March 25 th – March 31 st 2019In general news, Theresa May seems to be out as the PM of the UK as Parliament cannot agree upon a BREXIT plan. The conclusion of the Mueller investigation dominated the news, as the Democrats, and their propaganda arms in the media, scrambled to spin it all as they being victims of bad information for two-years. Meanwhile, President Trump took the victory tour to Michigan for huge crowds. Within the Democrat party, the internal wars continued. The Obama’s, thinking they control the fate of the party, smeared Joe Biden to help out Kamala Harris. They also orchestrated the dropping of all charges against Jussie Smollett, trying to make him a martyr, which backfired as even Saturday Night Live mocked him.In healthcare news, Ebola in Africa. On the campaign trial, the Democrats quickly pivoted away from the Mueller investigation and toward healthcare reform.
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Apr 1, 2019 - Elizabeth Holmes isn't the only one using a fake voice, and you. Long she can't even remember what her normal voice sounds like anymore.
And Mick Jagger had to undergo emergency medical treatment (which sounds like CABG for LAD?).In healthcare business news, Centene (CNC) WellCare (WCG) for $15 B. Bayer and JNJ settled Xarelto only $775 Million. Duke University settled claims that is created fraudulent research data to win grants (Recall, the head of the FDA was Robert Califf, who oversaw the research at Duke). Finally, Purdue Pharma settled with Oklahoma’s AG for $270 Million over Oxycontin addiction litigation.On the data front, Proteostasis (PTI) tanked on failed studies of triplet therapy to treat cystic fibrosis. It Phase 1 study of PTI-801 (CFTR corrector), PTI-808 (CFTR potentiator) and PTI-428 (CFTR amplifier), and separate studies of PTI-801 and PTI-428 as add-on therapies to background Symdeko made by Vertex (VRTX).From the FDA, dangerous breast implants are in the news again.
Reports that they cause lymphoma.
There are many, in the story of Elizabeth Holmes, but my favourite is her voice. Holmes, the ousted Theranos founder who was indicted last year on federal fraud charges for hawking an essentially imaginary product to multi-millionaire investors, pharmacies, and hospitals, speaks in that, as it turns out, is allegedly fake.Former co-workers of Holmes told, a new podcast about Theranos’s downfall, that Holmes occasionally “fell out of character” and exposed her real, higher voice — particularly after drinking. (Holmes’s family recently, insisting her voice is naturally low, just like her grandmother’s.)In the new Theranos, The Inventor, Holmes’ baritone is on full, strange display. There is a moment in which the camera person filming Holmes for an earlier interview segment asks her what her favourite Star Wars sound is (?), and she says Yoda.
The cameraman then asks her to do Yoda’s voice, and for a moment, I held my breath. She pauses, and then, in the same deep mumble, recites: “Do or do not, there is no try.”In the new Theranos, The Inventor, Holmes’ baritone is on full, strange display.If you hunt around online, you can sometimes find YouTube videos in which Holmes can be heard using that real voice before catching herself and deepening it, but these videos have a tendency to be after a day or two. This, of course, only makes me more interested.
Holmes is obviously guilty of many more serious crimes, but faking one’s voice is just weird, and embarrassing, in much the same way that bad toupees are: they place one’s bodily insecurities centre stage. Plus, now she’ll have to do this voice for the rest of her life (?), and it’s all I can think about. The internet’s reaction to the podcast, and to, John Carreyrou’s book about Theranos, suggests.Personally, the episode has brought me back to an equally thrilling (if smaller) faked-voice scandal, in which a former co-worker of mine, after speaking in a straightforward East Coast accent for more than a year, suddenly developed an accent she labelled British, but which sounded more Australian. Nobody knew what to do, except gossip profusely. I still wonder about that co-worker, and I expect I will for the rest of my life.
Ditto Elizabeth. So in order to better understand people like them (voice-fakers), I talked to Jillian O’Connor, an assistant professor of psychology at Concordia University voices’ influence on others’ perceptions.Perhaps the most important thing to remember, O’Connor tells me, is that people generally do the things they do because they believe the benefits greatly outweigh the costs. In other words: Holmes (and my co-worker, supposedly) had her reasons, even if they don’t make sense to the rest of us. Namely: she thought it would achieve the desired effect of making her seem like a Silicon Valley visionary, says O’Connor.“This whole Holmes situation, the image manipulation, dressing like Steve Jobs, trying to sound a particular way — it sounds like an awful lot went into facade,” she says.Given the many millions of dollars invested in Holmes’ non-functioning blood box, her effort was worth it, at least for a time. O’Connor says the research backs the effort behind Holmes’s baritone, too: “Some of we’ve worked on shows that when men and women deliberately lower their voices, it’s actually successful,” she says.“They do sound more dominant. They do sound more likely to be someone who’s in a position of power.”This belief, of course, is rooted in sexism, and the idea that men (and especially hyper-masculine men) are, and certainly not feminine ones. There are seemingly fewer scenarios in which a higher voice is beneficial, though women with higher voices are perceived as more fertile, feminine, and diminutive than their lower-voiced peers, which may partly explain the babygirl whisper perfected on The Simple Life.
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