Bad Blood - Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Bad Blood chronicles the tale of startup company Theranos. CEO Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford to start the company. Her premise was to produce a small machine that could produce all kinds of blood tests from a single drop of blood from a finger prick.

Normally you need to take a lot of blood from the body, and have a lab perform tons of tests requested by doctors. Holmes created a machine that in theory could analyze one variety of blood tests. But the machine was faulty. The real crime was putting the testing in production with real patients.

Plenty of employees determined that there was outright fraud going on. All were either fired or quit. They were muzzled by top lawyers for the company. Luckily a Wall Street Journal reported was tipped off and published a series of inditements against the company in his newspaper. He is the author of this book.

The Man Who Quit Money

Danielo Suelo is a guy who refuses to work for money. He does not like the monetary system at all. This does not mean that he never works. He just refuses to be paid for it. This is his way of life.

Daniel has minimal possessions. You might find him living in a cave in the wilderness. But it won't usually be that far away from a town. He likes to get leftover food that stores or restaurants want to throw away. Daniel is also sometime content to live off the land.

Suelo was brought up as a Fundamentalist Christian. He went off when older to find the secrets of God. I think he turned into an athiest. But that was not until surveying assorted religions around the world, and trying some of them out in different countries.

I do give Suelo credit that he is living the life he professes. He does live off the kindness of others, and the generousity of businesses that hand out leftovers. He does face problems when having to pay for things like dentistry or health care.

There were many highlights in this book about Suelo's life. One was when he and a new friend headed North and crossed a frozen lake to become stranded on a private island. Suelo had to swim back in icy waters, and beg the hotel owner who also owned the land for help.