Good Morning, RVA: A new humidity

The weather remains consistently humid, and the city still stands after last night’s dubstep invasion by Skrillex.

June 10, 2014; 7:05 AM • by Ross Catrow

Good morning, RVA! It’s already 73 °F! This week’s familiar weather pattern continues with highs in the upper 80s, a slight chance of thunderstorms, and humidity throughout. If you haven’t yet, you may want to invest in an emergency stick of deodorant to keep at the office–just in case.

Water cooler

It’s Election Day, kind of! Today, Virginia hosts primaries ahead of November’s general election. On the docket (depending on where you live): Eric Cantor vs. David Brat in the 7th district Republican primary, and Edward Jewett vs. Scott Bailey vs. Melvin Lorenzo Todd in the Democratic primary for Clerk of Court.

City Council postponed voting on the proposed James at River Bend high-rise condo project. They did, however, pass an amendment that lowered the maximum height of the building by 51.5 feet. They’ll meet again on July 18th (remember, Council meets just once a month now) to discuss.

It’s becoming a regular occurrence, but Vox has a nice explainer about the VA scandal involving massive wait times. Wait times at Richmond’s McGuire VA Medical Center are among some of the worst in the nation according to an audit performed by the Department of Veteran Affairs.

President Obama will answer questions about student loans today at 4:00 PM on the Whitehouse tumblr. He assures us that he is “hip to all these things.”

Today’s best headline: The Secret Service is unable to detect sarcasm online, wants software that can help.

Sports! The Squirrels fell to Reading, 5-8; Nats over Giants, 9-2; and Kings blank the Rangers, 3-0. Tonight the Squirrels start a series at Trenton, the Nats face the Giants at 10:15 PM, and the Spurs and Heat square off in game three of the NBA finals at 9:00 PM.

This morning’s longread

Why Notifications Are About to Rule the Smartphone Interface

Nerdy but interesting stuff. The bit about the WUT app is particularly interesting (to nerds).

Apps changed everything by countering the messiness of the Web. They proved a focused experience beats a broad one on a small screen. But as they’ve proliferated, navigating to them individually to perform simple tasks has become cruelly inefficient.

When we can interact with our data in short bursts via notifications, we make remarkable efficiency gains, especially on tasks that we perform again and again. Apps will become more about information and communications; we’re going to think of them as services instead of as windows onto our data.

Photo by: weeklydig

This morning’s Instagram

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