EverythingIsFine
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User ID: 1043
Election night is long and pauses in the pace of reporting those results isn't that odd. AFAIK, pretty much all the states counted continuously after starting the process, and did not takes breaks (example). In other words, that's a false claim.
The consent decree didn't lead to any substantive change in policies other than notification about signature matching, and I'm not concerned overmuch about chain of custody in the sense that people can often look and see if their ballot was accepted, plus any deliberate vote-changing associated with those concerns sound wildly implausible. In terms of ballot harvesting, etc. I definitely think there's some good room for stricter laws, though I don't necessarily think for example we need to be too worried about family or close friends agreeing to physically drop off sealed ballots at drop spots as a convenience thing. Campaign affiliated people doing it as some sort of service? Bad. Generic GOTV for example making it easier for seniors to vote? I think that's fine but could use a bit of supervision or auditing or something to avoid abuse, but possibly fine.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
A guy with the job to count votes comes under national scrutiny for if he counted them well or not. He's very publicly accused of counting them badly. He is up for reelection, now a known quantity to voters, and they can ditch him for someone who also claims he counted votes badly. He is chosen by a significant margin. The assumption is, therefore, that voters must agree that he actually counted just fine. That's a fair conclusion, given how public the whole process was and the wide news coverage.
In other words, I'm claiming the opposite: if a politician does something very public and very controversial, and then afterwards is reelected, then YES, the people either agree with the controversial thing or think it wasn't that big of a deal.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
First, your specific reference to a Las Vegas lawsuit, as near I can tell, does not exist. There was this story? If that's it, the fact you are misremembering specifics that do not exist is concerning. If you mean that story, it was about a GOTV effort that offered a raffle entry to Native Americans for voting (only illegal if proof of voting is required to enter the raffle, something the news story doesn't really address) and perhaps gave gas cards to voters who were in remote locations (apparently, legal if the gas cards are used to go to the polls, so that one might be a question mark).
If vote buying actually occurred, much less if it occurred on a scale needed to actually tip an election, we would know about it. Conspiracies are easy to hide for a few people, for a few isolated cases. Conspiracies that are capable of actually tipping an election? Practically zero chance they are undiscovered.
As to the history of how the balances work: a simple google will lead you to the Oregon SoS page which will tell you:
In 2020, out of millions of votes cast, residents and local elections officials reported 140 instances of potential voter fraud. Of these 140 cases, four cases were referred to the Oregon Department of Justice and two of those are pending resolution. By comparison, in 2018 there were a total of 84 total reports of voter fraud. Two were referred to the Department of Justice.
So clearly they are on the lookout but consistently don't find much. Going farther back? "[T]he Division obtained 38 criminal convictions for voter fraud out of the 60.9 million ballots in Oregon elections cast over a 19-year period". Oregon has an extensive and well-tested system of voting by mail with very little history of issues of nearly any kind and nothing I have ever seen gives me any reason to think otherwise.
As to the legal process. Maybe you don't know how courts work? I am starting to genuinely wonder. Sometimes, a lawsuit is filed, and it's so obviously false, unsupported, or has such a disproportionate ask (or of course lack of standing/wrong jurisdiction) that a court declines to even consider it. This is not a random gut decision but a process involving often multiple hearings and submissions from lawyers. In these cases, even though nothing is publicly examined and goes through some sort of trial-like process, the judges certainly look at and study the submissions they receive. They then evaluate the submission on its merits. News organizations as well as citizens kept a close eye on these and virtually none of them panned out -- and huge majorities of people actually in the know and experts on election processes, when they actually examined these affidavits, almost always found them to be poorly researched, based on hearsay only, misunderstandings of legitimate vote counting processes, etc. All this to say, it's certainly due diligence (due process, if you want to get real technical, is a more specific term about individual rights, but I'm using it in the broadly acceptable and widely used sense of "to fully and fairly traverse the full normal procedures").
There's basically a mountain of reasons to believe that by and large the voting system works pretty darn well, and by that token I refuse to be drawn in to some off-topic epistemic debate. The whole thing just frankly reeks of cognitive distortion and confirmation bias on a massive national scale. That's why Trump never actually settles on a single list of reasons why the election was "rigged", because it wasn't evidence -> conclusion, it was "I feel like I won" -> "let's seize and publicly endorse any and all claims that match but the specifics don't matter because I am so sure I won"
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
Moving forward, yes I think it’s great to make some adjustments.
But looking backward, it is grossly insufficient to just point out theoretical or principle based concerns. You need at least some actual evidence. To my knowledge, very little if any evidence suggests that the theoretical vulnerabilities you list actually were abused.
Plus let’s assume maybe not a worst case but a bad case: that a lot of old people had people vote for them because of mail ballots. Of course that’s bad in general terms and in principle. Statistically, talking about the effect, that’s still not much of an issue though because non-coordinated fraud tends to average out, quite frankly, and it’s hard to conceive of reasonable mathematical margins that would plausibly have swung the national vote using that kind of casual fraud alone.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
Hold on. I grew up in Oregon, they have had mail in ballots for a very long time, and nothing yet has surfaced as a problem despite this worry of yours that vote-buying is possible.
I’m of the school of thought that the system is responsive enough that we can actually wait, yes actually wait until we start to see hints of an actual problem before taking action. Otherwise just let things take their normal course, that has a long history of decently functioning checks and balances.
That system, which involves judges sometimes making calls in cases that don’t allow for the full regular process to play out, due to time constraints and the nature of a national emergency, is a fine way to resolve things. Sometimes I think a few judges overstepped. That’s not okay to be upset about, but it’s also normal. Nothing was diabolical about it. And in fact despite the so-called massive weaknesses of how things played out, practically zero evidence of fraud showed up to court. Due process after the fact was followed, and that due process determined that most every allegation was either worthless or unsubstantiated.
Moreover, guess what? People in every state are still armed with democracy even now. Many but not all states have reverted parts of their covid changes. And in all states, if voters want to “tighten” (quote marks because it’s a misnomer, IMO) voting laws, they are perfectly free to vote to that effect and elect representatives who share their views to make or revert changes moving forward.
Classic example is Raffensburger in Georgia. Voters re-elected him with a significant margin. In other words, The People we’re perfectly happy with how the process went.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
What about film? You have Miyazaki of course, you have Kurosawa, a few other pretty well regarded film makers, or even a few lesser known ones that are quite thoughtful (e.g. my brother speaks highly of Hirokazu Kore-eda). Nintendo is an insanely inventive and productive company with stellar quality. Plenty of other examples... but if you don't speak Japanese, I think almost by definition it's unfair to attempt to judge the quality of the output of a country's intelligentsia. That's an absolutely massive selection and discovery bias, among many others. Certainly, if you are using Twitter as your tool of choice, that says a lot more about you than it does about a whole country.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
So... are they planning on ignoring for example all the taxes and rules about stocks? Because those rules, sadly, are complicated and hard to get rid of for a reason, only half of which is the rich like it that way (the other half is an unfortunate truth that some of the rules actually make sense to have).
I don't think that's the most likely explanation. The easier one is more factual: no matter how incompetent a military starts out, after about six months or more of war, certainly a year, even bad militaries get better at war. In terms of the troops doing the actual front line fighting. There's no inherent contradiction of a "Russia has a shit military" type narrative and "it's very hard to retake ground" one. As an aside, I watch the news very carefully and I don't agree at all that the prevailing current narrative is one of "it's NATO's fault Ukraine isn't doing better". There are ammo shortages on both sides of the war, a lot of Western reserves are pretty strained for certain types of ammo and equipment (at least, they want to keep some in reserve for themselves and not totally empty out the shed), and Ukraine has of course found that acting like a petulant child who wants more more more, kinda sorta works? They have always danced a fine line between expressing a desire for more stuff and greater quality stuff, and avoiding acting too ungrateful, and I don't think that's changed very much other than they've finally gotten most of their (realistic) high quality wish list.
In short, I disagree that there is any substantive or coordinated gaslighting going on, in fact (Occam's Razor style) there is a much simpler explanation that requires very little intentional and complex deceit.
There's also, I should add, the element of how surprises are more newsworthy than boring updates. We were almost all certainly surprised that Russia was that awful at a lot of things especially early in the war. Then there was basically a repeat of the original stories but with the Wagner Group as the main character. The need for surprise also twists what kind of news stories are produced especially as the conflict becomes more, might I even say, boring.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
So I have a class starting up tomorrow that's required for my major, he's the only teacher for it, and he has a frankly horrendous ratemyprofessors rating. 2/5 off of 45 reviews, so sample size sure not massive, but even the positive 4 and 5 star reviews come with caveats and fully half of the reviews are a 1/5. He's got some sort of crazy setup where he doesn't use either Canvas or my university's home-grown LMS system (for posting assignments, grades, everything) but rather a custom Moodle setup that's very difficult to navigate, and the syllabus is not only confusing in its requirements but apparently he's also having us literally do 70% of the grading for him (madatory peer grading that... seems to be worth MORE points than actually doing the assignment itself! What??). There are all sorts of other signs that he's a little scattered and/or lazy, like extremely long pre-class videos, the classroom is located in the top floor of the um, athletic building (mostly it's a pool and a indoor courts and dance studios), the fact he posted winter's class setup by mistake and left it for most of the day, and still buried in the syllabus there's a whole series of tech setup steps for the code-related portion of the class and comments suggesting it should be done before the first class even starts -- yet the only email he's sent out, other than one that again linked to the WRONG CLASS, was one saying it would be nice to fill out our "profiles" on the page. All the comments are about how he's basically a non-existent teacher and going to class is almost worthless.
Anyways those are in some ways not relevant details. Mostly, it's just the quantity of awful ratings that's a bit shocking, at least for my teaching-focused university. My question: Do you think it's acceptable to ask the professor directly, whether in class or privately, why he has such a dreadful rating and if he plans to do anything differently? I know ratings != reality, but surely there's some merit to a sample size like that even if it's self-selected. And I'm honestly very tempted to, though maybe I should give it a few classes as a benefit of the doubt kind of thing.
Not all quote marks are really quotes, even if people in the forum like calling people out with them a lot. I like using them to draw attention to phrases or words that people use (or I am about to use knowingly) with particular baggage or specific connotations. In this case, I'm referring to Rubiales' own word in his Friday speech.
I read the news a lot and could watch things sort of develop. The furor got absolutely worse Friday after the statement. Want at least some evidence? Look at Google Trends and you can see things start to die down on Wednesday/Thursday, and spike Friday and double Saturday when he's actually suspended by FIFA, an action that to me seemed to be rushed out to satisfy public outcry (considering it had only been Thursday they announced a look into it). The search interest clearly indicates that traffic about the topic actually surpasses the original news bump Friday/Saturday. This is true for most all phrases I plug in having to do with the news. The curve can even be more dramatic. I know that Google Trends isn't a perfect examination method but it does reflect a bit how much people care.
This isn't the result of an "SJW mob" out to fire him (to use an actual quote of yours), and coopted by internal enemies. It's real people being upset about Rubiales, for example, alleging that anyone upset about the kiss is actually a (another actual quote from Rubiales) "fake feminist", and an implicit allegation that he blames Hermoso for not supporting him more, and the fact that people are fucking applauding someone who is showing zero contrition and instead going on the attack. Why is he being applauded?? Actually why? This guy just brought an absolutely massive embarrassment on the entire organization singlehandedly, even if it was totally innocent, so how on earth is he somehow a hero? Those things rightfully triggered disgust and though I cannot prove it, I can certainly make a valid claim that his post-kiss behavior is a worse problem than the kiss.
Now, does all that imply that I'd be happy with FIFA or the government or someone else giving him a harsher punishment because of his post-kiss behavior and lack of contrition? That's a harder question to answer. I'm not really sure, to be quite honest. On its face, that does seem to be an unequal application of justice. But practically, it would make sense. That's partly why I brought up the point about how there are apparently lots of other problems and mistreatment that has been swept under the rug that he might deserve to lose his job for.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
I will confess I just looked at the primary reddit threads and not the motte side, though they might be interesting and perhaps then I should, so I haven't examined it super in depth yet. But I'm actually more than happy to provide a definition, and I don't think it's actually all that difficult.
My own definition of a creep is someone who deliberately places themselves in situations to get, or verbally fishes for, excessive amounts or types of personal information from women, often largely unsolicited or abruptly sexual in nature. I think that captures pretty well what women mean by a creep. Some women might add an addendum that excessive leering might also qualify. Now, I'll concede that physical attractiveness of the male in question of course warps these standards a bit. We all know that happens (e.g. the HR meme). But it doesn't influence the definition itself, just the cutoff point of what constitutes "excessive" or maybe less often, "unsolicited". The definition I think is fine.
While no harm was demonstrated, he (at least to her view, obviously she didn't receive nor seek out the full story) did affirmatively demonstrate an a) unsolicited b) excessive and c) abruptly sexual interaction. The implication is that he views many otherwise innocent/normal interactions with women in a "I want to score", sex-seeking way. Someone interested primarily in not the personalities of women, but their sexual willingness to the exclusion of other things. That's a predator kind of mindset. Now, it's not actually his mindset (due to a wildly off base understanding of FWBs and a general unfamiliarity with female friendship generally) but you can forgive her for jumping to that conclusion, I think. And there actually are elements there that support the conclusion a bit! She makes a correlation-causation kind of judgement error in shunning him and spreading it around. More pessimistically (and more speculatively), it probably hurt her ego the implication that she's either really easy or she's only good for sex but not good enough for a relationship, so putting him in a "creep" bucket allows the problem to be him, not her.
Dictionary.com uses a bit more broad and uncharitable definition: "an obnoxious, disturbingly eccentric, deviant, or painfully introverted person". I don't like this definition at all because it combines and conflates a lot of behaviors and personalities together without much actual meaning. Maybe similar to what you're criticizing. I think it's grossly unfair to call someone a creep just for being a "painful introvert". What women are actually interested in, for sharing purposes, is to try to count "red flags" and due the absence of good data, often resort to less good measures including stereotypes in an attempt to keep themselves and those around them safe. It's understandable, but often imperfect and of course a bit vulnerable to gossips with bad intentions. The other element in being a "creep" is the "obnoxious" angle, which is the only thing I couldn't find a good way to include but should be, and perhaps also the part that leads to a more slippery slope and overbroad definition and use of the word.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
The timeline is important because there's little evidence that Rubiales is actually a "victim" of anything, nor is actually in danger of losing his job, until he decides that angry confrontation is the way to go. It's only after that moment that he actually faces real attempts to remove him. Before that, it's all speculation, online noise, and "we'll look into it". Stuff we've all heard before and often leads to not much at all. It's only after his speech on Friday (which could have had more detail but I chose to skip) that we start seeing petitions getting passed around, that FIFA gets serious, that the Spanish government starts announcing inquiries, that other Spanish players start making comments or talking about boycotts.
The true story is not in the media recycling the same content and punishing a man for a minor infraction, but in the behind the scenes pressure campaigns and PR attempts that seem to sidestep the actual human relationships involved. Note that Monday morning during the flight, Rubiales is already focused on saving his job rather than making real apologies, and he hasn't even been subject to a full media cycle yet! It's been like 6 hours.
Him deciding to fight was not protecting "real victims of assault". It was not an innocent man trying to keep his job from an online mob. It was an in-your-face political stump speech about how great, infallible, and perfect he was. It's the self-important, self-dealing soccer establishment applauding themselves for a job well done while making zero attempt to help the actual players who actually won the damn trophy.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
Well, if I'm honest part of my judgement is based on simply my experience of watching firsthand the Spanish-language videos, and my personal judgement of who to believe, but also there are two videos of different angles (which I saw but now can't find clean zoomed out links of because googling for original videos is a fucking horrible experience) that don't seem to support any real conversation between them. But it's also possible they had the conversation he claimed but she thought it would be a cheek kiss or a head kiss or something so it's not like any reasonable person is going to expect grabbing your whole head and planting a full on kiss on the lips in that situation?
I don't know how it comes across in my clumsy translation but all of his apologies were basically linked grammatically with some other excuse or with a connotation of "I have to" rather than "I want to". It's kind of the apology equivalent of being passive-aggressive.
So you think she didn't think it was a big deal except he said she said yes and that made it a big deal, because she was ok with the non consensual kiss but not ok with him claiming it was consensual, so after days of silence she released a statement denouncing the nonconsensual kiss?
That's pretty much right. She was fine being like, a little mistreated for the sake of not distracting from an awesome victory and celebrations. But when it morphed into a huge and deliberate misrepresentation, and him being so belligerent about it all, she felt she had to say something. My reading of her comments focuses on how she thinks it's more about him lacking respect for others than the actual vulnerability or any harm from the act itself. That Rubiales has created a "manipulative culture". And she realized that staying silent, rather than being a noble act, is in fact sending a message of impunity for bad actors to other women who might find themselves in similar situations. That's perfectly in keeping with for example the Wednesday release with the union, where she seems more interested in improving overall player conditions and a general sense of justice and being respected than an extraction of a specific punishment.
Because if there were true respect between the players and Rubiales, a kiss like that would be unthinkable.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
It could have been an error on my part. I just reached like 14k characters and was like, is this big enough to be its own thing? Certainly I put the effort in (translating sucks). I'm not sure that pure length + effort is a great heuristic for a top level comment but it seemed acceptable at the time to me, especially considering my point is more about the reaction to the kiss, rather than the dynamics of the kiss itself, though that might get lost in discussion.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not really about the kiss and what's an appropriate punishment. It's more about the culture surrounding it and how it's dealt with that is highly problematic. The first instinct of the federation and of Rubiales is to lean on Hermoso to make a situation that Rubiales caused go away, and to try to guilt trip her and her friends and family into doing so (the coach apparently tried no less than three times on the plane trip). The second backup plan is to make the bare minimum apology, where the subtext is extremely loudly insisting that not only is the infraction so small, but also that people are just being jerks to insist on ruining the moment, and that his only true crime was being "too good at his job" or something. He likes to talk about the moment having "bad faith", but that's bad faith right there. At no point does Rubiales say something like "I made her uncomfortable", or talk about respect, or display any remorse. It's all "oops I guess I was caught". And then the Friday speech. Oh boy, the speech. It's throwing water onto a grease fire. I cannot understate how shocked I am that he's being applauded loudly by so many people in the room. At this point he has faced honestly very little actual repression. It's mostly online. People (rightly) think he's insincere.
But making such a fiery speech and claiming his own victimhood as more important and real than the victimhood of someone else, while behind the scenes him and his bureaucratic, domineering friends are the ones laying it on? Hypocrisy. He's the one that worsened the situation again further. The situation looks even worse for him if they did in fact fake the Monday quote from Hermoso (source here) which seems more likely than not. Hermoso herself and her family didn't seem to want it to be such a big deal based on Monday alone, or even during the week, refusing to be baited out by reporters on multiple occasions. Now of course the media might have been making things worse, but the only official action was FIFA beginning to look into it. It's important to note again that he's only actually suspended on Saturday, after he ignites the firestorm. I don't think that's a coincidence.
And of course the thing underlying it all: As Hermoso alludes to, and apparently a LOT of other players on the women's team believe, there were and are actual big issues going on behind the scenes in Spanish soccer that mean that it's not actually a given that Rubiales deserves to have his current job. The tip of the iceberg, as it were. In particular, there was a whole heavyhanded incident back in September where a group letter from 15 players resulted in the federation going public first and accusing the players of blackmail and trying to pull a coup on the coach, with bad feelings all around. For what it's worth, those tensions didn't appear to involve assault or anything like that.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
Counterpoint: Russia didn't fully unleash its cyberpower against Ukraine because it expected to occupy Ukraine afterward and didn't feel the need to. However, in a hypothetical US-China conflict, China has a high chance of going pretty high-stakes to win (shooting down GPS and other satellites, unleashing their tried-and-tested cyberpower troops who might even be more experienced than US ones, etc). Their primary opponents would be the US Navy (which while relatively battle-tested has also shown signs of rot and corruption) and the Taiwanese military (which is even more dysfunctional and abandoned than China's). I think Western theorists strongly underestimate the threat China poses in such a conflict. They also have a ridiculous supply-line advantage (literally their entire coast right there), so they don't need to project air or naval power very far at all.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
Oil and gas only matter if a war is fought on the years scale, not the weeks or months scale. This is virtually guaranteed not to be the case. Any Taiwanese conflict is going to be a months-long affair at best. And if it's longer, there are larger macroeconomic considerations more important than oil. I think you dramatically overestimate how much oil a country goes through mid-conflict. No one is going to boycott selling China oil in peacetime, either. In short, this entire line of reasoning is irrelevant and severing the so-called Russia-China military alliance (which mostly only exists on paper, it's not like the Russian fleet would ever, under any circumstances, fight alongside China against the US, which is the only thing of real value Russia even has in that theater.).
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
I might agree with the job analogy but you're missing a major piece about abusive relationships. They tend to emotionally damage both people and their inner reasoning to a degree that leads to future dysfunction. As opposed to the other examples, it leaves a lasting decreased ability to succeed in relationships in the future. If you start a business, but fail, you usually learn a lot and are less likely to make those same mistakes again for your second business. If you take a bad job, it might motivate you to get better ones. If you approach a girl poorly, you learn what doesn't work. If you suck at golf, you will probably get better when trying again.
But if the girl you are dating literally stabs you, not only do you have some medical recovery going on, but studies as well as practical psychological research and experience show that the patterns of harmful mental thought that have resulted from the relationship are very damaging to future relationships. It's easy to get stuck in bad modes of thought. Research suggests that victims of abuse frequently find themselves in abusive situations again in the future at dramatically higher raters than can be attributed just to environment alone. They literally become worse at picking good, emotionally healthy partners and relationships (especially without therapy).
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
It's funny you linked indirectly to that reddit thread as apparently as of two days ago the OOP is back! asking what to do since that girl is apparently in his same major and is in one of his classes again and will probably be in even more in the future. So basically everyone in his major will know. But I'd argue that pulling aside a classmate in the library you're in an informal study group with and saying directly "hey let's have sex, but also I don't want to date you" out of the blue is something that merits inclusion in the informal network of women-to-women conversations that, out of safety, exists to warn others women of potential creeps. The fact he did it as maybe sophomore/junior (21 in college?) within a cohort of frequent acquaintances and in a school setting (the library!) is a major self-inflicted L, not merely an innocent misunderstanding in my view.
I do agree though that online responses to especially dating type questions don't line up super well with real life relationships. Something about the online experience doesn't allow the same degree of nuance and sense that the person you're talking to is a complicated and occasionally self-contradictory person in their own right.
EverythingIsFine
7mo ago
I've posted a longer comment with sources above that may interest you.
I'd like to post about the Spanish soccer kiss and some developments. Another commenter below posted a take decrying it as a case of classic excessive modern SJW-type media cancel culture crusades gone too far. This is not just a wrong take, it's a flagrantly wrong take and a significant misunderstanding of the "read between the lines" of everyone's statements. Also, the TIMELINE is very crucial to understanding this whole thing. In fact, the opposite is true, this is almost a perfect example of how people in power can't help themselves but to manipulate everyone around them. Below I will explain the exact timeline. (For length I'm making it its own comment, hope that's OK).
Interestingly, our understanding of the facts is very similar. As a background, it's worth noting that Rubiales has VERY extensive list of baggage and accusations from the last five years, including clashes with other officials and organizations, firings, lawsuits, leaked recordings, allegations of everything from sex parties to fraud to assault, and conflict with and within the women's team and their coach too. Regarding the kiss, the Spanish are very physically prone to displays of at times excessive physical affection. This is mostly just cultural, but it's important to note that there IS at least some smaller element of sexism that is baked in. The kiss appears to be one of joy during a massive medal celebration, but of course he's grabbing her whole head and planting it right on the lips, a bit too far. That same night, Hermoso laughs it off but also, critically, says she didn't really like it, "but what can I do?".
People online start to go to war about it, and people within the Spanish soccer community too don't really like the look or the attention. The very next day, which is Monday, a few things happen. According to this article, virtually all 300 people are on the same flight home to Spain, including the team, the coaches, federation people, family, etc. On said flight people obviously notice the growing online criticism. They left that morning, had a two hour layover in Doha, Qatar, and arrived that night in Spain (it's like 22 hours of flight time but going backwards so same calendar day). What happened on that flight?
According to Spanish media, once on the plane - and before the party began - Rubiales approached Jenni Hermoso and asked her to record a video with him apologising and explaining what had happened. This video would be later posted on social media. He said his job was on the line and that he needed her help, but Hermoso refused. Relevo.com reported that both Rubiales and Spain coach Jorge Vilda had spoken to the player and her family in an attempt to resolve the crisis. The incident tarnished the players' victory and they wanted to put an end to the controversy.
So they pressure her to defend him but she basically says no. They record a video with Rubiales ONLY in their Doha layover, which goes out later that night, but only after a statement goes out to a news agency (EFE) seemingly quoting her that basically goes "we were all just really happy and it was natural and no hard feelings". This comes out first and the video after (a bit of difficulty pinning down exact timeline but definitely in this order). Of note is that some media outlets are now alleging that the statement may have NOT in fact been a direct quote from her and the federation made it up (this is not certain however).
What's in the video? I speak Spanish pretty decently, thanks to living in Miami a while, so listening and watching it directly is pretty interesting. This is a horrible apology. I'm going to roughly thought for thought translate the whole video because it's worth noting the tone and words used:
We're in a proud moment for the federation for winning our second world cup, we're very proud, But as well, there's something that I have to be sorry for, which is of course something that happened between a player and myself. There's a great relationship between us both, as well as me and others, and where surely I did wrong and have to recognize it. Because in a big emotional moment, without any bad intention, without any bad faith, well, what happened, happened, it was very spontaneous, without bad faith from either of us. Okay, we understood each other because it was something natural, normal, no big deal, I repeat there was no bad faith; but then it became a big deal and people have felt hurt because of it, so I have to apologize, there's nothing else for it. And moreover, I have to learn that when I am in such an important position like president of a federation, when I participate in ceremonies and things like that, I have to be more careful. [Jump cut]. I also have to make a statement, in this response in front of you all, [unintelligible to me]. I also want to apologize before this person if I did it any other way they will have their reason [?]. [Jump cut] Lastly, yes I'm embarrassed because after one of the best times in women's soccer and in general too, our second world cup, it's hurt the celebration. I think we have to give credit to these women, this victorious team, we have to celebrate it most of all.
Commentary: Note how he focuses on how he's almost forced to apologize, how he created a distraction, and how he minimizes everything that happened. He doesn't even say what he did, he just says "what happened, happened". No big deal, no big deal. It's all about the consequences of his actions and nothing about how it could have made her feel or if he truly made a mistake. No, it's an apology that he "has to" make. This is, IMO, extra clear in the original Spanish and with intact voice inflections, etc. and I've tried to render the overall "vibe" of his comments accurately, though Spain-Spanish isn't my forte.
Tuesday rolls around, it's a big story still, and many people including the prime minister feel that the apology was inadequate.
Wednesday Hermoso releases a statement with her player's union and agency here which basically (and vaguely) says that the federation should take action to prevent bad things and make sure bad things aren't unpunished. It's not very specific but clearly is referring to the kiss, though the whole content is basically just urging better player rights.
Thursday FIFA begins to investigate and step in. Clearly pressure is building to fire him, suspend him, or have him resign.
Earlyish on Friday is a big federation meeting, where Rubiales makes a speech. I haven't been able to iron out exactly who called the meeting and for what exact purpose.
Do you really think I deserve this hunt? People demanding my resignation? Is this so serious for me to resign, having done the best management of Spanish football? Do you think I need to resign? Let me tell you something: I'm not going to resign! I'M NOT GOING TO RESIGN! I'm NOT going to resign! I'm not going to resign! [pause] I'm not going to resign!
Notable is that a very big portion of the audience is clapping loudly throughout. He the goes on to say that though he can't remember clearly it was Hermoso who lifted him up, they almost fell down and then they hugged. He emphasized it was her that picked him up so close, he told her not to worry about a missed penalty, told him he's great, then he asked "A kiss"? and she said OK. He says it wasn't something of desire nor forced and just like kissing his daughters and everyone gets that, even though they are saying the opposite when talking to the media. He says it's fake feminism and people who are all for his rivals. He calls it character assassination. He says that it suddenly ballooned from "no big deal" and then Hermoso didn't defend him and "a statement that I don't understand". He says that people making a big deal about it are hurting victims of real assault.
This ignites quite the firestorm that same day. (The next day, Satudary, FIFA suspended him. Since then, he's been pulled into at least one other avenue of potential firing/suspension as well). Note that Rubiales is not just adding detail but arguably changing the story. The importance of this is made clear when Hermoso finally and directly breaks her own silence, later on Friday FOLLOWING the speech, which in my opinion adds a TON of context to everything. Much as I want to summarize, this would take out the read-between-the-lines as well.
After obtaining one of the most desired achievements of my sporting career and after a few days of reflection, I want to thank, with all my heart, my teammates, fans, followers, media and everyone who has made this dream a reality; your work and unconditional support has been a fundamental part to be able to win the World Cup. In reference to what has happened today [Rubiales’ speech] and while I don’t want to interfere with the multiple ongoing legal procedures, I feel obligated to say that the words of Mr Luis Rubiales explaining the unfortunate event are categorically false and part of the manipulative culture he has created.
I want to make clear that not in any moment did the conversation occur that Mr Luis Rubiales references, and much less that his kiss was consensual. In the same way I want to reiterate how I did in that moment that what happened was not enjoyable.
The situation left me in shock because of the context of the celebration, and with the time passed, and those initial feelings being able to sink, I feel the need to denounce this as I feel that no one, in no work space, sporting or social, should be a victim to this time of nonconsensual behavior. I felt vulnerable and a victim of aggression, an impulsive act, sexist, out of place and without any type of consent from my part. In short, I wasn’t respected.
I was asked to released a joint statement to relieve the pressure off the president, but in those moments, in my head I only had being able to celebrate the historic achievement I accomplished with my teammates. That’s why, in that moment I communicated with the RFEF … and the same with media and people I trust, that I would not be releasing an individual statement nor a joint statement about the matter, as I understood that, by doing it, I would take away the spotlight from a very special moment for my teammates and I.
Despite my decision I have to state that I have been under constant pressure to come out with some sort of statement that would justify the acts of Mr Luis Rubiales. Not only that, but also, via different ways and different people, the RFEF has pressured my close circle (family, friends, teammates, etc) so I would give a statement that had little or nothing to do with how I felt.
It’s not my place to evaluate communication practices or integrity, but I am sure that as world champions we do not deserve a culture so manipulative, hostile and controlling. These types of incidents are added to a long list of situations that us, the players, have been [enduring] for the last few years, for what has been done, for what I have experienced, this is only a drop in a full glass and only what the whole world has been able to see. Acts like these have been part of daily life in our national team for years.
This statement almost perfectly describes how a normal person would react to the situation. Personally, although it sort of has devolved into in some ways a he said/she said, I find her account by far the most credible. The things that stand out, to me:
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Rubiales outright is lying when he's adding the detail about how it was literally consensual because she said yes to a kiss, that he's making the whole exchange up. She basically says this is why she's speaking now because of him doubling down and indeed adding falsehoods.
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She was silent because she was genuinely celebrating, didn't want to hurt the celebration, and also needed to process things. Personally, I think we can all relate to this, often our behavior psychologically right after something big doesn't always line up with our true feelings. Fun fact: Once someone threatened to kill me! It wasn't until later that my heartbeat could slow a bit down and despite sort of laughing it off at the time I realized it was actually a bit more serious. This jives with psychological research about how we react to unexpected and even unwanted events, including genuine sexual assault of various kinds. I might add that she might still feel that this isn't a big deal but was more offended by Rubiales' lies and/or general attitude than the actual event.
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This kind of bad behavior, rather than being a one-off kind of thing, is actually endemic to how the women's team and players are treated.
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She's been subject to a very significant pressure campaign to generate good PR even if it means lying. This pressure campaign has targeted a lot of people around her, too, which also seems to cross a line.
Ladies and gentlemen, this statement demonstrates almost exactly what feminists have been saying for years.
My take is that the kiss itself, not really that bad, but also something that does reflect on power dynamics, both men/women but also boss/employee. It deserved a real apology which was not given, instead the apology was not only extremely insincere, but also a result of behind the scenes pressure to sweep it under the rug and downplay. Rubiales doubling down was awful and it is kind of dystopian to see so much applause. He's the one playing a victimhood narrative, not Hermoso. Which is crazy! She didn't even talk about victimhood AT ALL until AFTER Rubiales basically lied about the kiss. I might add that Rubiales' version of events is in my opinion not supported by the video of the kiss, where they don't seem to have much of a conversation at all.
This is the key point behind why I bothered digging in to the whole timeline of things and making a whole effortpost. If you look at it all as the same big story, sure you might be inclined to say, yes this is just the media deciding to pillory someone with no due process and demanding blood for a minor infraction. But no, looking at her statement and the timeline, with the background of things not being very sunny within the Spanish federation and the players, it actually and fairly becomes a case of people in power trying to remain in power, especially in the world of soccer, which is well known to be an old boys club as well as infested with corruption on many levels, including FIFA. Far from victimhood being asserted by Hermoso, disproportionate to the actual harm or intent, it's Rubiales first trying to be a victim of persecution, as well as self-aggrandizing (note how many times he gives credit and glory to the federation and organization, rather than the players). Instead, Hermoso is only a reluctant participant in the whole debate who might have though it also wasn't a big deal and wanted to move on herself, until pressure and slander essentially forced her hand.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
I mean, I occasionally get strain on the lower side of my right middle forearm below the wrist, makes it painful to use a mouse. But this is only maybe a few times a month. Would you consider this a warning sign of something that will get worse and needs correction, or would you say that sounds more like transient overuse that simply being a bit more careful about time management is sufficient to avoid?
EverythingIsFine
9mo ago
As of time of writing, it’s possible the Hunter Biden plea deal may be falling apart.
Apparently the government isn’t after all quite willing to dismiss any future gun related charges after being pressed by the judge. If this is the case it looks like the media circus about the plea deal being unethical might not even have been necessary? It’s my opinion that the court process usually figures this stuff out on its own, unless anyone thinks media attention somehow influences the in court decisions of any interested parties significantly?
EverythingIsFine
10mo ago
You specify one specific investigation that the Durham report rightly concludes was founded on bogus grounds. However, this is not the only investigation against Trump and those in his orbit, and is not sufficient by itself to generalize. You're implying that all investigations against Trump follow this form, but that's incorrect. Rather, you should also consider the people in Trump's orbit that were indeed found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of various crimes (or admitted to such), including Flynn (lying), Stone (lying, threatening a witness), Manafort (conspiracy, obstruction), not to mention several financial related crimes (Cohen, Trump Org, Gates, Barrack, etc.)
The quote from Hemingway is referring to work done by the FGA (link to all their "Zuckerbucks" pieces here, which if you look at the website, appears to be one of those dime-a-dozen orgs that just spits out low quality research, infographics, and political talking points (thinly disguised if not actual PACs).
And let me tell you, that quoted conclusion of yours insinuating a causal or even a loose mere correlation in Georgia between Zuckerbucks and Democratic vote counts is an absolutely atrocious case of statistical malpractice. Any real statistician looking at the data (if they even felt this approach was even capable of yielding a real/practical/trustworthy answer, which they likely wouldn't) would say that those kind of margins don't even begin to approach statistical significance. The original source is here, and maybe if I'm feeling spicy I will analyze it tomorrow properly to check, but right now my alarm bells are ringing. I'm pretty tired atm, so I might be wrong, but I think 41 counties getting money vs 118 not is going to have a detectable difference required that's much more than 2.3 points with any sort of decent statistical power.
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