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If this is not Culture War tell me, but I'm flabbergasted, I have to share that with you all.
So it seems there is a documentary out about Elizabeth Holmes. I had no idea until I stumbled across this trailer, and at first I thought it was a movie. Because it looks like a movie. And I thought this was two actors and one, at least, of them was going to turn out to be a serial killer.
No, it would seem this is indeed the one, the only, the real genuine pure-quill Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy herself. And all I can say is holy crap.
Because she looks nuts. She looks like "I am about to slip some gelsemine into your tea and then sit by your bedside mopping your brow and cooing reassuringly as you slowly succumb to its effects, in the best traditions of the Golden Age of British murder".
It seems to be shot like a film, there has to be a hefty dose of acting going on because the guy playing? being? the director/narrator of the documentary looks like he is acting the part of "guy reacting to something he doesn't trust" with the hanging open mouth and sucking his tongue etc. reaction. But it seems like the filming really was that weird.
Gosh amighty. And there's a small child, a real small child and not "the script needs a baby" child actor, in this and everything. That really makes me concerned, because I would not leave that woman in charge of a goldfish.
The woman was either crazy as a loon or drugged out to the orbit of Pluto, or both. Because that kind of "pop your eyes wide open until the balls nearly fall out and stare unblinkingly and hold that stare for minutes" kind of behaviour, that is not normal.
How the hell did she get money from the supposedly rich and canny, the kind of hard-nosed business people whose job it was to sniff out frauds and schemers, who made tons of money by making the right decisions on investments and trades? Did the crazy only come out later?
People overestimate how canny these rich people are versus lucky. Also people who are really smart and good at something are still usually only good at one thing. Many of them are quite happy to hop on the hype train if other hard-nosed business people believe in the project. It's not like any of these people know anything about blood testing, but if Walgreens and Larry Ellison thinks it's the real deal why shouldn't they follow suit?
Also also, SV is overflowing with people flinging money at questionable ideas, the vast majority of which fail. Theranos blew up because it was massive, long-running fraud, not just vaporware. (And biomedical tech fraud has higher stakes than "our productivity software package is shit.")
Nope
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