Trash
At the Davis Square T stop, therre's a stand that once held a trashcan. Now it's juat a little metal platform with three struts and a hoop.
As I walked into the station, a woman dropped a wad of plastic and wax paper onto the stand, where it bounced off, hit the ground, and immediately started to roll away in the breeze. She continued chatting with her companion.
What magic is in the trashcan! It seems that for this woman, a garbage can is not a technology for the segregation of unwanted items, but a responsibility-transfer field. Passing an item through it purges one of any concern for its ultimate fate, or even its immediate one. Mission accomplished.