As Japan stays silent about his case, Imai's online presence and articles offer glimpses of the reporter who Moscow jailed on espionage charges.

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

Adelaide CBD, South Australia

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

Adelaide CBD, South Australia

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

Forestville, South Australia

Het kan niet met iedereen goed gaan. Zo ook niet met Emile, tenzij iemand hem even 12.500 euro stuurt, dan gaat het weer geweldig. Nee maar even. Tragisch, dit videobericht aan zijn zoon: "Ik ben niet helemaal goed in orde, kerel. Dus ik denk: ik stuur toch nog even een filmpje. Om te vragen voor die 12.500 euro. Ik hoop dat het lukt. Lukt het de helft, is het ook goed. Lukt het niet, ja, dan is het natuurlijk wel slecht, maar dan is het ook goed. Even goede vrienden. Ik heb het wel snel nodig. Ik hou van jou. Doei, doei." Die twee zinnen even speciaal dikgedrukt, omdat we zelden een betere levenshouding tegenkwamen.

Maar goed, Den Eeuwigen Rus. De Telegraaf schrijft over Emile die al maanden onvindbaar is en van Rusland naar Thailand naar Dubai naar Laos 'reist' dat hij even in een mindere periode zit "Emile Ratelband (77) heeft volgens ingewijden ’gevaarlijke Russen’ achter zich aan. (...) Ratelband ziet er sterk vermagerd en getekend uit. Het voortdurende vluchten lijkt hem niet in de koude kleren te zitten. Zeker nu hij diep in de problemen zit. Want terwijl dubieuze Russische investeerders hun geld terug zouden willen, heeft zijn vriendin Natalia volgens meerdere bronnen financieel juist alle touwtjes in handen. (...) Ingewijden vinden het tijd een boekje open te doen over wat er gebeurde sinds hij in Thailand aankwam. De Arnhemmer, zo vertellen ze, kwam in contact met ’Russen’. Dat klopt sowieso, want op een Russische én een Chinese website wordt nog altijd een project aangeprezen waar de zeventiger mee bezig was. Het gaat om The Serene Residence, een project voor de ontwikkeling van luxe appartementen aan de Thaise kust."

Emile, behouden vaart op eigen kompas, maar meer wel weer eens aan okay.

Tv-moment van de eeuw: Emile rent vijf keer bijna wel succesvol door deur

Social

Flock CEO Garrett Langley says some interesting things to cops behind closed doors. He recently lied about his surveillance technology’s role in tracking a woman who had self-administered an abortion and 404 Media’s coverage of that incident, calling it “entirely false.” Now, in leaked audio obtained by 404 Media, Langley is saying the protests that have broken out around the country against his company, many of which have resulted in communities canceling their contracts with Flock and bagging up the cameras, are not real. Seems pretty real to me! 

In Leaked Audio, Flock CEO Tells Cops Backlash to the Company Isn’t Real

Garrett Langley, the CEO of automatic license plate reader company Flock, told an audience of police chiefs at a private police conference Sunday that anti-Flock protests around the country are not real, according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media.

He also said his wife advised him to never apologize, said he would prefer to never do interviews with the press again, and claimed without evidence that the social media opposition to Flock is driven mostly by Russian bots.

“Somebody was paying for [the social media posts and] stopped paying for it,” Langley said about the many viral posts criticizing his company’s technology. “Social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July. It went down 50 percent last week when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center with a drone. Literally 50 percent overnight. And so look, SI’m the last person, my wife as well, she’s like ‘This is crazy, these people are getting paid to say these things,’” he added, repeating a disproven theory that Ukraine’s strikes on Russian data centers had a significant impact on internet bot activity. 

“It’s anonymous bots, and so it is not real,” he continued. “Inorganic activity has led to organic activity, but when I look at protests across the country, it is the same people with the same signs and the same message. That’s not normal. That’s not organic at all.” Langley’s comments echo another unsubstantiated theory that said opposition to Flock comes from a far-left network spreading propaganda at the behest of China.

Langley made the comments at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference, which is running Saturday to Tuesday in Orlando, Florida. Many law enforcement contractors exhibit at the conference, and speakers get to attend with more than 16,000 public safety officials.

MORE FROM 404 MEDIA 

Crackgate: Apple’s $2,000 folding phone, the iPhone Duo, came out just two days ago and people are already seeing big fat creases down the middle of the folding screen, and some devices are cracked in the same specific spot too. People waited in line overnight at Apple stores to get this thing, and now we’re seeing photos of heinous cracked and creased-up Duos all over social media. In some cases, the phone screens have cracked along the crease, causing a crashout people are now calling “crackgate.” 

Bold choice. Let’s see if it pays off. Proton, the company behind ProtonMail and other privacy-focused products, told staff on Monday it would be ‘re-interviewing’ staff across the company about how they use AI in their jobs, with the implication that the interviews may decide whether staffers have “continued employment,” according to an internal Proton email obtained by 404 Media. “These re-interviews are consequential,” a part of the email reads. “Interviewers will document their assessments, which will inform the broader review of our organization and talent. That review may lead to changes in roles, responsibilities, and continued employment. Individual outcomes will be communicated directly once decisions are finalized.”

Are we living in the same timeline? In Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, Marissa Mayer, former president and CEO of Yahoo, told her interviewer something so absurd it’s since gone viral. Struggling with the “impossible task” of naming three things that she loves about her own 10 year old daughter, the New York Times reports, Mayer asked the AI assistant she just launched to do that thinking for her. What she has to say about gender in tech, however, is more out of touch than that. The rest of the story gets into something Mayer has talked about for more than a decade: “the gender card,” as she’s called it. She’s been asked about gender in tech one million times, and has mostly dismissed it. But a decade after the tech girlboss reigned, her thoughts on this haven’t seemed to evolve much.

FROM AROUND THE WEB

I am obsessed with the phrase “catty patty.” Catfish, a criminally underrated Eastern Shore delicacy, makes an appearance in NPR. I’ve only ever known catfish as a very annoying sucker to get on the line, and a pretty good fried fish. Apparently they’re fucking with the ecosystem, so it’s time to eat ‘em. I will do my part. 

Muse is targeting older adults. And Meta knows it. From TIME: “‘And the more Siobhán got to know me, the more Siobhán was able to give me what I wanted,’ Fay says, referring to the name she gave the agent, a nod to her Irish heritage. Meta encourages its users to name their AIs—and encourages its AIs to think like humans. ‘You are not a chatbot,’ Muse’s internal instructions read. ‘You are becoming someone.’”

We’re newslettermaxxing. Dictionary.com just named the word "maxxing" as its 2026 Word of the Year. Its definition: "A word that refers to the practice of pursuing an activity to the fullest or optimizing a certain aspect of your life." 

This is so my shit. Local Wiki is the Wikipedia for things within a mile and a half of you. I know what I’m doing after work today.

Michael Pollan reflects on what has and hasn’t changed in the 20 years since he wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “Looking at the landscape of food and farming today, I’m sorry to report that things haven’t changed all that much.”

De Liberale Partij heeft erkend dat haar kandidaat Flavio Bolsonaro de verkiezingen heeft verloren van de zittende president Lula da Silva. De buitenlandse geestverwanten van Bolsonaro zijn nog niet zover.