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The Tragic Story of Vernon and Oswald (2016) (chrisgliddon.com)
132 points by akamaozu on May 1, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 17 comments



We used Nunito Sans on Riot.im for many years, and had the same experience of tracking down the author only to discover Vernon's tragedy. The font lives on, though - https://github.com/googlefonts/nunito for instance has sprouted a full Cyrillic version since.

http://sansoxygen.com/ is the way to donate to support Vernon's family now (the youcaring.com link seems to be dead).


I don't understand. When trying to make a donation paypal lands me on a page where I need to link a credit card. Is that necessary?


>It seems he didn’t have life insurance, either.

Peeps, if you have children, get some damn life insurance! Not doing so can turn out to be the single worst parenting decision of your life.


Seriously. If you have kids, don’t already have a good life insurance policy, and are your family’s main income provider, contact a few brokers and get quotes now! Make sure your family won’t be hit with a double whammy of you dying and no longer being financially stable.


After life insurance, put your most valuable assets (especially your home) in a living trust.

And most importantly take care of yourself and tell your children you love them every day. Rest in peace, Vernon.


life insurance if you can afford it, and an estate plan. That goes for both sexes.

Without an Trust, your estate will go through probate. I believe the county charges 1 percent, and it can take up to a year.

(A living Revocable Trust is not that difficult. Get it notarized. What I found confusing is funding the Trust. I need to do more research, but their is a form that needs to be filled out so your property taxes don't skyrocket. In CA it's the will doesn't need a notary's signature.)


Can they not ask Google to put a short note and the funding link on his fonts so people who is looking for fonts can know about and support his family? I think a lot more people should know about this tragic story.


Who's they? And more interestingly when trying to contact google with above information I bumped to wall. How does one contact google? There's no contact-us link unless you're a member of press.

Edit: TBH I'm a bit mad at google and all the rest of internet behemoths for this. The magnitude and breadth of his contribution should have drawn their focus and support to his family long ago. It is unacceptable that they (the family) should rely on the kindness of random strangers to make ends meet.


Mods, can you please spend (2016) to the title?


Ironically, when I tried to revisit this post I accidentally clicked a different Hacker News link, ending up on https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/story-one-whal... I noticed they use the Oswald font on that site.


I clicked on the YouCaring link but it took me to a 404 page that said it had been absorbed by GoFundMe. When I searched for “Vernon Adams” on GoFundMe I couldn’t find anything. Does anyone have the link? Has anyone successfully donated?

EDIT: I see the link is http://sansoxygen.com/


Maybe Vernon Adams' family could sell a commemorative (i.e. not endowing any copyright) NFT of the Oswald font and auction it on Ethereum.

The woman who featured in the disaster girl meme recently sold an NFT of the meme for 180 ETH, which is worth around $473,000 at current market prices:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/disaster-girl-makes-over-4...


He also designed Amatic SC, which is practically everywhere.


Medium is blocked in my country, is there any mirror available to read this somewhere else without using a VPN?


I hope this link helps, although the picture has become much, much smaller. https://outline.com/DZ9VmT


Yes. it works, thanks!


I've donated to this cause before. His family deserves as much, given the large impact of his contributions. Rest in peace.




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