection between Trump’s rise and policy choices and American business leaders is especially true for the top fossil fuel billionaires, says the Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP). The group has been tracking the impact of Trump’s latest presidential campaign and election win on the wealth of 15 individual billionaires involved in the fossil fuel industry.

In just one day after Trump’s inauguration, CARP says these 15 billionaires saw their combined wealth increase $3.31 billion, from $317.86 billion to $321.17 billion. And since the new year began, these individuals have made $17 billion, according to a CARP analysis using Bloomberg Data.

This list of top U.S. fossil fuel billionaires includes David Koch’s widow Julia Flesher Koch, Charles Koch, the current chairman and CEO of Koch Inc., Hamm, as well as many other owners of oil and gas companies like Kinder Morgan, Enterprise Products, and Hunt Consolidated.

Read More: What Trump’s Executive Orders Really Mean for the Climate

“A good return on investment,” Chuck Collins, co-founder of CARP tells TIME of the billionaires’ wealth increase since Trump’s election. Collins co-authored a report released this month by CARP tracking connections between Trump’s second run for office and U.S. oil and gas giants.

According to Yale Climate Connections, nearly $23 million in oil and gas industry funds went directly to candidate Trump and the PACs supporting him during his recent election campaign.

At an April 2024 dinner organized with Hamm and attended by oil executives from places including Exxon and Chevron at Mar-a-Lago, Trump asked attendees to donate $1 billion to his campaign. He told these executives they would save that much money and more after he repealed environmental regulations and fast track drilling permits, the Washington Post reported.

• Donald Trump’s Disruption Is Back
• The Powers Trump’s Nominees Will Have Over Abortion
• Breaking Down All of Trump’s Day 1 Presidential Actions
• Facing 4 More Years of Trump, Democrats Can’t Agree on a Plan
• Trump Launches New Immigration Measures, Prompting Abrupt Shift in U.S. Border Policy

CARP’s analysis comes as Trump declares a “national energy emergency,” begins the process of pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and promises to speed fossil fuel project approvals. In his declaration of a “National Energy Emergency,” Trump cited the need to lower energy costs and to boost oil and natural gas production across the country, in line with his mantra throughout his campaign: “drill, baby, drill.” 

Trump stayed the same course in his inauguration day address: “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have—the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.” His remarks received a standing ovation at Hamm’s inauguration watch party at Hay-Adams hotel in downtown Washington, the New York Times reported.

Collins says Trump’s election and his immediate executive orders are a “dream” for oil and gas executives—a dream they can only expect to get better.

“It’s a huge windfall for the industry, and it’s kind of a beginning,” Collins said. “This is the payback for investing millions and millions of dollars to get Trump elected, and clearing the way for members of Congress who are pro industry and climate deniers. This is what they paid for.”

source https://time.com/7209181/fossil-fuel-billionaires-wealth-trump-inauguration/

What to Know About ‘Stargate,’ OpenAI’s New Venture Announced by President Trump

President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank, MGX and Oracle to build new datacenters to power the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) – in an early signal that his Administration would embrace the technology.

The plans, which predate the Trump Administration and involve no U.S. government funds, would result in the construction of large datacenters on U.S. soil containing thousands of advanced computer chips required to train new AI systems.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Trump cast his support for the venture in part as a matter of national competitiveness. “We want to keep it in this country; China’s a competitor,” Trump said of AI. “I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations – we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built.” 

The message echoed recent talking points by the heads of AI companies like Sam Altman of OpenAI, who flanked him during the White House announcement. Altman has argued more vocally in recent months that the U.S. must race to build the energy and datacenter infrastructure in order to create powerful AI before China. 

The intent is to build datacenters on American soil, so that the U.S. retains sovereignty over the AI models that are created and run there. Some of the financing for Stargate, however, comes from abroad, via MGX, an investor owned by an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and Softbank, which is Japanese. 

OpenAI and Oracle have been working on building out datacenter capacity in the United States since long before Trump’s inauguration, and construction is reportedly already underway on some of the facilities connected to Stargate. The new President’s blessing, however, is a win both for OpenAI – which like all tech companies has attempted to position itself in Trump’s favor – and for Trump himself, who has seized on AI as a means for strengthening the U.S. economy and achieving dominance over China.

Stargate also appears to mark an end to OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing partnership with Microsoft, meaning the startup is now free to train its models with other providers. In return for early investment, OpenAI had agreed to train its AIs only on Microsoft’s systems. But the startup has chafed in the past at what insiders felt was Microsoft’s inability to supply it with enough computing power, according to reports. Microsoft remains a large investor in OpenAI, and gains a share of its revenue.

What could Stargate mean?

The goal behind Stargate is to create the infrastructure required to build even more powerful AI systems – systems that could perform most economically valuable tasks better and faster than humans could, or that could make new scientific discoveries. Many AI investors and CEOs believe this technology, sometimes referred to as artificial general intelligence, is attainable within the next five years or fewer.

But to get there, those AIs need to first be trained. This presents a problem, because the bigger an AI you want to train, the more interlinked chips you need in a datacenter, and the larger the electricity capacity of that datacenter needs to be. Currently, experts say, AI’s performance is bottlenecked by these two factors, especially power capacity.

Stargate would mean not only the construction of new datacenters to house the latest chips, but also the construction of new energy infrastructure that could supply those datacenters with the gargantuan amount of power needed for an AI training run. Those runs can last for months, with chips running day and night to mold a neural network based on connections within a vast corpus of data. 

“They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily, at their own plants if they want – at the AI plant they will build their own energy generation and that will be incredible,” Trump said Tuesday. “It’s technology and artificial intelligence, all made in the USA.”

Much of this electricity is likely to come from fossil fuels. Trump has committed to “unleash” oil and gas drilling, and has moved to block the grid’s transition to renewable energy. To cope with the rising demand by U.S. data centers for electricity, utilities companies have delayed retiring coal-fired power plants and have added new gas plants.

Will Stargate happen?

It already is. Construction has reportedly already begun on a datacenter in Abilene, Texas, that will house part of the Stargate project. But not all of the $500 billion pledged for the joint venture is likely to be available all at once. Of that figure, OpenAI said in a statement that Stargate would “begin deploying” only a fifth, $100 billion, immediately. The rest will be deployed over the next four years.

Stargate’s announcement led to a rare moment of disharmony between Trump and his most powerful political cheerleader, Elon Musk. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk posted on X shortly after the announcement. “SoftBank has well under $10 [billion] secured. I have that on good authority.” 

Musk has a long and fractious history with Altman. The pair co-founded OpenAI together, but Musk left in 2019 after reportedly mounting a failed bid to become CEO; he now owns the rival AI company xAI and is suing Altman, accusing him of reneging on OpenAI’s founding principles. Altman denied Musk’s allegations on X, inviting him to come to visit the first site already under construction. “This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put 🇺🇸 first,” he wrote. He had earlier written: “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.” An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Regardless of the size of Stargate’s checking account, it would be foolish to bet against a massive surge in datacenter construction on U.S. soil. Tech companies are already investing billions into the construction of facilities where they can train their next AI systems. And with Trump in the oval office, it appears they have succeeded in convincing the highest levels of government that building more AI infrastructure is an urgent national security priority. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you Mr. President,” Altman said at the White House on Tuesday, addressing Trump. “And I’m thrilled that we get to.”

source https://time.com/7209167/stargate-openai-donald-trump/

The New Film ‘What Are UFOs’ Examines Our Fascination with the Unknown

Nobody expected anything special when the squadron of Navy F/A-18 fighter jets headed out for routine aerial maneuvers off of the coast of Virginia Beach one day in 2013. The F/A-18s, a Naval workhorse, owned the local air space that day—but only until they didn’t. 

All at once, the jets’ radar picked up a cluster of half a dozen objects flying along with them, moving erratically—and entirely acrobatically. At some moments they ripped along side-to-side at speeds exceeding 350 knots—or 402 mph. Then, suddenly, they would stand utterly still in winds that themselves were moving at 150 knots (172 mph)—gusts that had the jets struggling to maintain position. Then the objects would accelerate again. They had no visible exhaust, no discernible means of propulsion, and indeed looked nothing like any aircraft in the nation’s civilian or military arsenal. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Measuring five to 15 ft. across, they were a “dark gray or black cube inside a clear sphere,” former Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves, who was aloft that day, tells TIME. “We almost hit one of the objects; they came within 50 ft. of the lead aircraft, and that’s really when we knew we were dealing with something a bit abnormal here. There’s no aircraft in our inventory I’m aware of that has the ability to operate at very low speeds, or no speeds, and then accelerate and operate like a fighter.”

That wasn’t the last time the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)—the genteel, modern-day term for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO)—harrassed the Navy. “We saw them in Virginia Beach between 2013 and 2015,” says Graves. “Later, when we executed training operations aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla., they were either already down there or they had followed us down, because we had over a dozen incidents, two of which were recorded [by the Navy] and released by The New York Times in 2017.”

Those videos, known popularly as “the Gimbal,” after the objects’ pinwheeling motion, are just part of the eyewitness visuals featured in the new PBS NOVA documentary “What Are UFOs?” premiering on PBS stations on Jan. 22. And Graves is just one of the many people who have borne witness to them who offers his accounts. The documentary traces the arc of UFOs and UAPs in American skies, from June 24, 1947, when aviator and businessman Kenneth Arnold reported the first widely publicized sightings of flying saucers, to the present, when accounts of UAPs have exploded, with 801 reported to the military since 2023 alone. Within the Pentagon’s $65 billion “black budget” of classified expenditures, an estimated $22 million has reportedly been spent on its Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which investigates UAPs.

Even before that contemporary program, the U.S. military was keenly interested in the provenance of UFOs and UAPs, as the NOVA film documents. From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force ran a secret—though since declassified—program dubbed Project Blue Book, which investigated 12,618 sightings of flying objects. Of these, 701 remain unidentified. Some of the earliest reports, from 1947 to 1949, were sightings of military assets that were part of the Department of Defense’s Project Mogul, under which the Air Force lofted high altitude balloons carrying sensitive microphones designed to pick up sonic signatures of Soviet nuclear tests. The initial rumors of extraterrestrial doings at Roswell, N.M. stemmed from a local rancher collecting debris from a balloon that descended on his land.

In the 21st century there is a lot more airborne traffic giving rise to a lot more potential false UAP alarms. More than 1,800 weather balloons are launched worldwide everyday, according to the NOVA documentary, and the Federal Aviation Administration reports that over one million registered drones are in private hands in the U.S. Plenty of what is reputed to be aliens likely has a perfectly banal terrestrial explanation. But sightings like the gimbal are a lot harder to explain away—a point proven by another UAP incident known colloquially as the Tic Tac.

In 2004, the U.S.S. Nimitz Carrier strike group off the coast of southern California picked up repeated radar reflections of flying objects that would rapidly appear and disappear from tracking screens. During those intervals when they were visible, they would fly in a looping, diving, and skittering path, rapidly dropping from 80,000 ft. to 20,000 ft. and hovering there. Finally, Naval pilot David Fravor and others were sent aloft to investigate and found their quarry—a 45-ft. long flying machine that for all the world resembled in both color and shape a Tic Tac breath mint.

“All four of us looked down and saw a Tic Tac object with a longitudinal axis pointed north-south and moving very abruptly over the water, like a ping pong ball,” said Fravor in 2023 testimony before Congress. “There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings. The object suddenly shifted its longitudinal axis, aligned it with my aircraft and began to climb. As we pulled nose onto the object within about a half mile of it, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared.”

Video of the encounter was released by the Navy which has never offered a theory as to what it was. 

Like the Tic Tac and the Gimbal, the hundreds of other unexplained UAPs continue to flummox experts. Graves is now executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, a nonprofit that collects sightings of UAPs with an eye toward helping to shape the public conversation around unidentified objects and deconflict airspace. He does not pretend to know what the bogeys are—but he’s pretty sure what they’re not.

“I don’t think that we’re seeing an adversary demonstrating capability beyond our state of the art during these relatively low reward, high risk operations,” he says. “To be able to take these technologies that we’re not aware exist and to put them basically directly over our homeland, in a position to be captured and reverse engineered…I don’t see that. I don’t see that logic.”

Equally unlikely is that the craft are highly classified domestic technology that much of the military has not been tipped off about. “These were airborne assets that were exhibiting capabilities beyond our state of the art,” Graves says. “And what I mean by state of the art is technology that would take greater than 10 years for the U.S. to develop, if they started now.”

That leaves non-earthly origins and Graves, for one, does not speculate on that score. “I don’t think we have the proper definitions to go down that road,” he says, “without having a better way of defining how we would determine whether something is truly from another star system…[whether] these objects are using magical physics that we don’t understand.”

The NOVA film does offer other explanations. Conspiracy debunker Mick West, author of Escaping the Rabbit Hole, theorizes that it’s not the object in the gimbal video that’s doing the moving but the camera that captured the image, creating merely the illusion of motion—though that doesn’t explain what the object, which would be stationary in this case, actually is. In another—infrared—video in which the object appears to disappear and reappear, West suggests that the camera might be capturing the image of a bird that reached thermal equilibrium with the background temperature and thus simply seemed to vanish.

The filmmakers leave viewers with pretty much as many questions as they greet them with—which fairly matches the state of the UAP art. With up to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way and an estimated 200 billion galaxies in the universe, there are uncounted trillions of planets that could host a highly technological civilization. Whether one of those civilizations would send any of their flying machines to our lonely world—and why they’d bother—is impossible to say. But the sightings keep coming—even if the answers remain elusive.

source https://time.com/7208931/what-are-ufos-pbs-documentary/