About your residence in one of two bubbles.

I'm a longtime fan of Timothy Garton Ash's work. He was on hand in Eastern Europe during the latter end times, and saw first-hand the value of truth in bureaucratic and totalitarian settings.

Do you figure Mark Seabrook will be voting for Donald Trump?

Do you live in a Trump bubble, or a Clinton bubble? by Timothy Garton Ash (The Guardian)

The myths, exaggerations and lies of our fragmented media have distorted reality for both left and right. This is eroding our democracy

 ... A noble American cliche invites us to believe in the “marketplace of ideas”. What we are witnessing in this election is a market failure.

It's why I say, "Death to Chains."

Speaking of the monolithic corporation's early years, Wikipedia observes, "In 1986, the name of the concept was changed to Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar to reflect the (founders') original concept of a place people could call their own."

The amazing fact that ordinary Americans regularly can be duped into believing a $1.2 billion company with 2,000 locations has much of anything at all to do with their neighborhoods, or might somehow be "their own" in any truly meaningful way, says as much about PT Barnum as the study of aberrant human psychology.

However, if I were a parent, what would concern me most is not my "own" gullibility, but the way we smilingly permit Applebee's and its ilk to "own" our children through tactics like that pictured above. We might as well allow corporate America to buy up future employment rights for kids at the earliest age possible, perhaps in exchange for gift cards.

Thanks to K for the photo: "This was a paper that came home in my kindergartener's folder. It's a cruel, cruel joke ... "

Yep. It is.