• Nathan Fielder's documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is a bona fide hit.
• The film, "You Can See Everything," grossed $15 million in its opening weekend in the US and Canada.
• It offers a revealing portrait of Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors.

Nathan Fielder's nearly three-hour documentary about disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes is running up numbers at the box office.

The film, "You Can See Everything," grossed $15 million in the US and Canada during its opening weekend, according to A24, the film's distributor.

That's the best opening weekend for a documentary this year. "Melania" had the second-biggest opening weekend for a documentary after its release in January. It grossed $7.1 million.

The film's financial success is matched by viewer reception, too. It scored a whopping 99% among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie-rating site, and a 98% among regular audiences.

Directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the picture offers a remarkably revealing portrait of Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors with her blood-testing company, Theranos.

Theranos was at one point valued at $9 billion. It said its product could run hundreds of medical tests using just a pinprick of blood from a finger, but investigations revealed the company was using expensive lab equipment to surreptitiously run the tests.

Holmes, as the company's CEO, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison after journalist John Carreyrou published a withering investigative report in The Wall Street Journal, sparking what eventually became criminal charges.

Business Insider's Henry Chandonnet has seen the film twice so far. He called it "one of the most shocking, revelatory, and oddly funny films" he'd ever witnessed.

"It was twisty and worthy of seeing with fresh eyes," Henry reported.

A Comissão Política Distrial do Partido Social Democrata de Beja, presidida por Gonçalo Valente, emitiu um comunicado no qual afirma ser de “uma profunda irresponsabilidade e falta de noção” a atitude da CIMBAL – Comunidade Intermunicipal do Baixo Alentejo, “completamente alarmista e servilista” e diz que “se tivesse procurado conhecer as razões que levaram Tancos a receber a escola de pilotos e não Beja, entre outras opções, não tinha feito a figura que fez.”

Diz o PSD Beja que a CIMBAL é um “organismo que deveria servir os interesses do território e não se comportar como um braço armado do Partido Socialista” e que por colocarem estes interesses partidários à frente da região que nunca fomos respeitados enquanto território pelo poder central”, com as consequências que se conhecem.

Prosseguindo, esclarece o líder do PSD Beja, que a Base Aérea de Beja é, “atualmente, a maior Base da Força Aérea”, que nela encontram-se sediadas “as principais Esquadras de aeronaves e helicópteros, além de simuladores, que garantem a formação de pilotos KC390”.

Seguidmente argumenta que: “A utilização permanente do espaço aéreo em Beja pela Força Aérea, não é compatível com a utilização do Aeródromo para a formação de pilotos com alta intensidade, por uma empresa como a Lufhtansa Tecnics. A presença desta implicaria o fim da utilização para fins militares nos actuais termos.”

Ou seja, a instalação desta Escola de Pilotos em Beja, implicaria o encerramento da Base da Força Aérea. E essa “seria uma opção inaceitável, fortemente lesiva do interesse nacional e local.“

E tendo em conta as suas características “optou pela aposta industrial para Beja, que beneficiando da Base Aérea como polo aglutinador, deverá transformar-se num dos principais clusters aeronáuticos de Portugal.

Beja foi por isso escolhida para a instalação de uma unidade de produção de aeronaves militares A29 Super Tucano (por acaso não vi nenhum comunicado da CIMBAL a felicitar esta decisão), com concretização para breve, garantindo a criação de postos de trabalho altamente qualificados e melhor remunerados, que se vai traduzir em forte fator de dinamização económica, coesão e fixação de pessoas e outras empresas na região”, destaca o PSD Beja no seu comunicado.

Portanto, “a escolha de Tancos para a instalação de uma escola de pilotos da Lufthansa assentou em critérios de racionalidade. Ao contrário do que sucede com o Aeródromo Militar de Beja, o Aeródromo Militar de Tancos é uma infraestrutura do Exército que está subaproveitada, necessita de fortes investimentos que serão assegurados pela Lufthansa e tem ampla disponibilidade de espaço aéreo.”

Consequentemente, se “a aposta na formação civil de pilotos, assente em critérios de lógica e racionalidade recaiu em Tancos, a aposta de industrialização e reforço do cluster aeronáutico, disputada por muitos outros distritos recaiu em Beja, com grande vantagem para ambas as regiões e perspetiva de desenvolvimento integrado do País.”

A rematar diz o PSD Beja no comunicado subscrito por Gonçalo Valente que este comunicado repõe a “a verdade dos factos”. E demonstra profunda gratidão “ao governo, pela forte aposta industrial que decidiu efetuar em Beja.”

Not long after the death of his father, Derek Askey, a new father himself, is selected as an alternate juror for a murder trial. The experience upends the typical vulnerability and openness of his life: Askey, under court order, cannot speak with his wife about the random violence heaped upon him, yet nevertheless worries about what his infant son “received from me” during his wordless days in the courtroom. He must withstand the gruesome details of the criminal trial, yet will not be allowed to participate in the jury’s deliberations. His personal essay is a challenging exploration of enforced silence, and the ways in which we seek to unburden ourselves through voice.

Before the trial, the other would-be jurors and I were asked our names, our occupations, whether we had spouses or children, and whether we could be impartial regarding the case, in which a man was being accused of murdering his girlfriend. At first I was curious to hear other people’s answers—Oh, wow, that guy fixes airplanes?—but curiosity quickly gave way to numb shock at how many people’s lives had been touched by domestic violence or murder. Or both. People you see every day. People who fix airplanes. One man said that, when he was little, his dad had beaten his mother; if he was being honest, he didn’t think he could be unbiased. The man was dismissed, and a woman was called up from the uncomfortable wooden pews to face the same interrogation. She had been attacked herself, she said. Some women had sisters, sisters-in-law, or best friends who’d been hit by a spouse or boyfriend.

In mid-August, The New York Times lost a defamation lawsuit in Alabama. It’s the first such case the paper has lost in more than half a century. Back in 2023, the Times reported that a University of Alabama basketball player named Kai Spears was at the scene of a fatal shooting—information that turned out to be false, and based on a single anonymous source. A jury found the paper liable for damages to the tune of $9.25 million. Ryan Phillips, the only reporter to attend the duration of the defamation trial, describes the experience:

Chief among the post-publication issues was the Times‘ reluctance to issue a correction or retraction when it became immediately clear that Witz’s anonymous source had been wrong in their assertion that Spears was in Miller’s car during the shooting.

The jury heard lengthy testimony about how the newspaper published “updates” in the form of “Editor’s Notes” to the online story to reflect each new denial coming from the University of Alabama, UA Director of Athletics Greg Byrne, Spears’ father, and then the Alabama walk-on himself in an Instagram post.

Apart from the updates, which the Times argued were tantamount to a correction when applying Alabama law to the evidence, the story remained unchanged until an official correction was eventually published by The New York Times on June 3, 2023.