Interesting Links for 15-06-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Edinburgh trams: Plans for extension to Newbridge set to be abandoned in favour of route along A71 corridor

(tags:edinburgh trams )

2. Do a quarter of British people really believe Covid was a hoax?

(tags:conspiracy polls )

3. Who wants to read a judge interrogate lawyers for presenting AI gibberish as if it was reality?

(tags:USA law AI epicfail )

4. Google risks forced breakup of ad business as EU alleges shocking misconduct

(tags:Google advertising corruption fraud business regulation )

5. Body mass index gets smack down: American Medical Association calls out harms and "racist exclusion" | Ars Technica

(tags:weight healthcare USA )

6. How many of these do you think are birds?

(tags:birds paleontology evolution )

7. How do people treat you differently when you're skinny?

(tags:weight bigotry society )

8. First time one of my posts on Mastodon has gone viral! (just hit 500 shares)

(tags:socialmedia )

9. Europe votes to regulate AI and ban use of live facial recognition

(tags:regulation ai faces )

10. 'I got to know my gut microbiome - as a result, I sleep better, have more energy and I've lost 25lbs'

(tags:microbiome )

11. Johnson Verdict: 'He lied, lied about lying, lied about lying about lying, and is generally a twat'

(tags:BorisJohnson lying politics satire true )

12. Two children were born with 'insatiable hunger' that left them severely obese. Now scientists know why (leptin gene mutation)

(tags:genetics hunger )

13. Boosting paternity leave has economic benefits and reduces inequality

(tags:parenting men uk inequality )

14. Wildcats bred in captivity released into Cairngorms

(tags:cats nature scotland )

Comments

[andrewducker]

Agreed. I would hope that they haven't done anything criminal here. But it certainly sounds like they were more careless than you would expect from people you were paying to represent you in court.

There's possibly a case here for regulation - that for something to be considered a good source of legal information it need to be approved by a legal standards body. Although publicising this case might be enough to bring it home to people that they need to check their data from any source!

[danieldwilliam]

Negligence can certainly trigger criminal liability in some situations. Driving without due care and attention or recklessly discharing firearms for example.

I think there is a question here about the interaction of signing the paperwork to submit the pleadings to court, which is a deliberate act of saying I [believe / know / understand / swear] that these things are true and the utter carelessness with which they have gone about checking the cases are correct. If you say "these things are true" and the only reason you believe that is that you have put less than zero effort in to reviewing the truth of your own statement when you could have have you in fact deliberately lied?

Also, worth noting that just because the lawyers' defence lawyer says that there needs to be a deliberate lie to trigger a sanction doesn't mean he's correct.

[andrewducker]

True. If the whole point of you checking someone else's work is that you are supposed to check it is true, and you don't, then that's definitely the kind of thing that can lead to a miscarriage of justice and which courts do not look kindly on.