This spells out a scenario that had just popped into my mind: what if this is an intentional "demonstration" of their bioweapon prowess, which they are using as leverage for backroom negotiations around Ukraine or whatever.

oh no no no, just about everything about Russia these days is explained by Hanlon's Razor. There is absolutely no any conspiracy/planning, I assure you

I also watched a lot of news content and never saw them until seeking them out. I suspect they are suppressed by the algorithm because they are generally willing to give voice to anti-establishment, anti-oligrachy sentiments (both from the hosts and guests). But yea they're great. The primary hosts are explicitly left and right leaning but rarely get caught up in partisan discord and instead focus on high quality, fact based journalism. (Relatedly, the one topic that does most often trigger the occasional bouts of partisan bickering between Saagar and Krystal is COVID and Dr. Fauci, make of that what you will).

There is no such legal obligation. That's a myth the oligarchs have spread to preclude people from even imagining socially responsible corporations.

Sure, you might get fired if you try to put social responsibility or even just long term sustainability of the company above quarterly earnings/growth if your board isn't on board with it. But you won't go to jail.

You don't need the legal obligation because that's just the way it is. You'd need a legal obligation to change it. The truth stands that typical corporations have only one goal, the maximization of that corporation's ambition which is almost always growth of revenue and profit. This is how it works, regardless of how you all continue arguing the unimportant details. It's almost as if you can keep the real problems hidden away by making a big scene about the meaningless.

That doesn't matter. The point is that legal obligation absolved of culpability. There is no such legal obligation whatsoever, and so there is culpability.

> The truth stands that typical corporations have only one goal

"Typical" is the key word here. The typical American of your age probably doomscrolls TikTok. Do you? Do you have a legal obligation to do so? Three completely different things.

This is actually true. The shareholder maximization value thesis can be traced to a single economics paper and was very controversial at the time as it broke from the obligations that companies were typically under to be responsible to uphold in exchange for limited liability protection. Most businesses were structured as partnerships or sole proprietary entires that didn't have limited liability for shareholders and had a broad obligation to shareholders, bondholders, employees and society

I agree in principle, but also agree with gp that in practice the things one has to do to rise to a position of power in corrupt institutions make it virtually impossible to be a credible agent of change, especially private/secretive institutions like military, intelligence, military-industrial corps. I guess politicians are the one role that is supposed to be able to operate without those institutional constraints but of course, (in the US) given corporate capture of political speech, political hyper-polarization, etc, in most cases they are just as or more constrained. It is a hard problem.

I can't wait to tell my dad about this study. We recently got into a heated debate when he insisted that I was a toddler on a family vacation we were reminiscing about, when in fact I was a teenager on that particular vacation, and he was mashing it together with memories of a different vacation. He is 75 but is in pretty good cognitive health, no signs of dementia besides this unreliable long term memory.