Ours is an age when very few people in public life seem to have any original ideas. Old grudges, old theories of how society or gender or diseases work. Old grifts are getting re-aired again, too. Exhibit one:
Yes. it’s her again. The Theranos lady with the fake deep voice. She’s currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for fraud, having tried to sell the world on a just-one-drop blood-testing machine that turned out to be vaporware. However, her partner, hotel heir Billy Evans, is keeping the dubious-blood-testing-device flame lit. Per the NY Times (archive.is link here with no paywall):
Billy Evans, who has two children with Ms. Holmes, is trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing,” according to marketing materials reviewed by The New York Times.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Theranos similarly aimed to revolutionize diagnostic testing. The Silicon Valley start-up captured the world’s attention by claiming, falsely as it turned out, to have developed a blood-testing device that could run a slew of complex lab tests from a mere finger prick.
Mr. Evans’s company is named Haemanthus, which is a flower also known as the blood lily. It plans to begin with testing pets for diseases before progressing to humans, according to two investors pitched on the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had agreed to keep the plans secret. Mr. Evans’s marketing materials, which lay out hopes to eventually raise more than $50 million, say the ultimate goal is nothing short of “human health optimization.”
The machine he is planning to build looks eerily like the Edison machine Holmes and her erstwhile business partner/squeeze Sunny Balwani were hawking to gullible investors like former secretaries of state George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, the Murdoch family, the DeVos family, and others. I’m sure Mr. Evans’s pitch will hook at least a few takers, in spite of his connections to a convicted fraudster.
Sometimes I think if I had no scruples I could make a quick $50 million hawking, like, rose quartz bracelets that improve your tooth enamel and your sex life by blocking 5G “radiation.” But I don’t think I could live with myself if I did. That’s the difference between me and you and these latter-day vampires: we look in the mirror and we actually see what’s there.
Open thread.
Day 6: Hardwood Installed, Sanded, Crisis on Day 3, Resolved on Day 4, 2 Finish Coats On, One More to Go
Kayla Rudbek
How are they not getting either laughed out of the room or chased out of it by angry people?
Rose Judson
PS: I have a roundup of analysis about the UK/US “trade” “deal” coming tomorrow. I was waiting for actual experts to chime in, and that takes a few days.
Anyway, fuck Elizabeth Holmes. Over and out.
@Kayla Rudbek: People don’t usually have any silver bullets or wooden stakes handy nowadays – especially not in investor meetings. Rookie error.
rikyrah
Don’t hate the player
Hate the game 😠
rikyrah
You do understand that this is the Audacity of Caucasity 😒
RaflW
NYT “If that sounds familiar, it’s because Theranos similarly aimed to revolutionize diagnostic testing.”
We are being utterly wrecked by credulousness in the press.
Theranos lady is in prison because the company actually aimed to revolutionize mark-fleecing. Or maybe not even that. Scamming people with ludicrous promises and faked products is a well worn scam, nothing revolutionary about it except it was snake-oil testing.
TONYG
I’ve long been of the opinion that many wealthy investors are among the stupidest people on the face of the earth. So, yeah, they can go ahead and invest in a diagnostic blood-testing company that’s being started by Holmes’s partner. Sure, go ahead. I think a lot of the problems with our “economy” are due to the fact that the investor class has so much money that they literally don’t care about their own money. They can lose a billion or two and still have more money than they’d ever need. An insane system.
Rose Judson
@rikyrah: Ha. true. Also, in regard to the original grift: it was a cute, blue-eyed blonde doing the talking. I’m sure fewer than 30% of the dudes she pitched to heard a word she was saying in her fake tenor voice.
MattF
Isn’t Martin Shkreli out of prison? Shkreli and Holmes should team up. So many opportunities for… financial enhancement… out here in the out-of-prison world…
Dangerman
When I think of Theranos I think of lit flame. Only hoping for second degree burns. I’m not a char kinda guy.
cmorenc
But there are many people who would do so and have shame all the way to the bank.
WaterGirl
Oh. my. god.
The balls on these people. Seriously.
RaflW
Since it’s an open thread, here’s SW Georgia tv meteorologist posting on Bookafaces. Seems he feels like he can put DOGE on blast, and that’s helpful to see
(I can’t link the photo of the graph, but it showed the diverging line of US vs. Europe modeling of weather forecast accuracy)
eclare
Hey if Gwyneth Paltrow can make millions convincing women to put rocks in their vajayjays, go for it with the rose quartz!
https://youtu.be/jd_T_IYVVV4?si=opAsrqabBS8IRjxg
eclare
@RaflW:
Good on him.
Doug R
Family Guy did an episode where they parodied 3 different prestige tv shows. “Only Murders In The Building”, “The Dropout” and “The Bear”.
The middle segment “The Dropout” has Lois as Elizabeth Holmes. Some great work by Alex Borstein on her voice.
It’s called “A Real Who’s Hulu” and should on Hulu/Disney+ by now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSMsXA6Dnbk
Phylllis
@TONYG: Yep, right up there with Katy Perry, Gayle King et al paying Jeff Bezos for the opportunity to ride on his vertical roller coaster.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
Why not both?
no body no name
@eclare:
I knew she pushed a lot of crack pot shit but I didn’t know about that one.
lowtechcyclist
I tell ya, all these morals and scruples and stuff can really get in the way sometimes, can’t they? :D
As for me, I spent enough time fundie-adjacent, you might say, during the first few decades of my Christian life, that I was long convinced that I could get rich by fleecing evangelicals. I couldn’t do it now, it’s been too long since I actually spent enough time with them to say the right things in the right way. But fifteen or twenty years ago? You bet.
But like you, I’m just not cut out to be a grifter. Too many annoying scruples.
Kayla Rudbek
@Rose Judson: vampires are obsessed with counting, after all (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmomania)
TONYG
@Rose Judson: Ha ha. That’s right. An awful lot of straight men turn off whatever limited intelligence they have when they see an attractive woman.
Kayla Rudbek
@RaflW: the inaccuracy is already here (everyone who went to Maryland Sheep and Wool this year can tell you that; forecasters said no rain until after 6 pm, thunderstorm and hailstorm blew through around 3-4 pm respectively)
Ruckus
@Kayla Rudbek:
Because not everyone is skeptical – enough.
Also because if you can’t make money legally, rationally, honestly then you likely will cheat because it takes money to live in modern life. Not as much as some believe but it does take some. And it will only get worse because there are going to be increases in the number of humans over time. It might change but there will likely be more humans, likely over the replacement numbers than less, because most humans like the process to get there. This is changing among a noticeable percentage of the population but some think we need as many as possible and that they are so great that the world should and will welcome any number of them.
laura
I would gladly invest $5.00 to watch Tyler Schultz repeatedly kick Billy Evans in the nut sac.
Hoodie
@TONYG: A friend who worked in VC once told me “you have no idea how much dumb money is out there.” It stands to reason that massive wealth inequality would lead to this simply because of span of control issues, i.e., no one person could intelligently invest that much money, even with professional help. The same friend said that it’s hard to find enough legit things to invest in. Another friend who works for the Gates Foundation says that it will be a challenge to invest all of the Gates fortune as Gates recently announced.
sentient ai from the future
i think the investors they wind up fleecing will at some level have deserved it, so all i can think of is those poor fuckin’ kids they’re raising. i grew up in a very woo-embracing family, and none of them are worth a rusty goddamn raising kids, they are all bluster and dominance even when it doesnt rise to the level of actual abuse.
trollhattan
I am WAY ahead of these posers and even have a working prototype.
You may consult my Kickstarter page for more, and the opportunity to invest. Ground floor and all.
ETtheLibrarian
Nothing illustrates Nerve like White Men.
Fools and their money are soon parted.
trollhattan
@Hoodie:
FOMO truly is one of the most powerful drugs. An equally powerful drug is “Fuck that guy, I’m going to be richer than that asshole.”
trollhattan
@RaflW:
They will 1. get people killed 2. increase property damage claims orders of magnitude (has anybody alerted the insurance industry?) 3. make life unworkable for farming and the infrastructure that supports it (irrigation districts, water purveyors, infrastructure managers–reservoirs, pumping plants, aqueducts).
Hard to point to Trump’s most damaging dismantling of government but this might be more far-reaching than whatever Junior is doing at FDA.
jimmiraybob
“…by blocking 5G “radiation.”
You’ve got to convince your marks …. I mean investors, that you are an up and coming company with a vision for the future and that you’re ahead of the game (only suckers invest in old technology cures). I suggest using 6G radiation as the hook. I think this would have longer-term profit potential. As they say, a new one’s born every minute. Maybe plug a future spinoff in the works that deals with Jewish Space Lasers.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Another example of the same phenomena is David Hogg, who apparently told Jim Clyburn to get over himself on Bill Maher’s show.
Tell me again why is he the Vice Chair of the DNC?
He went and bashed other Ds on TV.
JoyceH
Let’s not forget that the guy who marketed a product alleged to “undo” your COVID vaccine is now Director of the FBI.
Rose Judson
@jimmiraybob: Thanks, I’ll be sure to cut you in on any profits.
Raoul Paste
Vampires Walk Among Us
Stephen Miller does seem a tad pale
jonas
@Kayla Rudbek: We are a nation of extremely gullible, ignorant, and confused people.
jonas
*headdesk
Sure Lurkalot
@Hoodie:
Good advertisement for confiscatory tax rates when money hoarders accumulate too bigly. Why should Gates and his foundation get to pick and choose what they consider worthy causes for largesse?
Another Scott
@Hoodie: Sorry, I’ve (still!) got a raw spot about Gates…
Yes, what with poverty being eliminated, everyone being able to study anything that interests them, all human problems being solved, and nobody suffering from any legitimate need, that there’s nothing more that can be done with his personal $113B or his foundation’s $72B.
Of course.
It’s such a tragedy. But what are ya gonna do???
//
Grr…
Do these Gates people actually think about what they’re saying??
Google tells me that there are roughly 50M public school students in the USA. $200E9/50E6 = $4,000.00
I see a simple thing that could be done with Gates’ billions. It would make a huge difference as well. There are thousands of systems like that, in the USA and around the world, that substantial funding increases would greatly help. They don’t need fancy “new” thinking or “new” approaches with all kinds of strings that he wants to pull – they need funding.
But, no, the Foundation still spends (AFAIK) the absolute minimum – 5% – every year to keep its tax exemption.
Billionaires, and their giant foundations, are a public policy failure and should be drastically shrunk.
Grr…
[/rant]
Sorry.
Similarly, there are millions of investment opportunities out there, but too many people with too much money want giant returns for little or no risk. Life doesn’t work that way for long.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
JoyceH
@jonas: The good news is that he isn’t actually doing the WORK of being FBI Director. He just wants those sweet FBI planes for flying to fights and to visit his girlfriend.
hells littlest angel
“But that trick never works.”
“This time for sure!”
kindness
This is definitely a case of ‘for those who refuse to learn from history’. The new pitch is the same as the old pitch Theranos used.
Rose Judson
@Raoul Paste: He is something more awful. Something that reproduces via spores, I think.
bbleh
But I don’t think I could live with myself if I did. @lowtechcyclist: @cmorenc:
Bothered by an overly active conscience? Too many scruples getting in the way of making serious bank?
Introducing a REVOLUTIONARY new online therapy to REMOVE ANNOYING MORAL BLOCKAGE and FREE your creative efforts … that you can do IN THE PRIVACY OF YOUR OWN HOME!
All it takes is 8 hours, in one or several sessions, ANY time you want, and YOU will be BACK IN CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE!
YOU are one of the few people to learn about this exciting breakthrough, and this LOW introductory offer of $199.99 won’t be available for long! CLICK HERE to sign up and GET YOUR LIFE BACK ON TRACK TODAY!
Jackie
Deja Vu all over again… Sinema part deux?
I’m not happy with Fetterman, either, but we need to keep him in the fold until either he decides being a senator is not his jib, and Gov Shapiro replaces him, or PA primaries him with a STRONG candidate.
HopefullyNotcassandra
I once knew a fellow who claimed with a straight, serious face, if you stuck your hand in his box* all of your illnesses would be cured. He claimed he had many satisfied customers. He charged money to stick your hand in his box.
I wondered how he slept through the night.
* the box was a cardboard box with a lightbulb screwed inside.
Another Scott
@hells littlest angel: “Nothing up my sleeve…”
🤪
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jeffro
But you can’t, ’cause that’s MY gig…LOL
Jackie
Hmmm…
Bill Arnold
This is why phones have make-up mirror mode; the reflection-challenged are very persuasive.
/S
Gretchen
I used to be in charge of lab instrument quality control. We had inspectors come out four times a year to watch every step of testing and they would send us blind samples to test and we’d lose our license if we failed too many. I never understood why Theranos never had to do any of that and just gave values that everyone assumed were correct
trollhattan
@Gretchen:
Don’t you understand? Worshiping at twin alters of Steve Jobs and Yoda means not answering to all those bureaucrats. What do they know?
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it. It’s good that people are thinking of ways to reduce unfair and sometimes unconscious bias that has real effects on people. An economic Yes or No choice seems sensible here, and maybe in many other places.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Truth.
Ksmiami06
@RaflW: what in the liminal space time fuck? Seriously
Sally
@Another Scott: I agree. There are so many areas that desperately need funding. Why, he could just refund USAID! Or as you suggest, subsidise public education. A few years ago, Musk (spit) told the UN if they could tell him how much would it cost to bring clean drinking water to everyone on earth, he would fund it. They did a deep study, came up with strategies and numbers. Musk’s (spit) attention was elsewhere and no funding was forthcoming. Gates could do that – think of the legacy. I think the answer was well within Musk’s (spit) financial ability, and easily within Gates’. It’s only hard if you’re lying.
Barry
@Kayla Rudbek: “How are they not getting either laughed out of the room or chased out of it by angry people?”
IMHO, those investors were all in on the scam. They just thpught that they were scammers, as well.
Anonymous At Work
I’d say something about how even a pet diagnostic device has to get through FDA testing but the FDA laid off so many diagnostic device experts that they had to rehire them (like “all” since their salaries were paid by industry up-front before getting results).