Good morning, RVA: Are you Happy?

If you think today looks great, tomorrow’s gonna blow your mind.

March 21, 2014; 7:00 AM • by Ross Catrow

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F right now, which is, admittedly, colder than yesterday, but you can expect the same wonderful weather this afternoon as last afternoon: 65 °F and sunny. It just screams two-wheeled transportation, so if that’s your scene, helmet up and get out there!

You’ll want to soak up every last bit of springtime warmth today and tomorrow before temperatures fall back into the 40s come Sunday.

NCAA Tournament Watch

What a wild and exciting start to the 2014 NCAA Tournament. In the very first game #11 Dayton upset #6 Ohio State. The Atlantic 10 put up a good showing with #11 Dayton and #5 Saint Louis advancing and #10 St. Joe’s falling in overtime to #7 Connecticut. There were four overtime games. Here’s a list of yesterday’s upsets:

#11 Dayton over #6 Ohio State
#9 Pittsburgh over #8 Colorado
#12 Harvard over #5 Cincinnati
#12 NDSU over #5 Oklahoma

Remember, VCU takes on Stephen F. Austin tonight at 7:27 PM on TrueTV, and UVA takes on Coastal Carolina at 9:25 on TBS.

Water cooler

The mayor debuted his proposed budget, which lacked any additional funding for riverfront development–including the Brown’s Island Dam Walk. He’s since said that was not his intention and that he may have sent the wrong message.

The Church Hill Irish Festival takes place this weekend and should be a great time. If that’s not your cup of tea, we’ve got four other great ways to spend your time.

This RVA Happy video is making the rounds and features some of your favorite Richmonders:

The EU has signed a “political association agreement” with Ukraine. The agreement is basically what Ukraine’s previous president rejected, which ignited the current situation.

This is an actual quote from Turkey’s Prime Minister, not, like, something from The Onion:

We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic.

This morning’s longread

The Empathy Vacuum

They judge us by our failures and not our desire to improve. They judge us by our tools and not what we can accomplish with them. They judge us by their own standards, without a breath given to the possibility that a different perspective might exist.

Which is pretty much the Internet in a nutshell, isn’t it? Exposed to the entire spectrum of human enthusiasms, it’s basically impossible not to judge. Our empathy overloads and gives up and we sit, staring at the screen aghast, that somebody, somewhere might actually believe that what they’re doing is OK, is acceptable, is even appropriate.