"15 years ago" is funny, because Siri couldn't even do either of those functions on desktop 7 years ago [1]. It's crazy how they've managed to do nothing with a winning hand.

[1] https://reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9q7ugf/it_is_truly_absur...

> Perhaps there is more damning evidence.

Do you consider the announcement from her publisher that she admitted that she plagiarized passages as a damning response or damning evidence?

It's also not just her wealth but her personality. For better or for worse, someone as headstrong as her attracts a certain type of person, and the article showed that even her own husband was afraid of getting involved...

> Bi’s husband focused on stabilizing the family, a move he credits with saving their marriage. He blamed the hospital, not Smith, but told me that the litigation is “her grieving process.” He tried to stay out of the legal stuff so that Bi couldn’t blame him too.

I honestly feel bad for the family, because I've heard many stories about this type of familial dynamic from children who grew up inside them...

Cluely should reach out to him for a sponsorship deal.

Yeah, I'm surprised someone who's been working at over 50 companies in only 3 years wasn't caught sooner. Some of the stories are wild enough that they had to have been shared with others at the time.

Founders don't like to go around advertising that they got tricked by a scammer. They're trying to impress everyone and raise money. Telling the whole world that you got scammed is not a good look.

Years ago I was hired as an Engineering Manager at a small company, within about the first month on the job I had to have the awkward conversation about firing two of the employees on my team.

See it turned out that the boss worked remote 4-1/2 days of the week, and the employees were in office.

One would show up at 10, take 2 hour lunch around 11.30 and leave around 2.30. He did not work remote. This employee was as always behind on his work.

Second wasn’t even a programmer. He just lied on his resume and got the job over beers and a handshake. He was a graphics designer, he played off a few WordPress template installs as his portfolio.

To keep a story short, the owner spent months doing everything but firing the two employees, demanding I try to teach the designer some computer science and ignored the other scammer. He refused to believe he paid these men 6-figures for years on end. That I must be coming in here to lie and wreck his company, that I left my cushy high-frequency trading job to ruin his startup.

When I asked the sole good engineer on the team what in the hell was going on at this company she simply told me “Oh, the old manager just did all the work for the other two guys since he was their buddy and hired them originally.”

It doesn't have to be the whole world, just their inner circle. If people are that reluctant to admit fault (50 times!), then that's a dismal statement on how often we see truth in society overall.

I've always been suspicious about how many brand-name products that I wouldn't give a second thought about in a store were marked as D or F.

10+9

He's 7.

How would you describe the local cultural opportunities in your area?

Different than what's in a city, and generally not as enjoyable if you're just passively consuming it. Lots of motorsport (auto manufacturing was huge in the area, very long tradition of it), fishing/hunting, local music (some styles represented better than others, but that goes for everywhere), hobbyist heavy industry. There's definitely plenty of other stuff going on that I just haven't heard about. Pretty often I run into situations where I'm talking to somebody about a new interest and they say "yeah, there's actually plenty of that going on, look into/talk to X, Y, or Z". Not so much culinary or visual/fine arts stuff happening, so if you're looking to participate/collaborate as far as that goes, I can tell you off the top of my head that the area would be a bad fit.

If you're looking to be involved in culture for just a few hours at a time by going to a restaurant or show and not being involved much past that, you're going to be painfully bored here. I don't think doing that is a moral shortcoming or anything like that, but there are a lot of people that are doing that, don't realize it, and misinterpret the lack of opportunities to do so outside of a large city as that place just not having any culture at all.

I don't want to sound like I'm victim-blaming here, but the reality is there's no free lunch. Investments are not risk-free, and, as you've discovered, there's a reason you got these properties at such a low cost. It seems like your real estate situation can't go on like this forever, right?

> selling my properties would be a ruinous move letting go of my most valuable assets that are the only toe hold I have in this economy, and may threaten my ability to become a homeowner potentially ever again, depending on how this economic future plays out.

Despite these negatives, it's possible that selling is the financially-smart thing to do. Keeping your properties may also be a ruinous move that could cost your ability to become a homeowner ever again. It's unfortunate, but it sounds like you need to choose whichever is the lesser of two evils and stick with it.

> If i was bestowed some gift of capital, I could complete the renovations and make the house income-producing.

As an alternative, if this is actually true, then you'd be the perfect candidate for a loan against your house. People commonly get emotional around housing and debt, but there's no room for that when you're struggling to survive.

I know someone in the Bay Area AI-adjacent community who went through that exact rapidly-escalating psychotic break in a highly visible and well-documented fashion. This started last year, and he's now in jail. The risk only increases from here :/