I have been looking forward to this long weekend for a while now. Three whole days off and football on each one of them! It looks like we might actually get some rain here in Dallas, which we sorely need.

I don’t have any big Labor Day plans except to do a lake loop in the morning to frontload my mileage for the week. Frankly, that’s just the way I like it. These extra weekend days are something I treasure for simply taking a breather from the daily grind, which usually entails a bit of hermitage.

My birthday also happens to fall on Monday, but I’ve started to make peace with the fact that I actually don’t want to do things on my birthday. I don’t know why, but I like just having a quiet day to myself rather than a big party or something. What a coincidence that I enjoy spending the day just chilling out on both holiday Mondays and my birthday, which are one in the same this year!

Have a safe weekend and no matter what you do, I hope you enjoy it!

Photos

1.

I went out to lunch with a friend this week. It was a spur of the moment thing, but it was a wonderful little surprise.

I don’t know of any other city that has so many local drive-in burger places. It’s pretty cool, given how rare they are, that we have three or four of them in the city. They’re pretty no-frills, and haven’t been updated in decades, but that’s part of the charm.

The angle of the awning relative to the building at this one is strange, and I wanted to capture that in the photo of it. There were cars around the building at the time but I didn’t want to include them in the frame and risk taking the focus off of the lines of the awning and the straightforwardness of the building itself.

One of the things I noticed after the fact is that the pillar on the right hand side of the photo separates the leaves on the tree and the only part of the sky with clouds in it very cleanly. I didn’t plan it, but I do like it.

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2.

The intersection near the restaurant has had an abandoned gas station in one corner for as long as I can remember. When I passed it this time, I was surprised to see that they were starting to tear it down. The whole back of the building had been ripped out, which was interesting, but I was drawn to the barrels on the side of the building.

The barrels looked like something out of a video game to me—carefully placed to allow the main character to hide from an NPC behind them. They’re nondescript and aged enough to put in a game 35 different places without drawing any attention.

I had planned on a wider crop with this one, but felt that the red roof drew too much attention away from the barrels and the window, and that the background was too busy to keep in the frame. There are elements I really wanted to keep in the frame but couldn’t justify given all of the other things that would be in the frame as well. The brick hanging from the wall that you can see in the original was so neat, but I couldn’t keep it in and still have the focus on the subject.

I was glad that I could keep the cutout in the wall, at least. I think the asymmetrical placement of the barrels helps even out some of the weight of the photo, but I can absolutely see why some people might feel it’s still too unbalanced. Because I take so many photos of brick walls, the cutout feels like it helps differentiate it from every other photo I take.

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Links

1. How the Paralympics Have Expanded Into a Competitive Showcase of True Athletes by ‪Emma Baccellieri‬

Guttmann soon returned his focus to spinal cord injuries and finally had a chance to implement some of his beliefs. In 1941, he gave a presentation to the Medical Research Council of England on methods of treatment for paraplegics. He felt that with enough focus and encouragement, some patients might have the ability to recover a limited range of motion, and that nearly all patients could benefit from a different perspective. The council found his ideas persuasive—especially considering the increasing number of soldiers returning injured from the front lines—and soon asked Guttmann to launch a National Spinal Injuries Centre. The resources would be limited. But Guttmann would be able to experiment with philosophies of treatment as he saw fit. 

I knew nothing of the founding of the Paralympic Games until I read this piece, and if you’re in the same boat as I was, I can’t recommend a better article to you. The athletes compete in the same sports that are featured in the Olympics, and actually have an additional sport called Goalball that’s totally unique to the Paralympics.

I watched the opening ceremonies earlier this week and thought they made for a better event than the ones for the Olympics, which had a made-for-TV feel to them. I’m excited to watch more of the Paralympic Games over the next couple of weeks.

2. Signal Is More Than Encrypted Messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, It’s Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong by Andy Greenberg

Signal is a heroic example that evolved in a moment of historical contingency and happened to involve some genuinely genius individuals who were committed and had a work ethic that carried it over that period of time. So I know that tech done differently is possible. I don’t think it’s fair to say other alternative models just haven’t worked because people prefer Big Tech. No, these alternative models have not received the capital they need, the support they need. And they’ve been swimming upstream against a business model that opposes their success.

I’m a big fan of using Signal as my primary means of private communication outside of iMessage. It’s cross-platform, it’s fully-featured, and it’s not trying to be anything more than what it purports to be: a private, encrypted messaging platform.

This interview of their CEO was one of the most refreshing pieces I’ve read in a while. It was nice to see proof that there are still people out there who have values and principles and the fortitude to do what is right, rather than what is most profitable.

Especially in the tech space, this is rare, and it feels like it’s becoming more so every day.

3. UNC Football: We Appreciate Your Patience by Max Sloan

The offseason drags on forever, for players moreso even than fans. It’s a long time, waiting for next season, and for every team but one it’s longer still. A slow march even for the victors, then, but for those with uncertainty clouding the future of their teams an eternity. Ages that fans spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to see what fresh changes would now shake the bedrock of the college football world as we knew it. Waiting to see what news would trickle in from Chapel Hill, dripping through our minds like so much blessed rain in a desert. Meanwhile, the players, squirreled away somewhere between meeting rooms and squat racks, holding all the answers but being asked again and again to reaffirm their commitment. Workouts and weedouts and wind sprints in the wilting summer heat, all with the end goal of improving over a disappointing end to last season. All the while waiting for a chance to do it again; waiting for a chance to be better.

I loved this framing of the upcoming football season. The juxtaposition between the experience and knowledge of the fans and that of the players is vast. We’re almost at the place where we know what the players know now, and it’s both exciting and terrifying.