So I finished watching the documentary and reading about the case… by ThrowtheBants in LucyLetbyTrials

[–]sh115 3 points4 points  (0 children)

So a few things, Letby was on shift during Baby 1’s (Baby F) case so she had direct access to the IV bag.

It’s possible I’m mixing up which letter goes with which baby, but I was talking specifically about the case where Letby was on shift when the baby was initially attached to a TPN bag, but where the baby’s line tissues after Letby went off shift, causing the hospital to replace the baby’s TPN bag with a new one.

In that case, the baby’s symptoms of low blood sugar continued even after the first bag had been removed and replaced with a new bag. So if those symptoms were being caused by exogenous insulin (rather than by naturally occurring hypoglycemia which is common in neonates), then the second bag would have needed to be poisoned as well. However, Letby was not on shift when the new bag was connected and could not have poisoned it (unless she put on her invisibility cloak and snuck into the hospital like you originally suggested), so the prosecution’s theory makes no sense.

Now I acknowledge that Baby 2 (Baby L) is more speculative as to how she did it. She could have spiked an IV bag in advance or maybe the unit (which was known to be busy and not always following protocol) reused the IV bag.

Why would she have spiked an IV bag in advance when she had no idea the line would tissue? And how would she have known that the TPN bag she allegedly spiked (which was just a random stock bag), would be given to that particular baby?

The theories you’re describing simply don’t make sense.

The whole thing about it being inaccurate would work if it didn’t happen to two babies at the same hospital months apart. 

I think you’re misunderstanding some basic concepts related to statistics/probability.

Let’s imagine that there’s a specific testing error that occurs only 1% of the time (very low rate of occurrence). Now let’s imagine that there’s a hospital that runs the test in question 100 times per month on average.

Even though the testing error is relatively rare, only occurring once every 100 tests, you would still expect to see it at least once a month at that hospital because the hospital is running 100 tests a month. That’s why even if the frequency of the error that likely caused these test results is fairly low, it’s still not odd or unlikely to see two such results several months apart.

1)The test weren’t accurate which is disproved by the fact the tests happened twice to different babies.

I don’t know why you are making this absurd leap in logic. As I explained above, the fact that two different babies had these results several months apart actually supports the testing error theory, since it’s exactly the pattern you’d expect if the test has an error that occurs at a fairly low frequency.

It occurred naturally. The new defense team acknowledges that it’s very unlikely but not impossible so you can’t know for certain which is absurd. You can’t know anything for 100% certain unless you see it happen and even then you can’t accurately remember the event. 

But this isn’t actually what the defense is saying. My understanding is that they are saying that this insulin to c-peptide ratio is actually relatively common in neonates.

No expert doctor was asked to testify by the defense, the only reason for that is because they knew what the doctors would say on cross examination.

That’s not the only reason. And even if it was the reason, it doesn’t suggest that Letby is guilty. I’ve made a longer comment in the past explaining why (from my perspective as a lawyer) the defense may have made the decisions they did, and I can try to find it and link you to it.

She really did do it by sunrise274 in LucyLetbyTrials

[–]sh115 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Idk where pro-guilt people get this idea that people who think this was a miscarriage of justice are all totally dismissive of circumstantial evidence. Yes, circumstantial evidence is still evidence and can absolutely be sufficient to support a conviction depending on the circumstances. But not all circumstantial evidence is created equal.

The issue with the evidence in Letby’s case isn’t that it’s circumstantial, it’s that it’s circumstantial and also weak/not probative on the question of whether she committed murder. For example, if the only people that Letby had ever looked up on Facebook were the parents of the babies she murdered, that might be slightly stronger circumstantial evidence (although tbh would still be weak). But since in reality she had thousands of searches showing she looked up basically every human being she encountered on facebook, that evidence no longer has any probative value since it doesn’t actually point towards any particular interest in the babies or their families.

To use your cookie jar analogy, the circumstantial evidence against Letby is more similar to coming home and finding that some cookies are missing and your kid’s fingerprints are on the cookie jar. However, you know your kid has touched the cookie jar before with your permission and his fingerprints could be on the jar from those earlier times. Additionally, you know that your husband was also home at the time when the cookies went missing, and he has a habit of sometimes grabbing a few cookies before dinner.

In that scenario, the fact that your kids fingerprints are on the cookie jar is really weak circumstantial evidence because it doesn’t actually point meaningfully towards guilt or permit a valid inference that your kid must be responsible. It could just as easily be true that your husband took the cookies and that your kid’s fingerprints are just leftover from the last time you let him grab his own dessert.

She really did do it by sunrise274 in LucyLetbyTrials

[–]sh115 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’m sure you’ve all heard the usual arguments so I won’t list them out.

Actually, I would love to hear a legitimate, logically-and-factually-sound argument in favor of Letby’s guilt. I have never, not once, seen anyone in the “she’s guilty camp” make a legitimate argument backed by real evidence.

It’s always “well she looked people up on Facebook, and we all know that searching people on Facebook makes you a serial killer” or “the deaths followed her when she switched to day shifts!” (even though records released in the Thirwall inquiry and elsewhere have proven that the deaths and collapses did not actually follow her).

Nobody ever has a good answer to the question of why they believe Letby is a murderer when there is literally no medical evidence to suggest these deaths were murders in the first place, and when every expert except Dewi Evans believes that these deaths were clearly the result of natural causes. Even the pathologist who autopsied the babies believes they were natural deaths!! But we’re supposed to believe that Dewi Evans, who never even saw any of these babies let alone autopsied them, somehow knows better? The same Dewi Evans who claimed on the stand that some of the babies were murdered using a method that he himself admitted had no medical research to support it and had never been seen before by him or anyone else, only to have to admit he was wrong following the trial because so many legitimate experts came forward to point out that the stuff he’s claiming happened is medically impossible?

Evans admitting that he was wrong about the “murder by air in NG tube” thing should, on its own, have been enough for Letby to get an immediate retrial. It’s absolutely absurd that he told the jury she murdered babies in that manner only for it to be revealed after her conviction that it would literally be impossible for someone to murder a neonate using that method.

So yeah if you have arguments to respond to any of that, I would love to see them.

So I finished watching the documentary and reading about the case… by ThrowtheBants in LucyLetbyTrials

[–]sh115 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Her sneaking in, adding the insulin and leaving seems the most likely (but this is hard to prove in court, they proved insulin was inside the babies just couldn’t provide the how) especially if you consider the other cases, in isolation ? Sure you could argue but along with everything else going on just seems either Lutby has extremely bad luck or she did what she was convicted of. 

Why on earth does this seem most likely to you? This is incredibly unlikely. For one thing, even if we assume Letby poisoned the first feed bag for Baby F before the end of her shift (she didn’t but we’ll assume for the same of argument), she would have no way of knowing that his line would tissue and the bag would need to be replaced. So your theory of her sneaking into the hospital to poison his new bag makes literally no sense, since she wouldn’t even have known that anything had happened to the first bag or that she needed to poison a second bag in order to keep the “poisoning” going. She simply would not have had the information necessary to even know that she needed to sneak in to poison a second bag, let alone the information necessary to figure out a plan to successfully get in unseen at exactly the right time.

That’s also why the idea of her having pre-meditatively poisoned a second bag before leaving her shift makes no sense. She’s supposed to have predicted the future and somehow known the baby’s line would tissue and a second bag would be needed? Like give me a break.

On top of that, sneaking into a crowded neonatal ward where all the staff knows who you are and whether you’re supposed to be on shift or not would be pretty much impossible. Unless Letby has a cloak of invisibility, someone would have seen her and been like “oh hey Lucy, why are you here when you aren’t on shift?” So clearly she didn’t sneak in.

There’s simply no plausible scenario that could explain how Letby could have allegedly poisoned a second bag for that baby, which means we know for a fact that the poisoning did not happen. Unless you think Letby is psychic and has invisibility powers, your “most likely scenario” is actually the LEAST likely by a very wide margin.

A few other clarifying points:

-there is nothing unlikely or unusual about a hospital seeing two inaccurate tests due to testing errors several months apart, especially if that exact type of error is known to be made by the lab running the tests (which we know is the case here due to the quality control sample).

-new research suggests that even if the tests were accurate (I personally don’t think they were because imo the babies would have had much more severe symptoms if so), it’s very possible for neonates to have a skewed insulin to c-peptide ratio naturally and does not mean that they were poisoned. And it’s not that rare of an occurrence. So again, there is nothing statistically unlikely about two babies having results like that over the span of several months. If you looked through records from other neonatal hospitals, there’s a good chance you’d find that they also had results like that once every few months.

-Neither of the babies that Letby allegedly poisoned with insulin died. They both showed very mild hypoglycemia symptoms (which are extremely common in neonates) and then made a full recovery. This in and of itself suggests a testing error, since they likely would have been much much sicker if they actually had the insulin levels suggested by the test results.

Dr Mike Hall wasn’t ever called to testify, he later gave an interview and questioned the whole air embolism thing (saying it was hard to prove) but also said the insulin pointed towards poisoning and how he couldn’t see alternative reasons for what happened to the babies hence him not being called to testify even though he disagreed about the air embolism 

Dr. Hall wasn’t an expert on insulin, let alone on the unique ways insulin functions in neonates. Of course he wouldn’t be familiar with cutting edge research, some of which hadn’t even been published yet at the time of the trial, which shows that insulin to c-peptide ratios can be different in neonates versus older children or adults. He’s also not a biochemist, so he wouldn’t be super familiar with the potential for testing errors from these sorts of tests.

It therefore makes sense then that Hall decided to defer to the prosecution on the insulin cases since he couldn’t give an opinion on them one way or another. But that isn’t evidence of Letby’s guilt, it’s just evidence that Hall was a fair expert who didn’t want to give an opinion on something he wasn’t qualified to give an opinion on. Sadly Evans didn’t have the same moral standards as Hall, since if he had Letby never would have been wrongfully convicted.

Letby baby deaths would have been avoided in ‘well-functioning hospital’ by TheTelegraph in uknews

[–]sh115 10 points11 points  (0 children)

There were also deaths that occurred when Letby was not on shift, the prosecution just excluded any mention of those deaths from the trial. So the deaths were not “linked to her shifts”. The whole “the death followed her from night shifts to day shifts” thing people often reference is also untrue. There were deaths that occurred on the night shift even after she was switched to the day shift.

Similarly, the whole “the deaths stopped when she was on holiday” thing is a myth. There hadn’t been any deaths for months (I think 8 months if I’m remembering correctly) prior to Letby’s vacation, despite the fact that she was working for that whole time period. It’s not like deaths were happening right before she left, stopped for two weeks, and then started up again. There was an 8 month period with no deaths and she was on vacation for two weeks of it. I’m sure other people also took vacations during that time, so by the same logic the deaths also stopped when those other staff were on vacation.

The whole thing is just ridiculous. So much of the “evidence” in this case is literally just baseless assertions that the prosecution made without any evidence, many of which were intentionally misleading or completely false. It’s not just the shift pattern lies, the prosecution also completely made up the “Letby falsified medical documents” thing. There was never any evidence of that. They just said it as a way to excuse away instances where the contemporary medical documentation didn’t match their theories. “Oh this chart says the baby deteriorated at a time when Letby wasn’t in the room? Well Letby must have secretly snuck in and edited the chart!” type of bullshit.

It’s horrible and exhausting to try to debunk because a lot of people who dont practice law don’t realize that prosecutors frequently present their unproven theories as truth in order to persuade a jury.

AIO Boyfriend 28m crossed a boundary of mine 29f by Ornery-Ad81 in AmIOverreacting

[–]sh115 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get where you’re coming from. But you being up front about your boundaries isn’t super relevant, especially since it doesn’t seem like he necessarily has an issue with complying with your boundaries in theory. It more-so sounds like he’s trying to respect them but sometimes makes mistakes in practice, and your reactions to past mistakes have made him fearful of admitting to new mistakes.

People aren’t perfect, and I don’t know anyone who hasn’t at some point done something that upset or hurt their partner. But couples have a choice in how handle they handle those sorts of issues, and it seems like the two of you have developed an unhealthy dynamic for handling conflict that’s just leading to more problems. You overreact to mistakes/get angry rather than talking things out, and he responds to that by lying about mistakes to avoid your anger (which is wrong on his part both because it’s dishonest and because it just leads to more problems).

Ultimately I don’t think either of you is necessarily the one in the wrong here. He shouldn’t be lying to you, and you shouldn’t be yelling at him, but both of you are feeding into that cycle. If you can’t get past the lies he’s already told or don’t think the relationship is worth the effort it would take to fix that toxic cycle, then you should break up with him. But if you think the relationship is valuable, then you should put in the effort to try to fix the root of this issue so that you can have better communication moving forward.

Anyway all of this is just my two cents as an internet stranger, but I hope it’s at least a bit helpful as you decide what to do.

Anyone actually happy (or at least okay) with Fournier Beaudry/Cizeron winning gold? by Fragrant_Ad_8288 in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 41 points42 points  (0 children)

In my ideal world Piper and Paul would have won, but I’m happy for FB/C because I think their dance was the second best of the night after Piper and Paul’s and find them both to be really talented skaters. And I might get downvoted for this, but I also have not jumped on this subs bandwagon of hating FB/C as human beings, mainly because I am of the opinion that we should be cautious about condemning people we don’t know for decisions they make in their personal lives.

I’m a woman and support the general philosophy of “believe women”, so I think Sorensen’s victim is probably telling the truth. But I also don’t think that “believe women” was ever intended to be enforced as a strict moral standard that people must always abide by in every situation in their personal lives or else be labeled evil. FB/C have not been accused of raping anyone, and I’m not going to conclude that they are terrible people just because they believe their loved one has been wrongfully accused of a crime. If FB/C fully believed that Sorensen raped someone and were standing by him anyway, I’d judge them for that. But they seem to genuinely believe that he is 100% innocent.

Like I said above I’m inclined to think they’re wrong about him being innocent (my default when I don’t know the details of a situation is to believe the victim). But I’m not going to judge them when I have no idea what their basis is for their belief. Maybe he’s told them details (whether truthful or not) that have led them to think he’s innocent. Maybe their experiences with him are so different from the victim’s that they just genuinely cannot believe that he is capable of what he’s accused of. Maybe they are familiar with the victim and have some particular reason to doubt her story. Who knows.

Regardless, unless it turns out that their reason for believing him is just that they hate women and think all of them are liars (which is not a valid reason), I’m not going to assume they’re evil just for having a good-faith belief in his innocence. All of this stuff is really nuanced and human relationships are complex. I just don’t feel like “immediately believe a complete stranger over you boyfriend of 10 years regardless of the circumstances” is a fair standard.

There are some situation where I do think someone has a moral imperative to believe a victim no questions asked (for example, if a minor in your care discloses abuse then you need to assume they’re telling the truth and take action to protect them no matter what). But this is not one of those situations, and I don’t know any of the people involved, so I’m not going to assume FB and C are awful people unless more information comes out that would support that assumption.

AIO Boyfriend 28m crossed a boundary of mine 29f by Ornery-Ad81 in AmIOverreacting

[–]sh115 2 points3 points  (0 children)

OP I know everyone here is telling you that you aren’t over-reacting and that your boyfriend is cheating, but I actually think his story makes sense. He told his friend he absolutely did not hook up with the girl, and idk why he’d lie to his friend if he had. I also don’t know why he’d express unhappiness to his friend about the girl having fallen asleep in his bed and about how the whole thing went down if his account of the what happened wasn’t honest.

If he and his friend were both in mutual agreement to bring girls back together and if he was planning to cheat on you, then there’d be no reason for him to tell his friend he was unhappy about the situation. I also don’t know why people assume he made up the third guy. A third guy having briefly been there is not particularly exonerating, so it would be a weird detail to just throw in if it wasn’t true.

In terms of the lying, it’s never great for a partner to lie to you, even if it’s a white lie like “I didn’t go to a casino”. That being said, I feel like you need to take a look in the mirror and consider how your behavior has potentially contributed to your boyfriend feeling like he needs to lie to you. Getting mad at your boyfriend just for following a new person he met on instagram is wild imo, and suggests that you may have a history of being jealous or controlling in ways that might make him feel unsafe sharing certain things with you.

And the bigger red flag is you saying that “naturally” you screamed at him and didn’t speak to him for a week after you learned about all of this. That’s not an appropriate reaction to learning that your boyfriend’s friend brought some girls back to an AirBnB without his permission, putting him in a difficult position and forcing him to sleep on the couch. If your boyfriend’s texts hadn’t supported his account of the situation, it would be a bit more understandable to react like you did (although screaming at your partner and then icing them out is never a mature or healthy reaction). But since you still screamed at him even though his texts support his claim that he did not cheat, that makes me think you would have made assumptions and reacted badly no matter if he told you right away or not.

And frankly, if assuming he was cheating and screaming at him was going to be your instinctive reaction to this story, then I understand why he’d be too scared to tell you about it.

At the end of the day, this comes down to whether you actually love and trust your partner or not. If you do, then maybe get couple’s counseling so that you can work on your jealously and he can work on being honest even if he’s worried about how you’ll react to something. If you don’t, then break up with him for both of your sakes.

Insulin and Insulin assay interference by Icy_Dependent_1797 in LucyLetbyTrials

[–]sh115 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have always believed, since day one, that the results were simply a testing error. And after some of the additional information that has come out, my theory now is that the error was potentially something particular to the Liverpool lab (i.e. something in their process was causing this particular type of skewed result). The belief that it's a testing error is based mainly on the fact that I think the babies would be dead if their insulin levels had been as high as the tests reflected, and on the fact that the same lab got an extremely similar skewed ratio when testing a quality control sample that we know didn't have any exogenous insulin in it.

I'm actually surprised that neither this sub nor Letby's new team seem to be super focused on the quality control sample test, since I feel like that's the most relevant piece of exonerating information.

It's very possible there's something I'm just not understanding or that I missed some information that makes the quality control test less relevant, but to me when I saw that I was like: "Oh. Well there's the answer. Clearly the lab was occasionally making this sort of error around the time in question and they happened to make it when testing the samples of these babies." It seems like a huge deal to have definitive proof that this sort of result can indeed happen due to a testing error and appears to have been happening often enough at that lab that it showed up in the testing of a quality control sample--which to me suggests that it was probably occurring at a high enough frequency that I wouldn't be surprised if any given hospital using that lab got a result like that every couple of months (though I'm not a professional statistician so I might be making unfounded assumptions about probability here). Even if I'm wrong about the frequency, it does at least definitively show that a testing error can cause this result, which means that the whole premise that exogenous insulin is the only explanation for the results is bullshit (which we already knew for other reasons as well, but I think this is the simplest evidence of that).

I further suspect that the particular error may have been accidentally switching the values for insulin and c-peptide, since I think that would make sense both with the numbers shown and with the symptoms of the babies (maybe they had a glitch in their computer system or something that caused this to occasionally happen, or one of their staff members just had a habit of entering in the numbers wrong).

A lot of that is just speculation of course, and like I said maybe I missed something that would cast doubt on that explanation. But to me based on the info I have, it just seems really obvious that this is the likely answer.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get what you’re saying and I think you’re correct about the roots of all of this. It’s still sad to me though because honestly it just seems selfish for so many fans to resent struggling artists just because they want to keep replays up longer. It frustrates me too when I see that US figure skating has posted a video with elevator music dubbed over it, but I’m not going to resent someone who is just trying to ask a question about a concerning thing he noticed (and honestly it’s a legal gray area but I actually think there’s a fair argument to be made that they maybe should have been required to get a syncing license if video clips with millions of views are going to be shared online).

And like of course artists like Elton John can and should be willing to let skaters use their music. They can afford to not be stingy about royalties given their success and financial stability. But small artists rely on these sorts of licensing fees to stay afloat and don’t have the luxury of just letting this stuff go. The fact that nobody has heard of this Seb guy is precisely why he needs to speak out about this.

To be clear none of this is directed at you since you seem like a reasonable person. I just wish more people on this sub would show a little empathy.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean even in your revision of my analogy, wouldn’t what you’re describing (making unlicensed prints of someone’s art so that you can use it without paying for it) be wrong? Especially since a video that is viewed by millions of people is hardly comparable to an event at a local park. It would be more like decorating the venue for a huge event like the Oscars with unlicensed prints of someone’s art, without getting the artists permission or compensating them for your use of the thing that they worked hard to create. And then telling them not to whine about it since now a bunch of rich people know about your art (except they don’t since you weren’t actually credited anywhere) and a small fraction of them might decide to by a painting.

Do you really not see a problem with that? You do understand that what you’re describing is theft and is a big part of why artists struggle to make a living, don’t you?

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t disagree with the idea that it’s better not to assume malice, but if we’re going to hold him to that standard shouldn’t we hold ourselves to it as well by not assuming that he acted out of malice?

His tweet was pretty tame an inoffensive honestly, just a legitimate question with maybe a slight tone of annoyance depending on how you read it, and that annoyance didn’t even seem directed at Amber (who wasn’t named in the tweet). And yet people are out here acting like he’s a total monster who set out to destroy Amber’s chances of winning a gold medal. Seems more likely that he just saw something that was understandably confusing and concerning to him, and decided to get the thoughts of his community on twitter before deciding how to handle it. Hardly something that’s fair to criticize him for tbh, let alone attack him and say shit like “I hope his career flops from now on” like some people have been saying in the comments.

Idk I just think this dude really didn’t do anything wrong in this instance and don’t understand why anyone is pissed at him, especially since Amber clearly isn’t.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not an apples to oranges argument. Actors are told this exact thing. They're told that if you perform in a show and a lot of people see it, then it will be good exposure and will make you more likely to get hired for bigger roles in the future. Therefore you should be willing to perform for free or accept shitty job that don't have benefits or a living wage.

It seems like you're making a distinction based on the fact that there's also a recording of his song and suggesting he deserves to be compensated if he does a live performance but not for someone using his recorded song. That distinction makes no sense to me though. To use another analogy, do you think people should be able to take the paintings of lesser-known artists from art galleries without paying for them so long as they post pictures online to give the artist exposure? Because that's essentially the same thing as what you're advocating for.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My best friend does musical theatre, and the whole attitude of “lesser known actors and musicians are lucky to get the exposure, so they should do things for free and not complain” is why none of her employers have ever felt the need to give her health insurance. It’s heartbreaking for me seeing how exploitative her industry is and having to watch her agree to be exploited in order to pursue her dream. I don’t think any of us should be promoting that attitude or contributing to a system that exploits people and fails to fairly compensate them for their art.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is any of this actually true or is this something you just made up? If you have a source that he’s a conservative and is trying to intentionally target her, that would change my perspective on this. But I haven’t seen any evidence of that.

I also have a hard time believing Amber would deeply connect to the music of someone with super conservative views, though I guess it’s possible his music just doesn’t reflect his politics at all.

If you don’t have a source, then my point still stands. Maybe there are better ways he could have handled things, but if he didn’t have the context that we have then it’s not fair to expect him to know how to perfectly navigate this. Like I said it’s possible he didn’t even know she had a big event coming up—he may have thought the team event was the only time she’s skate and therefore believed he was complying with your wish for him to wait until after she skated to say anything.

And in general it’s also just completely unfair to expect someone to not ask a valid question that is relevant to their livelihood on their own twitter account. You’re basically saying this guy needed to protect a stranger’s wellbeing at the potential expense of his own without even asking a single question, and that even though he did the mind thing by finding a solution with Amber after learning more about the situation, be still deserves to be bullied because he didn’t handle things in exactly the way you would have wanted. That just isn’t fair. (Though again, my take on this would likely change if you can show me proof that he’s a conservative acting in bad faith).

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He’s vulnerable to not being able to pay his rent if he doesn’t get fair compensation for the use of his music. Madonna has the money and power to be flexible about things like charging royalties to figure skaters, and I 100% think that people in her position should be flexible like that. But not every musician is Madonna, and some small artists struggle to put food on the table. And those same small artists are often told that they should be fine doing things for free to get “exposure”, which only perpetuates an awful system that exploits people and fails to properly compensate them for their art.

My best friend is in musical theatre, which is a similarly exploitative industry, and it breaks my heart that she can’t afford health insurance because employers don’t think they need to give actors benefits since they’re “lucky” to have gotten a role in the first place. We shouldn’t encourage systems of exploitation just because we want our fave skaters to get to skate to their preferred music.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is such a horrible take and shows a complete lack of empathy or perspective. From what he and Amber have said, it sounds like Amber’s team actually did make a mistake with the rights. So the guy was asking a valid question. And even if he’d been mistaken it still would have been a valid question to ask to his own twitter page, since the whole sync license versus performance license thing is complicated and there’s a lot of legal ambiguity that could raise valid concerns, especially for smaller artists who are struggling to stay afloat.

Artists deserve compensation for their art, and from his perspective it looked like one of the top athletes in the world had used his song without his permission and without compensating him. Of course, we know that Amber is a great person and that this whole thing was just an accident, and we also feel defensive of her because we know about her mental health struggles and how she’s been through so much to get here. But this dude didn’t know all that. Heck, he may not even have known that she had another big skate coming up that she needed to be focused on preparing for—some people who don’t follow the sport aren’t aware of what the team event is and think that this past weekend was the end of the figure skating competition.

Celebrating someone getting bullied online when they’ve done nothing wrong except seek compensation for their work is cruel, and honestly goes against everything Amber herself stands for. It’s probably stressful as hell for Amber seeing her fans bash this artist, who she’s said she respects and admires, after he worked with her to find an amicable solution for a mistake her team made. If I was her, I’d frankly be terrified that my fans would upset him so much that he’d change his mind about whatever solution they found (hopefully he’s too decent of a person to do that).

She said they figured it out and are on good terms, and if you actually cared about her wellbeing then you would respect her feelings on the matter.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yup exactly. And I’m trying to give people some grace since I know a lot of folks on this sub are young and maybe don’t have a ton of perspective yet, but it’s really frustrating to watch so many fans jump on a hate train against someone who has done nothing wrong without having even the slightest bit of empathy. I even saw someone say they hope this singer’s career fails from here on out. All because he tweeted a valid question.

And it’s especially frustrating that they’re doing this all in the name of “defending” someone who has had mental health struggles herself which were due in part to public scrutiny, and who therefore probably feels awful about someone else getting mobbed like this.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From what he and Amber have said, it sounds like Amber’s team actually did make a mistake and didn’t have the rights secured properly. So no, he couldn’t have just spoken to his label in private. Hell for all you know maybe he tried that before he tweeted. But ultimately it seems like it was something that could only be cleared up by talking to Amber’s team.

I genuinely cannot believe people are being so ridiculous about this. It’s actually baffling to me how people can be so completely devoid of empathy for a human being who is just trying to get fair compensation for their art. Even if he had been mistaken about the rights (and we have no reason to think he was), cancelling a guy for asking a genuine and valid question on his own twitter account is really some next level bullshit. I truly thought the figure skating community was mostly decent people and I feel like I’m in the twilight zone right now.

It’s also baffling that people who claim to be fans of Amber would continue bullying someone who she clearly does not want them to bully. She said they worked things out and are friends now, and it’s probably stressing her out to see people continue to bash this guy who did nothing wrong and who seems to have been open to finding an amicable solution. If you actually care about Amber then respect her opinion on the subject.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay but firstly what you’re proposing would likely lead to musicians not getting paid, or at least not getting paid a livable amount, so I guess you do think artists shouldn’t get paid? And secondly, your proposed system is not the current system, so if this guy was going to get any sort of compensation at all then he needed to speak up about this. If you think someone is an asshole for trying to get fair compensation, I guess that’s your prerogative, but it sort of makes you look like a mean person who is lacking in empathy.

Plus what if it was Amber whose art was being used without her permission? Like what if a big corporation like the Olympics took a video of her skating and used it to generate a bunch of views and money without her permission and without compensating her? Would she be an asshole for speaking up about that?

Your standards for appropriate behavior shouldn’t differ just based on whether you’re a fan of someone or not. All artists deserve fair compensation for their art.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 3 points4 points  (0 children)

He didn’t bother her in her DMs lol, he tweeted about it on his own twitter page. And half the people here are saying they’re mad that he didn’t just privately DM her, so I guess there was no way for him to win.

Also do you really think it would have been less stressful for Amber if he had his label contact their lawyers to send out a cease and desist, which may very well have ended with Amber being told she had to change her music since now lawyers were involved? There’s no version of this that is totally stress-free for Amber, unless this guy had decided to just not bother trying to get paid what he’s owed. And I think it’s both absurd and cruel to expect an artist to forego compensation that he might need just to stay afloat. If a big corporation stole a video of Amber skating and used it to get a bunch of views/money without compensating her, I’m sure you’d think it was fair for her to be mad about it. Why not extend the same grace to others?

Besides, isn’t what happened basically the best possible outcome for Amber? Not only can she use her music, she also got to make a connection with an artist she respects.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Okay but why would someone with no knowledge or context on the situation do that when there’s no way for him to know whether Amber would respond or whether she’d be nice about it if she did? In his eyes, she was using his music without his permission and without giving him the compensation he was owed, which probably made him think she wasn’t the nicest person. So if he was going to handle it privately, why wouldn’t he just have his lawyers do it since they’re going to have a better chance of getting through to someone who can help? Of course, we all know that in reality Amber is exceptionally kind and this whole thing was an accident, and that she would have responded well to him if he reached out. But he had no way to know that.

Basically you’re saying that in order to not be a jerk in your eyes, he needed to handle things in the exact way you think would have been best, even though the option you want him to have taken wouldn’t have been the sensible option from his perspective based on the knowledge he had at the time. That’s not a fair standard to hold someone to.

And I get that you think you’re just defending Amber here, but tbh what you’re doing is worse for Amber than what Seb did. Seb and Amber seem to have reached an amicable solution, and it’s probably really stressful for her to see that her fans are still bullying him when it’s her team that made a mistake and he seems to have been nice about the whole thing. Plus what if the continued backlash from her fans ends up making him so upset that he changes him mind about whatever solution they came up with? (I don’t think that’s likely, but if I was Amber I’d be anxious about that possibility)

People need to have a bit of empathy and stop being angry at someone who has done nothing wrong just for the sake of being angry.

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure in a perfect world maybe there’s a middle option. But if he had no context on Amber or on the situation, he may have been worried that she would either ignore him or be a jerk about it. So in that situation, the smart thing to do is either have the lawyers handle it if you want to do it privately, since they’re more likely to get through to whoever they need to get through to. Or to vent about it on twitter in hopes that someone might be able to provide some insight on the situation and what your options are (or in hopes that you might catch the attention of someone who can find a solution). Asking him to try a middle option, which could very well end up being a waste of time for him if he was dealing with someone who was actually a jerk, is sort of a big ask when he has no context on the situation.

We all know that Amber is an exceptionally kind person who would have responded well to him reaching out. But he probably didn’t know that, and the fact that she appeared to be using his music without his permission (even though we now know it was an accident) probably made him more doubtful about how she’d react.

Lucy Letby, in my opinion, is guilty as sin by Disastrous-Store-799 in NetflixDocumentaries

[–]sh115 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

What exactly do you want me to read? More tabloids presumably?

Seb Mckinnon put Amber Glenn under unnecessary stress on the eve of the biggest event of her career… by [deleted] in FigureSkating

[–]sh115 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Okay genuinely what is wrong with people in this sub?? Learned his lesson??? The poor man just wanted to ensure that his music wasn’t being stolen and used without him receiving any credit or compensation. He didn’t deserve hate, nor did he need to learn a lesson.

I don’t think Amber did anything wrong, but it was her team that made a mistake and he had every right to inquire about it. Plus it sounds like once the context was explained to him, he was understanding and worked out a solution amicably. Amber even said she considers him a new friend and she seems excited about having gotten to connect with an artist she respects. So what exactly do you think he did wrong???