They analyzed the vomit and revealed you were a squirrel.
This guy's the antithesis of the fake news bod in the previous post...
Did I miss the article that explains how Ms. Holmes was able to get this killer lineup of eminent old men to serve on her board? And why Schulz would be so dedicated to her, that his loyalty to her would supersede his feelings for his grandson?
I'm guessing it has something to do with the company having a market valuation of $9 billion at one point.
Bois Schiller lawyers reinforce my faith in humanity by providing yet more evidence that lawyers are a different life form, something in nematoda or the like presumably.
Lawyers must be the same species as we can reproduce with them. I've seen it done.
6: I wasn't sure about the timeline -- what came first, the eminent old men or the huge piles of cash?
Wasn't it determined she used her sex appeal of drastically asymmetrical eyes, or something?
Thanks to Viagra, it doesn't matter.
Now we know Step 2. As in the step between gather underpants and profit.
As I've followed the whole Theranos saga, Elizabeth Holmes has made the transition from "arrogant and incompetent" to "cartoonishly evil" with impressive speed.
Which I think is great, because I'm a feminist.
I asked my dad if he knew anything was fishy at the time. His response:
I knew the first time I heard about it that here had to be major problems because there were no publications and no independent evaluations of the underlying technology. I think most "laboratorians" from technologists up to medical directors knew or suspected as much.
In addition to technical issues, the one factor she would most likely not have been aware of was the issue that fingerstick blood is not the same as venous blood. It correlates, but it can easily have different levels of electrolytes and most other tests in chemistry and hematology, and will also vary depending on dehydration and age, as finger tips lose subcutaneous fat.
Then I asked him if he tried to short a bunch of stock options, and he said "Wouldn't have had the guts - what if it had worked?" My dad is great.
18: Your dad's not exactly a livin' on the edge kind of guy, right?
Great analysis from dad. The other obstacle to profit is that Theranos is not publicly traded.
Also, options have an expiration date. For large, liquid companies, there are options traded with expiration dates about 2.5 years out, but for smaller or newer companies, the window is narrower. You're not just identifying that the company is overvalued, but also guessing that the price will drop before too long.
Jesus Christ, Boies Schiller. Even at [REDACTED] I never heard about litigators ambushing anybody's grandchild.
Everybody is somebody's grandchild.
I know what the H. stands for in Jesus H. Christ.
23 should have been from Cain or Abel.
I know it's a lot to ask, people, but can we try to stay in our lane and out of the apocrypha today? I don't have the stomach for Trump and Middle-School Bird-Killing Jesus in the same thread.
29: For some reason I always remember him for the "U.S can't afford to be a Hamlet among nations" speech, which did its little part in ending that brief lamentable interval in modern U.S. history when "the Vietnam syndrome" caused us to hesitate in getting involved in foreign wars.
29 Pretty much. What the fuck, doesn't he have more than enough money and not much time left to live? Who the hell wouldn't tell that huckster to take a hike?
Not to defend the asshole, but given that the board was basically the Club for Aging 1970s GOP Assholes, I think his loyalty was much more to his pals than to Holmes. I mean, the whole con was complicated, but it was, for Schultz, an affinity scam, and people are notoriously defensive about those. But it's basically, "What will Henry say if my grandkid brings this whole thing down and makes us look like idiots?"
I always remember him for the "U.S can't afford to be a Hamlet among nations" speech,
Confusingly, this is nothing to do with the "strategic hamlet policy".
32: It's never too late to realize that you're stupid.
Shultz presumably had some amount of stake in the company - how much was he charged for it?
If Hamlet were strategic, he would have made himself king instead of letting the whole deal go to Norway.
36: No, Fortinbras would still have invaded. Hamlet should have just kept his mouth shut, let Claudius become firmly established as king, and then waited to inherit. Claudius didn't have any other heirs and wasn't likely to have any. And Fortinbras would never have dared invade if he'd thought he faced a unified and stable Danish regime; as it was, Claudius and Polonius were distracted by having to deal with Hamlet's lunacy and possible treason.
Are you calling my mom old?
and then waited to inherit
If only there were some example for him to use of how to shorten that wait.
the board was basically the Club for Aging 1970s GOP Assholes
When I first saw the list of board members (through a link from this site a little over a year ago) I remember thinking "Why didn't she just go ahead and name the company SPECTRE?"
I'm not even sure if brother-before-son inheritance is a thing anywhere in the world (it happens twice in Hamlet; Claudius succeeds Old Hamlet, of course, and Old Norway's younger brother takes his place rather than Old Norway's son Fortinbras) or who would have a better claim after Claudius' death, Hamlet or the hypothetical son of Claudius and Gertrude.
40: oh, killing Claudius is fine, but not right then. Wait for him to deal with the Fortinbras incursion (HASHTAG LUDLUM) first, which he seems to be doing quite well unless distracted, and then bump him off a few months later.
Doesn't the House of Saud cycle through brothers?
I think 'Choose one from this small set of family members' is a system that shows up some places -- I'm not quite remembering, but wasn't something like that the pre-Norman Invasion Saxon system? Election from a short list of eligibles?
Though largely by bloodless coup.
45: thanks for that. So Hamlet's inheritance is secure as long as he outlives Claudius, regardless of any future Little Claudii that turn up. Of course I should have remembered the Sauds.
Apparently, the Sauds are better at not stabbing each other than whatever family ran the Ottoman Empire.
That would be the Ottomans. (Well, the House of Osman.)
largely by bloodless coup.
Pouring poison in someone's ear is bloodless.
The "House of Osman" would make a good name for an opium den.
I am entertained to discover that WS Gilbert wrote a spoof of Hamlet called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" which is quite good.
True story: Until I just looked it up now, I thought the "ear poison" part was just from the Simpsons.
I don't think we ever find out how Old Hamlet gets killed. The poison in the ear is from the Murder of Gonzago.
Which Moody Hamlet wrote on instructions from his father, right?
Which he wrote, but not, I think, as his father's amanuensis. The whole "the play's the thing/ wherein we'll catch the conscience of the king" scheme is Hamlet's own idea IIRC. Which makes sense because it's not the sort of thing that Old Hamlet, who was given to fighting duels with poleaxes and was played by Brian Blessed, would have come up with. He'd have been more like "WHAT! What are you DRIVELLING ABOUT Branagh you MILKSOP! Just get a BLOODY GREAT AXE and HIT DEREK JACOBI in the head with it!"
Hamlet was born several centuries too early for his modern Danish ideas.
I just saw a fairly awesome wuxia adaption called The Banquet. It reduces the Hamlet equivalent to basically a supporting character, which (shocker!) is a huge improvement.
Actually hang on, he hints at it:
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.
Friggin' agnatic seniority. Good way to ruin a Crusader Kings 2 game. First your upstart dukes force you to change to it from primogeniture, then Old Uncle Murdery kills you and your kids. That would be okay since you'll get to play as him, but he's bad at everything except stabbin' and poisin', and being old he dies quickly. Then you end up as Loser Older Cousin We* Made a Bishop In Outer Shitholeshire So We Could Ignore. Then the civil wars come.
* Royal we obviously
...and that was me. Although I think only Ginger Yellow and I are CK2 players here.
Actually, Denmark was an elective monarchy during the period in question, in which the eldest son of the reigning monarch was usually, but not always, elected. I like Asimov's interpretation of Hamlet, in which Hamlet and Claudius are both skilled and potentially deadly rivals for the throne from the beginning, which is the main issue driving the subsequent action.
In Act V, Hamlet lists his grievances against Claudius: "He that hath killed my king and whored my mother, Popped in between th' election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life," which makes it clear that Hamlet had ambitions for the succession that Claudius had thwarted. Asimov's interpretation is that Claudius had likely taken advantage of Hamlet's absence from the country at school to arrange a quick wedding to Gertrude and secure support among the electors by this promise of continuity with the previous regime, presenting Hamlet with a fait accompli on his return. This explains Hamlet's obsession with not just the fact of his mother's marriage to Claudius but specifically the haste of it - if Gertrude had waited, Hamlet would have had a chance to campaign for the throne himself.
This also suggests that Hamlet's succession is by no means secure if Gertrude and Claudius have further children. And Claudius is clearly suspicious of Hamlet from the beginning, though he hides it well. In Asimov's interpretation, both Claudius and Hamlet are initially restrained against each other by the need to keep or gain the support of the nobility, without which Claudius cannot expect to keep nor Hamlet gain the throne. So they maneuver against each other indirectly until late in the play.
I like Asimov's interpretation of Hamlet, in which Hamlet and Claudius are both skilled and potentially deadly rivals for the throne from the beginning, which is the main issue driving the subsequent action.
Aha! I remember reading an analysis like this ages ago, occasionally wished I remember where. But I used to read a lot of Asimov, including nonfiction.
65: I play some. More of an EU man, though.
EU's mechanics feel close to the surface, so sometimes I can't suspend disbelief. Which is okay--it's still a lot of fun. But EU4 never brings out emotions that CK2 does. My conniving cousin, or rebellious duke, can feel like a real, thinking threat in a way that EU4 Austria or the Big Blue Blob of France never does.
On that note, elective monarchy sucks, too.
Democracy has some real fucking problems, let me tell you.
You know who's terrible? Economists.