January 17, 2019
The sorry state of state graphic design, Ohio rips off a grandma on first day of medical weed sales, John Kasich swoops an airline seat, and more.
Behold the first thing visitors see when they enter Ohio via road.
Everybody involved in the making of this welcome sign should be fired. We could have let our state’s brightest fourth-graders design something better.
You know our state goofed when a guy like me who owns 32 pairs of sweatpants looks at the finished product and says, “Seriously?”
I have a few questions:
Why is the second “O” bigger than the first in “Ohio?”
What’s the point of using two different shades of red?
What the hell does “find it here” even mean?
Comic Sans — what the fuck?
Sadly, we have an answer to No. 3:
Heartwarming to know our state government likely paid a consulting firm tens of thousands of dollars to produce a word salad like, “The brand represents how people actually think and feel about their experiences in Ohio.”
None of those words actually mean anything.
This is just another chapter in Ohio’s struggle with graphic design and marketing. Our current license plates look dirty from any distance further than three-feet, and we recently replaced county number tags with county name tags in a font that can’t be found anywhere else on the plate.
There are many reasons for Ohio’s decline of national importance — we’re expected to lose another electoral vote after the next census. Shitty signs and license plates aren’t the only reason we’re hemorrhaging young people. But they offer a glimpse into our problem. It’s hard to entice young professionals to move here if it looks like we don’t even employ one competent graphics designer.
Hundreds of Ohioans purchased medical marijuana yesterday and somehow to state avoided anarchy.
In its first sale, the state ripped off a grandma in a “420” long-sleeve shirt. Look at all those prideful people smiling as their store busts granny’s head for $17 a gram!
CNN hired former Ohio governor John Kasich this week as he continues to wait in the weeds hoping Trump’s House of Cards collapses so he can position himself as a The Last Sane Republican.
He was such an absentee governor down the stretch, Kentucky’s Republican governor couldn’t resist potshotting him at Mike DeWine’s inauguration.
From Scott Wartman of cincinnati.com:
Based on Bevin’s comments Thursday, it appeared Bevin and outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich didn’t have much of a working relationship. He referred to Kasich as “the one who preceded the one who is coming in.”
“He’s been a little busy,” Bevin said. “I don’t spend a lot of time on set at CNN, so I’ve not had occasion to cross paths with him much.”
Yesterday Kasich made the mistake of bumping a semi-famous comedian with a Twitter account off an overbooked flight.
People reveal their true self while boarding airplanes and in grocery store parking lots when it comes time to return the shopping cart.
Remember this episode the next time Kasich presents himself as an aw-shucks moderate, which will probably be tonight on CNN.
The heroin/fentanyl epidemic in this country started when the Sackler crime family pushed Oxycontin on America as a miracle, non-addictive painkiller. It turns out one of the richest families in the world may not have been level with us while earning generational wealth.
From Barry Meier of nyt.com:
Members of the Sackler family, which owns the company that makes OxyContin, directed years of efforts to mislead doctors and patients about the dangers of the powerful opioid painkiller, a court filing citing previously undisclosed documents contends.
When evidence of growing abuse of the drug became clear in the early 2000s, one of them, Richard Sackler, advised pushing blame onto people who had become addicted.
“We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible,” Mr. Sackler wrote in an email in 2001, when he was president of the company, Purdue Pharma. “They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”
That email and other internal Purdue communications are cited by the attorney general of Massachusetts in a new court filing against the company, released on Tuesday. They represent the first evidence that appears to tie the Sacklers to specific decisions made by the company about the marketing of OxyContin. The aggressive promotion of the drug helped ignite the opioid epidemic.
There are tens of thousands of people in prison for selling weed. Yet the Sacklers get to move in the uppermost crust of our society. “Land of the Free,” or whatever.
Speaking of rich, unaccountable assholes… there may never have been a better time in American history to inside trade. The SEC is operating with a skeleton crew thanks to the shutdown caused by our baby boomer president who suffers from early onset dementia.
From Justin Rohrlich and Ana Campoy of qz.com:
John Stark, former chief of the SEC’s Office of Internet Enforcement, which monitors, among other things, online trading and investment activity, called the numbers “shocking” and predicts an increase in insider trading while enforcement staff is on furlough.
“There will absolutely be people on Wall Street, and off of Wall Street, who believe they may be able to get away with something because the cop is simply not on the beat,” Stark said. “I was there during a shutdown [in November and December of 1995] but the SEC was able to find funding to pay people’s salaries, so people stayed at work. This is a dramatic difference from that.”
They maybe able to get away with something? No shit? On Wall Street? That’s hard to believe.
THOSE WMDs. John Bogle, who founded Vanguard and revolutionized retirement savings, dies at 89… Facebook doesn’t need to fool you… The “skills gap” was a lie… Feds say “star” DEA agent abroad stole millions… T-Mobile executives behave as if our president is corrupt.