Let it bleed

As some readers might know, I've been booted off Facebook for 30 days. Today is Day 14 or 15, I don't know. Nor do I really care. The break has been quite refreshing.

It has also freed up my time.

Which I have put to good use cleaning out my garage and catching up with the reading list. OK, I haven't gotten around to cleaning out the garage but as soon I am done trolling a Nigerian Con Artist offering me membership in the Illuminati, I will be.

Last week I finished John Carreyrou's riveting Bad Blood. It documents the rise and fall (a slow painful bloodletting) of Theranos, a Silicon Valley start up that started with a little prick but turned into a whole company of big pricks.

Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos CEO, set out to replicate Steve Jobs. What he had done for the 1's and 0's, she was going to do to A, B, O, and AB. Steve took the cold sterile Univac Room and turned it into something sexy and personal. Ms. Holmes was determined to the same for blood analysis labs.

A lofty goal? Of course it was, but with a limitless stream of VC cash and a heaping helping of deceit and chicanery, anything is possible.

What made the book most interesting is my second degree of attachment to the company.

You see when Theranos went to market they also went to Chiat/Day for their marketing. This was in 2013. My permalancing days at Chiat ended in 2010, but I was still being brought in to put out fires. And so I know most, if not all, the people who got swept up in this bloody mess.

And while many Theranos employees cowered before Ms. Holmes and put their paycheck ahead of their morality, it was encouraging to see many Chiat folks demanding answers and displaying some actual backbone.

It's hard not to read this book and see the outright parallels to the current Shitgibbon administration, including:

*The cult-like leader

*The intentional lying and misinformation

*The paranoia

*The inability to learn and process information

*The back-stabbing retribution

*The lack of candor

*The resistance to criticism

*The evil, outright, succeed-at-all-cost, you cross me in any way and block my access to billions of dollars and I will bend you over, fuck you from behind and chop you up like some cheap, meaningless Saudi Arabian journalist, type greed.

It's enough to make the blood boil.

Where's the Atavan?