See the Silurian hypothesis:

The Silurian hypothesis is a thought experiment, which assesses modern science’s ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilization, perhaps several million years ago.

If any of the polygraph operators are opposed to Patel, this would be a convenient way to get his actual loyalists fired without evidence.

I wouldn’t be surprised if forces on the ground deliberately downplayed the damage when reporting to Trump so he wouldn’t endanger them all with further escalations.

But if anyone knows that already, it’s FBI staff.

The sponsor would have to be able to publicly demonstrate that the assassin was paid, though—otherwise they could claim to have paid the bounty while keeping the money, and the assassin couldn‘t protest without exposing their identity.

That’s why I’m specifically wondering about the public aspect of the bounty—it presupposes that the assassin will be publicly known and able to conduct financial transactions afterward, and that the sponsor will be able to openly make good on their promise.

I’m not asking whether there have been any previous similar bounties—I’m asking whether any of them were the primary incentive for a successful assassination.

The attempt against Rushdie failed, and the attacker claims to have had religious rather than financial motivations (and doesn’t seem to have planned to escape to collect payment in any case).

Has there ever been an assassination that was motivated by a public bounty? And did the assassin successfully collect?

I never used it in person, but the LFP (light field picture) format used by Lytro cameras was an interesting concept—you could change the focus, depth of field, and perspective after the image was captured.

A better idea would be using Medicaid recipients to replace incompetent cabinet secretaries.

Fluid construction grammar
Unscented transform
Heteroglossia
Lorenz system
Relict (biology)
Yuezhi

In order: 8 (sans sauerkraut & pickled veggies), 1, 7, 3, 5, 4, 6, 2.

It’s what happens when a very naughty function tries to divide by zero.

I think it does accurately model the part of the brain that forms predictions from observations—including predictions about what a speaker is going to say next, which lets human listeners focus on the surprising/informative parts. But with LLMs they just keep feeding it its own output as if it were a third party whose next words it’s trying to predict.

It’s like a child describing an imaginary friend, if you keep repeating “And what would your friend say after that?”

The Russian equivalent of “you can’t fire me—I quit!”

Sure, it looks like foul play—but it’s also a perfectly natural reaction to driving a Tesla.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Fish.

My apartment building turns 100 this year.

One of the crime scene cleanup photos shows a prominent pride flag in the window of the establishment, and the venue’s website says “Proudly Black-, Brown-, Queer-, and Women-owned.”

Could that have been the motivation for the attack?