It’s not new. The Dutch East India Company was for all practical purposes in control of the Dutch government for decades, and did horrific things in countries around the world to great profit. Closer to home, “banana republic” was a real thing.

It’s disappointing it’s still so prevalent in the current day.

I don’t know, I would consider our hard-wiring to seek out social relationships or to love our children to be a part of what makes us human. (As part of a basket, in the sense that having four legs is part of what makes a dog a dog, but not all dogs have four legs.)

Recognizing our wiring puts us in the best position to strategize how to work around it, if we want to. Like trying to not eat cookies from the pantry via willpower will always ultimately fail, but not having any cookies in the pantry has a good chance of preventing excessive cookie eating.

In support of that theory, there was a multiplayer video game study a while back that found it was the less skilled men who were assholes to women players. The better players didn’t seem to care about their teammates gender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Male_behavior_towards_female_gamers

Depends on whether the AI boom is like the canal boom (fizzled), or the railroad boom (still going, arguably underinvested).

It’s kind of interesting how religions handle change in their theology. The Catholics have very few teachings that have been designated “infallible” - almost everything is potentially up for grabs (https://uscatholic.org/articles/201105/is-there-a-list-of-infallible-teachings/). Judaism has a whole thing about “since God gave the Torah to us at Sinai, it is now ours to interpret, and God himself said that we should rule on legal matters by majority vote (Exodus 23:2)” (https://www.mayimachronim.com/not-in-heaven-the-snake-oven-of-akhnai/) I am sure other religions have their own get out of jail cards, too.

Hospitals in areas with large JW populations have opaque IV bags available, and at patient’s request will lie to visitors about what is in it. Members have been “following their conscience” for decades, and I suspect this change is more about not ostrasizing those members than actually changing behavior.

It’s kind of the lemonade stand of our time. Get some feel for how markets work, and exercise some generally applicable skills (video editing).

At my company the direct manager approves the detail - although if the total looks reasonable for the assignment they don’t scrutinize individual expenses - then above that there are automated flagging checks only. If mixed in with legit expenses, and the description or vendor type or whatever didn’t trigger the automated flagging, $20 for something inappropriate would never be caught.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_strings