QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Y’all. Please don’t make us have to create a campaign called ‘Don’t Pokemon-Go and Drive.’ We know you have to catch them all, but only look for Pokemon when you are not behind the wheel. Also, don’t stop traffic just for PokeStops, and don’t cross the street without paying attention.”
—The Texas Department of Transportation on its Facebook page. TxDOT dished out some solid safety advice for gamers playing the new Pokemon smart phone app, which according to Vox “uses your phone’s GPS and clock to detect where and when you are in the game and make Pokémon ‘appear’ around you (on your phone screen) so you can go and catch them.” Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
BIG NEWS
U.S. Leaders Descend on Dallas
Tuesday afternoon, President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and former president George W. Bush will attend a memorial service for the five police officers killed by a sniper attack last week in Dallas. Obama’s last visit to Dallas was of starkly different nature—when he was here in March for fundraising purposes, he made news by donning a cowboy hat as he left. As the Dallas Morning News notes, this trip will be much more somber for the”consoler-in-chief.” It’s unclear exactly what Obama will say at the memorial service, but White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest emphasized to the Morning News that the president is concerned about policing and race, and is “intensely frustrated” about not being able to enact “common sense” gun restrictions. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz will also be at the service, but Governor Greg Abbott—who was hospitalized Monday for a minor infection caused by burns he suffered last week—will not attend, according to the Austin American-Statesman. His wife, Cecilia, will be attending in his place. According to the Morning News, seating for the memorial service at Meyerson Symphony Center downtown will be reserved for law enforcement officers and the families of the victims. It won’t be open to the public.
MEANWHILE, IN TEXAS
End of an Era
San Antonio Spurs great Tim Duncan officially retired yesterday. Fittingly, Duncan won’t even attend the press conference to be held for his own announcement on Tuesday, leaving us with the same quiet grace he exuded on the court for nineteen years of his career, all of them spent with San Antonio. By every metric, Duncan is a legend of the game and a sure-fire Hall of Famer. The number-one overall pick in the 1997 draft, Duncan went on to win five championships, two MVP awards, three Finals MVP awards, fifteen All-NBA Team selections (tied for the most ever), and fifteen All-Defensive Team honors (holding the record). He also won a ridiculous 1,072 regular season games. Duncan’s Spurs were the winningest team of the last two decades in any major professional sport, according to the Spurs’ press release, and the team’s .710 winning percentage during Duncan’s career was “the best 19-year stretch in NBA history.” Some retrospectives on the Big Fundamental worth reading if you want to laugh, cry, and feel feelings about the stone-faced star: Jack McCallum in Sports Illustrated, Harvey Araton in the New York Times, those jokers over at The Onion, and this “oral history” of Duncan’s wardrobe by The Ringer.
Police Shooting
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner has asked the Department of Justice to review last weekend’s fatal police shooting of Alva Braziel, according to the Houston Chronicle. Braziel’s death added more tension to a community already angered by the deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana, who were both black men shot by police. Turner also called for the Houston Police Department to immediately release all video of the altercation with Braziel. According to Houston’s KTRK, HPD said Braziel was shot ten times by police after they found him in the middle of the street waving a gun. HPD said the officers opened fire after Braziel pointed his gun at them. Both officers were wearing body cameras. Surveillance footage from a nearby gas station has already surfaced, and it appears to show Braziel with his hands up at one point, but it’s unclear from the tape if he pointed a gun at the officers before he was shot.
Ceci N’est Pas Une Wall
Former Texas Governor and failed Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry might be all for a Donald Trump presidency (he endorsed the candidate in May), but he apparently doesn’t think too highly of the mogul’s controversial proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border. The bespectacled Perry took a moment for some real talk on picture-sharing app Snapchat’s political show (because it’s 2016, and apparently that’s a thing now), telling host Peter Hamby that Trump’s dream of a border wall is just not going to happen. But Perry did believe that Trump could build some sort of wall—not one made of brick and mortar, but instead made of ideas and, well, pixels? “It’s a wall, but it’s a technological wall, it’s a digital wall,” Perry said, according to the Texas Tribune. “There are some that hear this is going to be 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso, 30-foot high, and listen, I know you can’t do that.” What does this mean? Who knows. Never change, Rick Perry.
WHAT WE’RE READING
The town of Wink isn’t worried about the massive sinkholes threatening to swallow it Texas Tribune
Three people died in three weeks in Bexar County jail San Antonio Current
Inside the ER of the hospital that handled the victims of the Dallas shooting D Magazine
Let’s all give a warm welcome to dust from the Sahara Desert KPRC
A bunch of old timers talk about the weather Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
