Good Morning, RVA: A warm welcome back

Across the globe, it’s, like, unseasonably warm.

December 1, 2014; 6:52 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Miwok.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and I don’t know what say, you guys. Here we are on the first day of December, and the highs could break into the mid-70s! Other than the beautiful temperatures, today features plenty of sunshine and wonderfulness before rain moves in tomorrow.

Water cooler

The RTD’s Michael Paul Williams adds to the discussion about Binford Middle’s uncertain future. Real stuff here: “Busing in more black children from elsewhere to attend Binford skirts an obvious issue: the absence of white children who live nearby in the Fan. Something is amiss when a school building in a predominantly white neighborhood is populated almost entirely by black students.”

State Senator Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) has introduced SB 686, a bill decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana. Usually each year someone in the General Assembly sponsors similar legislation, but it never makes it out of committee.

This past weekend the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer dropped. If you’ve already watched it 12 times and still can’t get enough, here’s a 72-minute podcast about the 80-second trailer.

People! You’ve almost made it to the end of American Consumerism Weekend. Another 24 hours and you can forget about buying things until your annual trip to CVS for stocking stuffers on December 24th. Until then though, buy our stuff! 15% off all RVA merch until the end of today with the coupon code CONSUME.

Sports!

So many sportsthings happened over this long weekend. Rather than recap them all, I think it’s better to just look forward than to live in the past. Here are the important highlights:

• Hokies beat the Hoos sending the former bowling and the later home for the year. UVA coach Mike London did, however, receive a contract extension before the game took place. Tech fans across the nation celebrated.
• Rams lost to a much-improved Old Dominion team, 67-73.
• Richmond (prolate spheroid) won their first game of the FCS playoffs and advance to take on #7 Coastal Carolina this Saturday.
• Washington lost to the Colts, 27-49, despite benching RGIII.

This morning’s longread

The Secret Life of Passwords

Whoa, whoa, whoa surprisingly interesting article in the New York Times about passwords. You aren’t snoozy at all!

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I began asking my friends and family to tell me their passwords. I had come to believe that these tiny personalized codes get a bum rap. Yes, I understand why passwords are universally despised: the strains they put on our memory, the endless demand to update them, their sheer number. I hate them, too. But there is more to passwords than their annoyance. In our authorship of them, in the fact that we construct them so that we (and only we) will remember them, they take on secret lives. Many of our passwords are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry. Often they have rich back stories. A motivational mantra, a swipe at the boss, a hidden shrine to a lost love, an inside joke with ourselves, a defining emotional scar — these keepsake passwords, as I came to call them, are like tchotchkes of our inner lives. They derive from anything: Scripture, horoscopes, nicknames, lyrics, book passages. Like a tattoo on a private part of the body, they tend to be intimate, compact and expressive.

This morning’s Instagram

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December 1, 2014 6:52 AM 0