These plates have been around since 2010 (and obviously the bicentennial of the war was in 2012), but we're just noticing now, as somebody at Reddit is calling attention to the typo.
The Redditor says: "I was never a fan of having a plate celebrating the War of 1812, but I'm even more upset now that I (and tons of other Marylanders) are driving advertisements for international online gambling."
On the up side, this proves that no one is looking at URLs and typing them into their browser window. It took 13 years for anyone to notice the mistake that is on nearly 800,000 license plates.
Also on the up side: This is a good lesson in the potential for mistakes. Please check everything before relying on anything.
CORRECTION: It was not a typo. Originally, the URL went where it was supposed to, a website about the Star Spangled Banner National Historic Trail. Later, perhaps in 2022, the URL became available for purchase, and the Philippine gambling operation snapped it up. You have to read the comments over at WaPo to understand the problem.
I need to follow my own advice and check everything before relying on anything.
Posts
16 comments:
America grew great and powerful by the industriousness of its people. The more Government assumes power and control the more shit gets fucked up because bureaucracies by definition are stupid and inefficient. This is one of several million examples that the lame mainstream media could share each and every day.
"Locket's Led Grare."
In the War of 1812, the British freed enslaved men, gave them guns, and used them against the Americans. Hence the line "hirelings [mercenaries] and slaves" mentioned in a later verse of the Star Spangled Banner. Maybe I am "woke," because once you see what the US really is, you can't unsee it.
I used to brush this stuff off by saying that the idea of freedom and justice for all was aspirational at the time, and we have been steadily working towards a better day, towards making it true, over the decades and centuries, but here we are, a country that has been co-opted by a cabal of war mongering fascists bent on world conquest, a cabal which uses our differences to divide and rule over us, and that excuse will no longer wash.
"Nothing honors our ancestors like Virtual Cockfighting in the Philippines."
Yes. And?
they should change the url, to something for ALL AMERICANS.. Something like Whitehouse.com
That's a perfect encapsulation of Big Blue Government at work, is it not, encompassing its most famous resident all the way down to the Miracle of Baltimore and state-wide public-school educational excellence. How many people work at the Maryland DMV, one wonders?
Wait, the state issued government ID that you must display or pay a fee to replace, that government ID listed a link, and the state didn't secure that link long-term?
Sounds like the state of Maryland owes 800,000 citizens brand new plates at no cost, at a bare minimum. That's a nice 8-figure cost.
It is pretty typical for abandoned URLs that get any sort of traffic to be snapped up by other parties to try to direct traffic to them. Gambling is almost quaint as a takeover. Porn and malware are pretty common as well.
I'm not sure why a government would direct people to a web site that they did not control. That is quite unwise.
Broken links are a constant problem with old web sites. Likely they stopped using that webpage and didn't think to maintain the URL until the plates were out of service. When they stopped renewing, it went back in the hopper.
Be glad it's not porn.
Driving in Maryland is a gamble in itself, so this is totally on brand.
Of homonyms, acronyms, dual-use symbols and rhetoric, and correlation. Semantic drift, historical divergence, redistributive change exemplify 50 Shades of a 1619 Project, Covid-19/20/21/22 censors and mandates, selective prosecution, title abiguity, gender proliferation, logical conflation, etc. A hash of a function with low probability of collision with reality.
That generation of Maryland plate is one of the worst designs ever. It has an unreadable stacked pair of small letters and a designed-by-committee scattered patriotism theme.
Both the prior and later generation of Maryland plate look much better.
The prior "shield" plate plus the "War of 1812" / bad URL plate:
https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/marylands-new-license-plates-look-like/
The current "state flag on a field" plate:
https://www.shoplicenseplates.com/assets/images/2022-maryland-license-plates-pair-4eg1740.jpg
"I need to follow my own advice and check everything before relying on anything."
Life is short, so good luck with that. The necessity of having to rely on supposedly reputable sources for information is part of why solipsism never works.
Just curious, has anyone established positively that the gambling site isn't actually owned and operated by the State of Maryland?
robother,
I wish I could remember Bucky Katt's entire rewrite of the SSB, but "And the rocket's DEAD BEAR" is still with me.
"Blogger Aggie said...
Just curious, has anyone established positively that the gambling site isn't actually owned and operated by the State of Maryland?"
Maryland has its own gambling site, and it ain't in the Philipines...
https://www.mdlottery.com
Post a Comment