How do you like these apples?

Top of Mind

🍏 Apples to Apples, Crime to Crime

At Lynd Fruit Farm in Pataskala, the fall tradition of U-Pick apples has turned into U-Steal. In the last three weeks, thieves have been caught cramming Golden Delicious into every car crevice imaginable: under seats, beneath blankets, in glove compartments, and, most creatively, inside a spare tire well. The prize haul? More than $400 worth of fruit, neatly bagged after being pulled from its makeshift getaway vehicle.

This isn’t a one-time bad apple. Over Labor Day weekend alone, there were four separate theft attempts totaling nearly $300. Since then, four more incidents have followed, valued at $80, $80, $160, and that $400 bumper crop on Sunday. All have ended with sheriff visits and charges pressed.

“Unfortunately, the theft at U-Pick continues,” the orchard posted with photos of the contraband. Employees have become part-time bounty hunters, rooting through cars like TSA agents for contraband Honeycrisps.

Alex Patton, whose family runs the orchard, says 99% of visitors are “perfect, great customers” who just want to pick apples and snap a family photo. But the other 1% apparently think they’re starring in Fast & the Ferocious (Fruit Edition).

Scarlet Letter Trivia

Question: What is Ohio’s official state apple
A. Melrose
B. Honeycrisp
C. Gala
D. Jonagold

The Robots Are Coming (To Columbus First, Obviously)

Ohio lawmakers are officially worried about your toaster filing taxes, your iPhone inheriting your grandma’s house, and someone in Pataskala trying to marry ChatGPT. That’s the gist of a new bill from the Ohio House Technology and Innovation Committee, which wants to make sure artificial intelligence doesn’t sneak into the “human-only” parts of law, like marriage licenses, power of attorney, or signing off on your Do Not Resuscitate order.

Committee chair Rep. Mark Claggett is taking the long view, warning that AI could be “more dangerous than nuclear weapons” because it’s everywhere and controlled by a select few. That’s the kind of soundbite that plays well at hearings, right between “blessing and curse” and “what could possibly go wrong?”

But Ohio isn’t new to the tech frontier. Central Ohio has always been a proving ground for invention, often in ways that end up quietly shaping the country. Battelle Memorial Institute, headquartered right off King Avenue, has been cooking up futuristic projects since the 1920s, everything from armor plating in World War II to Xerox copy machines to early advances in nuclear fuel. In other words, long before Columbus became the test market for breakfast sandwiches and seltzers, it was a test market for the future.

Honda, too, has spent decades in Marysville fine-tuning robotics and automation in manufacturing. Remember ASIMO, the humanoid robot that could climb stairs? While it was unveiled in Japan, Honda’s Ohio footprint was part of the brain trust feeding into those breakthroughs. And Ohio State has always been a quiet heavyweight in computing, running supercomputers that rank among the fastest in the world, machines so powerful they make your MacBook look like a graphing calculator.

Now the latest frontier is AI, and central Ohio is once again on the map. Meta is building its massive data center campus in New Albany, a digital fortress humming away to power the next generation of AI. Universities are rushing to write AI policies before students turn in essays that sound suspiciously like they were written by polite Canadian robots. And local startups are trying to harness AI for everything from logistics to health care.

Meanwhile, the philosophical debates are catching up with the hardware. Katherine Forrest, a former federal judge, warned in the Yale Law Journal that AI could eventually reach a form of sentience, not human, but aware enough to force courts to decide whether a machine deserves rights. Imagine a Columbus courtroom where a jury deliberates on whether your Roomba qualifies as a “legal person.” Stranger things have happened here; this is the city that once ticketed people for eating donuts in their cars during the ’90s.

For now, Ohio’s lawmakers are keeping things simple: no robot spouses, no robot guardians, no robot running your estate. That’s human-only territory. But with a century of Ohio history proving that world-shifting tech tends to pass through Columbus first, it’s fair to wonder if we’re just a few years away from an AI mayor on Broad Street. And honestly? They might do a better job filling the potholes.

🍹 Service with a Purpose

Columbus knows how to throw a gala, but this one comes with more than tiki cocktails and shiny awards. Service! Relief for Hospitality Workers is back with its second annual fundraiser on October 17, raising money to support the people who keep the city’s bars, restaurants, and hotels running.

What started in 2020 as a boxed meal program for unemployed workers has grown into Café Overlook, grant programs, and now the under-construction Service Innovation Kitchen, a training hub downtown designed to give hospitality workers the skills and stability to turn jobs into careers.

This year’s gala promises legacy awards, hard-hat tours of the new kitchen, and enough feel-good speeches to balance out the mai tais. Behind the fun, though, the mission is clear: an industry built on living wages, equity, and respect. Columbus hospitality workers don’t just serve the city, they keep it alive.

Tickets HERE:

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Trivia Answer

A) Melrosen (who knew…really who knew it?)