Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, and probably raining. You can expect the chance of rain to persist throughout the day while the temperature—and humidity—rise. I think we did it. I think it's warm now!
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 907 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 45 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 106 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 50, Henrico: 33, and Richmond: 23). Since this pandemic began, 172 people have died in the Richmond region. I think this is the most new coronavirus deaths reported in a single day since VDH started releasing data. Compared to 2017 (the most recent data on this CDC website), COVID-19 is now the 9th leading cause of death in Virginia, killing 1,281 people—more than Septicemia (1,249) and Flu/Pneumonia (1,245). At the current rate (about 30 new deaths each day), the coronavirus will pass Kidney Disease in 12 days and Diabetes in 23 days.
Since the Governor chose not to grant the Mayor's request for a modified entry into recovery, at 12:00 AM, Richmond will join Henrico and Chesterfield and jump right into Phase One. What's that mean? The City has set up a reopening guidance page with both "allowed activities" that correspond to the State's guidance and the "Mayor's Best Practices," which are some of the things Mayor Stoney unsuccessfully requested from the Governor—but based on local public health guidance! We've gone over this before, but the gist from the State: retail can open up to 50% of their capacity, restaurants can open up to 50% of their outdoor capacity, salons and barbershops are open by appointment, places of worship can open up to 50% of their capacity, and fitness-based businesses can host outdoor classes. However, the Mayor recommends that places of worship continue meeting digitally or, if they must meet, do so outside. He also suggests restaurants keep a log of patrons to make the inevitable contact tracing easier. I hope and believe that most faith groups and restaurants in the City will do these things! By far, the best part of Richmond's reopening guidance page are these two sentences: "The state has not released guidance on what Phases 2 and 3 will look like throughout the state. All localities are waiting for guidance from the Governor and the Virginia Department of Health to learn what Phases 2 and 3 will allow or keep restricted." You and me both, all localities. I'd love to know what metrics the Governor will use to decide to move the state into Phase Two, what that timeline looks like, and what restrictions will lift. Maybe at today's presser?
Now, a trio of Richmond Public Schools updates. First, the District sent out an email the other day that said an "RPS employee who was present at multiple events at Mary Munford Elementary School over the last two weeks has tested positive for COVID-19." This means that if you stopped by Munford to pick up supplies, a computer, food, whatever, you could have been infected and need to isolate yourself for 14 days! If you have any of the COVID-19 symptoms, you should call your doctor ASAP. Second, RPS will host virtual graduation ceremonies for students on June 22nd and June 24th, depending on their school (you can find the full list of which school when here). Third, and finally, with the budget adopted however many virusdays ago, the RPS School Board also approved funds for a new K-8 curriculum. You can learn more about what that means and specifics on the new material here, but you can also join a curriculum preview for parents tonight at 6:00 PM (in both English and Spanish).
Wyatt Gordon at Greater Greatest Washington has a piece on slow/open streets, which I link to in a continued attempt to get you to fill out this form so we can get something like this on the ground in Richmond. I appreciate and agree with this take on why some of our neighborhood streets are incredibly unsafe: "In the 1950s during White Flight, huge portions of Richmond city streets were converted into six to eight lane pseudo-highways to accommodate suburban (largely White) commuters at the expense of the more diverse, lower-income urban dwellers who remained. With ample space and terrible safety records, these roadways offer Richmond low-hanging fruit ripe for a road diet."
Via /r/rva here's a good skyline + train + raging river pic. That'll be a triple score for your RVA Instagram bingo card.
I want to mention, out loud, the protests taking place in Minneapolis in response to a White police officer killing George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Floyd's death, along with the killing of Breonna Taylor and the attempted modern-day lynching of Christian Cooper, are the most recent and most visible examples of how life as a Black person or person of color in America is vastly different from my lived experience as White man. Writer Clint Smith pointed me toward this passage from James Baldwin's "An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis": "Or, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness—for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps—they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of—and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us."
This morning's longread
AI Weirdness: Rhyming is hard
AI researcher, Janelle Shane, makes artificial intelligence do weird and hilarious things that usually make me cry-laugh. Here she uses a freely available AI to generate rhymes. Incredible.
Although many people have generated AI poetry and lyrics, you’ll notice that they generally don’t rhyme. That’s because generating a decent rhyme is super hard. You can get an inkling of this if you prompt the neural net GPT-2 with rhymes to complete. It will fail almost every time:
Roses are red Violets are blue I want to eat French fries with my nice ham and cheese I want to eat all the bacon I can get I want to eat the fresh frozen clams The reason I love your spice rack is because there's no place to hide You got potatoes the size of postage stamps
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