# The Price of Shame  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything]] - Full Title: The Price of Shame - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The Thames Water scandal highlights how company management prioritizes bonuses over public accountability, even amid significant failures and public pressure. While lifts are generally safe, incidents of them suddenly shooting up can be deadly, despite their rarity. Lastly, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex creatively reimagines real places, showcasing his unique vision of the region. ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > One incident that *does* fit that profile is the story of Betty Lou Oliver, who went to work one day and found herself plunging a terrifying 75 storeys back to ground level. Even then, though, there were three mitigating factors that mean you probably don’t need to worry about repeating her experience. For one thing, this is going back a bit, to July 1945. For another, it only happened because someone had flown a USAF B25-Mitchell bomber into the Empire State Building. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jwggwtrr6p1d23nnet7jcf4b)) > Fourteen people died from that impact (three on the plane, 11 in the building). Oliver, a 20 year old elevator attendant, suffered severe burns and bone breakages when she was thrown from the elevator she was attending to at the time. She was bandaged up, placed onto a stretcher and loaded into a second lift, whereupon – this is brilliantly, and horrifically, “*[Hennimore!](https://substack.com/redirect/cd4dcda8-2d8f-4700-a891-ba1b01a57225?j=eyJ1IjoiNjJ0MzkifQ.xvmeteYUWuTW2048sY06HqWl8UGBClWNt9EFiNpuf-Q)*” – the extra weight caused its cables, weakened by the crash, to snap, sending car and Betty alike plummeting down to ground level. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jwggww7pzfy6d828j38kdqk9)) > Elisha Otis ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jwggz9bhbytvy347tnn6zxk8))