But what can you do?

Something else I've seen walking from work to the bus station.

How is it that we're supposed to live? How much are we meant to ignore? Caring too much is just uncool, always has been. Plus, it's exhausting. Is this why so many people are so relentlessly shallow? I'm sure I am one of them.

Is it that the press is "weak?" Or just that everything is subject to the omnipotent Market? Money is strength, power, love, sex, good, right, might. And...truth?

Privatization

I work in San Francisco and often walk from my office, near AT&T Park, to the Transbay Terminal at 1st and Mission, where I catch the bus home. I've noticed that some of the buildings downtown have notices like this one embedded in the sidewalk.

You know, we citizens have given up an awful lot of what was once called the "commons," to the point where assertions of ownership such as this are the norm. We think nothing of the fact that corporations own, or claim ownership of, pretty much everything.

Meanwhile, I frequently pass this frighteningly monolithic, windowless cube owned by the aforementioned, stadium-branding telecom. It was from a secret room within this Borg box that the National Security Agency jacked into AT&T's Internet backbone. Thanks to our brave lawmakers, this corporation now has legal immunity for having helped our government spy on us. Oh, well.