USCE 2023: Please let them shove a camera up your butt

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE 2023: Please let them shove a camera up your butt

«‹›797 »

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Byzantine posted:

I like how you phrase it as a failing of the left here. The US military/law enforcement are not neutral parties that can be swayed to either side - they are inherently anti-leftist organizations that have been purging any pinko sympathizers from their ranks since before anybody in this thread was born. Leftists joining up to Change The System From Within just gets them killed like Pat Tillman.

The cop standing by as George Floyd was murdered also joined to change the system from within.

'Reform from the inside' is a childish fantasy, and there's a reason even children's cartoons that show it as the 'happy ending' never actually get around to showing the results, or quietly forget about it. You're either converted or killed. Even joining the military to at least learn combat skills is crapshoot given the likelihood of getting abovementioned Pat Tillman treatment, or just your life thrown away or coming back broken in mind and body.

Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 02:58 on May 8, 2023

# ? May 8, 2023 02:43

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 26, 2024 10:38

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

cat botherer posted:

Sure millions of people died, but without their sacrifice, we wouldn�t have twitter.

More seriously, that research could have been done more openly, cheaper, and better were it not connected to the MIC. We just don�t like funding things with goals other than finding better ways to kill people.

Yes, on a society-wide level, it would be nice if we could fund science and engineering without funneling the money through defense contractors first. It would be cool if we changed government to send our tax money directly to science-doing nonprofits instead. Unfortunately, accomplishing such widespread systemic change requires all of us to do our part to change the American system, instead of just blaming it all on other people's individual failings.

On an individual level, somebody who wants to build rocket engines for a living basically has the choice between working for a defense contractor, working for a billionaire's pet project (which will also start taking defense contracts as soon as it can actually send a rocket to orbit), or giving up on rocket engineering and doing something else with their life instead. Sucks to be them, I guess.

# ? May 8, 2023 03:01

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

'Reform from the inside' is a childish fantasy, and there's a reason even children's cartoons that show it as the 'happy ending' never actually get around to showing the results, or quietly forget about it. You're either converted or killed. Even joining the military to at least learn combat skills is crapshoot given the likelihood of getting abovementioned Pat Tillman treatment, or just your life thrown away or coming back broken in mind and body.

The far right wingers seem to have done an incredibly good job at reforming things from the inside in the security forces, while having had difficulty doing so in the military specifically because of the reliable presence of those who are not right wingers. Ceding control of the tools for projecting power to the right wing seems unwise - even a leftist utopia would need a functioning military and military industrial base. There's no actual obligation to join one of those groups as a leftist and thinking so would be stupid, but similarly shaming and driving away anyone who does join those groups, where all the best-case scenarios sort of require some portion of them to be on your side, seems very unwise.

# ? May 8, 2023 03:22

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Name Change posted:

I'm glad they got the notorious convicted charlatan to do a family photo shoot

NYT is well-known as a paper that is on publicists' speed dial when you need to do image rehab.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/arts/dan-schneider-nickelodeon.html

I'm happy to see Hugo Drax was able to recover smoothly from that whole "Moonraker" incident. He looks like he's living quite well with himself now-a-days.

# ? May 8, 2023 03:23

Gumball Gumption: Jan 7, 2012

Main Paineframe posted:

Yes, on a society-wide level, it would be nice if we could fund science and engineering without funneling the money through defense contractors first. It would be cool if we changed government to send our tax money directly to science-doing nonprofits instead. Unfortunately, accomplishing such widespread systemic change requires all of us to do our part to change the American system, instead of just blaming it all on other people's individual failings.

On an individual level, somebody who wants to build rocket engines for a living basically has the choice between working for a defense contractor, working for a billionaire's pet project (which will also start taking defense contracts as soon as it can actually send a rocket to orbit), or giving up on rocket engineering and doing something else with their life instead. Sucks to be them, I guess.

It does suck to be them but is that justification? Lots of people don't get to live their dreams because of extenuating circumstances. Is "there is no way to do what I want without harming others" an acceptable reason to do the thing you want? Does doing your part involve withholding knowledge and labor from the weapons manufacturers?

# ? May 8, 2023 03:36

Shooting Blanks: Jun 6, 2007; Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade

Discendo Vox posted:

I read the article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that Holmes is a skilled charlatan who is trying to use the author to rehab her public image, and ends with rejecting the couple's calculated self-presentation:

I think 'sociopath' would be the word I'd use, rather than charlatan. But that's just me.

# ? May 8, 2023 03:46

Prism: Dec 22, 2007; yospos

Shooting Blanks posted:

I think 'sociopath' would be the word I'd use, rather than charlatan. But that's just me.

They aren't mutually exclusive!

# ? May 8, 2023 03:48

James Garfield: May 5, 2012; Am I a manipulative abuser in real life, or do I just roleplay one on the Internet for fun? You decide!

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Even joining the military to at least learn combat skills is crapshoot given the likelihood of getting abovementioned Pat Tillman treatment, or just your life thrown away or coming back broken in mind and body.

I mean joining the military to learn combat skills is a major red flag, but I don't think it's coincidental that the right wingers who want to do a coup are constantly screaming about the need to make the military less woke and I think it would be bad if they got what they wanted.

(no need to enlist to keep the military woke though, college degrees are doing that)

# ? May 8, 2023 03:53

Gumball Gumption: Jan 7, 2012

Here's the Holmes article

quote:

Elizabeth Holmes blends in with the other moms here, in a bucket hat and sunglasses, her newborn strapped to her chest and swathed in a Baby Yoda nursing blanket. We walk past a family of caged orangutans and talk about how Ms. Holmes is preparing to go to prison for one of the most notorious cases of corporate fraud in recent history.
In case you’re wondering, Ms. Holmes speaks in a soft, slightly low, but totally unremarkable voice, no hint of the throaty contralto she used while running her defunct blood-testing start-up Theranos.
“I made so many mistakes and there was so much I didn’t know and understand, and I feel like when you do it wrong, it’s like you really internalize it in a deep way,” Ms. Holmes said as we stopped to look at a hissing anaconda.
Billy Evans, Ms. Holmes’s partner and the father of their two young children, pushes a stroller with the couple’s 20-month-old son, William. William enjoys playing in the sand, “The Little Blue Truck,” dumplings and, like his mom, already speaks some Mandarin. But William especially loves the San Diego Zoo, which is why, on a recent Thursday afternoon, I found myself in the surreal situation of trying to make sense of Ms. Holmes’s version of her rise and fall, while watching a restless cheetah and buying a gorilla T-shirt at the gift shop.
“How would you spend your time if you didn’t know how much time you had left?” Ms. Holmes said, her impending prison report date top of mind, perhaps even more so given that we were surrounded by animals behind bars. “It would be the kind of things we’re doing now because they’re perfect. Just being together.”
Ms. Holmes has not spoken to the media since 2016, when her legal team advised she go quiet. And, as the adage goes, if you don’t feed the press, we feed on you. In Elizabeth Holmes, we found an all-you-can-eat buffet. It had everything: The black turtlenecks, the Kabuki red lipstick, the green juices, the dancing to Lil Wayne. Somewhere along the way, Ms. Holmes says that the person (whoever that is) got lost. At one point, I tell her that I heard Jennifer Lawrence had pulled out of portraying her in a movie. She replied, almost reflectively, “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.”
So, why did she create that public persona? “I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl or a girl who didn’t have good technical ideas,” said Ms. Holmes, who founded Theranos at 19. “Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn’t.”
Maybe?
Ten years ago, Ms. Holmes was the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, worth $4.5 billion (on paper, in Theranos stock), and one of the most visible and celebrated female C.E.O.s on the planet, running a start-up with a $9 billion valuation. Then, in 2015, The Wall Street Journal published an investigation into Theranos, calling into question whether its labs and technology — a sleek, boxy device called the Edison — actually worked as promised, testing for a wide range of illnesses with a tiny amount of blood collected with a rapid finger prick.
In 2016, federal inspectors from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services found “deficient practices” in a Theranos lab that posed “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.”
That began a saga that would eventually lead to Ms. Holmes being convicted of criminal fraud charges.

The 15-week trial began in 2021 and featured extensive testimony about troubling practices at Theranos. The jury heard from several patients, including one who said a Theranos blood test revealed she was having a miscarriage when, in fact, she had a healthy pregnancy. Ms. Holmes was not convicted on any counts related to patients. But the testimony was a stark reminder of the human stakes of choosing biotech as your start-up.
Ms. Holmes was found guilty in January 2022 on four of 11 charges that she defrauded Theranos investors out of more than $100 million. Her top lieutenant at Theranos, and much older boyfriend at the time, Ramesh Balwani, was found guilty of 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud at Theranos. He began a 13-year prison sentence last month. On Thursday, his legal team filed an appeal with the Ninth Circuit.
During the closely followed proceedings, a prosecutor, Robert Leach, said this was a case “about fraud, about lying and cheating,” alleging that Theranos raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by misleading them about its blood-testing technology’s capabilities.
Lance Wade, a lawyer for Ms. Holmes, said that his client “made mistakes, but mistakes are not crimes.”
By the time I met Ms. Holmes and Mr. Evans, they were counting the days until April 27, when she had been required to report to Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, for 11.25 years. (Shortly before she was due at prison, Ms. Holmes made a last-minute request to remain free pending an appeal, which automatically delayed her report date by an undetermined amount of time.)
Day 44: the afternoon we ordered in Mexican food at their quaint rental home near the Pacific.
Day 43: the morning we went for breakfast and Ms. Holmes breastfed her baby, Invicta (Latin for “invincible”) and sang along to Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants” on the loudspeakers (“This is the first album I ever owned.”).
Day 42: the time we had croissants and berries and Mr. Evans made coffee and we walked the couple’s 150-pound Great Dane-mastiff mix, Teddy, on the beach.
On the second day we spent together, Mr. Evans asked me what the most surprising part of spending so much time with Ms. Holmes was. I told him it’s that I didn’t expect her to be so … normal?
If you didn’t know she was that Elizabeth, whose trajectory launched a cottage industry of podcasts, TV shows, Halloween costumes and groupies who sold blonde wigs outside her trial, then you might sit next to her at the Lucha Libre taco shop in Mission Hills without thinking twice.
This is when Billy puts on the deep voice. The guttural one that the world heard in Ms. Holmes’s TED Talk and CNBC appearances and in the actress Amanda Seyfried’s Emmy-award-winning turn as Ms. Holmes in Hulu’s “The Dropout.”
If you hate Elizabeth Holmes, you probably think her feigned perma-hoarseness was part of an elaborate scheme to defraud investors. If you are a person who is sympathetic to Ms. Holmes, then the James Earl Jones inflection was a sign of the impossible gymnastics that female founders must perform to be taken seriously. If you spend time with Ms. Holmes, as I did, then you might come away like me, and think that, as with many things about Elizabeth Holmes, it was both. Either way, even Mr. Evans agrees, the voice was real weird.
He was driving the family’s Tesla. Ms. Holmes climbed in, after strapping the babies, calm and happy, into their carseats. I rode shotgun. “That would be crazy, if she answered the door and said, ‘Hi. I’m Elizabeth Holmes,” Mr. Evans said, imitating the voice. Ms. Holmes let out the slightest of giggles from the back seat.

I realized that I was essentially writing a story about two different people. There was Elizabeth, celebrated in the media as a rock-star inventor whose brilliance dazzled illustrious rich men, and whose criminal trial captivated the world. Then there is “Liz,” (as Mr. Evans and her friends call her), the mom of two who, for the past year, has been volunteering for a rape crisis hotline. Who can’t stomach R-rated movies and who rushed after me one afternoon with a paper towel to wipe a mix of sand and her dog’s slobber off my shoe.
After Ms. Holmes was convicted, Rupert Murdoch, who invested $125 million in Theranos, emailed The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper he owns, calling himself “one of a bunch of old men taken in by a seemingly great young woman! Total embarrassment.” I am not a smarter or more astute observer of human behavior than Mr. Murdoch or George Shultz, the former secretary of state who helped end the Cold War, or James Mattis, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and former defense secretary, both of whom were Theranos board members and investors. So, how could I be sure that “Liz” wasn’t another character that Ms. Holmes had created?
I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person. She’s gentle and charismatic, in a quiet way. My editor laughed at me when I shared these impressions, telling me (and I quote), “Amy Chozick, you got rolled!” I vigorously disagreed! You don’t know her like I do! But then, something very strange happened. I worked my way through a list of Ms. Holmes’s friends, family and longtime supporters, whom she and Mr. Evans suggested I speak to. One of these friends said Ms. Holmes had genuine intentions at Theranos and didn’t deserve a lengthy prison sentence. Then, this person requested anonymity to caution me not to believe everything Ms. Holmes says.
This warning stuck with me, and it got at something that had been gnawing on me since I first met Ms. Holmes. How do you have an honest conversation with a person whose fraud trial has played out so publicly? I tried to ask Ms. Holmes this directly. How do I believe you when you’ve been convicted of (basically) lying? But how could I ask someone who was nursing her 11-day-old baby on a white sofa two feet away if she was actually conning me?
It was in these uncomfortable exchanges that Mr. Evans often stepped in. “Your question is, ‘How do you say anything when everything you say is going to be doubted?’ You just have to say it,” he said.
So, to just say it: Ms. Holmes knows what you’re thinking about her trial, and the birth of her two babies.

When she alerted the court on March 12, 2021, that she was pregnant with her first child, Mr. Leach, the prosecutor, called the news “frustrating.” The trial had already been delayed because of the pandemic, and was pushed back a few more weeks, until after she gave birth that July.
Which is why she was there in a San Jose federal courthouse using the high-tech Elvie breast pump with its glowing aqua nipples. “She looked like a Fembot,” Mr. Evans said.
At her sentencing hearing in November 2022, she was visibly pregnant with her second child. That baby was born in February. In March, Ms. Holmes’s defense team partly cited her “two very young children” in arguing that she should remain free while appealing her fraud conviction. A Daily Mail headline referred to the baby as a “Last-Ditch Bid for New Trial.”
But, as Ms. Holmes explains it, it’s just bad timing (to put it mildly). She is 39. She fell in love with Mr. Evans in 2017. They did not anticipate that she would be indicted. They did not anticipate that she would be sentenced to 11 years. They always wanted a big family.
“If we let how other people might view that, or what impression someone might make of it dictate how we live our lives, then we’ve lost,” Ms. Holmes said. “Finding your person in the middle of all of this and experiencing that love when you’re going through hell is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.”

I’d hardly sat down in Ms. Holmes’s and Mr. Evans’s home the first time we met in person, when Ms. Holmes told me about her work at the rape-crisis hotline. She’d just finished a 12-hour shift, which she does a few times a week from home using her cellphone, answering calls when they come in.
She then put this work into context, telling me how surviving a rape at a fraternity party her sophomore year at Stanford had, in retrospect, colored so many of her life choices. It’s the part of her story that she keeps getting back to. The one she told a sympathetic, but ultimately undeterred jury, according to news reports. The one she wants people to (finally) listen to. (I later reviewed a 52-page Santa Clara police report that documented the details of the alleged sexual assault and Ms. Holmes’s injuries. Ms. Holmes did not press charges.)
Ms. Holmes hands the baby to Mr. Evans. “I’ll give her to you when we’re talking about this stuff,” she said. She continued, “I woke up with this guy who was my friend having sex with me and I couldn’t get him off of me.” Ms. Holmes said the assault, in October 2003, contributed to her decision to drop out several months later and start a company.
To help her do that, she turned to Mr. Balwani, known as Sunny, whom she first met in 2002 on a college trip to China. Ms. Holmes was 18. Mr. Balwani was 37 and had already successfully founded and sold a tech company.
In March 2004, her sophomore year, Ms. Holmes left Stanford and moved in with Mr. Balwani to get Theranos off the ground. (Mr. Balwani guaranteed a loan to Theranos and joined the company in 2009.) “I really thought I’d be safe,” Ms. Holmes said. “My friends at school and that whole universe, it didn’t exist anymore when I was with him. It was all gone.”
As Ms. Holmes explained it, echoing a key part of her defense strategy, Mr. Balwani kept close control over her every action. She detailed extensive domestic abuse and sexual assault. She said that Mr. Balwani forced her to stop speaking to her family and Stanford friends and pressured her to adopt the black-turtleneck, red-lipstick persona.
“He always told me I needed to ‘kill Elizabeth,’ so I could become a good entrepreneur,” she said.
Jeffrey Coopersmith, a lawyer for Mr. Balwani, denied the allegations. “Our client is not a person who is vindictive or mean spirited or aggressive,” he said.
She lived by entrepreneurial tenets that she said Mr. Balwani told her she needed to follow in order to succeed. These included not sleeping for more than five hours, going vegan, getting to the office daily by 5 a.m., no alcohol.
“It was only when people started to raise questions about the company that I started to see that he was not who I thought he was in business,” Ms. Holmes said of Mr. Balwani. “And then that made me start to question everything else.”

One of the last times we spoke, I asked Ms. Holmes to clarify what she meant. As C.E.O., wasn’t she in charge? She said Mr. Balwani did not control her every interaction or statement at Theranos, but she “deferred to him in the areas he oversaw because I believed he knew better than I did,” and those areas included the problematic clinical lab.
Mr. Balwani’s lawyer, Mr. Coopersmith, said his client was in regular contact with Ms. Holmes about any issues at the lab, adding that she “was a strong woman who had a vision and Sunny was helping her execute her vision.”
Ms. Holmes’s story of how she got here — to the bright, cozy house and the supportive partner and the two babies — feels a lot like the story of someone who had finally broken out of a cult and been deprogrammed. After her relationship with Mr. Balwani ended and Theranos dissolved, Ms. Holmes said, “I began my life again.”
But then I remember that Ms. Holmes was running the cult.

In person, Ms. Holmes is engaging, but she is also somewhat socially stunted. It’s as if Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in his early 20s in a start-up and woke up a 32-year-old at Burning Man. That’s because in the 14 years Ms. Holmes led Theranos she didn’t do any of the normal things 20-somethings do, according to her friends and family. Ms. Holmes had so few actual friends, she said, when she was running Theranos that she once pulled a female pharmaceutical executive aside to ask if the way Mr. Balwani treated her was normal in a relationship. However — the same person who warned me about Ms. Holmes pointed out that she seemed to have plenty of wealthy, famous friends in this period.
In 2015, when The Wall Street Journal first reported on serious flaws in Theranos’s technology, Debbie Sterling, an entrepreneur and classmate of Ms. Holmes’s from Stanford, reached out asking if Ms. Holmes needed someone to talk to. “She said, ‘I don’t have any friends. I only work, from the first thing in the morning until late at night,’” Ms. Sterling recalled. “It was kinda creepy.” She corrects herself: “Not creepy, but concerning.” They eventually met for breakfast in Palo Alto.
Ms. Sterling said she thought about her friend as two distinct people: There was “black turtleneck Elizabeth” and there was “real Elizabeth.” Ms. Sterling, along with several other Stanford friends, attended the trial to support Ms. Holmes. But first she bought brown drugstore hair dye, worried that being seen there might impugn her reputation.
In 2016, as regulators scrutinized Theranos, Mr. Balwani resigned. Theranos shut down its clinical laboratory and laid off roughly 40 percent of its estimated 790 employees. Ms. Holmes’s brother (and Theranos executive), Christian Holmes V, helped her pack up and move out of the mansion she’d shared with Mr. Balwani. Ms. Holmes, barred from working in a medical laboratory for two years, checked into a hotel and then rented a two-bedroom home in Los Altos. She had almost no belongings, so her parents sent her some ’90s chintz furniture that they had in storage.

In 2017, as Theranos faced an onslaught of legal challenges, both civil and criminal, Ms. Holmes moved to San Francisco, where she met a recent M.I.T. graduate and entrepreneur, Billy Evans, at a house party during Fleet Week to benefit wounded warriors. Mr. Evans had gone out to get ice for a party he was hosting at his own apartment and a friend texted to ask if he was going to the benefit. He agreed to swing by for a few minutes and never made it to back to his party.
A mutual friend introduced him to Ms. Holmes and the pair talked for three hours. “My friends were texting, ‘Where are you? We’re here,” Mr. Evans recalled. “To say we immediately fell in love isn’t an overstatement.”
Mr. Evans was 25 and living with roommates in San Francisco, but in many ways he was more mature than Ms. Holmes. She was 32 and had never opened a bottle of wine. “Elizabeth lived in complete isolation with Sunny,” her father, Christian Holmes IV, told me. “It’s hard to explain the extent to which she missed so much of the growing up that someone does in their 20s.” As Theranos settled an onslaught of civil lawsuits and federal prosecutors closed in on criminal charges, Ms. Holmes started to socialize again, reconnecting with family and friends. “Despite everything going horribly in her life, we had our daughter back, and it was wonderful to see how she used to be,” her mother, Noel Holmes, said.
Ms. Holmes and Mr. Evans quickly became more than friends and moved in together. “It had been two years of all this stuff written about me, and I think you get to know someone in a totally different way when you walk in with that skepticism versus if you meet when everything is sunshine and roses,” Ms. Holmes said. “That allowed us to get to know each other in a really deep way.”
In 2018, the Justice Department indicted Ms. Holmes, accusing her of lying when she told investors that Theranos’s devices could quickly perform a full range of clinical blood tests using a finger prick, even though she knew the tests were unreliable, limited and slow.
The much-hyped box didn’t do much of anything. And most of the promises that put Ms. Holmes on the map turned out to be fiction.
The Theranos board, failing to find a buyer for the start-up, eventually dissolved the company.
Where do you go when your life’s work and reputation go up in flames? … Burning Man.
Ms. Holmes and Mr. Evans went to the desert oasis for moneyed bohemians. She burned a tribute to Theranos. “There was an incredible sense of grief because I’d given everything to it, my whole life, since I’d been 18,” she said of that period.
The following year, in 2019, after U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila set a date for Ms. Holmes’s criminal trial, she and Mr. Evans hit the road. As prosecutors assembled their case, Ms. Holmes and Mr. Evans spent six months traveling the country in an R.V., sleeping in campgrounds and Walmart parking lots. Ms. Holmes balanced outdoor yoga and long hikes in national parks with working on her legal defense.
I tell Ms. Holmes (in so many words) that it seems like she became blissfully happy just as her life was falling apart. She does not disagree. “Even though that period was a crisis and Theranos was my life and like my child, I gave everything I had to it,” she said. After it was gone, “I also became free.”
At least, for now.

Mr. Evans, whose parents are prominent hoteliers in San Diego, and Ms. Holmes have an us-against-the-world ethos that is both romantic and rings slightly of Bonnie and Clyde. They say they’ve been chased out of residence after residence, no matter how remote. On my way to their front door, I walk past rows of orange storage containers filled with the couple’s personal belongings. They never unpack, Mr. Evans explains, concerned they’ll have to move again when they’re found.
The morning we went to the zoo, Mr. Evans stopped at Starbucks. He returned to find the barista had written “Billy the Kid” on his coffee cup. Ms. Holmes didn’t get the reference.
Mr. Evans took a few calls for work while I was visiting. I asked what he does. “A lot of different stuff, investing, starting companies,” he replied, without elaborating. How is Ms. Holmes paying her legal expenses? “I can’t,” she said. “I have to work for the rest of my life to try to pay for it.” I asked if Mr. Evans’s family was helping to cover her legal expenses. She shook her head no.
An earlier legal team quit after Ms. Holmes could not pay them. One pre-sentencing report by the government put her legal fees at more than $30 million. Ms. Holmes did not detail how those fees would be paid, and her current representatives at Williams & Connolly did not respond to emails asking about her financial arrangement.
Their toddler, William, recently had 105-degree fever, the couple said. They raced him to the emergency room. The first thing the attending doctor said was, “You look a lot like that horrible woman.” Ms. Holmes looked at him with her piercing blue eyes, and said, “I’m sure you’re a better person than she is.” The doctor seemed to realize who he was talking to. She continued, “Then he said, ‘Are you Elizabeth Holmes?’ And I said yes and he said, ‘I am so sorry,’ and I said, ‘Don’t be, all you know is what you’ve read.’”
By Billy’s father, William L. Evans’s tally, there are “over 67,600,600” web results on Ms. Holmes, all of them negative, compared with “21 million results, many of which are positive” for Osama bin Laden, figures he wrote in a letter to the court. Ms. Holmes’s mother, Noel, said she stopped cold in a Barnes & Noble when she saw her daughter characterized in a book display as a “paranoid sociopath” who is “devoid of conscience.”
“Everybody got on the train that Elizabeth was evil, and it was great copy, and they took it and ran with it,” Ms. Holmes’s father, Christian, said.
Ms. Holmes’s defenders, stretching back to childhood, said in letters to the court, and in conversations with me, that the feverish coverage of Ms. Holmes’s downfall felt like a witch trial, less rooted in what actually happened at Theranos, and more of a message to ambitious women everywhere. Don’t girl boss too close to the sun, or this could happen to you …
“There’s an unspoken lesson for female executives: you’re allowed to be successful but not too successful,” Jackie Lamping, a Kappa Alpha Theta sorority sister of Ms. Holmes at Stanford, wrote in a letter to Judge Davila, who oversaw the trial.
Ms. Holmes said she believed that making herself the poster girl for women in tech put a huge target on her back. She regrets being the subject of fawning magazine covers (though I imagine the authors of those stories regret it more). “I never lost sight of the mission but I think I did of the narrative,” she said. “The story became this story that was totally snowballed away from what we were actually talking about.”
Of course, Ms. Holmes also tried to control the story, often with scorched-earth tactics. She is typically docile, but got visibly upset when I asked about how the lawyer David Boies had threatened litigation against people who spoke negatively about Theranos. Alex Shultz, the father of the Theranos employees turned whistle-blower Tyler Shultz, and the son of George Shultz, told the court that Tyler “slept with a knife under his pillow every night thinking that someone was going to come and murder him in the night.” (Ms. Holmes and Mr. Boies parted ways and she replaced her legal team in 2016.)
“I’m still thinking about the journalists being intimidated,” Ms. Holmes said after we’d moved on to several other topics. “As I said at trial, I completely wish we’d handled that situation differently.” She tears up. “I take responsibility for it because I was C.E.O. of the company and at the end of the day, that’s that, but I don’t believe in people being treated that way, period.” (In response to Ms. Holmes seemingly casting blame on her legal team, a spokeswoman for Mr. Boies texted, “Whatever.”)
Ms. Holmes chooses her words carefully when I ask if the prominent men who invested and joined the Theranos board were drawn to the start-up partly because the founder was an attractive young woman. “A lot of people were attracted to this for their own reasons,” she said.
What does she think would have happened if she hadn’t garnered so much early attention as the second coming of Silicon Valley? Ms. Holmes does not blink: “We would’ve seen through our vision.” In other words, she thinks if she’d spent more time quietly working on her inventions and less time on a stage promoting the company, she would have revolutionized health care by now.
This kind of misguided talk is the one consistent thread in my reporting on who Ms. Holmes really is. She repeatedly says that Theranos wasn’t a get-rich-quick scheme for her; she never sold her shares and didn’t come out of it wealthy. Ms. Holmes’s parents said they borrowed $500,000 against their Washington, D.C.-area home to post Ms. Holmes’s bond.
I can’t shake an earlier story that Mr. Evans relayed. In the waning days of Theranos, Ms. Holmes got a dog, a Siberian husky named Balto. Last year, when a mountain lion carried Balto away from the front porch, Ms. Holmes spent 16 hours searching in the woods, digging through brambles and poison oak, hoping to find him alive. Everyone knew Balto was dead, but Ms. Holmes kept searching. The relentlessness. The certainty. The fanaticism. It’s the same way Ms. Holmes kept hanging on at Theranos.

Over antioxidant smoothies, Ms. Holmes told me she has ideas for Covid testing, drawing on her work in a Singapore lab as a college student during the SARS outbreak.
She maintains the idealistic delusion of a 19-year-old, never mind that she’s 39 with a fraud conviction, telling me she is still working on health care-related inventions and would continue to do so behind bars.
“I still dream about being able to contribute in that space,” Ms. Holmes said. “I still feel the same calling to it as I always did and I still think the need is there.”
If your head is exploding at how divorced from reality this sounds, that’s kind of the point. When Ms. Holmes uses the messianic vernacular of tech, I get the sense that she truly believes that she could have — and, in fact, she still could — change the world, and she doesn’t much care if we believe her or not. “Liz is not a natural born leader; she is more of a zealot than a showman,” Mr. Evans wrote to Judge Davila.
It’s this steadfast (or unhinged?) belief that has kept Ms. Holmes fighting, even though a guilty plea would have likely helped her chances of remaining free. “She could have said, ‘Yes, I lied, and I tried my best to save mankind, but this happened in my enthusiasm,’” her father told me. “But she has taken the position that she is not guilty and that takes guts.”
Ms. Holmes eventually found her beloved husky, Balto, in the woods. But by then the dog was gone, torn apart by the mountain lion.

The last day I spent with Ms. Holmes, I parked and walked up the long driveway to find her and Mr. Evans embracing in the kitchen. They looked like they were slow dancing, swaying slightly, the two of them against the world. Fireplace burning. Seagulls flying overhead. Teddy drooling in his crate. Babies (plural) sleeping.
Mr. Evans left for a workout, saying he doesn’t want “dad bod.” Ms. Holmes and I sat at the kitchen table alone, talking. She didn’t seem like a hero or a villain. She seemed, like most people, somewhere in between. As Ms. Holmes broke down thinking about what her children will be like in 11 years, I kept going back to her central promise at Theranos: The technology that she invented would, in her words, create “a world in which no one ever has to say goodbye too soon.”
And there she was, preparing to do just that.
That Friday, the couple were getting ready to host a group of friends from the Bay Area. They invited me to stay. They repeatedly invited me to come back, to bring my family. We could all go to the zoo together.
I appreciated their hospitality, but I didn’t fully understand it. Usually interview subjects can’t wait to get rid of me.
Then I realized why they kept opening the door wider. Ms. Holmes is unlike anyone I’ve ever met — modest but mesmerizing. If you are in her presence, it is impossible not to believe her, not to be taken with her and be taken in by her. Liz Holmes and Billy Evans know that. I politely declined their invitation.

It mostly just seems hack. A puff piece on a sociopath that gets as complicated as "gee, people sure are complicated. And really charming!"

# ? May 8, 2023 03:59

Zwabu: Aug 7, 2006

What the gently caress kind of articles did this reporter write before this? JFC reads like junior high yearbook copy.

# ? May 8, 2023 04:17

fizzy: Dec 2, 2022; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

Wait, but then wouldn't it have been more ethical to not write the article at all instead of giving someone you know to be a charlatan any sort of publicity?

The New York Times has a track record for writing sympathetic interviews to white supremacists and charlatans.

quote:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nationalist.html

A Voice of Hate in America�s Heartland

HUBER HEIGHTS, Ohio � Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall. They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.
Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fianc� is not an avowed white nationalist.
But Mr. Hovater, in the days leading up to the wedding, was somewhat less anxious. There are times when it can feel toxic to openly identify as a far-right extremist in the Ohio of 2017. But not always. He said the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: �You can just say, �Yeah, so?� And move on.�

It was a weeknight at Applebee�s in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton, a few weeks before the wedding. The couple, who live in nearby New Carlisle, were shoulder to shoulder at a table, young and in love. He was in a plain T-shirt, she in a sleeveless jean jacket. She ordered the boneless wings. Her parents had met him, she said, and approved of the match. The wedding would be small. Some of her best friends were going to be there. �A lot of girls are not really into politics,� she said.

In Ohio, amid the row crops and rolling hills, the Olive Gardens and Steak �n Shakes, Mr. Hovater�s presence can make hardly a ripple. He is the Nazi sympathizer next door, polite and low-key at a time the old boundaries of accepted political activity can seem alarmingly in flux. Most Americans would be disgusted and baffled by his casually approving remarks about Hitler, disdain for democracy and belief that the races are better off separate. But his tattoos are innocuous pop-culture references: a slice of cherry pie adorns one arm, a homage to the TV show �Twin Peaks.� He says he prefers to spread the gospel of white nationalism with satire. He is a big �Seinfeld� fan.

�I guess it seems weird when talking about these type of things,� he says. �You know, I�m coming at it in a mid-90s, Jewish, New York, observational-humor way.�

# ? May 8, 2023 04:42

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

Zwabu posted:

What the gently caress kind of articles did this reporter write before this? JFC reads like junior high yearbook copy.

She used to write a lot about Hillary

# ? May 8, 2023 05:19

Staluigi: Jun 22, 2021

The nazi lives next door in a house and breathes oxygen just like you or me! His belief that babies should be put in meatgrinders causes some consternation, but you wouldn't know it just from watching him eat a sugary concoction of which he is quite relatably fond!

# ? May 8, 2023 05:35

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

GlyphGryph posted:

The far right wingers seem to have done an incredibly good job at reforming things from the inside in the security forces, while having had difficulty doing so in the military specifically because of the reliable presence of those who are not right wingers. Ceding control of the tools for projecting power to the right wing seems unwise - even a leftist utopia would need a functioning military and military industrial base. There's no actual obligation to join one of those groups as a leftist and thinking so would be stupid, but similarly shaming and driving away anyone who does join those groups, where all the best-case scenarios sort of require some portion of them to be on your side, seems very unwise.

The far right did not 'reform' the police, the police has been their natural allies and support structure from the beginning. As said, they are not, and never have been, neutral or non-political by default and corrupted from the outside. American police literally descend from slave catchers. Leftists are not welcome there, and are either assimilated to the point of no longer being anything recognisable as leftists, ejected or murdered.

James Garfield posted:

I mean joining the military to learn combat skills is a major red flag, but I don't think it's coincidental that the right wingers who want to do a coup are constantly screaming about the need to make the military less woke and I think it would be bad if they got what they wanted.

(no need to enlist to keep the military woke though, college degrees are doing that)

It is coincidental, because they are dumb as gently caress, and the military just wants more warm bodies and since they've been begrudgingly forced to desegregate they need more warm bodies to throw into the next meat grinder they might as well cast a wide net, especially since the right wingers don't practice what they preach. The military is literally a hierarchical top-down organisation that obeys political mandates.

Do you think you can reform Wal-Mart by getting a job there?

Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 05:53 on May 8, 2023

# ? May 8, 2023 05:51

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

Staluigi posted:

The nazi lives next door in a house and breathes oxygen just like you or me! His belief that babies should be put in meatgrinders causes some consternation, but you wouldn't know it just from watching him eat a sugary concoction of which he is quite relatably fond!

It�s really quite telling that the nyt reporter imagines that the typical reaction, along with disagreement, to hearing a nazi say hitler was good would be confusion. It�s like when richard spencer went on one of those fluff morning shows and the hosts kept balking and asking him if he was really serious, then saying, �you can�t really be serious� while he smiled directly into the camera.

# ? May 8, 2023 06:00

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

FlamingLiberal posted:

She used to write a lot about Hillary

And apparently also a lot about Bernie Bros.

# ? May 8, 2023 06:29

fizzy: Dec 2, 2022; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

fizzy posted:

The New York Times has a track record for writing sympathetic interviews to white supremacists and charlatans.

The NY Times's track record in this respect is even longer and more distinguished than I had initially expected.

quote:

https://www.nytimes.com/1922/11/21/archives/new-popular-idol-rises-in-bavaria-hitler-credited-with.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/Holocaust/firsthitler.pdf

NEW POPULAR IDOL RISES IN BAVARIA
Hitler Credited With Extraordinary Powers of Swaying Crowds to His Will.
FORMS GRAY-SHIRTED ARMY
Armed With Blackjacks and Revolvers and Well Disciplined, They Obey Orders Implicitly.
LEADER A REACTIONARY
Is Anti Red and Anti-Semitic, and Demands Strong Government for a United Germany.

By Cyril Brown.
Copyright, 1922, By the New York Times Company By Wireless To the New York Times.
Nov. 21, 1922

...

[Hitler] is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the "Hakenkreuzler." So violent are Hitler's fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew's night.

But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.

A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: "You can't expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them."

# ? May 8, 2023 06:35

Space Cadet Omoly: Jan 15, 2014; ~Groovy~

Gumball Gumption posted:

Here's the Holmes article

It mostly just seems hack. A puff piece on a sociopath that gets as complicated as "gee, people sure are complicated. And really charming!"

Yeah, I feel pretty comfortable in my belief that it would have been more ethical to not write this article.

# ? May 8, 2023 08:27

Srice: Sep 11, 2011

Gumball Gumption posted:

Here's the Holmes article

It mostly just seems hack. A puff piece on a sociopath that gets as complicated as "gee, people sure are complicated. And really charming!"

It's a hell of a contrast to compare how the NYT writes about Holmes here to how they write about, well, pretty much anything involving trans people.

# ? May 8, 2023 13:36

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

So when is she going to start her prison time

# ? May 8, 2023 13:57

Cranappleberry: Jan 27, 2009

Hitler had terrible gas and farts.

# ? May 8, 2023 13:58

Zwabu: Aug 7, 2006

How, as a rich person, do you get to arbitrarily and indefinitely put off a jail sentence?

# ? May 8, 2023 14:11

syntaxrigger: Jul 7, 2011; Actually you owe me 6! But who's countin?

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

Yeah, I feel pretty comfortable in my belief that it would have been more ethical to not write this article.

Time to add �NYT reporter� to the write off list!

# ? May 8, 2023 14:17

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

Zwabu posted:

How, as a rich person, do you get to arbitrarily and indefinitely put off a jail sentence?

Spend a lot of money on lawyers finding things to appeal, I think.

# ? May 8, 2023 14:28

the_steve: Nov 9, 2005; We're always hiring!

Cranappleberry posted:

Hitler had terrible gas and farts.

Yeah, but he did kill Hitler.

# ? May 8, 2023 14:29

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Zwabu posted:

How, as a rich person, do you get to arbitrarily and indefinitely put off a jail sentence?

I believe her one weird trick here was getting pregnant while having exceptionally good lawyers. That, and

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1233603313029074944

# ? May 8, 2023 14:38

Mellow Seas: Oct 9, 2012; Can't post for 10 years!

It's not surprising the NYT published the "Liz Holmes" piece; they do that kind of poo poo all the time. I remember a similar piece about Madoff's wife when he got sent to jail. I think they do them because a lot of their readers and contributors who have the biggest clout see her as a member of their peer group, and like to gawk with horrified curiosity at what might happen to themselves or their friends or their children if one of their crooked business schemes ever goes sideways. "Well, at least I'd still be able to go to dinner parties after my two years at the country club prison, right???" It's Style Section poo poo, squatting on the business page.

Srice posted:

It's a hell of a contrast to compare how the NYT writes about Holmes here to how they write about, well, pretty much anything involving trans people.

The NYT publishes plenty of good writing about trans people, they just print a lot of bad writing about it too. Here are a few of the good things:

Trans Kids Deserve Private Lives, Too
There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America
These 12 Transgender Americans Would Love You to Mind Your Own Business

No, that doesn't excuse or cancel out the bad op-eds they publish, or the unnecessarily equivocating tone of their news coverage on trans issues, but people shouldn't be under the impression that it's an anti-trans hate rag. It's just the same gutless, opportunist consensus-chaser it's been since at least the Spanish-American War.

Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 14:46 on May 8, 2023

# ? May 8, 2023 14:43

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

Discendo Vox posted:

I read the article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that Holmes is a skilled charlatan who is trying to use the author to rehab her public image, and ends with rejecting the couple's calculated self-presentation:

You don't have to defend every lovely article the NYT puts out.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? May 8, 2023 14:49

BRJurgis: Aug 15, 2007; Well I hear the thunder roll, I feel the cold winds blowing...
But you won't find me there, 'cause I won't go back again...
While you're on smoky roads, I'll be out in the sun...
Where the trees still grow, where they count by one...

Should the wealthy have to go to jail? The answer may be more complicated than you think.

For one, they're valuable to society. One becomes rich by innovating and working hard. They then support their communities by buying goods and services, and creating jobs or providing housing. Are these the kinds of citizens we want to throw in a filthy cage?

Some may balk at the supposed luxurious lifestyles of the wealthy. Yet, that too may not be what it seems. "'Sometimes I just don't know what to so with myself" said one interviewee as they longingly watched a housecleaner dust a Faberge egg "Sure, I could use the indoor pool, or personal movie theater, but I'd have to go to one of my other homes to use a bowling alley or private circus - and several of those aren't accessible via my yacht! Oh, what's the point?"

Their eyes dart through the window to a south American man in a long-sleeved shirt, busily picking up sticks from a meticulously maintained lawn the size of a sports field.

"See, that's the life. That lucky fellow gets to be outside all day, and he never needs to wonder what to do with himself; I have my people tell him! You know, he gets to enjoy that lawn far more than I do, and he's paid to care for it! Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong?"

I could not help but feel deep empathy and admiration for this man. Such was his pain that it's almost unimaginable what effect lowering his standard of living would have. For the poor, prison is sometimes a kindness, but this great man in front of me (who has accomplished so very much for the world by moving money and numbers around) was kind, intelligent, and hard working. Why was society intent on making an example of him?

"If only people had the capacity to consider every side of the story." He said, finally addressing his upcoming court appearance "For one, what we're doing is totally legal in [that country]. What's more, those poor folks live in absolute poverty. Those who last the day are given more money than they've ever seen in their lives, and they're free to work the next event! We have to turn many applicants down to keep things sporting. And you can't use just any old thing. We've had people ask about bombing runs, a barrage from the sea, even tactical nuclear weapons. Well that would ruin both the course and the hunt!"

Seeing the consideration and even handedness of this man, I could not help but be saddened by the way he was being treated by the media. Couldn't there be room in the world be a bit more understanding?

Perhaps we're all guilty of running an island where you hunt people for sport.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? May 8, 2023 14:57

fizzy: Dec 2, 2022; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

BRJurgis posted:

Should the wealthy have to go to jail? The answer may be more complicated than you think.

For one, they're valuable to society. One becomes rich by innovating and working hard. They then support their communities by buying goods and services, and creating jobs or providing housing. Are these the kinds of citizens we want to throw in a filthy cage?

Some may balk at the supposed luxurious lifestyles of the wealthy. Yet, that too may not be what it seems. "'Sometimes I just don't know what to so with myself" said one interviewee as they longingly watched a housecleaner dust a Faberge egg "Sure, I could use the indoor pool, or personal movie theater, but I'd have to go to one of my other homes to use a bowling alley or private circus - and several of those aren't accessible via my yacht! Oh, what's the point?"

Their eyes dart through the window to a south American man in a long-sleeved shirt, busily picking up sticks from a meticulously maintained lawn the size of a sports field.

"See, that's the life. That lucky fellow gets to be outside all day, and he never needs to wonder what to do with himself; I have my people tell him! You know, he gets to enjoy that lawn far more than I do, and he's paid to care for it! Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong?"

I could not help but feel deep empathy and admiration for this man. Such was his pain that it's almost unimaginable what effect lowering his standard of living would have. For the poor, prison is sometimes a kindness, but this great man in front of me (who has accomplished so very much for the world by moving money and numbers around) was kind, intelligent, and hard working. Why was society intent on making an example of him?

"If only people had the capacity to consider every side of the story." He said, finally addressing his upcoming court appearance "For one, what we're doing is totally legal in [that country]. What's more, those poor folks live in absolute poverty. Those who last the day are given more money than they've ever seen in their lives, and they're free to work the next event! We have to turn many applicants down to keep things sporting. And you can't use just any old thing. We've had people ask about bombing runs, a barrage from the sea, even tactical nuclear weapons. Well that would ruin both the course and the hunt!"

Seeing the consideration and even handedness of this man, I could not help but be saddened by the way he was being treated by the media. Couldn't there be room in the world be a bit more understanding?

Perhaps we're all guilty of running an island where you hunt people for sport.

I read this article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that the interviewee is a sociopath who hunts the most dangerous game, and ends with a condemnation of the interviewee as being "guilty".

# ? May 8, 2023 15:08

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

fizzy posted:

I read this article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that the interviewee is a sociopath who hunts the most dangerous game, and ends with a condemnation of the interviewee as being "guilty".

There's no such thing as an anti-war movie, and there's no such thing as a piece like this that isn't ultimately a fluff piece. You're humanizing the subject and making them more sympathetic, regardless.

# ? May 8, 2023 15:16

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

fizzy posted:

I read this article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that the interviewee is a sociopath who hunts the most dangerous game, and ends with a condemnation of the interviewee as being "guilty".

Just because they acknowledge the facts of the crimes doesn't mean its not a puff piece.

# ? May 8, 2023 15:22

PharmerBoy: Jul 21, 2008

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

There's no such thing as an anti-war movie, and there's no such thing as a piece like this that isn't ultimately a fluff piece. You're humanizing the subject and making them more sympathetic, regardless.

While I agree with the general sentiment of "The Holmes article is a puff piece, entirely unnecessary, and better off unwritten and unpublished," the way your statement is worded comes across as we shouldn't remember the prison population/to-be-imprisoned population are human.

# ? May 8, 2023 15:39

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

fizzy posted:

I read this article. It indicates throughout, and concludes, that the interviewee is a sociopath who hunts the most dangerous game, and ends with a condemnation of the interviewee as being "guilty".

I enjoyed this even if the others didn't get the joke (or they continued it more subtly than I managed to detect, in which case I'm a moron)

# ? May 8, 2023 15:48

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

GlyphGryph posted:

I enjoyed this even if the others didn't get the joke (or they continued it more subtly than I managed to detect, in which case I'm a moron)

Oh goddamnit

e: https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1655574051287453696

Another one of these. The existing child labor laws apparently aren�t being enforced worth a drat, and they�re being rolled back even more in red states.

cat botherer fucked around with this message at 16:08 on May 8, 2023

# ? May 8, 2023 16:03

Mooseontheloose: May 13, 2003

cat botherer posted:

Just because they acknowledge the facts of the crimes doesn't mean its not a puff piece.

Did he murder 50 people? Yes. But in his way, he was charming, almost sympathetic.

# ? May 8, 2023 16:07

KillHour: Oct 28, 2007

cat botherer posted:

Oh goddamnit

e: https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1655574051287453696

Another one of these. The existing child labor laws apparently aren�t being enforced worth a drat, and they�re being rolled back even more in red states.

Why the gently caress do we live in an onion parody of the real world :cripes:

# ? May 8, 2023 16:13

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

KillHour posted:

Why the gently caress do we live in an onion parody of the real world

The employers should go straight to prison for this poo poo, none of this "fines" bullshit. Anyone working in a managerial capacity while a literal child works at a loving slaughterhouse needs to do time.

# ? May 8, 2023 16:21

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Zwabu posted:

How, as a rich person, do you get to arbitrarily and indefinitely put off a jail sentence?

Even the middle class it is very report to prison on this date in the future.

# ? May 8, 2023 16:26

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 26, 2024 10:38

Yawgmoft: Nov 15, 2004

PT6A posted:

The employers should go straight to prison for this poo poo, none of this "fines" bullshit. Anyone working in a managerial capacity while a literal child works at a loving slaughterhouse needs to do time.

Consequences for the rich is something China and Singapore do far better than most places in the West.

# ? May 8, 2023 16:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE 2023: Please let them shove a camera up your butt

«‹›797 »