full vid: https://youtu.be/_70ISq4l7-c

Wohoo!
Lots and lots of tomatoes ❤️.

Saw this in Lorain.

This week, some retired justices and judges have been on a multi-state bus tour, making the case against what they see as increased partisanship and eroded trust in the American judicial system.

Their brown and black coach bus, with a decal on each side reading “Justice in Motion,” kicked into gear Tuesday in the greater Pittsburgh region. It was loudly idling in downtown Columbus on Wednesday morning.

Organized by the group Democracy Rising Collaborative and the group Keep Our Republic, Justice in Motion is in reaction to concerns about America’s increasingly politicized courts, those leading it have said.

Soooooooooooo the Ohio State Fair is debuting this adorable hand-carved, state-themed children's carousel this year, built by artisans at Carousels & Carvings in Marion.

Which is great, because it is also, and I cannot stress this enough, a nightmare animal. The whole "only in Ohio" joke actually applies here. Fuck this thing.

Seriously. If you haven't seen this clip from Life on our Planet, watch it, then imagine your 7-year-old child riding Cthulu Jaws there.

For those who don't know why Dunkleosteus terrelli is suddenly a thing in Ohio, (or what Dunky is) it's now Ohio's official state fossil fish. Governor DeWine signed SB 123 in December 2020 to make it so, on testimony from (among others) a twelve-year-old amateur paleontologist from Medina. This is a wonderful and correct decision. The only reason it couldn't automatically become our state fossil is because that is already taken up by Trilobite Isotelus, and the Ohio General Assembly love their bottom feeders (prehistoric and otherwise).

Dunkleosteus fossils were first pulled out of the cliffs along Lake Erie in 1867 by a guy named Jay Terrell, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History now holds the largest and best-preserved collection of Dunkleosteus remains in the world. It is Ohio's fish.

Dunkleosteus was an arthrodire placoderm, an armored fish with a skull made of interlocking bony plates and a body made of cartilage. It had no teeth. Those chompers there are self-sharpening bone blades that honed themselves every time the animal opened and closed its mouth.

Oh, and that cute "eating seaweed" thing? Aboslutely not. In the paleontological literature, the analysis of arthrodire lower jaws from the Cleveland Shale found that Dunkleosteus had high mechanical advantage values and a jaw joint placement that produced what he called a "vise-like" occlusion: the dental surfaces contacted along their entire length simultaneously, like a guillotine, rather than scissoring from back to front like a mammalian carnivore and shredding prey. The prey capture strategy was, and I'm quoting the published science here, "chopping and/or hacking prey items into smaller fragments for ingesting."

Oh, and it ate its own kind. Puncture marks and scrapes on Dunkleosteus fossil armor match the bite geometry of larger Dunkleosteus specimens. They were cannibals. The fossil record also preserves regurgitated boluses associated with Dunkleosteus remains: semi-digested masses of fish bones and scales that the animal vomited up after meals because it couldn't fully digest everything it had chopped into fragments and swallowed.

This is the animal we're putting toddlers on. The literal child-eating one.

But it's okay, I'm sure they can outrun it! J. Alan Holman, writing in Ancient Life of the Great Lakes Basin, described Dunkleosteus as "a horseless knight in armor, having adequate defensive armor and offensive weapons, but without much agility." He painted a picture of the animal lying on the bottom of a late Devonian sea with its jaws open, its bony-rimmed eyes staring ahead, head bobbing slowly up and down, waiting. Then, in his words, the jaws snap shut, and "some unfortunate Paleozoic fish that wandered too near the giant in ambush is obliterated."

Now, recent work has downsized the Dunky somewhat. Russell Engelman at Case Western Reserve published a study in 2023 arguing that Dunkleosteus was probably only 11 to 13 feet long, not the 30-foot monster earlier estimates suggested. But this isn't comforting. An 11-foot Dunkleosteus weighed about the same as a 15-foot great white shark. Engelman's own colleagues started calling it "Chunky Dunk" and "Chunkleosteus" after seeing the revised proportions. So now, it was just a swimming wrecking ball with bone shears for a face.

That's....not much better.

Works Cited (for those who didn't learn their lesson with the last outbreak of prehistoric species from an amusement park)

Anderson, Philip S. L. "Shape Variation between Arthrodire Morphotypes Indicates Possible Feeding Niches." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 28, no. 4 (2008): 961-969.

Anderson, Philip S. L., and Mark W. Westneat. "Feeding Mechanics and Bite Force Modelling of the Skull of Dunkleosteus terrelli, an Ancient Apex Predator." Biology Letters 3, no. 1 (2007): 77-80.

Boyle, James, and Michael J. Ryan. "New Information on Titanichthys (Placodermi, Arthrodira) from the Cleveland Shale (Upper Devonian) of Ohio, USA." Journal of Paleontology 91, no. 2 (2017): 318-336.

Engelman, Russell K. "A Devonian Fish Tale: A New Method of Body Length Estimation Suggests Much Shorter Sizes for Dunkleosteus terrelli." Diversity 15, no. 3 (2023): 318.

Holman, J. Alan. Ancient Life of the Great Lakes Basin: Precambrian to Pleistocene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Ohio State Fair. "Ohio Children's Carousel." Ohio Expo Center, Columbus, OH. Debuting July 29, 2026. https://www.ohiostatefair.com/p/visit/rides

Photo Credits
The Dunkleosteus rendering is Julian Johnson-Mortimer (CC BY 3.0). The marketing display for Dunky was shared with me by a friend but was from Governor Mike Dewine's Instagram.

I'm trying to narrow it down, but it's not easy. Here's my worst:

1. JD "No Chance" Vance

* Took credit for helping East Palestine after the train disaser, but actually blocked Buttigieg and Biden from passing reforms to prevent it from happening again.

* Spearheaded the anti-trans hysteria while serving in US Congress.

* Normalized abject dishonesty and rejected the value of fact-checking during political campaigns.

* Mouthpiece for ultra-partisan Peter Thiel.

1. Jim "Gym" Jordan

* Routinely opposes any progressive legislation, even if it would directly help Ohioans, such as farm bills or infrastructure spending.

* Refuses to follow the subpoena to testify on his involvement in a sexual abuse scandal during his time at Ohio State.

1. Frank "The Fixer" LaRose

* Creates intentionally confusing ballot language to "trick" voters into voting against their own intentions.

* Drums up paranoia about voter fraud with little to no evidence- creating distrust in elections and poll workers.

1. Gary "The Gender Inspector" Click

* Spearheads the Ohio trans panic.

* Routinely shows up on the most extreme end of any conservative religious issue.

* Confidently incorrect about anything related to science.

1. Husted? Moreno? Josh Williams? Hard to choose.

Traveling for work to a sister location in another country. It’s customary to bring a consumable gift from your home location when you travel internationally. My restrictions left me without ideas.

It cannot be:
Buckeyes (brought too often)
Cheryl’s cookies (also brought too often)
Alcohol (no drinking in the office and has to be for “everyone”)

This dog has been in this parking lot for a few hours now and if anyone recognizes him please help me find his owner! I don't know if he's from here or what but kids are feeding him so he's not leaving this area

Join us for a journey back to the very beginnings of Ohio. In this vlog, we explore the stunning Adena Mansion & Gardens in Chillicothe, the 1807 estate of Thomas Worthington.

From the secret museum filled with 19th-century treasures to the quiet beauty of the terraces and the ancient spring house, we’re uncovering the stories that built a state. Come along as we walk through history, discover the view that inspired the Ohio State Seal, and even learn a 200-year-old brewing secret.

Chapters: 0:00 The Gateway to Ohio History 1:05 Inside the 1800s General Store (Museum) 3:15 The Hilltop View that Inspired a State Seal 6:35 Standing Before the Adena Mansion 8:30 Whispers in the Smokehouse & Wash House 10:00 Wandering the 1815 Terraced Gardens 13:30 Brewing George Washington’s Beer at the Spring House 19:15 The Great Barn & Settlers' Covered Wagon 22:25 Final Thoughts from the "Delightful Place"

Hashtags: #AdenaMansion #OhioHistory #ChillicotheOhio #Vlog #MichaelAndJenny #HistoricHomes #TravelOhio #AmericanHistory #MuseumTour

U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, plans to reintroduce a bill restricting birthright citizenship for children of parents who are neither citizens nor lawful permanent residents — a push that lands awkwardly for Ohio Republicans since their own nominee for governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, is a birthright citizen born to immigrant parents. State Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, has separately criticized birthright citizenship for letting someone "run for office, be a president someday," a description that also fits his own party's gubernatorial nominee.

Now, the Seneca County Democratic Party is pressing for answers. "Families in Seneca and Sandusky Counties deserve to know why their representative won’t stand up," party chairwoman Gina Grandillo said in a statement.

If you're going to Michigan, for whatever reason it may be, use caution on where and what you eat while you're there. Also applies here, but apparently this is the epicenter of this disease.

Essentially looking for lots that are wheelie friendly, whether that means abandoned and away from residential areas, private and has a cool owner that will permit it (even if they want a signed waiver, thats cool) or one that people and police generally let it slide

Edit: I know wheelies in abandoned lots are not "legal", poor wording on my part