In most jurisdictions, part of the definition of a not-for-profit (of which a charity is a more restricted subset) is that it doesn’t exist for the benefit of the members / shareholders, or a specific person.

So creating a charity / NFP and asking people to pay into it is usually okay, but the purpose of that charity can’t be to enrich you, and it is a separate legal identity (i.e. taking a charity’s funds and giving it to yourself would be embezzling). Many jurisdictions allow for sports clubs to exist as not-for-profits, but they’d generally need to be for the purpose of organising a whole team to practice, compete and so on.

Generally charities can employ people to do work for them and pay them, but (varies by jurisdiction) they generally need to be not paid above a fair market rate for the work they actually do to advance the goals of the charity.

If the goal is to help a legitimate cause, you could also ask them to donate to an existing not-for-profit for the cause.

Disclaimer: IANAL, and anyway all of this would vary by jurisdiction - not legal advice!

I think there is some value to MBFC, even though there are also cases where it is problematic - I don’t think a blanket rule would be right.

The issues (& mitigating factors):

• Some of the ‘mostly analytics’ sources still have ‘bias by omission’ problems or misleading headlines, even if the facts in the articles are accurate. But I think on the fediverse, we aren’t beholden to algorithms or their editorial choices in terms of the balance of what we see, so the impact of this is limited.
• Opinion pieces have a place, although arguably not on World News. At the very least, factual pieces from outlets that also publish opinion have a place. But MBFC downrates outlets for having an opinion at all even when clearly labelled as such.
• The attempt to categorise every bias on a left to right scale when really there are so many dimensions any bias could be along isn’t as helpful.

So I’d suggest:

• Only mentioning it when an outlet has a history of publishing things that are factually incorrect (or there is reasonable doubt over it). Not every fact can be verified from first principles (and sadly often articles don’t name their primary sources - in a better world having no source would reduce credibility, but it is often hard to find articles that meet the well-sourced bar). People deliberately muddying the waters create think-tanks to cite with fake facts, fake scientific journals, and cite other unreliable sources - fact checking often requires on the ground investigation, asking reliable experts, and so on; it is simply impossible to be in expert in everything you read in the news to spot well-executed fake news. I think of the approach like a tree - there are experts in an area who can genuinely apply critical analysis to decide if something is fact or bogus. But there are also bogus experts. Then there are aggregators of facts (journals and think-tanks, etc…) that try to only accept things reviewed by genuine experts. But there are also bogus aggregators. Then there are journalists and outlets that further collect things from genuine aggregators and experts, and refine them. But there are also bogus outlets. Sites like MBFC try to act like a root to the tree and help you identify the truthful outlets, who have a good record of relying on truthful aggregators, who rely on truthful experts.
• The left / right bias part means very little - I’d suggest ignoring it if you’re looking at a single article.
• Any of the higher tiers of factual reporting should be fine and not worth a mention.

If there are reliable sources countering some facts, posting those instead of (or as well as) complaining about the source is probably better.

That’s a false dichotomy though. There are ways to prevent cheating that don’t rely on the security of the client against the owner of the device on which the client runs (which is what both of what your ‘ways’ are).

For one thing, it has long been a principle of good security to validate things on the server in a client-server application (which most multi-player games are). If they followed the principle of not sending data to a client that the user is not allowed to see, and not trusting the client (for example, by doing server-side validation, even after the fact, for things which are not allowed according to the rules of the game), they could make it so it is impossible to cheat by modifying the client, even if the client was F/L/OSS.

If they really can’t do that (because their game design relies on low latency revelation of information, and their content distribution strategy doesn’t cut it), they can also use statistical server-side cheat detection. For example, suppose that a player shoots within less than the realistic human reaction time of turning the corner when an enemy is present X out of Y times, but only A out of B times when no enemy is present. It is possible to calculate a p-value for X/Y - A/B (i.e. the probability of such an extreme difference given the player is not cheating). After correcting for multiple comparisons (due to multiple tests over time), it is possible to block cheaters without an unacceptable chance of false positives.

What jurisdiction is she in? And (if she knows) what jurisdiction is he in? (Jurisdiction as in country, and if the country has them, state / province). That will make a big difference to next steps.

The whole “crime capital” thing being tacked on to the story is ridiculous. Never let facts get in the way of a good story I guess! According to the ABS, Victoria has the second lowest rate of offenders per capita of any Australian state or territory (order is ACT, VIC, TAS, SA, WA, NSW, NT).

While someone’s political beliefs are highly multi-dimensional, there are two axes that are commonly used to define where someone sits:

• Economy - Left is favouring social responsibility for people receiving economic support (supporting people to meet their basic needs is everyone’s collective responsibility), while right is favouring individual responsibility (meeting your basic needs is your responsibility, and if you die because you can’t, even if it is due to something outside of your control, tough luck).
• Social liberties - Social Libertarian is favouring individual decisions on anything not related to the economy / rights of others, while Social Authoritarianism supports government restrictions on social liberties.

Since there are independent axes, there are four quadrants:

• Socially liberal, Economic left - e.g. Left Communism, Social Democrat, most Green parties, etc…
• Socially authoritarian, Economic left - e.g. Stalin, Mao. Tankie is a slang term for people in this quadrant.
• Socially liberal, Economic right - Sometimes called libertarian. Some people with this belief set call themselves Liberal in some countries.
• Socially authoritarian, Economic right - e.g. Trump. Sometimes called conservatives.

That said, some people use tankie as cover for supporting socially authoritarian, economic right but formerly economic left countries(e.g. people who support Putin, who is not economically left in any sense).

Does she know which Australian state? Likely every state has cyberstalking rules, but it would be a state law.

And apparently enforcement of foreign judgements in the US is state-by-state, and the US state doesn’t need personal jurisdiction over the person. So any US state court can decide to recognise a foreign jurisdiction, under local state laws, and all other states will recognise it. So if OFCOM can find one state that will recognise the judgement, then they are in trouble.

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.

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).

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:

• The employee is not required to spend, it is only a factor in promotions and not retaining the same role. OP said you can “get in trouble for not using this” - countering this defence perhaps depends on proving what kind of trouble to show it is a requirement. In addition, under s340, employers are not allowed to take an adverse action against an employee for exercising or proposing to exercise a workplace right, and adverse action includes discriminating between and employee and other employees of the employer.
• That the employee is not required to pay any particular person, they can choose what to buy as long as the select from a prescribed list. However, I think that could be countered by saying this is an indirect requirement to spend, and the “or another person” attaches to the “pay” part, so I don’t think that argument would fly.
• The the requirement is reasonable - however, that could be countered by arguing the privacy angle, and the fact that this is for personal shopping, far outside the reasonable scope of an employment relationship.
• That the payment isn’t for the benefit of the employer. I think that could be countered firstly by arguing this is a requirement to spend not pay, and event if it was to pay, it is indirectly for the employer’s benefit since it allows them to attract and retain clients. The way they are pushing it could further prove this.

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:

• The Israeli War Cabinet are war criminals and terrible people for slaughtering civilians in Palestine and Lebanon.
• The Houthis are war criminals and terrible people for targeting civilians in Israel.
• The US Trump Administration are war criminals and terrible people for killing civilians in Houthi-controlled areas.
• Hamas are war criminals and terrible people for targeting civilians.

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.

The awkwardness here actually works in favour of abolishing tips and replacing them with the pay being factored into higher prices.

No one wants to be the sucker - human nature is that people are generous if they think everyone else is generous, but if they feel that others are not ‘pulling their weight’ on generosity and are instead taking advantage, that’s the fastest way to dry up other people’s generosity. Right-wing media use this fact to undermine support for social welfare - e.g. if 0.001% of welfare payments are fraudulently taken, they set editorial policy that makes it seem like beneficiaries are rorting the system instead of being truly needy.

But when it comes to tipping, the dynamic actually works the other way - people feel generous by tipping, even though it is harmful long term. If a few people ahead of someone in the line don’t tip, should they be the sucker who does tip? And for the employee, you want them to be the advocate on the inside for forcing people to pay their share instead of taking advantage - by having the displayed price be the total upfront price that includes the compensation for employees, instead of an optional tip.

There is a minimum amount of total money the employee could make before they’d go and work somewhere else instead. So if, hypothetically, everyone in a country where tipping is common even for non-exceptional service just stopped paying tips, hospitality employers would be forced to pay more to stay competitive with other non-customer-facing industries.

Of course, a drastic shock to the economy like that would probably cause a lot of upheaval, as some employers struggle to accept the new norm.

However, the same thing would work even if the change was slower - e.g. if 5% of people didn’t tip, and did it very obviously and vocally, and then the practice spread as it reached 10% and so on.

Obviously it sucks for the employees who get hit by the first few non-tippers, but over the long term it would be for the better for worker rights. So I could absolutely see it working.

That said, I say this from a country where tipping is not the norm (except maybe the occasional ‘keep the change’ for exceptional service), and the law and expectation is that the most prominent displayed price is the total price you pay - and people react very negatively towards businesses seen as trying to bring in American style tipping culture.

I believe nothing in the podman rm family worked because the container was already gone - it was just the IP allocation that was left.

Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story from the 2nd century - although even that is a parody of existing stories. So the origin dates back a long time!

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This slowly degrades the power of the union and ultimately reduces wages and benefits of the workers

I’m not sure I buy into that - but that said I live in a country where unions are popular, but unions are not allowed to force people to join (but unions do have a right of access to workplaces to ask people to join / hold meetings).

Firstly, it doesn’t take that big a percentage of an employer’s workforce to strike before a strike is effective… companies don’t have a lot of surplus staff capacity just sitting around doing nothing. And they can’t fire striking union workers for striking.

Secondly, if all employees have to belong to one particular union, that also means the employees have no choice of which union, and hence no leverage over the union. Bad unions who just agree to whatever the employer asks and don’t look after their members then become entrenched and the employees can’t do much. If there are several unions representing employees, they can still unite and work together if they agree on an issue - but there is much more incentive for unions to act in the interests of their members, instead of just their leadership.

A lack of guaranteed employee protections, on the other hand, is inexcusable - it’s just wealthy politicians looking out for the interests of their donors in big business.

Why not donate to a local charity that might not receive as much, rather than a US based one?

Oh you are right - but it actually seems like history was repeating! https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/delays-ease-after-peak-hour-equipment-fault-hits-melbourne-trains/ar-AA1vaHLD seems to talk about the actual fault that was yesterday.