Right before last week's newsletter went out, a short-selling firm called Hindenburg Research published an extremely critical report on Roblox. In it they accused the publicly traded company of inflating its metrics (and thereby its valuation) and, more worryingly for the parents of the millions of children who use Roblox, also called it a "pedophile hellscape". The report alleges some hair-raising discoveries within the game. The researchers found chatrooms of people purporting to trade images and videos of children, and users claiming to be children and teens offering such material in exchange for Robux, the in-game currency. Roblox strongly rejects the claims that Hindenburg made in its report.

A framed photograph of three men in military fatigues hangs above his desk. They're tightening straps on what first appear to be two water heaters but are, in fact, thermonuclear weapons. Resting against a nearby wall is a black-and-white print depicting the first billionth of a second after the detonation of an atomic bomb: a thousand-foot-tall ghostly amoeba. And above us, dangling from the ceiling like the sword of Damocles, is a plastic model of the Hindenburg. Depending on how you choose to look at it, Rhodes's office is either a shrine to awe-inspiring technological progress or a harsh reminder of its power to incinerate us all in the blink of an eye.