Is the second law of thermodynamics routinely violated?

[septimus]

I continue to feel that my claim …
Unlike the Laws of Newton, Maxwell and Einstein, the Second Law isn’t a dynamical law; it’s just a statistical fact, closely akin to the Law of Large Numbers.
… is correct, and should have quiesced this bickering!

@Max_S

… What does free energy have to do with the second law? …

Everything.

@https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_free_energy

According to the second law of thermodynamics, for systems reacting at STP (or any other fixed temperature and pressure), there is a general natural tendency to achieve a minimum of the Gibbs free energy.

@researchgate.net

Another way of looking at the Helmholtz free energy is realizing that in equilibrium a system at constant T and constant V will be in a minimum of the Helmholtz free energy. Indeed this can be easily derived from the second law …

(Google to detail the difference between Helmholtz’s and Gibbs’ free energy.)