Replace “teller” with “bank” because we are talking about legal ownership, not physical control.

They don’t have anything but a responsibility to care for it

While they absolutely “have a responsibility” to you, they also benefit from holding it, so your “anything but” rhetoric is incorrect. Brokers and banks alike earn money by lending the assets the have, despite their corresponding liabilities.

Do you think there isn’t a “clear record” without direct registration (from your other comment)

Correct. Legally, you have a “security entitlement”. Per UCC 8-503, the property interest you have a result of this entitlement is merely “a pro rata property interest in all interests in that financial asset held by the securities intermediary”, i.e. what your broker actually has, which is (a) opaque to you as a customer, and (b) is fundamentally difficult even for them to pin down - as it is composed primarily of their DTC account balance, ideally but they undoubtedly have many derivatives, transactions to settle (which can extend beyond 2 days because FTDs are common), shares lent out that are due to them, etc. So while the number of security entitlements in your account has a clear record, your property interest in the issuer does not have a clear record.

Location: suburbs of Chicago, IL

While I usually live in NC, I am visiting family. In this particular brand of suburbia, every single day the streets are alive with the sound of gas powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers. While I watch the news drone on about petty celebrity drama, the graph breaking upward trend of ocean temperatures elicits barely a word from any news source, and people carry on paying to burn gasoline to make already short grass shorter and move the cuttings around.

Another one. Don’t forget "No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”

I generally feel that way a lot of the time… though not as much at the supermarket, moreso when I am enjoying nature, believing so many of these species I enjoy observing will suffer a miserable and fearful extinction

WTAF

There’s lots of human-imposed economic stressors at the moment such as excessive rent, but for me the bigger one is our steady and cognitive-dissonance-filled march towards ecosystem collapse and climate catastrophe

I think games are coming out that are still just as fun. The only reason I may have less fun with gaming is because outside stress in the world makes it harder to engage as fully with the games today