I honestly don't know if I posted this video before. But if I don't know, how can YOU know? I've been on a bender lately with this celebrated sociopath/bloodsucker, mainly because her face in slow motion reveals everything about her. The smile in this gif/video (enhanced by recording it off my computer monitor with my old cam-corder) looks manic, if not maniacal, with the utter self-assurance and grandiosity of one convinced of her own immortality. The smile just goes on and on, unblinking, but when she DOES blink it's just as weird. It's a sort of Disney blink, the head turning minutely to one side and the curly black artificial lashes slowly fanning the air. It reminds me of those ballet-dancing ostriches in Fantasia. In fact, an ostrich would probably have more intelligence than this so-called genius. Guile she has, and cunning, but both of these are traits that cats have in abundance. And they also do that slow, predatory eye-blink that mesmerizes us so much, hypnotizing people into handing her $9 billion and breaking every regulation in the book.
In what, you may ask? Why, in human blood. For this is the currency Elizabeth Holmes deals in. These nanoclips from some of the more drooly videos about Holmes (prior to 2016, when she was finally assassinated by the truth) only add to my astonishment at the lengths she would go to in order to appear sincere. Here she is in a lab coat - and may I say, after reading Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, this woman has never been within ten miles of such a thing - earnestly at work purifying blood samples and saving humanity at the same time. For that is what she lives for. The fact that someone at Theranos would set up a dummy lab so that this dummy of a woman could pretend to be working in it isn't so surprising. What surprises me is how many people gushed over her, fawned, crowned her "the next Steve Jobs" (as if the first one wasn't bad enough. Wasn't Jobs known for stealing other people's ideas?) At any rate, I want to get off this obsession now and on to a more palatable one. But I just had to share this with you. Note her robotic movements, android face, and other less-than-human features. It scares the hell out of me, it does. Think of it. She nearly had our blood.
Blogger's note. I am sorry to confront you with so many surprising facts all at once. I will attempt to refute them as best I can. This is from an extremely out-of-date article from back when Elizabeth Holmes was telling everyone she was a genius, and they believed her. I will attempt to refute these 21 surprising facts, or at least until I run out of steam or get bored and quit. (21? Are they freaking kidding??) 21 Surprising Facts About Billionaire Entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes
See how much you really know about America's youngest female billionaire.
It's really only in the past year that we've come to know and admire the world's youngest female billionaire, Elizabeth Holmes. Her incredibly unusual business strategy had her flying under the radar for more than a decade as she built her revolutionary blood-testing company, Theranos.
("Flying under the radar" is code for "covering their asses so they won't get their asses thrown in jail".)
Now Holmes is ranked No. 1 on the Silicon Valley 100, Business Insider's list of the most prominent (and coolest) people in Silicon Valley.
Here are 21 surprising facts you may not have known about America's coolest multibillionaire: (Note. "Coolest" means what?)
Ranked No. 110 on the Forbes 400 in 2014, Holmes topped the list of America's Self-Made Women in 2015 with a net worth of $4.7 billion.
Holmes was born in 1984. Considering her already incredible achievements, that in itself is surprising to many. (Um. I was born in 1954, and nobody runs around in circles because of it. When you were born isn't all that significant when you've committed such an astonishing amount of fraud. All it proves is that it's never too soon to be a criminal.)
At just 9 years of age, Holmes wrote in a letter to her father, "What I really want out of life is to discover something new, something that mankind didn't know was possible to do."
While still in high school, Holmes completed three college Mandarin courses and sold C compilers to Chinese universities. (Lies. Lies. Lies. She wrote that letter a couple of years ago. She quotes it during absolutely every interview. "See, everybody? See how I was a selfless, burning idealist even when I was a little, little girl?")
Holmes went to Stanford for chemical engineering, and during her time there, filed her first patent (for an advanced drug-delivery patch). She then dropped out of college just before her sophomore year.
She once traveled to Singapore to spend a summer working in the Genome Institute labs on groundbreaking SARS research. (The proof? Poof!)
Holmes was exceedingly private in the first 11 years of building her company. She's made a huge splash since appearing on the cover of Fortune magazine last summer.
Her company name, Theranos, is a combination of the words therapy and diagnose. (Note. I prefer the similar term THANATOS, which is Greek for death.)
Since launching in 2003, Theranos has developed blood tests to help detect dozens of medical conditions, including high cholesterol and cancer, using just a drop or two of blood drawn from a pinprick in your finger. (No they haven't. There is no Theranos. There is no blood-testing technology. Elizabeth and her henchmen hacked a Siemens blood-testing machine and stole its data after realizing their own equipment was about as useful as a toaster.)
Part of Holmes's inspiration came from her aversion to needles; her mother and grandmother even fainted at the sight of needles. (Not true. Just theatre. Made up. Went over well with crowds. Sociopaths like to drill their way into your heart with warm-puppy, vulnerability-based bullshit.)
Holmes assembled what can be described as an all-star board of experienced and accomplished people in the corporate world: George Schultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and Bill Frist, among others. (Wait, well, that - yeah. Sugar Daddies, all. She batted her presumably-false eyelashes at them, wore tight sweaters - and by the way, those famous black turtlenecks were NOT in imitation of Steve Jobs, who wore crewnecks, which is a kind of t-shirt - and did whatever other favors they asked. Kind of makes you sick to think of 90-year-old men going all gaga over a sociopathic fake blonde.)
Holmes met Sunny Balwani, who would later become her company's COO, in Beijing the summer after her senior year of high school, during the time he was getting his MBA from Berkeley. (According to Bad Blood author John Carreyrou, Sunny Balwani is more like a bodyguard/thug or something out of a bad gangster movie. He does not possess the intelligence of a gnat. During that whole book, I never figured out what Sunny was doing there.)
Holmes is often compared to visionary Steve Jobs and told Mercury News she launched her company after "thinking about what is the greatest change I could make in the world."
Like Jobs, Holmes wears a daily "uniform" of a black suit with a black cotton turtleneck.
Holmes has set her sights on more than simply dominating the blood-testing market; she wants to create a whole new market called "consumer health technology" that will see consumers more engaged in their health care. (Oh Jesus, stop, stop, STOP! Her vacuous fake idealism is the worst of it. Holmes simply doesn't care. Nothing was real, none of it was real, and none of it bothered her in the slightest, including the very real danger that her fucked-up testing could cost human lives.)
As of last year, Holmes had 84 patents to her name (18 U.S. and 66 non-U.S.).
According to CBS News, Holmes spends every waking hour in her office and doesn't even own a TV at home. (And you believed her! In light of what we now know, I am beginning to wonder just what she did all day.)
In March this year, Holmes became the youngest person ever honored as a lifetime member by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. (Oh boy - get one of those long-arm stretch-out things with the hand on it, and snatch that award back! Horatio Alger is all about "rags to riches", but since when are riches necessarily tied to human decency?)
According to The New Yorker, Holmes "can quote Jane Austen by heart, [but] no longer devotes time to novels or friends, doesn't date, doesn't own a television, and hasn't taken a vacation in 10 years ... She is a vegan, and several times a day she drinks a pulverized concoction of cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, and celery." (I want to see that celery.)
She abstains from caffeine, limits the amount of time she sleeps, and works seven days a week (Insights by Stanford Business). (Doing what exactly?)
Holmes is notoriously secretive, and while she's been criticized by industry peers as such, insists she must protect her technology from the prying eyes of competitors. (And. You know what else. Didn't work out, did it, Elizabeth?)
PUBLISHED ON: JUL 1, 2015 How things change in only a handful of years!
Yes, the candidate's a dodger, yes, a well known dodger
Yes, the candidate's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger too
He'll meet you and treat you and ask you for your vote But look out boys: he's a dodgin' for a note,
Yes, we're all dodgin', a dodgin', dodgin', dodgin
Yes, we're all dodgin' out away through the world
Yes, the preacher he's a dodger, yes, a well known dodger
Yes, the preacher he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger too
He'll preach you a gospel and tell you of your crimes
But look out boys: he's a dodgin' for your dimes
Yes, we're all dodgin', a dodgin', dodgin', dodgin
Yes, we're all dodgin' out away through the world
Yes, the lover he's a dodger, yes, a well known dodger
Yes, the lover he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger too
He'll hug you and kiss you and call you his bride
But look out girls: he's a tellin' you a lie.
Yes, we're all dodgin', a dodgin', dodgin', dodgin'
Yes, we're all dodgin' out away through the world
This isn't actually about the internet at all. Except that it is. This is one of Aaron Copland's beloved Old American Songs. These are loosely based on old folk songs that are thought to be anonymous (or written by that well-known composer, Arthur Unknown). To me, a lot of them sound suspiciously like Stephen Foster, especially the one that always moves me to tears, Long Time Ago. To hear William Warfield sing that delicate bit of musical incandescence is to truly be transported to another time and place, when people were different.
Or were they? This song seems to have been written as a sort of brash but good-natured political satire, a protest against the corruption that seems to have been around forever, trickling down from government to the most intimate areas of our lives I don't need to tell you what "dodgin'" is, though today we might say scamming, spamming, trolling - all the different names for fraud.
The song is about insincerity as a way of life, and how ubiquitous it is. It's pretty cynical as it moves from political candidates (whom we all know are crooked) to preachers "dodgin' for your dimes" (has anything changed here?), to - the worst of all, the most painful - the lover: "He'll hug you and kiss you and call you his bride/But look out girls: he's a-tellin' you a lie."
The only thing that saves this song from cutting sarcasm is the shrugging insistence that "we're all dodgin', out away through the world." Arthur Unknown seems to be saying we all have something of the scam artist in us, a necessary survival mechanism that often seems to work a lot better, and cost us a lot less, than honesty and sincerity. But then, displaying those qualities requires a mixture of foolishness and courage that most people just aren't up to, these days.
Instead, we see what we can get away with. Everyone's doing it, aren't they? Myself, I have paid far more dearly for my honesty than for my occasions of dishonesty. Often, a lie is what people would rather hear. All this proliferates on the internet like seething bacteria in a polluted sea. It's the ideal medium for dishonesty, and just look at how well it has done! As usual, its shining initial promise has pretty much collapsed into mediocrity and outright danger. It's just not safe to trust any more. Integrity struggles, surfaces like a dolphin, goes down again. I don't know what the end of this is. I can't even end this post! But I know it's a good song, and I'm going to go listen to the rest of them now.
ADDENDA. The roots of the song:
"The Dodger Song" is a 19th-century American folk song. Aaron Copland wrote an arrangement for it as part of Old American Songs, a collection of arrangements of folk songs. "The Dodger" was apparently used as a campaign song to belittle Republican James G. Blaine in the 1884 Presidential election between Blaine and Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate. Cleveland had won the support of progressives by his fight against Tammany Hall in New York. The version known today is based on a Library of Congress recording by Mrs. Emma Dusenberry of Mena, Arkansas, who learned it in the 1880s. It was transcribed and first published by Charles Seeger in a little Resettlement Administration songbook.
SPECIAL BONUS VERSES! There's more to this song than you think.
Oh, the candidate's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, Oh, the candidate's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger too. He'll meet you and treat you and ask you for your vote, But look out, boys, he's a-dodgin' for your vote. We're all a-dodgin', Dodgin', dodgin', dodgin', Oh, we're all a-dodgin' out the way through the world.
Oh, the lawyer, he's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, Oh, the lawyer, he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too. He'll plead your case and claim you for a friend, But look out, boys, he's easy for to bend.
Oh, the preacher, he's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, Oh, the preacher, he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too. He'll preach the gospel and tell you of your crimes, But look out, boys, he's dodgin' for your dimes.
Oh, the merchant, he's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger Oh, the merchant, he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too. He'll sell you goods at double the price, But when you go to pay him you'll have to pay him twice.
Oh, the farmer, he's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, Oh, the farmer, he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too. He'll plow his cotton, he'll plow his corn, But he won't make a livin' as sure as you're born.
Oh, the sheriff, he's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, Oh, the sheriff, he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too. He'll act like a friend and a mighty fine man, But look out, boys, he'll put you in the can.
Oh, the general, he's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, Oh the general, he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too. He'll march you up and he'll march you down, But look out, boys, he'll put you under ground.
Oh, the lover is a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, Oh, the lover is a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too. He'll hug you and kiss you and call you his bride But look out, girls, he's telling you a lie.
Blood magnate Elizabeth Homes tries to defend herself in the wake of the Theranos (thanatos?) scandal. Note how different her facial expressions are, the eyebrows going up and down, the once-proud head tilting and bowing, the big sorrowful "how COULD you?" eyes. She looks like a little girl called into the principal's office. Abusers often try to turn it around so that they are the victim: it's part of their inherent narcissism. The system fed this woman and her schemes, exalted and inflated and lionized her to the point that she blew up like a balloon, then finally popped.
(Or not. She is just as likely to work an elaborate con in prison. You CAN kid a kidder, and you can con a con, especially if you've had this much practice.)
Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2014
Born
Elizabeth Anne Holmes February 3, 1984 (age 34) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Elizabeth Anne Holmes (/hoʊmz/; born February 3, 1984) is the founder and former CEO of Theranos, a privately held company known for its false claims to have devised revolutionary blood tests that used very small amounts of blood. She is under indictment by the United States Department of Justice for wire fraud.In 2015, Forbes named Holmes as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world due to a $9 billion valuation of Theranos.The next year Forbes revised the value of her interest in Theranos to zero dollars, given an updated $800 million valuation of Theranos and the fact that many of Theranos' investors hold preferred shares and so would be paid before Holmes (who holds common stock) in a liquidation event).
Blogger's note. I found this about as plausible as the video from a couple of years ago with the crickets slowed down to sound like an angel choir. I soon found an actual recording of crickets slowed down, and it sounded like. . . crickets slowed down. When you look at the size of the grains relative to each other, you realize it can't be sand at all, but a combination of shells and unusually-shaped, colorful stones.
But hey! I'm playing internet party pooper here. Everyone is exclaiming over these things! To see the world in a grain of sand, and an angel choir in a goddamn bunch of insects The ones on the bottom look like fucking CELERY, for God's sake! And a lobster claw.
Here is an actual photo of sand magnified 250 times (pretty close). Compare and contrast.
Good morning, gentle readers. Since I must constantly keep you updated and informed on the fascinating details of my dull, disappointed life, here's two cents' worth of stuff on a phenomenon you may or may not have heard of. It's called "other". You may have heard of catfishing (or "catphishing", a more accurate term) in which someone on social media assumes the identity of an imaginary person, hooking in somebody who is lonely, vulnerable and easily deluded. This happens for obvious sexual, emotional and/or financial purposes which are always self-serving, and sometimes sadistic. It happened to Meri Brown of Sister Wives, no less, and a watered-down version of it happened to me, sort of, but I wasn't aware of it for years. I don't get a lot of FB messages except from one person, a close friend I keep in touch with because he has been sick lately and not given to talking about it unless I ask him. Then I read a post from another FB friend which said something like, "I don't know if you're aware of it, but your Facebook messages have a category called 'other' which functions like a junk email/spam file. It automatically files suspicious messages and isn't obvious to access. Most people don't even know about it." I just had to find out what this was about.
There were a few dozen messages, some of them of the "unclaimed money" variety where you only have to send the person $5000.00 to get your billion-dollar "lost" inheritance. Some were nonsensical, and a few were generic "hi, let's be friends" messages that hoped to snag me very easily, the hook being barely baited. I've picked out a few favorites. Some of these went back several years because I simply didn't know they were there: it's not obvious at all, and as with so many Facebook features, you have to be born knowing about it, unless you're me. Then you never find out until it's too late.
2 mutual friends: Genni Gunn and Linda Clay
I do everything at I AM A GENERAL CONTRACTOR
June 29, 2012 11:27 pm
HELLO PRETTY LADT I WAS JUST PASSING WHEN I SEE YOUR WONDERFUL BEAUTIFUL FACE I WAS CATIVATED IF YOU DONT MINE CAN WE BE FRIENDS
This has got to be one of my favorite Facebook messages ever. Never before have I been called a "PRETTY LADT", and I never will be again. These things are sent out in bulk in the hopes that one in ten thousand might "bite", take the bait, be completely convinced this guy (? Could be anyone) is interested in her personally, is truly "CATIVATED" (speaking of "catfish" - maybe this was an encoded warning of sorts). And I have to admit, I "DON'T MINE", never have mined and probably never will mine because I simply don't have the equipment. This reminds me of something from the old TV series WKRP, in which someone filled out a dating service form with hobbies that included "logging", a much more rugged activity than low-impact running. There are usually details to pad out the profile and give an impression of prosperity, reliability, whatever. A "GENERAL CONTRACTOR" who does "everything" (including a lot of vulnerable women) must seem like a good thing: this is a self-employed, financially solvent guy who writes all in caps and can't spell.
hi,
my name is Grace, i saw your profile and i became interested to know more about you, please can you give me the chance to know more about you? i will be very happy to be your good friend . this is my private E_mail ( babegrace222 (@) yahoo.co.uk )
PLEASE DON'T REPLY ME HERE. CONTACT ME THROUGH MY PRIVATE E_MAIL, SO THAT I WILL SEND YOU MORE PRIVATE PICTURES ( babegrace222@yahoo.co.uk )
You and Justine Favour aren't connected on Facebook Lives in Kharkov, Ukraine Now this one is really strange. Why would a person named Grace (not a friend, of course) take special notice of my profile, saying she "became interested to know more about you" (then repeating the phrase)? The "babegrace222" alone is very strange and emanates the possibility of porn-y pictures. But then there is that "PLEASE DON'T REPLY ME HERE" which is in urgent caps, and the reference to "MORE PRIVATE PICTURES" - ay ay ay! What sort of private pictures, and how much do they cost? (But remember she wants to be my "good" friend, so it must be OK). But the strangest thing of all is that this message isn't from "babegrace222" at all, but someone named Justine Favour who is NOT on my Facebook page and lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. If she exists at all, I very much doubt her name is Justine Favour.
Chat Conversation Start
April 16, 2013 9:30 am
Hi, How are you doing? hope you are doing great..Iam John, from Austin,Texas.Am 9year widower,i live with my pet dogs wamma and sandy. I need a long term relationship a woman who will love me for whom Iam..caring,loving,nice.passionate,romantic honesty,with a great sense of humor.sure,Am a gentle man,caring,lovely,respectful,passionate,romantic,good manners with a great sense of humor.distance doesn't matters in any relationship,what matters is the heart and love shared.i love traveling,going to the beach,playing pool games,camping,fishing,drawings,watching movies and sunset. you caught my attention.i will love to know more about you..keep safe and God bless. John,
This is the closest thing to classic catfishing I've ever received. Probably sent by some cash-strapped middle-aged woman desperate to squeeze someone (anyone!)so she can pay her overdue bills and her drug dealer. Every detail in this thing has been stage-managed: the up-front phony well-wishes, the mention of living in Austin, Texas (somehow a solid, wholesome-sounding place),and the nine years being a widower - such a long, long time to be lonely and bereaved (though he has two dogs, golden retrievers who bound around their master, eager for a walk to go score some wallets in the park).
He immediately states what he "needs", "a woman who will love me for whom Iam"(sic). He then goes on to list his reams of good qualities, many of them repetitive. "Loving" and "lovely" may have been conflated, unless he truly is lovely (a slip?). The really revealing statement is "distance doesn't matters in any relationship". This is always a red flag in social media, because it places the other person at a safe (unsafe) remove. If you never look into the other person's eyes (and the photos they send might be of George Clooney's better-looking brother), you never catch their vibes, see into them and figure out if they are sincere. It goes on and on. "You caught my attention" has a generic feel, and notice he never uses my name. "Caught" has squirmy connotations when applied to catfishing. And it's doubtful he even looked at my profile picture because they're often abstracts, landscapes and pictures of Harold Lloyd. The activities he enjoys, take note, mostly don't cost much, so he's cheap. "Sunset", the last activity mentioned, doesn't cost anything at all. "Keep safe and God bless" is the ultimate irony, because if you in fact answered this thing, I doubt very much that you would be on safe ground. A couple of these things had apparently disappeared on me, leaving me wondering just how bad they might be, or who was policing it in the first place:
This message has been temporarily removed because the sender's account requires verification.
You and Loquilla Loca aren't connected on Facebook
Loquilla Loca. Hmmmmm.
Dear Facebook friends, I hope everyone had a nice weekend! This is just a friendly reminder that tomorrow night -- April 24 -- Honoria Birdsong will launch her second collection of short stories, Bad Dope, at the Dakota Tavern (249 Ossington Avenue), and we want you to celebrate with us! Author Kathryn Krackenburger will interview Birdsong live on stage, and copies of Bad Dope will be available for purchase (and autographing!). Plus, it's just nice to have any excuse to go to the Dakota, isn't it? Be there any time after 7 p.m. It's totally free, too! This book launch just gets better and better! -- Neville Tuesday, Publicist, Handcrank Books
Sorry, folks, I had to include this one (with certain details changed to protect ME) which came in and was promptly filed under "other", even if it isn't strictly catfishing. But it is, most definitely, junk mail. Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Let me tell you just why this offends me so much. I was briefly in an online a "writer's group" (a contradiction in terms, I've always felt) that was based exclusively in Toronto, with the writers doing more nasty, whispering playground-talk and backstabbing than anyone ever did on FB. Most of it involved slagging writers from anywhere but Toronto, a kind of blood sport. I mentioned doing some contract work for a textbook press and was sniggered and sneered into the ground: "oh well, I guess if you want a paycheck that badly", "cheap outfit, shitty pay", and worse.
This gooey invitation-thing reeks of exclusivity and pathetic CanLit insularity: we seem to think we're big shit, and sadly, we are not.("Plus, it's just nice to have any excuse to go to the Dakota, isn't it?" Oh, my goodness, he's from Toronto so he must be right!)Myself, I thought the Dakota was where John Lennon got shot, but no, it's in that only-place-in-Canada-to-be-a-writer-of-any-importance, Toronto. I was grateful to see the event was "totally free" - I've never heard of anyone with the audacity to charge people for a book signing, but in Toronto, one never knows. (And I never knew there were degrees of "free": partially free, 75% free, totally free?). While I am the first to admit that "this book launch just gets better and better" (didn't anyone tell this guy he's trying too hard? But this is what Toronto authors sound like now), I am also quite eager to pass, since they probably do a retinal scan at the door to make sure you're not from Vancouver.
It ended up in "other", folks. It's a piece of junk, a mass mailing that never should have come to me at all. I'm not about to hop a plane and spend a couple thousand dollars to go see Honoria Birdsong push her dope book. Sorry. Please go fishing for someone else.
.jpg)
