prior probability

On this day (15 May) in 1536, Anne Boleyn, the former queen of England, is condemned to death after standing trial in London on charges of treason (plotting to kill the king), adultery, and incest with her brother. (She was beheaded four days later.) Alas, for what it’s worth, most historians dispute the charges and have condemned her show-trial as a sham proceeding with a pre-determined guilty verdict. One historian (George Bernard), however, claims that Queen Anne may have been guilty of some of the charges. See, for example, Bernard’s revisionist articles in The Guardian and the History News Network. More details about Queen Anne’s trial, including the orders for her execution, are available here.

Never, right?! Alas, what has motivated this blog post is this report (Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed, 11 May 2026) that Instructure (the company that owns Canvas) has paid an undisclosed ransom to a gang of black-hat cybercriminals that hacked the company’s learning management system (twice!) earlier this month. Here is some background:

1. “ShinyHunters” (a black-hat criminal extortion group active since 2019; Wikipedia)
2. “2026 Canvas security incident” (also via Wikipedia)
3. “The Canvas hack is a new kind of ransomware debacle” (Lily Hay Newman & Andy Greenberg, Wired, 8 May 2026)
4. “Visualization of nationwide Canvas breach” (Ajith Araiza-Singh & Luca Vicisano, The Daily Californian, 8 May 2026)

Now, to the business at hand: when, if ever, should ransomware be paid? Below are links to some of the scholarly literature (ungated or open access*) on the economics and law of ransomware payments, in alphabetical order by author:

1. “To pay or not: game theoretic models of ransomware” (Edward Cartwright et al., Journal of Cybersecurity, 2019)
2. “Should we outlaw ransomware payments?” (Debabrata Dey & Atanu Lahiri, Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2021)
3. “Ransomware: to pay or not to pay?” (Cath Everett, Computer Fraud & Security, April 2016)
4. “Should the ransomware be paid?” (Rui Fang et al., ArXiv, 15 October 2020)
5. “Cyber insurance and the ransomware challenge” (Jamie MacColl et al., University of Kent, 2023)
6. Bonus link: “The average cost of a ransomware attack in 2024 was $5.13M …” (Jason Firch, 6 October 2025)

On this day (13 May) in 1846, the United States Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico. As a result of this unjustified war of aggression (see here or here, for example), the United States would end up acquiring — “stealing” would be a more accurate term — 500,000 square miles of Mexico or roughly 55% of her territory, including present-day Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah, as well as portions of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming! Two bonus links: Manifest Destiny and Mexican Cession.

Yes, today (12 May) is National Limerick Day, which falls on the birthday of English artist and poet Edward Lear (born 12 May 1812), who popularized the five-line humorous poetic form in his Book of Nonsense, first published in 1846. (More details here, via The Smithsonian.)

In addition, as blogger and writer Richard Bist explains (see here), not all limericks are naughty. Below, for example, is a little limerick I wrote about Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”:

Markets may appear quite unplanned,
But by a hidden force both subtle and grand,
Though each man seeks his gain,
It’s clear to explain:
They’re all led by an Invisible Hand.

And here is another one about the famous “Adam Smith Problem”, i.e. the apparent or real disconnect between Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and his Wealth of Nations:

Adam Smith, two tomes did he write,
But the books made many scholars fight,
For one spoke of self-gain,
The other, of empathy’s reign,
Leaving critics to wonder who’s right!

Bonus link: here is Cal Tjader’s Wikipedia page.

The inaugural 2026 Canadian Baseball League (CBL) season opens today (10 May) with the Kitchener Panthers visiting the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club at Dominico Field. Among the players on the diamond will be my favorite right fielder, Yasiel Puig! (The Leafs signed the ex-Dodgers star last month.) Although Puig was found guilty earlier this year on trumped-up federal charges of obstruction of justice and false statements (remember James Comey’s vindictive prosecution of Martha Stewart?) and is still awaiting sentencing, I am confident he will be exonerated on appeal.

Update 5/11: I can’t find the box score of yesterday’s CBL season opener, but according to Ball Player Universe (@Ballplayerverse), Yasiel Puig hit a home run in the 9th inning of the game.

If you are keeping score at home, here is the breakdown:

• 0:00 Suit Guy Goes CRAZY / Sam Sellers (@samsellersmusic)
• 2:40 Mom Hops On / Jennie West (@jenniewest.work)
• 3:00 Dude Brings Some Nerd BARS / Kema (@lifeofkema)
• 3:41 Cyper Homie Gets On / RED (@thenoirred)
• 3:56 Back And Forth With Suit Guy
• 4:32 Ari Gets a Verse in
• 5:02 ZACK BLACK / Spicehandler (@mr.spiceguyeats)
• 5;23 Kema & Ari Close it Out
• 6:02 Outro

Congratulations to my students who are graduating from the newly-christened Barry S. Miller College of Business today (8 May 2026); this 2005 speech by Steve Jobs is for you!

On this day (7 May) in 1794, amid the infamous “Reign of Terror” phase of the French Revolution (La Terreur, September 1793 to July 1794), the National Convention of the First French Republic (République française, 1792–1804) officially replaces the Revolution’s atheistic “Cult of Reason” with a new non-denominational state religion known as the “Cult of the Supreme Being” (Culte de l’Être suprême). Here is some background via Wikipedia (footnotes and some hyperlinks omitted):

“The French Revolution had caused many radical changes in France, but one of the most fundamental … was the official rejection of religion. The first new major organized school of thought emerged under the umbrella name of the Cult of Reason. Advocated by radicals like Jacques Hébert and Antoine-François Momoro, the Cult of Reason distilled a mixture of largely atheistic views into an anthropocentric philosophy. No gods at all were worshipped in the Cult of Reason; the guiding principle was devotion to the abstract concept of Reason.

“This rejection of all godhead appalled Maximilien Robespierre…. He thought that belief in a supreme being was important for social order, and he liked to quote Voltaire: ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him’. To him, the Cult of Reason’s philosophical offenses were compounded by the ‘scandalous scenes’ and ‘wild masquerades’ attributed to its practice. In late 1793, Robespierre delivered a fiery denunciation of the Cult of Reason and of its proponents. and proceeded to give his own vision of proper Revolutionary religion. Devised almost entirely by Robespierre, the Cult of the Supreme Being was authorized by the National Convention on 7 May 1794 [18 Floréal Year II] as the civic religion of France.”

More details about this tumultuous chapter in French Revolution history are available here: Mathias Sonnleithner, “More Voltaire than Rousseau? Deism in the Revolutionary Cults of Reason and the Supreme Being,” in Anna Tomaszewska (editor), Between Secularization and Reform: Religion in the Enlightenment, Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill (2022), pp. 160-196. See also this short report by Rumaysa Haqqani (via The Collector): “When Robespierre Created the Cult of the Supreme Being“.

How can us mere mortals, living in a ruthless, dog-eat-dog capitalist system, ever hope to obtain the sagacity and wisdom of a Stoic sage? Is it even possible to become wealthy or to better one’s condition in a way that is both logically and morally consistent with the main precepts of Stoic ethics? These questions are no minor intellectually masturbatory quibble. To the extent most people live in a “commercial society,” i.e. a society in which “Every man … lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant ….” (Wealth of Nations, I.iv.1, p. 37), the Stoic-capitalist dilemma should be of interest to all. My contribution to these questions is to propose a Smithian solution to the Stoic-capitalist dilemma by imagining Adam Smith’s “impartial spectator” device as a Stoic sage–our inner Marcus Aurelius. (See my previous post.)

But at the same time, my Stoic portrait of Smith’s impartial spectator poses several deep questions that deserve further study. For starters, if a Stoic spectator is possible, what about a Kantian impartial spectator or an Hegelian or even a Nietzschean one? Is it possible to conjure up different versions of Smith’s impartial spectator, and if so, does this possibility undermine or bolster my argument for a Stoic spectator? In addition, the ontology of the impartial spectator is open to two radically different and diametrically opposed interpretations. Some Smith scholars conceptualize Smith’s imaginary entity as “an ideal observer with divine grounding whose normativity comes from an Archimedean point of view.” (Weinstein 2026, p. 174) Others, by contrast, “flatten” Smith’s imaginary spectator, seeing him as “a product of an individual agent’s imagination and therefore limited by the imaginer’s fallible capacities.” (ibid.) Which of these two pictures of the impartial spectator is the correct one, and does the divine interpretation rule out the possibility of a Stoic spectator? Is God a Stoic?