404 Media reached out to purported clients of Jacob Wohl’s AI lobbying firm. Six of them — including Microsoft, Palantir, and Pfizer — said they’d never heard of it. The other six didn’t respond.
Wohl, who pleaded guilty to fraud in 2022, is perhaps best known for a series of “spectacularly failed smear attempts” directed at figures like Robert Mueller, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren.
In today’s issue of Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick argues that the lively Brazilian community of X users may find a home on Bluesky, but not so much on Threads, whose heavy-handed algorithmically sorted user interface doesn’t click with Brazilian internet culture.
A caveat from The Verge: we still don’t have official numbers on Brazilian sign-ups for Threads over the weekend.
[Garbage Day]
The Guardian reports that HP, embroiled in a legal saga with Mike Lynch for over a decade, will continue pressing for damages even after the tech tycoon’s confirmed death-by-superyacht.
Lynch previously lost to HP in a UK civil suit, though he was acquitted of related fraud charges in a US criminal proceeding earlier this year. The Guardian writes:
Lynch’s widow, Angela Bacares, was onboard the Bayesian when it sank but was among 15 people who were rescued. According to the Sunday Times rich list, Lynch and Bacares’s combined wealth was £500m.
After announcing last week that it would have to “temporarily cease operations” due to the ban of X in Brazil, popular celebrity-watching account @21metgala — which is apparently run entirely by Brazilian admins — is back, with the caveat that its connection is “unstable.”
Brazilian fans play an outsized role in online fandoms for actors, musicians, and other celebrities.
[Twitter]
Tigran Gambaryan, a compliance officer at crypto giant Binance, has been detained in Nigeria since February on charges of tax evasion and money laundering. In March, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison in the US.
Reuters reports that Gambaryan, a US citizen, has once again applied for bail, saying he is suffering from a herniated disc and “bouts of malaria and pneumonia.”
The claim that the Titanic was swapped with a sister ship and intentionally sunk for an insurance payout is, according to Reuters, a long-running and meritless rumor.
But it’s entirely new to me! And extremely hilarious! You should treat this (and anything else on that cursed site) with the gravity and weight of fanfiction, but let’s be real, fanfiction is fun.
[The Unredacted]
Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke.
