Good morning, RVA! It's 58 °F, and this is the first time the early morning temperature has started with a five in a good, long while. Today you can expect highs in the low 80s and a wonderfully sunny sky. The beautiful weather should continue through the weekend, but things will start to heat up on Sunday, and by Monday we’ll see temperatures near 100 °F. Soak up this amazing weather over the next couple of days! Get out there and enjoy it!
Water cooler
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Em Holter went to a Casino 2.0 meeting the City held last night and reports on some of the things the Casino People said. The folks involved claim the rebooted project is “vastly different” from the thing we already voted down once, but, I dunno, it’s still an event venue and hotel supported by a predatory casino. I hate every bit of the framing and language being used to market this project to Richmonders; the sign on last night’s speaker’s podium said “VOTE YES FOR JOBS, REVENUE, & A STRONGER CITY”—as if those things were impossible without a casino! I’ll tell you what I’d vote yes for a thousand times over: Building strong, thriving neighborhoods like those the gambling-free Diamond District and City Center plans describe. Regardless of what the folks selling this project tell you, this is not an either-or! We can absolutely create jobs, increase revenue, and build a stronger city in better ways—more sustainable ways!—without building an enormous casino.
In his daily email, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras lays out new athletic and event security protocols, “as part of our ongoing commitment to do everything humanly possible to safeguard our students, staff, and families.” Effective immediately, tickets must be purchased in advance, no re-entry will be permitted, no bags of any kind will be allowed, and everyone will need to go through a security screening. I assume this is in response to last week’s cancellation of Huguenot High School’s football game over security concerns. Half of me is disappointed in the world we live in that it’s come to this, but the other half of me has walked through security screening at the Siegel Center for years and years. I think this is just how sports are now, and I’d be surprised if other local school districts don’t already have similar policies in place or aren’t actively in the process of considering them.
Karri Peifer at Axios Richmond has a delicious deep dive into the locally made Nightingale ice cream sandwiches. If you’ve never had them before, they are excellent—if a bit overwhelming. Cut in half, a stack of them make an excellent birthday cake replacement, and they are on my very short list of Richmond things I would share with Tom Hanks.
Via RIC Today, this wild fact: Short Pump Town Center turns 20 tomorrow. In my very-Richmond, very old-person mind, Short Pump Town Center is still “the new mall.”
Football season returns in earnest this weekend. For me, that means setting aside the ethical questions about if football should even exist and watching the Virginia Tech Hokies take on the Old Dominion Monarchs at 8:00 PM on Saturday. Also of note: On Sunday, the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic will feature the Virginia Union Panthers and the Morehouse Maroon Tigers at 4:00 PM. This means, if you’re an NFL Network subscriber at least, you’ve got a rare opportunity to watch VUU football on TV! Pretty cool.
Logistical note! Monday is Labor Day, a federal holiday celebrating the labor movement, which is a weird thing given America’s contemporary anti-labor context. It also means I’ll be taking the day off from this email and will return to your inboxes on Tuesday. I hope you can find the time to set your own labors aside and use the long weekend in some sort of restorative way—whether that be riding a bike through the forest or laying quietly in bed with the blinds drawn or something else entirely!
This morning's longread
Why note-taking apps don't make us smarter
An article that discusses both productivity apps and AI? Sign me up! I’ve had similar thoughts as the author about the true usefulness of AI—uses other than generating lists of dad jokes “in the style of Abraham Lincoln as if he were a 1930s reporter.” It seems like natural language interfaces to our own data would be really helpful. Imagine a Siri that actually worked, or, basically, the movie Her but without the horror film aspects.
The reason, sadly, is that thinking takes place in your brain. And thinking is an active pursuit — one that often happens when you are spending long stretches of time staring into space, then writing a bit, and then staring into space a bit more. It’s here that the connections are made and the insights are formed. And it is a process that stubbornly resists automation. Which is not to say that software can’t help. Andy Matuschak, a researcher whose spectacular website offers a feast of thinking about notes and note-taking, observes that note-taking apps emphasize displaying and manipulating notes, but never making sense between them. Before I totally resign myself to the idea that a note-taking app can’t solve my problems, I will admit that on some fundamental level no one has really tried.
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Picture of the Day
I don’t encourage this, but it did make me smile.
