Mastodawn

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/02/21/ex-microsoft-executive-nathan-myhrvold-told-jeffrey-epstein-he-hosted-putin-s-wife-and-daughter-on-his-superyacht

Leaning heavily on a story in the Seattle Times two weeks ago (which I'll link in comments and has some _holy shit_ moments), the Russian dissident media Meduza finds there are also connections to Putin.

Here's the Meduza article:

#microsoft #msft #seattle #cascadia #epstein #EpsteinClass #RussiaRussiaRussia #IsTrue #politics #ItsBad

Ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold told Jeffrey Epstein he hosted Putin’s wife and daughter on his superyacht

Jeffrey Epstein’s interest in Vladimir Putin is well documented in the files released by the U.S. Justice Department in late January. Now, Meduza has uncovered another curious connection between the convicted sex offender and the Russian president: in previously undisclosed emails with Epstein, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold said that he hosted Putin’s wife and daughter aboard his boat in 2010. The billionaire technologist, who has denied having a personal relationship with Epstein, is the owner of a $15-million superyacht. But the exchange about the Putin family raises more questions than answers.

Meduza

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/records-show-deeper-ties-between-epstein-ex-microsoft-exec-myhrvold/

Feb 22

And here's the Seattle Times article:

Which includes reference to a trip to the island, as well a particularly icky tidbit which won't fit here, so I will add in next reply.

#microsoft #msft #seattle #cascadia #epstein #EpsteinClass #RussiaRussiaRussia #IsTrue #politics #ItsBad

#microsoft #msft #seattle #cascadia #epstein #EpsteinClass #RussiaRussiaRussia #IsTrue #politics #ItsBad

Feb 22

Quoting the previously-linked Seattle Times article:

On May 31, 2014, before a visit to Seattle by Epstein, Myhrvold reached out and invited him to visit his labs and office at Intellectual Ventures, the Bellevue-based investment firm co-founded by Myhrvold.

“Have your people call mine, we will set up a lab visit, and you should come see my office. and bring” her, Myhrvold appears to have written, referring to a woman or girl by name.

“i am going to leave her there,” Epstein replied. Myhrvold sent back a smiling face emoticon.

RE: https://social.ridetrans.it/@Andres4NY/116076573976179386

Andres Feb 22

@moira Mm, this is also not the kind of joke you make if you _just_ have a professional relationship with someone:

FeloniousPunk Feb 22

@Andres4NY @blogdiva @moira Line them ALL up

So,... spring 1980:

After some months of me missing ever more obvious hints from my freshman year roommate (first real encounter with passive-aggressive "Midwestern Nice" that I, from NJ, found totally baffling), making him have to spell out in no uncertain terms

(1) we were **not** friends, that

(2) his announcing a party in our room should **not** be construed as an invitation, and that

(3) I should find some other place to be on such occasions

-- and, to be honest, the whole paradigm of sitting in the room with people I didn't really know, listening to music I didn't really like, while choking on 2nd-hand marijuana smoke was starting to get Old --

1/6

... I took to spending Saturday nights in the computer center, the one building on on the Princeton campus that didn't close. I *was* actually taking my first EECS class that semester along with the insane physics E&M course, so there was no shortage of stuff to do.

On one of these occasions, sitting out in the lobby doing some physics homework, I encountered this guy.

We got to talking. He was a physics grad student, running some massive simulation of something for his thesis, waiting for it to finish.

2/6

... ABSOLUTE **FIREHOSE** of nerdery like nothing I'd ever seen before (and I like to think I was no slouch in this dept myself). We had one of those conversations that you can only have when you're 19, touching on every physics and SF topic under the sun.

At some point maybe six hours into this, I noticed it was light out, 7:30 in the morning. Realized I'd been up for 22+ hours, starting to hit The Wall, so it was time to go see if the mj smoke had cleared out of my dorm room. I took my leave and that was that.

Figured I'd see him again at some point.

3/6

Never got his name.
He never got mine.

(my freshman year conversations were like that; there was one guy I had to write a check to after having known him for a year and I was like, oh shit...).

I also suck at facial recognition. I remember the bright red curly hair but not much else.

(Yes, I am Very Bad at Networking; how could you tell?)

Never saw him again. Evidently that was his last run, or we were just unlucky on timing thereafter.

4/6

12 years later, when I got hired by MSFT Research, I technically worked for Nathan, but as VP of ATBD, he was already 3 levels up, and (Director of Research) Rick Rashid was already doing everything that mattered w.r.t. managing the lab.

Nathan and I *never* had occasion to interact. I physically saw him maybe once when someone pointed him out to me across the Bldg 9 cafeteria (which wasn't that big, but anyway), but that was all (no recognition; the red hair had likely faded).

And he was already on his way out. Within a year or so ATBD became AT, Rick got promoted to VP, Nathan went off to go dig dinosaur bones in Montana and that was that.

5/6

While I vaguely knew he'd gotten a physics PhD at Princeton early 1980s, I didn't get some of the key details until later (i.e., what his topic was, that his startup that MSFT bought was all about running simulations).

To this day, I still don't know for certain who I actually talked to that night, and it's impossible to know if my life really *would* have gone in a different direction if that really *was* him and we *had* met again,

but there aren't all that many people who fit the profile.

And now I'm thinking I dodged a bullet.

6/6

Feb 25

@wrog I empathise having also dodged a couple of bullets.

jeez the near misses sometimes, right?

HTTP 1.1/418 Teapot Feb 25

@wrog @moira Definite bullet dodging, if so.

Feb 25

@wrog holy shit what an asshole your roommate was

goddamn

HTTP 1.1/418 Teapot Feb 25

@moira @wrog Christ what an asshole.

Roger Crew✅❌☑🗸❎✖✓✔Mar 3

@rmd1023 @moira

It is possible I'm not being completely fair. I probably did subscribe to any number of Geek Social Fallacies (this preceding that blog post by 15+ years), and the conversation did actually simplify things going forward (we stayed out of each other's way and I no longer had to expend effort on getting along). In theory, if I'd ever wanted to claim the room for a party of my own I could have done so, but somehow this never came up (surprise).

I yet remain mystified what the housing office was thinking in putting us together. I suspect they mostly gleefully ignored what people put on their roommate preference forms.

1.1/1.2

Roger Crew✅❌☑🗸❎✖✓✔Mar 3

@rmd1023 @moira

The one thing that really pissed me off was that he lied about being a non-smoker on the form in order to not get paired with a smoker. And while he promised he'd never smoke in the room and kept to it as far as cigarettes were concerned, this evidently didn't apply to marijuana...

1.2/1.2