I feel like I don’t use this blog for what I originally intended it to be. But, instead of letting it stagnate, I’ll do the next best thing: filler content! But between Kickstarter recommendations and musings of how fashionable duct tape purses are for men, I think the need for pointing out the existence of filler has long since passed.
I was watching a YouTube series the other day about Jan Hendrik Schön. It was one of those situations where a person keeps pathologically supporting a grand lie with impressive tenacity. I was thinking about this idea for a bit, and there are a small handful of stories that came to mind.
This is an arbitrary collection. People concoct grand lies all the time, and those incidents get cataloged in film form and YouTube form all the time. Don’t even get me started on the financial industry! In my cases, though, there’s a pattern of bigger-picture optimism. Like, well-meaning associates involved felt like they were part of something contributing to a positive moment in history (for a while at least).
The Rise, Lies, and Demise of Jan Hendrick Schön.
YouTube game reviewer turned essayist on research topics, BobbyBroccoli, has a 3 part video essay on Jan Hendrick Schön.
The story is about a researcher who fabricated data and research results in published scientific papers while at the famous research organization Bell Labs.
The story also talks about the psychological damage brought on to peers who thought they were doing something wrong because they couldn’t match these amazing results at anywhere near Jan’s pace.
The Dropout
The Dropout is Hulu’s 8-episode TV miniseries on the Theranos scandal.
I would be surprised if there’s anyone who’s not familiar with Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos incident. To recap, Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University at 19 to start Theranos, a medical company designed it to run like a technology company. At the height of the company, it was valued at 9 billion dollars – with Elizabeth Holmes being named the youngest billionaire by Forbes, at $4.5 billion dollars. Until, in a single moment where the technology was exposed as fake, and her worth was adjusted to $0.
Big adjustment.
Elizabeth Holmes is played by Amanda Seyfried. The show has great production value and a lot of great moments.
I’ve been following the Theranos situation since 2016, and there’s just so much to this story, even beyond what the show covered.
Shattered Glass
Shattered Glass is a story about The New Republic writer, Stephen Glass, who reported on sensational stories that were later found to be fabricated. All this while a new editor was put in place and politics at the magazine were causing tensions.
With Hayden Christensen playing Stephen Glass, this was probably the first time I really understood why actors worry about being typecast:
- It’s weird seeing Darth Vader (Hayden) play a journalist.
- It’s weird seeing Chloë Sevigny from Kids.
- And it’s weird seeing Steve Zahn from SubUrbia.
Something about these gals and fellas playing reporters behind a desk and computer, compared to how I recognized them from past movies. They all do a great job, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s weird.