The number of organ donors jumps 21 percent per day during motorcycle rallies, compared to before and after the rallies. That’s six additional transplant recipients for every two rallies!
Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures had a 19 percent stake in the now-bankrupt BlockFi, The Wall Street Journal reports. Another crypto bet from the venture capital firm also went bankrupt: Vauld Group. The last time I saw Thiel IRL, he was shilling Bitcoin at a Bitcoin conference.
Apple is famously so prudish that in Epic v Apple, it had a fit in court about a banana. As a result, a judge later ruled that the banana — its name is Peely, and it is from Fortnite — may appear nude in court.
In a later tweet, Musk told my colleague Jake Kastrenakes that Apple was making some kind of moderation demand about Twitter.
To be honest, I want to know what DC has against California. Not only is the Senate doing a hearing on Thursday at 7AM PT, the House is doing one next week at the same time. Annoying! Rude! Anti-innovation!
It sort of feels like the salute (or sniper check lol) emoji is the emoji of 2022. Anyway, here’s a meditation on its use by departing Twitter employees:
According to Mr. Clowes, the former Twitter engineer, the army of saluting emojis was “probably one of the more tragically beautiful mass people group things” he has ever seen.
[The New York Times]
Verification is an old nemesis for Musk.
You may remember Son from encouraging Adam Neumann to be crazier at WeWork. Anyway it looks like he made some other bad investments, too:
The widening losses in SoftBank’s various investment vehicles have also added billions of dollars to the tab that SoftBank’s founder owes the group in relation to its technology bets. This is because SoftBank fronted Son the money to invest in its technology-related funds, which he is under no obligation to repay for many years.
[Financial Times]
Apparently Alameda took huge losses when Luna went down, and sloppy accounting prevented Bankman-Fried from realizing how bad it was. Also, his meetings with regulators were “PR.”
Hey, remember yesterday, when I said Changpeng “CZ” Zhao had painted a target on his exchange, Binance, by helping topple FTX?
Well, the Republican who’s most likely to lead the House Financial Services Committee told The Block that Binance’s role in the debacle will be part of a hearing in December.