In favor of things that actually work
🛜 Fast internet is a requirement · Water mains · Tale of two memos · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
Hope you all had a leisurely weekend about town. The weather is perfect. It has me entranced.
I heard a radio ad the other day (yes, I still listen to the radio) that said, "Life's too short for a slow internet connection." It's a kind of dystopian question to ponder, but it makes sense. We're all familiar by now with the inexpressible rage that comes from slow or spotty internet. It's the digital equivalent to road rage — seeing red and visualizing your computer flying through a window, its innards dashed across the concrete outside.
Louis CK had a funny bit about this on Conan a few years back wherein he declares that "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy." Speak for yourself there, bud.
All the 'woe is me' theatrics aside, in the little monologue, he talks about sitting next to a woman on a commercial flight and watching as she gets frustrated with how slow the plane's WiFi is. Louis, recounting the event, imagines what he'd say, "Give it a second... It's going to space! Can you give it a second to come back from space!?"
Yes, it's good to be grateful and humble and all that, but I'd have to disagree with Louis here. Internet should work, and yes, life is too short to deal with a shoddy internet connection. Asking as much from the Technology Gods is not beyond the pale. It is the minimum requirement. The internet should work and be fast. Anything less than that is an affront to God and humanity.
Onward.
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💦 Water We Doing About Water Mains During Friday’s media roundtable, Mayor O’Connell addressed questions about Nashville’s aging water infrastructure. “We get regular briefings from Scott Potter, our director of Metro Water Services,” said O’Connell. “And they strategically are looking to do pipe upgrades.”
The mayor explained how the city has addressed the replacement of old pipelines and continues to coordinate neighborhood-wide stormwater projects. “Part of the Second Avenue rebuild project has meant they have actually begun fully separating the sewer process there,” he said. “So they use the rebuild process to significantly upgrade infrastructure in the downtown area.”
When asked whether Metro Water is fully staffed, the mayor assured those in attendance that the department has teams ready to respond to water main breaks and that he hadn’t heard of any staffing shortages. Meanwhile, certain strategies pursued by Metro to bankroll water infrastructure upgrades have landed them in court.
In January, when asked about the class-action lawsuit filed by those who’ve paid stormwater capacity fees imposed by Metro, O’Connell explained that officials are simply trying to find ways to pay for upgrades to the system despite certain limitations. “There are a handful of counties across Tennessee, for instance, that are able to use impact fees to have a standardized approach to the cost of growth from an infrastructure basis,” he said. “We don't have that in Nashville, and so between our Planning Department, Department of Transportation, and Water and primary entities, we've tried a few different policy approaches.” Based on the outcomes of other lawsuits targeting Metro’s practice of passing off infrastructure costs to property owners, the city’s capacity fees could be deemed unconstitutional.
📝 Tale Of Two Memos A few weeks ago, Acting National Institutes of Health Director Matthew Memoli issued a memo that outlined how certain federal grant cuts aim to efficiently direct funds toward medical research while trimming the fat. “The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” read the announcement. “It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.”
A week later, officials from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital joined forces to hedge against pending NIH research grant freezes. According to Axios, VUMC president and CEO Jeffrey Balser, University of Tennessee president Randy Boyd, Vanderbilt chancellor Daniel Diermeier, St. Jude's president James Downing, and Meharry president and CEO James Hildreth said the funding cuts would “slow scientific progress and have severe consequences for our global competitiveness.”
Meanwhile, multiple lawsuits have been filed against the NIH’s move to cap reimbursements associated with facilities and administration at 15 percent. A federal judge has since blocked the NIH from going forward with the proposed changes.
🎤 State Of Black Tennessee On Saturday, the Southern Movement Committee hosted their fourth annual State Of Black Tennessee Town Hall. The event was held at Beech Creek Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville and featured speakers like Nashville’s Assessor of Property Vivian Wilhoitte, Mayor Freddie O’Connell, and Metro Councilmember Deonté Harrell. It also included several panelists who spoke on education, community organizing, immigrant rights, and discriminatory practices and policies.
During a Q&A, Metro Nashville Public Schools Board Member Robert Taylor was asked about the Antioch High School shooting and its traumatic impact on the black community. Taylor explained how violence in schools is a reflection of what’s going on in the community. “I want to challenge us, as a community, to stop the nonsense out here,” he said. “We have a standard for what we want. We have a standard for our kids, but we allow it to slip.”
Taylor not only addressed the danger of what young people consume through television, video games, TikTok, YouTube, and “whatever else they watch,” but also argued the need for male role models and leaders. “When you have a 17-year-old that doesn't have enough people in his life that he has to get online to find friends who indoctrinate him to want to harm himself and as many other people as he can, that’s a problem in our community,” he said. “We need more men to get involved and getting engaged in these kids' lives so they're not sitting on the internet, going through the dark web and finding all this craziness out here, because they know they can connect with a real human being that cares about them and loves them.”
DEVELOPMENT
- Locals plan NYC-inspired bodega, cafe for East Nashville neighborhood (NBJ)
- Oracle adds 16,000 square feet to downtown office footprint (NBJ)
- Former Taqueria del Sol space to be revamped (Post)
- Planned SoBro tower sees interior redesign (Post)
- Berry Hill commercial building listed for $1.2M (Post)
- Austin company completes latest local commercial property purchase (Post)
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 David Gray @ Ryman Auditorium, 8p, $56+, Info
🪕 Bronwyn Keith-Hynes @ Dee's Lounge, 6p, $10, Info
🎸 Timbo & Lonesome Country @ Jane's Hideaway, 8p, Info
+ modern take on classic country, bluegrass & hillbilly Jazz
🪕 Val Storey, Carl Jackson, Larry Cordle & New Monday @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
💀 Grateful Monday @ Acme Feed & Seed, 7p, Free, Info
🕺 Motown Monday @ The 5 Spot, 9p, $5, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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