Hail Mary Saturday
Posted 11/07/2026 · ← All field reports
Full disclosure: this is commentary and jokes. Facts come from the linked reports, so click through and judge for yourself. The party kits linked here are our own products.
It's game day. Rivalry Saturday. The weekend when grown adults paint their faces and argue about refs. So naturally the Agency's inbox filled up with sports metaphors: a predicted alien Hail Mary, a foreign embassy running a trick play with AI, counterfeit championship rings trying to sneak past customs, and two Michigan schools settling a rivalry in gallons. Grab a foam finger. Open the folder.
Exhibit A: The alien Hail Mary (a prediction, not a playbook)
According to IBTimes UK, filmmaker and UFO researcher Jon Stewart (not that one) told FOX 32 Chicago he thinks President Trump might answer the midterm drubbing with "catastrophic disclosure": a live alien, alien remains or crisp 4K footage of a recovered craft. He floated a multi-day Roman-style extravaganza. AOL's write-up quotes the "Hail Mary" framing. The same reports note there's no confirmed White House plan, and the Pentagon's UFO office has said it found no verifiable evidence of recovered alien tech.
The Agency respects the hustle. Disclosure has now been "two weeks away" for roughly seventy years, and every election cycle someone predicts the reveal will finally drop when a politician needs a distraction. Notice the pattern: the aliens are always available on short notice, always in 4K and always conveniently timed to someone's news cycle. Real evidence doesn't usually RSVP around the polls. If a live alien does show up at a press conference, we will eat this blog post. Until then, file it under "fan fiction with a parking spot at Dugway."
Exhibit B: The dumpster deepfake and the drift
Over in the diplomatic trolling league, India Today reports Iran's embassy in India posted an AI-generated clip of a Trump look-alike being carried out and tossed into a bin labeled "Hazardous Waste," captioned simply "The U.S. midterm elections" with a laughing emoji. The Daily Express points out it looks a lot like an AI clip Trump himself posted earlier in the year of a late-night host going into a dumpster. Trolls trolling trolls. Everyone in this story owns a meme generator.
Here's the part skeptics should actually care about. A What the Fact check notes some accounts stripped the caption and passed the clip around as if a real president had fainted. That's the drift: satire leaves its context and becomes "evidence." Today's lesson from the corkboard: when a six-second video confirms exactly what you already wanted to believe, check who made it and whether it's a joke before you forward it to Aunt Linda.
Exhibit C: "Hair Pins Metal"
Customs officers in Houston, per a CBP news release, seized 75 counterfeit Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rings shipped from China and labeled "Hair Pins Metal." Officers noticed the poor craftsmanship and the NFL confirmed the fakes. Real ones would've been worth at least $750,000. The Agency salutes whoever wrote that shipping label with the confidence of a man claiming a weather balloon was a weather balloon. Pro tip for aspiring smugglers: when your cover story is "hair pins," maybe don't send 75 of them shaped like championship jewelry.
Exhibit D: The Piss Off
Meanwhile in Ann Arbor, actual scientists have finally weaponized rivalry. CBS Detroit reports researchers from Michigan and Michigan State are running "The Piss Off" at today's game: two yurts, one per school, collecting tailgaters' urine to turn into fertilizer for flowers and grass. The official event page explains the pasteurize-and-concentrate process. It's a real research project and honestly a good one. It is also the most honest scoreboard in American politics: one side, the other side and a tank measuring who's full of it. Somebody get the cable news panels a yurt.
Exhibit E: Odd-news side quests
From today's Weird News feed: scientists suspect a stinky gas seeping out of Mars hints the planet may still be volcanically active (ScienceAlert), which means the Red Planet has entered its uncle-after-Thanksgiving era. Researchers also tried an old-school mirror-gazing "psychomanteum" to see if it triggers ghostly experiences (ScienceAlert). And New Jersey has a fresh Bigfoot-on-the-roadside report. Bigfoot remains the only public figure who never needs a Hail Mary.
The pattern on the corkboard
Connect the dots and today's theme is the trick play. A disclosure prediction dressed as a game plan. A meme dressed as a news clip. Fake rings dressed as hair pins. The one thing that was exactly what it said on the label? A yurt full of pee. Skeptic move of the week: read the label, then read the reporting, then laugh. In that order.
More field reports: Scapegoat Friday and Hangover Briefing