Technically, the trade of Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings went down on October 12, 1989. But 30 years ago today, October 10, is when Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson announced to his staff that he was going to do it, at the end of their daily lunchtime jog. As he recalled to writer Steve Wulf five years ago:

“I told them the only way to fix this thing was to trade our best player. I told them we had to trade Herschel Walker.”

The team was 0-5 at the time, on its way to 1-15. There was some bad luck in there, to be sure, and some players who were still learning on the job (Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin), but the roster wasn’t much better than that record. The Walker trade, largely misunderstood at the time, nominally brought in four players. But they were not nearly as important as the seven draft picks that came along with them, which Johnson used to acquire other picks and move around in the draft, resulting in the Cowboys acquiring Emmitt Smith, Darren Woodson, Russell Maryland, Kevin Smith, Clayton Holmes, and Alonzo Highsmith. It fully set in motion a rebuild that resulted in Super Bowl wins in 1992, 1993, and 1995.

There are plenty of other examples of Johnson’s greatness as a personnel man (not to mention a coach) but this, probably rightly, the one that is always brought up.

Officer Aricelia Géiser is on her second year at the State Fair of Texas and her first year working it.  

“I’m a big fan of the food, honestly. It’s so hard to be working and not eat all the food. It’s different working the fair, because you’re in uniform and everyone notices you, asking where’s what. It’s a good feeling helping lost kids get reunited with their parents. I don’t ride the rides or play games. We don’t get out of here until 11 p.m., so everything’s closed down.  My advice? Wear comfortable shoes!” 

Jo Brans was a wonderful writer. She began contributing to D Magazine in 1976. She wrote book reviews and dining reviews and then went on to have a monthly column called Families. She was funny and smart and generous with personal details. Jo did her work here well before my tenure, and I never met her, but having recently spent a good number of hours hunting down her bylines in our musty old pages, I feel indebted to her. Her voice helped establish the magazine in its earliest years.

Jo and her husband Willem left Dallas for New York City in 1984. She was at the time an SMU English professor. Find the time to read the essay that she wrote about her impending departure, titled “Goodbye to All This.” She talks about why she’ll miss her students and the magazine and the city itself.

Then read this amazing cover story she wrote for the magazine in 1982 about marriage and divorce. I would love to have been present for the editorial meeting that produced the cover concept, which sold the piece as reader service. That photograph? Were those models even old enough to marry a first time, much less a second? Did that woman bear that child when she was 12? Lee Cullum was the editor at the time. I’ll have to ask her.

In any case, if Jo’s story was reader service, it was very literary reader service. In laying bare her own divorce and remarriage — how her friends and family handled it, how her children adjusted — she did offer us a “guide” of sorts. When she wrote the essay, she’d been married to Willem for eight years. She talked about looking forward to the eight to come, and the eight after that. I was happy to learn from Jo’s son, Winton Porterfield, that she managed 45 years with Willem.

Jo died September 25 in New York. She is survived by Willem; Winton and his wife Kim, who live in San Marcos; and her daughter, Erin Porterfield, who lives in Dallas. Funeral services will be this Saturday, October 12, in New York. There are more details about the service and her life in this obit.

If you know anything about me, there is a good chance you know how much I love Nick Van Exel, who was the Mavs’ left-handed, irrationally confident sixth man in 2002 and 2003, before being traded to Golden State. He has a skull made to wear headbands at a jaunty angle. He is, without question, one of my favorite basketball players of all time. Post career, he’s been coaching (including a stint as the head man for the G League Texas Legends). Now, he’s back in Dallas, as a pro personnel scout, according to my guy Marc Stein.

Welcome back, sir. I’m sorry. Welcome home.

Soon, Uber will move a lot of people to Dallas. The company will take up residence in the gleaming new buildings that sit on the eastern edge of Deep Ellum, a development called The Epic on North Good-Latimer Expressway. Tuesday, a pack visited an empty 12th floor on the development’s cockeyed first structure. Inside was concrete everything, except for a stage flanked with a projector and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered damn incredible panoramic views of the city.

The faint outline of a self-driving car appeared every so often on screen, a reflection of light sliding slowly across it. Lil Nas X and Post Malone blared from the speakers. Eventually, Eric Meyhofer stepped on stage. He heads Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), the Pittsburgh-based slice of Uber charged with making self-driving cars a reality. He’s been with Uber since 2015.

Depending on who you believe, Uber may—or may not—live and die by ATG’s success. That’s because the economics of its current business are not good. It continues to lose money on rides, and, despite scale, Uber hasn’t been able to differentiate itself from competitors with technology that markedly improves the experience or lowers the price. And, internationally that’s not just Lyft. Its second quarter earnings report revealed a $5 billion loss. Simply put, the model works better when you don’t have to pay drivers.

Meyhofer was not in town to answer for all Uber’s struggles or for some Uber-to-Dallas kickoff soiree. Tuesday was a town hall for the launch of Uber’s effort to begin mapping downtown Dallas. To do so, it will use its self-driving cars driven by real human beings. One day, the company hopes it can turn the real robots loose with paid passengers. You couldn’t help but notice what felt like an abundance of effort to show transparency.

“Remember, this is about growing our existing business,” Meyhofer said. “This isn’t about replacing driver partners. This is about adding supply. When you look at cities that are getting hit the hardest, they’re the ones that typically can’t secure enough drivers. They can’t grow to meet demand. Those are good places for us. But it has to be a city where the geography is reasonable for the technology at the time.”

And Dallas is one of those places?

The New York Times published an interactive article on the state of auto emissions in America this morning. It is based on data released through Boston University’s Database of Road Transportation Emissions. The map above shows where we were in 2017. From 1990 to 2017 in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, emissions outpaced our population growth. Total emissions increased 113 percent overall and 27 percent per person (in Los Angeles, total emissions over the same time period increased 16 percent overall and went DOWN 2 percent per person).

Nearly 60 percent of those increased emissions come from passenger cars, S.U.V.s, and pick-up trucks. National fuel economy standards have not been enough to stem the tide. A strong economy and low gas prices have meant people are driving more miles and buying more and bigger vehicles, which in turn burn more gas. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is expected to rollback Obama-era efficiency standards for passenger vehicles this month.

The NYT’s charts show us as the third largest offender overall after New York and Los Angeles. We saw less of a recession dip and have been on one of the most marked rises nationally since 2010. When adjusted for population, we move a little farther down in the pack. But, interestingly, that’s where transit-friendly New York does much better than we do.

Since the federal government has been ceding authority for regulations, cities and states have been picking up the slack, setting pollution standards, providing tax incentives, expanding public transit, encouraging carpooling, and planning denser neighborhoods. The study is further evidence that the choices cities make will have a greater and greater impact on our future.

You can play with the data here.