In Australia, there is a strong presumption towards keeping left as a pedestrian (and overtaking on the right - e.g. etiquette on escalators is to keep left, but if you are walking up the escalator, overtake to the right).
In some particularly busy places (especially on shared footpath / bike lane zones) there are even arrows on the pavement to ensure tourists know what side to keep to.
There are always a few people (probably tourists) who don’t follow the local etiquette.
Or at least the other way around. Reddit is banned from me.
to lose 100% of the court cases where they try this defense
I don’t think the litigants actually know this. The shady characters they are paying for the information probably know that, but represent that it will just work if they do it right.
Imagine you have some kind of legal problem, and you go to your lawyer, and your lawyer tells you they know what to do that will let you win. You’ll probably do it. Now for the litigants, it is the same thing, except instead of a lawyer, it is some person with an Internet and/or in real life following, who dazzles you with lots of fake formality that aligns to your preconceptions of the legal system based on TV. Of course, it is all just pseudolegal and a scam, but you don’t know that.
Now you might except that some critical thinking and/or research of authoritative sources like case law, or consulting a real lawyer might let the litigant see that it is a scam, but critical thinking skills are not as common as you might hope, and secondary education in many places doesn’t cover much about the law or how to do legal research.
Consider that 49.8% of voters in the 2024 US Presidential election voted for Trump, even after seeing the first term. Many people are easily hoodwinked into acting against their own best interests, especially if they are convinced there is a community of other people like them acting the same way (SovCit like groups do have some numbers), that people who endorse those theories get a lot of recognition / are influential (the leaders of the groups can create that impression), and that their theories have a long traditional backing (usually they make up a historical backstory).
That catholics should practice confession is a religious belief. But the confidentiality part is from canon law - i.e. in terminology of most other organisations, it is a policy. It is a long-standing policy to punish priests for breaking it, dating back to at least the 12th century, but nonetheless the confidentiality is only a policy within a religious organisation, and not a religious belief.
Many organisations punish individuals who break their policy. But if an organisation has a policy, and insist that it be followed even when following it is contrary to the law, and would do immense harm to vulnerable individuals, then I think it is fair to call that organisation evil - and to hold them culpable for harm resulting from that policy.
Even if the confidentiality itself was a core part of the religious belief itself, religious freedom does not generally extend to violating the rights of others, even if the religion demands it. Engaging in violent jihad, for example, is not a protected right even in places where religious freedom cannot be limited, even if the person adheres to a sect that requires it.
Easy! Why do you think it happened? Inadequate food regulation? Underfunded healthcare? Insufficient regulation of pollutants that can impact health and cause chronic disease?
I don’t know your individual circumstances, but given the state of the world right now, I’d bet it’s a combination of all three.
IANAL, but it is an interesting question to consider whether it would be illegal in Australia (if anything, as a test to see if the right laws are on the books to block this kind of thing). The laws are likely different in the US, and it might vary from state to state.
The Fair Work Act 2009 (Commonwealth), s325 provides that:
An employer must not directly or indirectly require an employee to spend, or pay to the employer or another person, an amount of the employee’s money or the whole or any part of an amount payable to the employee in relation to the performance of work, if:
(a) the requirement is unreasonable in the circumstances; and
(b) for a payment—the payment is directly or indirectly for the benefit of the employer or a party related to the employer.
I think you could imagine the employer arguing a few lines:
So I think it would probably be contrary to s325 of the Fair Work Act in Australia.
Another angle could be the right to disconnect under s333M of the Fair Work Act:
An employee may refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, from an employer outside of the employee’s working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable.
If someone has a work and a personal phone, and has the app on the work phone, but refuses to use take the work phone or install an app on their personal phone so they can respond to tracking requests from the employer, then maybe this also fits.
I also wonder if in Australia this could also be a form of cartel conduct - it is an arrangement of where purchases (other than those the company should legitimately control) are directed centrally under an arrangement by an organisation.
Under s45AD of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010,
(1) For the purposes of this Act, a provision of a contract, arrangement or understanding is a cartel provision if: (a) either of the following conditions is satisfied in relation to the provision: (i) the purpose/effect condition set out in subsection (2); (ii) the purpose condition set out in subsection (3); and (b) the competition condition set out in subsection (4) is satisfied in relation to the provision.
So the purpose condition has several alternatives separated by ‘or’, one of which is:
(3) The purpose condition is satisfied if the provision has the purpose of directly or indirectly: … (b) allocating between any or all of the parties to the contract, arrangement or understanding: (ii) the persons or classes of persons who have supplied, or who are likely to supply, goods or services to any or all of the parties to the contract, arrangement or understanding; or
It sounds like there is a solid argument the purpose condition is met - they are allocating where people who are part of the arrangement (employees) shop.
They’d also need to meet the competition condition for it to be cartel conduct. For this to be met, the arrangement might need to include the clients of the company:
(4) The competition condition is satisfied if at least 2 of the parties to the contract, arrangement or understanding: (a) are or are likely to be; or (b) but for any contract, arrangement or understanding, would be or would be likely to be; in competition with each other in relation to: … © if paragraph (2)© or (3)(b) applies in relation to a supply, or likely supply, of goods or services—the supply of those goods or services in trade or commerce; or
So it could be argued that this is a cartel arrangement between the company, its clients, and its employees, and so attract penalties for cartel conduct.
It is possible for all of the following to be simultaneously true:
While all of the above crimes are of roughly the same type (albeit for different reasons), they do differ in extent - the Israeli War Cabinet is responsible for the most suffering by a wide margin.
I think it is a morally consistent position to condemn all of the war crimes above, although perhaps to prioritise efforts condemning the bigger ones.
I looked into this previously, and found that there is a major problem for most users in the Terms of Service at https://codeium.com/terms-of-service-individual.
Their agreement talks about “Autocomplete User Content” as meaning the context (i.e. the code you write, when you are using it to auto-complete, that the client sends to them) - so it is implied that this counts as “User Content”.
Then they have terms saying you licence them all your user content:
“By Posting User Content to or via the Service, you grant Exafunction a worldwide, non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid right and license (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to host, store, reproduce, modify for the purpose of formatting for display and transfer User Content, as authorized in these Terms, in each instance whether now known or hereafter developed. You agree to pay all monies owing to any person or entity resulting from Posting your User Content and from Exafunction’s exercise of the license set forth in this Section.”
So in other words, let’s say you write a 1000 line piece of software, and release it under the GPL. Then you decide to trial Codeium, and autocomplete a few tiny things, sending your 1000 lines of code as context.
Then next week, a big corp wants to use your software in their closed source product, and don’t want to comply with the GPL. Exafunction can sell them a licence (“sublicence through multiple tiers”) to allow them to use the software you wrote without complying with the GPL. If it turns out that you used some GPLd code in your codebase (as the GPL allows), and the other developer sues Exafunction for violating the GPL, you have to pay any money owing.
I emailed them about this back in December, and they didn’t respond or change their terms - so they are aware that their terms allow this interpretation.
I think the whole case seems super suss.
The photos of someone in the area look nothing like him.
But supposedly they found him days later, based on someone recognising him (from what? he doesn’t even look like the publicly shared suspect photos), and despite him supposedly having travelled a great distance - enough to scatter any evidence over large distances where it would never be recovered, he happened to have a complete set of evidence on him, including a paper “manifesto” and the weapon. That seems like a rather unlikely story. And then they try to seek the death penalty, and double up federal and state.
I think what happened is the authorities decided they probably would never find the real killer, but it was also unacceptable not to have someone to blame - they’d rather kill an innocent to send a message than let crime against the rich go without a response. So they picked some random they didn’t like and set him up.