a review of 滴血成金：硅谷血检大骗局

henry kissinger calling elizabeth's board meetings (and i quote) "a human rights violation" is grotesquely on the nose for a literal genocidal war criminal. the rest of the documentary is full of equally bizarre quotes from a wide range of psychopaths, including of course, elizabeth holmes herself. this is strange territory. it seems from a behavioral standpoint, and also from a journalistic standpoint, that it probably is not possible to make a documentary "about theranos" or "about elizabeth holmes" because both of these things are such monumental frauds. we know some facts about where reality deviates from claims, and those facts are included in this documentary...but this hits me more like a study of psychopathic entrepreneurs, or a documentary about the whistle blowers who helped ultimately hold elizabeth accountable, or a condemnation of silicon valley slash american capitalism than it does a documentary about elizabeth or about theranos. she's certainly a real person in the sense that she seems to have consciousness and most or all of the usual human organs contained inside a skeletal system, a muscular system, and a skin sack (scientific terminology). but the fact that basically her entire personality is comprised of antisocial behavior and tendencies kinda begs the question of what actually defines humanity. i have a strong hunch that there probably are not many (if any) other species where individual beings of that species display such aberrant behavior. it's also interesting to ponder why, of all the thousands of psychopaths who hold the title of ceo at american corporations, the deeply fucked behavior of this one woman is so captivating and shocking to us. the ceos of chevron, anthropic, google, microsoft, boeing, et al. likely do more harm to humanity every single day than this woman did cumulatively. as a raging feminist, it is tempting to be like "society thinks it's fun to villainize this 'normal', seemingly well adjusted, cute woman", but i know that's too simplistic, so i'll resist entertaining that any longer. i'm not really sure what makes it so captivating, but honestly, it kinda is. going to see the nathan fielder version of this tomorrow against all my better judgement. i don't know how nathan fielder, an almost certain malignant narcissist, would succeed at making any type of interesting art about a fellow pathological human...but a lot of people sure seem to think he did do that. i think more likely people are conflating an interesting story with interesting art. we shall see.