191–200 of 320 posts
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What?
Elon's DOGE is responsible for over 100k deaths. Some died a horrible death with medical devices stuck in them because there was no one to remove them after all funding was instantly cut. One of the most inhumane and disgusting acts in history.
I have a distinctive memory about Theranos from business school - so circa 2013 a few years before it blew up. Some professor was going on and on about Holmes for being a young, female, founder. It stood out at the moment as weird because the praise was separate from success or outcomes or like brilliant science. It was all about the identity: gender and age. I wonder if the reason the scam went so far as it did beca…
I just read this article about a Stephen Hawking biography that talks about how "Hawking’s overweening ambition and self-promotion, his repeated failure to acknowledge the work of others, his sexism and controlling behaviour were largely ignored because of his disability" so identity perception by the public does in fact contribute to how people think about their achievements. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/s…
Basically, he considered it is his right to have his way with his young interns and employees.
I have a distinctive memory about Theranos from business school - so circa 2013 a few years before it blew up. Some professor was going on and on about Holmes for being a young, female, founder. It stood out at the moment as weird because the praise was separate from success or outcomes or like brilliant science. It was all about the identity: gender and age. I wonder if the reason the scam went so far as it did beca…
That said, Holmes being a woman is also why we're discussing this documentary and why everyone is almost gleefully interested in her downfall. If a man had done this one it'd have all blown over long ago.
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Yeah but the “vision” was just the ideas of a kid with 2 semesters of college classes under her belt saying “what if”. It was never going to work. She had tons of competent engineers working for her. The basic idea was and is unworkable. If she had come up with an actual good idea with only 2 semesters of experience then sure you could say she was a genius. Even if she couldn’t successfully build a company. But the m…
> The basic idea was and is unworkable. To be fair, lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable until someone bangs their head against it enough times and suddenly it is workable. Sometimes the environment or available technology just have to change/improve/scale a tiny bit more for something to go from unworkable to workable. Still, what she did was obvious fraud straight up, not just "lets bang our head against this until…
Sure, but also lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable regardless of how many times heads get banged, due to some fundamental limitation, like perpetual motion machines or homeopathy. It's a spectrum, but from what I understand Theranos was closer to the "unworkable in theory" side of things than the "currently unworkable in practice" side of things.
Fielder's "The Rehearsal" on HBO was madly brilliant.
In particular, season 2 is truly a work of art. As you said, it is just flat out brilliant. If you haven't watched the final episode of nathan for you (season 4 episode 7), watch it. it's equally fantastic.
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Thanks for The Rehearsal secondary-req. Added to my watchlist.
I have a distinctive memory about Theranos from business school - so circa 2013 a few years before it blew up. Some professor was going on and on about Holmes for being a young, female, founder. It stood out at the moment as weird because the praise was separate from success or outcomes or like brilliant science. It was all about the identity: gender and age. I wonder if the reason the scam went so far as it did beca…
Of all the ways Theranos was a scam, the gender thing was pretty much the last. She was wealthy, stacked the board with all the wrong sorts of people but the right sorts of people for corrupt contracts.
I'll give you another example that was about the same time, with much lower stakes, but it always really annoyed me. An entrepreneur, Grace Choi, launched the "Mink 3D makeup printer" at Tech crunch Disrupt in 2014. At the time, it was pretty clear to me that the device was an idea that wasn't functional yet, but there was tons of coverage at the time of how revolutionary this was, and also basically scoffing at the idea that the male-only TechCrunch judging panel couldn't possibly have any ability to evaluate the device, and any criticisms they had were obviously just sexism. Here is an example of a typical fawning article at the time: https://www.forbes.com/sites/deniserestauri/2014/06/30/a-har...
Now, Ms. Choi is not an Elizabeth Holmes, and from what I can tell it looks like she eventually got something functional (but honestly I can't tell how much) around 2019-2020. But she never "blew up" anything, I'm unable to tell if she ever had real deliveries, and her minkbeauty.com website looks to be defunct. I'm not blaming her for creating a product that failed, but moreso what she did create was a ton of uncritical coverage from the perspective of "She's a woman disrupting a world men don't understand!"
The world is now teeming with hucksters and fakers, and sure, while I'd guess the majority of those hucksters and fakers are likely men, whenever you create unspoken rules that "people of a certain sex/race/class aren't allowed to criticize because they don't have the 'lived experience'" then you obviously throw the door wide open to shysters who will take advantage of that.
Elizabeth Holmes Thanksgiving Visit: Family Time in Prison https://www.memesita.com/elizabeth-holmes-thanksgiving-visit... And wtf is even a "prison camp?"
Article was fairly unfocused, any particular reason you linked it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What?
Elon's DOGE is responsible for over 100k deaths. Some died a horrible death with medical devices stuck in them because there was no one to remove them after all funding was instantly cut. One of the most inhumane and disgusting acts in history.
Fielder's "The Rehearsal" on HBO was madly brilliant.
In particular, season 2 is truly a work of art. As you said, it is just flat out brilliant. If you haven't watched the final episode of nathan for you (season 4 episode 7), watch it. it's equally fantastic.