AbouBenAdhem

If someone else posts a better comment that renders mine superfluous, I’ll often delete mine. But if someone else has already replied to mine, I’ll leave it for the sake of context but downvote it so the better one gets more visibility.

“Kash Patel denies rumors he possesses a modicum of personal integrity.”

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.

The problem with matter that doesn’t interact electromagnetically is that everything else can pass right through it. (That’s why dark matter theoretically remains in halos around galaxies instead of getting incorporated into galactic discs via drag from other matter.)

If dark matter can only interact via gravity, it can only attract other matter toward it (albeit very weakly)—including both matter and antimatter. So it can’t keep matter and antimatter apart.

You’d also have no way of manipulating the dark matter itself, except through gravity.

Dark matter interacts via gravity but not electromagnetism (including light). So its particles would have no electric charge, and thus no distinct antiparticles.

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

Yeah—I just don’t understand how they disentangle the two if they’re both happening simultaneously.

I would have thought the volume of water retained on land by dams would be more than offset by the volume lost to melting glaciers.

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).