this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Over the last 20 years for every $2000 in reward money offered by law enforcement in the United States, less than $4 has been paid.
or $1 per $500, or $2 per $1000. sorry, it was asking for fraction simplification
I'm sorry, you're saying that only $1.214521 of every $607.2605 was paid out?
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE
Finally someone spells it out in a way I can understand. That's outrageous now that it makes sense.
This is why I hated math in school. You guys are doing all sorts of crazy math, and I have no idea what's going on.
We get it! The metric system is better! Geez.
I didn't know rewards were common but have never looked into that, who reports those numbers even? They sound fun to go through
WARNING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF GATEKEEPING BELOW.
Who would have thought me a radical leftist would be sick of fellow leftists. If you can’t see an LLM as a legitimate tool then you’re just lying to yourselves. Furthermore the i didn’t post without asking if the other person wanted to see but you’re all too self righteous to keep out of.
It’s sad really as you’re not going to bring anybody over to your cause when you just shut out anything that doesn’t fit your narrow world view. How are we any different than r/conservative.
I asked an LLM although many here hate that.
It basically said it’s very fragmented but many departments / organisations do publish their rewards information.
SEC, DOJ, Dept of state RFJ, FBI, DEA, Crime stoppers, and more.
You have to go and look at each one and consume that data ideally programmatically. The LLM has links you can try but I won’t post the output without consent.
Why bother asking the bullshit machine
Why bother questioning what others do. Move along you silly cunt.
Imagine not being able to do your own research.
Imagine. I’m not a fucking researcher. I doubt you could do your own research.
It's really not that hard, buddy.
At least, not for those of us who aren't absolute idiots.
Well you sound like a damn clown if you think you’re a researcher. Wonder what degree you have.
I’m a software engineer not a researcher. Furthermore it was a quick and easy way to get an idea where to start. Don’t bring your biases about LLMs to me cause i couldn’t give a fuck what you think pal. Frankly you’re all boring going on about LLM bad, Linux great ad nauseam.
Go the fuck outside and touch some grass. It ain’t that deep you bloody melon. Sick of y’all’s judgemental asses. If you don’t like a topic or thing just move along. Christ on a bike nobody cares what you don’t like pal.
The fact of the matter is, I didn’t post the output unless the person who I was actually conversing with said they would appreciate that. Then you losers come and get involved.
Would love to debate some of you IRL so if anyone is around Manchester in the UK. hmu.
Damn that's crazy bro. I ain't reading all that.
Maybe I'll have AI summarize it.
"They're an idiot."
Crack on pal. Have a great day, the sun is shining here and I’m trying to enjoy it.
I want all of the data. I see nothing wrong with LLM's scraping government sites
I’ll paste the output. My prompt is below too so if you want to probe it for the best way. You could get it to make a program just have to keep pushing if stuff doesn’t work. I’m a developer so it helps if you know a little.
Prompt.
Where can I find data on reward money offered vs paid in the USA over the last 20 years
Reply Short answer — there’s no single complete national dataset.
Reward programmes are fragmented across federal agencies, state/local Crime Stoppers chapters, private bail/bounty firms, and corporate/financial whistleblower schemes. To build a 20-year “offered vs paid” series you’ll need to pull from several sources and (optionally) stitch them together.
Below are the best places to look (with examples and why they matter): 1. Federal whistleblower & reward programs (high-quality, machine-readable annual reports) • SEC — Office of the Whistleblower: publishes annual reports with amounts awarded each fiscal year (detailed PDFs). Great for securities whistleblower payments (large, consistent dataset since 2011).  • DOJ / Department of Justice press releases and program pages — DOJ has various reward/whistleblower programs (and a recent pilot program). Useful for criminal/corporate enforcement reward totals where reported.  • U.S. Department of State — Rewards for Justice (RFJ): posts individual reward offers and announcements (large, occasional awards). Good for transnational/terrorism-related reward offers.  2. Federal law enforcement (FBI, DEA, etc.) — press releases and “rewards” pages • The FBI and some other agencies publish individual reward offers (Ten Most Wanted, fugitive rewards) and occasional summaries. These are event-level (not neat annual totals), so you’d scrape press releases or file FOIA requests for bulk data.  3. Crime Stoppers (national + local chapters) — aggregated rewards paid • Crime Stoppers USA and many local chapters publish aggregate “Rewards Paid” and “Property Recovered” statistics (useful for local/community reward payouts). There are many chapter reports you can scrape/collect.  4. Private-sector and industry sources (bounty/bail industry, private reward platforms) • Bounty hunters / bail bond industry earnings and private reward platforms are private and fragmented — statistics exist in trade pieces, law reviews, and industry blogs but no central public dataset. See law reviews and industry reports for estimates.  5. News archives & academic evaluations • For historical context and one-off large reward offers (and sometimes totals), use major news archives, NCJRS/NIJ and academic reports (e.g., evaluations of Crime Stoppers). 
Practical approach to build the 20-year series
If your goal is an actual dataset (offered vs paid per year), I recommend this pipeline: 1. Decide scope — which kinds of rewards? (e.g., federal law-enforcement offers, whistleblower awards, Crime Stoppers/local rewards, private bounty/bail payments). 2. Pull high-quality federal reports first — SEC whistleblower annual reports, DOJ/State press release archives, FBI press releases. (These are the easiest to quantify.)  3. Scrape Crime Stoppers chapters — collect annual “rewards paid” numbers from national and major local chapters (they often publish totals).  4. Supplement with FOIA or API calls — for FBI/DOJ bulk records or if you need all reward offers (not just press releases). 5. Handle private/industry data as estimates — compile from industry reports, law journals, and news; treat these as less reliable.  6. Normalize & document assumptions — e.g., currency (nominal vs inflation-adjusted), whether “offered” is the maximum stated offer or the amount actually committed, and whether “paid” includes partial payments.
Useful starting links (to grab data now) • SEC Whistleblower Annual Report (FY2024 example).  • SEC newsroom (whistleblower award press releases).  • State Dept — Rewards for Justice program pages.  • FBI reward announcements / press releases.  • Crime Stoppers USA / sample local chapter stats pages. 
⸻
If you want, I can start pulling and assembling a first-pass dataset for you right now (for example: SEC whistleblower totals per year + Crime Stoppers national totals + notable federal reward offers per year) and deliver a CSV with year, source, offered (if available) and paid. Tell me whether to include or exclude (a) private bail/bounty payments, and (b) whether to inflation-adjust amounts — I’ll assume nominal USD if you don’t specify.
Wow, yeah. People hate that you used an LLM, lol. Look at those down arrows.
Yup. We are the left wing The Donald. They hate everything. And talk about the same shit incessantly without actually making any change cause they won’t engage with anyone else with a different opinion.
When it's actually a perfect use of an LLM.
Some motherfuckers just insist on using hammers to drive screws
Right? This is one of the perfect examples where we don't care too much about the accuracy of the data, it would be extremely time consuming, etc etc.
I believe that but I do have to wonder how much of that is due to no credible leads being offered on most cases vs them just cheating their own narcs. "Money paid" vs "Money offered" doesn't give any clarity to that.
Especially when you consider that big rewards are not offered when detectives can figure things out pretty easily. The ante goes up with severity and difficulty. I'm sure there was a reward for Osama bin Laden, but I wasn't not turning him in because the reward was too small or I didn't believe I'd get paid. I just didn't know where the dude was, let alone how I could get him turned in