What is this world coming to when driving with a laughably bad hand-painted cardboard license plate is a crime?

How did they even spot the forgery?

License plates in America were once things of beauty, or at the very least, simplicity. Over at Slate, William Morgan takes a look back.

A rather guppy-looking cod.

Over in Italy, a man has received a traffic citation for riding a moped in a restricted area. The only problem? He was walking, sans moped. Apparently, automated traffic cameras picked up a license plate he’d attached to his backpack, and a ticket was automatically, and hilariously, issued.

This is a ticketable offense.

Apparently, officials throughout the country have been issued “invisible” license plates. Though they can of course be seen with the naked eye, the fact that they’re intentionally not in any databases means computers don’t recognize them at all. As such, the vehicles wind up immune to parking tickets and automated traffic camera speeding tickets.

Rob Kindler is a Vice-Chairman at Morgan Stanley, a company which received of $10 billion (that’s $10,000,000,000) in TARP bailout money. Reportedly, this is his license plate.

Look, I enjoy a good dick joke as much as the next guy, and that’s definitely the allusion here. But if you actually follow through, spending the time and money to get that on the license plate for your Porsche Cayenne? Well, that’s just a “Fuck you!” to the American taxpayers. So, fuck you too, Rob.