🌹 Good morning, RVA: More free COVID-19 tests, a pun (I hope), and 75 books

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and it’s gonna rain. Today—all day long, from 10:00 AM onward—you can expect rain, maybe even that good, soaking rain we’ve missed for the last forever. Things should dry out overnight, leading us into a crisp and dry holiday weekend. Towards the end of the week, you wouldn’t be out of place wearing long underwear, your favorite band T-shirt, and your warmest flannel. I think actual winter weather may be just around the corner!
 

Water cooler

Thanksgiving! One of the many times over the next couple of months where folks gather, cram their bodies inside a room with other bodies from who knows where, and start sharing aerosols and particulates with one another while passing the potatoes. It’s the perfect time to spread respiratory disease, and the perfect time for the USPS to offer another round of four free at-home COVID-19 tests. It takes 12 seconds to fill out the form and get your (free!) tests, so just go ahead and do that right now.
 

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today at 3:00 PM. You can find the full agenda here, but I want to point out two specific items. First, the committee will hear a presentation on Richmond Connects, Richmond’s first update to its transportation plan in a long, long time. It’s an exciting update, because later today they’ll post the full Draft Action Plan over on rvaconnects.com and we’ll get to weigh in on what actual factual things the City should do to make its transportation infrastructure better, safer, and more equitable. More on this after I get a second to flip through the plan. Second, RES. 2023-R056 designates the alley in the block bounded by Stuart, N. Nansemond, Kensington, and Roseneath as “Rose Pedal Alley.” Listen, I definitely celebrate this charming bike-related pun, but I do hope it’s not a typo that made it into a resolution that will soon become a permanent part of our street grid?
 

Writing for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Justin Lo has a really nice history of the Asian community and markets out on Horsepen Road. Tap through to learn the origin stories of Mekong, Tan-A, Full Kee, and a bunch of other Richmond classics.
 

Also in the RTD, a list of the 75 books banned by the Hanover County School Board. The list includes classics like Slaughterhouse-Five, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West—but also all of the sexy fairy books written by Sarah Maas. What an embarrassment for the County, and, I’m sure, will lead directly to a million-week wait at the Pamunkey Regional Library for all of the A Court of Thorns and Roses books.
 

Riley Wyant at NBC12 reports that Virginia State University will host the second presidential debate next year on October 1st. This, of course, assumes that presidential debates are even a thing that happens anymore, which I don’t think is a safe assumption. Still, pretty cool, though! Should the it take place, VSU will be the first HCBU to host a general election presidential debate.
 

Logistical note! The next three days are state holidays—well, technically, tomorrow the Commonwealth’s employees will celebrate “4 hours additional holiday time” aka a half day. Regardless, starting tomorrow, I’m going to pause this email newsletter for the extra long holiday weekend and return to your inboxes on Monday. I hope in the midst of holidays, and meals, and families, you find time to do something restorative. For me that’s, obviously, going to be bikes and horror films. What is it for you? Let me know!
 

This morning’s longread

Inside the Chaos at OpenAI

What is even happening at OpenAI this week? They fired their CEO, who Microsoft then hired, but actually maybe not yet? I dunno, but it’s a spicy situation and definitely still in progress. This article, last updated yesterday morning, is already out of date!
 

OpenAI was deliberately structured to resist the values that drive much of the tech industry—a relentless pursuit of scale, a build-first-ask-questions-later approach to launching consumer products. It was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to the creation of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that should benefit “humanity as a whole.” (AGI, in the company’s telling, would be advanced enough to outperform any person at “most economically valuable work”—just the kind of cataclysmically powerful tech that demands a responsible steward.) In this conception, OpenAI would operate more like a research facility or a think tank. The company’s charter bluntly states that OpenAI’s “primary fiduciary duty is to humanity,” not to investors or even employees. That model didn’t exactly last. In 2019, OpenAI launched a subsidiary with a “capped profit” model that could raise money, attract top talent, and inevitably build commercial products. But the nonprofit board maintained total control.
 

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Picture of the Day

Parting of the Red Sea.