prior probability

On this day (25 November) in 1876, U.S. Army troops raid the Cheyenne village of Chief Dull Knife (pictured below) on the Red Fork of the Powder River in retaliation for General Custer’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. For a more complete history of this awful attack and the events leading up to it, see here.

Book: Jorge Almazán, et al., “Emergent Tokyo: designing the spontaneous city” (for a 2024 trip to Tokyo I am preparing for; see also book cover below; hat tip: Kevin Postlewaite).

Survey article: Dirk Bergemann & Marco Ottaviani, “Information markets and nonmarkets” (for my revised retrodiction market paper (see here); hat tip: Google Scholar).

Op-ed: Cass R. Sunstein, “Why I am a [faux] liberal” (for my upcoming reply to Professor Sunstein’s holier-than-thou op-ed; hat tip: the Amazing Tyler Cowen).

Research report: Richard van Noorden, “How big is science’s fake-paper problem?” (for an ongoing research project on data fraud; hat tip: Mark Tuttle via Andrew Gelman).

Book: Kevin Yee, et al., “ChatGPT assignments to use in your classroom today” (for my spring semester course-preps).

Happy Thanksgiving-break Friday! I had to do a double take earlier this week when I first saw the parody post pictured below via “shitposter” extraordinaire Alex Cohen (@anothercohen):

I first saw this thought-provoking autobiographical tribute to Thanksgiving Day by Comanche author Paul Chaat Smith when I visited the American Indian Museum in Washington, D.C. earlier this year (see here). Alas, I could not find this excellent and entertaining video on YouTube, but it is up and running on Facebook (here) and Instragram (below):

What a difference a day makes four or five days make!

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Sherlock Homes

Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the day President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas: 22 November 1963. To mark this somber occasion, check out the seven pop culture artifacts mentioned in this report via The Conversation as well as this excellent essay on “The Endless Assassination of John F. Kennedy” by Sean O’Neal, a writer for Texas Monthly. (This Wikipedia page and this report on “The Secrets of the JFK Assassination Archive” by Scott Sayare, a freelance journalist writing for New York Magazine, are also worth reading.)

In addition, check out the short video below, which surveys the history of the Zapruder film, perhaps the single-most important — and lucrative — piece of evidence regarding this endless enigma, one that was withheld from the public for years and that the greedy heirs of Abraham Zapruder eventually sold to the government for $16 million (greedy because they wanted even more money!). For a more detailed history of this infamous film clip, I recommend this excellent essay by my colleague and friend Brian Frye as well as David Wrone’s book “The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination“, and for an apology of the Zapruder family’s abject greed, see Chapters 13 & 14 of “Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film” by Alexandra Zapruder, who is the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder.

(Bonus confession: For my part, the JFK case has fascinated me since I was in middle school, when I first learned about the Warren Commission’s shoddy investigation and likely cover-up of what really happened that fateful day.)

Bonus video: “Andy Warhol, Nine Jackies | Videos in American Sign Language (ASL)”

Moonlight #1 [Dept (뎁트), featuring Sonny Zero (오넷) and OoOo]:

Moonlight #2 (Kali Uchis):

Moonlight #3 (Ludwig van Beethoven, featuring Anastasia Huppman on the piano):

I have featured Cuban surrealist street artist Yulier Rodríguez (a/k/a Yulier P.) on this blog several times before. Now, I just discovered his Instagram page; in addition, award-winning Cuban author and blogger Yoani Sánchez interviewed the grafitti artist in August of 2023. Her interview is in Spanish and is available here. (Bonus link: a 2020 profile of Yulier P., which is also in Spanish.)

Yesterday (17 November), the board of directors of OpenAI unceremoniously fired Silicon Valley legend and ChatGPT boy wonder Sam Altman. According to the official announcement, Mr Altman was fired for his deceit and chicanery: “A deliberative review process by the board […] concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board …” Wait, what?! Everybody lies (see here, for example), and OpenAI is the third most valuable startup in the world, so what is the real reason why evil genius Sam Altman was fired? Was it about money or “politics“, or was it the result of a bona fide dispute over A.I. safety? Alas, I wish there were a truth market for days like these! File under “truth is stranger than fiction” (hat tip: Mark Twain.)