Good morning, RVA: Mass shooting at a high school graduation

I’m not sure I have any helpful, or even angry, words this morning. It’s
just so, so sad.

Good morning, RVA! It's 61 °F, and you may see some rain early this morning. For the rest of the day, though, you can expect some partly cloudy highs right around 80 °F. Also, you should probably keep an eye on the air quality. We’re currently under an Air Quality Alert until midnight tonight due to wildfires all the way up in Canada—check out the EPA’s AirNow website for the latest maps, data, and actions to take. Our region has Air Quality Index of 105, putting us at the low end of an Orange Alert, or “unhealthy for sensitive groups” (that’s people with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children). Anything over 150 is “unhealthy” (for everyone), which we hit last night when the sky filled with haze and turned the setting sun red. Your weather app of choice will most likely tell you our region’s AQI, so keep an eye on it, and, if you fall into one of the “sensitive groups,” consider adjusting your schedule to spend less time outside or at least avoid strenuous physical activity outside.

Water cooler

Last night—after Huguenot High School’s graduation ceremony at the Altria Threater wrapped up, with students and families heading out into Monroe Park to celebrate—someone shot seven people, killing two and sending one to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. School is cancelled for RPS today, and the remaining high school graduations have been rescheduled for next week. If you can handle it, here’s the Superintendent’s email from last night, an interview with him literally moments after the shooting while he’s still wearing graduation robes (warning: it’s hard to watch), and some reporting from the Richmond Times-Dispatch collecting reactions from across the state. I’m not sure I have any helpful, or even angry, words this morning. It’s just so, so sad. It’s sad that people are dead, hurt, and traumatized—lives changed forever. Sad that kids who’ve worked incredibly hard had one of their landmark, celebratory moments taken away from them by gun violence. It’s sad that a regular part of life now is texting your kids or your friends’ kids to make sure they’re alive after something like this happens. And it’s unbelievably upsetting that the people who have the power and opportunity to make a difference, to help protect children from gun violence, just don’t care. If you or your child needs to speak to a counselor, you can call the ChildSavers Immediate Response Helpline at 804.305.2420 or Richmond Behavioral Health Authority at 804.819.4100.

Today at 1:00 PM, the Board of Zoning Appeals will meet and consider the proposed fire training facility planned for a piece of land near the Southside’s Hickory Hill Community Center. This plan—which community members oppose and both the City’s Planning Commission and Urban Design Committee have rejected—was, for some reason, endorsed by City Council back in May. I think the UDC’s denial puts it really well and clearly lays out why Council should have left things well enough alone: “UDC stated that it recommended denial of this application because the proposed use and proposed aesthetics are inconsistent with the neighborhood, existing open space, and existing community center. The UDC further recommended denial because the proposal will remove existing greenspace in a historically marginalized neighborhood; removal of a greenspace is counter to the Master Plan (Richmond 300) and RVAGreen 2050 statements of increasing and protecting green and open space, especially in historically marginalized communities.“ I’m sure the RIchmond Fire Department needs a training facility, but I’m also sure we can find another location for it that doesn’t remove green space from a marginalized community. I mean, I have a hard time imagining that this project would have made it this far if it were proposed for, say, Bryan Park or Byrd Park.

This morning's longread
Apple Vision

Today’s longread is a serviceable distraction. I don’t know how to feel about Apple’s recently-announced augmented reality headset, the “Apple Vision Pro.” I’ve got a wide open mind about it, though, and am excited to try it—even if some of the use cases in the demonstration videos seem a bit dystopian and sad.

The payoff is the ability to then layer in digital experiences into your real-life environment: this can include productivity applications, photos and movies, conference calls, and whatever else developers might come up with, all of which can be used without losing your sense of place in the real world. To just take one small example, while using the Vision Pro, my phone kept buzzing with notifications; I simply took the phone out of my pocket, opened control center, and turned on do-not-disturb. What was remarkable only in retrospect is that I did all of that while technically being closed off to the world in virtual reality, but my experience was of simply glancing at the phone in my hand without even thinking about it.

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Picture of the Day

Correct number of bikes = n+1.