Good morning, RVA! It's 66 °F, and today looks HOT. You can expect highs in the upper 90s, with even more heat over the weekend. This kind of heat is dangerous, serious business, and you should make smart choices if you're planning on spending some time outside under the burning eye of the sun. Additionally, remember: Hydrate or diedrate.
Water cooler
The CDC updated their COVID-19 Community Level numbers last night and now Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield are all at the "medium" or "yellow" level. The 7-day case rates per 100,000 people in each locality, respectively, are: 248, 321, 268. Worryingly, the new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people for the region is 9.8. Once that number hits 10 (on a Thursday), a locality switches to "high" Community Level and the CDC guidance is to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status. It seems pretty likely that'll happen next Thursday. I dunno y'all, 9.8 is pretty dang close to 10, and, for the next little while, you will not find me indoors without a mask on my face.
Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Education, at the direction of Governor Youngkin, released this 34-page report about the state of Virginia's public schools. I think this is a really confusing document to try and understand! There's definitely a lot of petty, distracting, misleading, offensive garbage in this PDF, but I also think it might highlight real areas for improvement. This confusion and obfuscation of reality is probably the point, and I have no doubt that the Governor intends to use this report to further his goal of dismantling public schools in favor of private-run charter schools come next General Assembly session. I haven't found it yet, but I'd love to read something from someone smarter than me explaining the "honesty gap" and what's actually happening with Virginia's public schools. In the meantime, here's Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury's coverage. P.S. If you believe, that in the Year of Our Lord 2020, the number of Virginians homeschooling their children increased because of some systemic "frustration with the state of public schools," I have a bridge to etc.
Whoa, Trevor Dickerson at RVA Hub reports that the Dairy Bar, long-time (like decades) Scott's Addition milkshake spot, has closed. In the most Scott's Addition of things, "Neighboring shuffleboard bar Tang & Biscuit, which opened in 2018, announced today it will be taking over the space and plans to create a breakfast and lunch spot with a 'funky diner feel' called Biscuits & Gravy."
RIC Today has a nice profile on Skelē, the 12-foot-tall Museum District skeleton that I've featured in this space a couple of times. Homeowner and artist Justin has just the coolest vibe, and says about his homemade skeleton designs, "I just liked the idea of not having to rely on someone else or pay an exorbitant amount of money for a costume which doesn’t exist because it’s twelve feet tall.”
Tomorrow from 2:00–4:00 PM, 1708 Gallery will host a neat skywriting art performance at Chimborazo Park: "A skywriter will trace the dimensions of a 40-acre plot above Chimborazo Park above to place a sharp focus on the Freedman community that existed in this area." So cool! It is of course free to look at the sky, but you can RSVP over on Eventbrite.
Riverrock kicks off tonight down around Brown's Island with a bunch of events (including dogs flying through the air to catch frisbees and landing in a huge pool, adorable). Bouldering, fishing, biking, bands, and more continue throughout the weekend, and there's almost certainly something you'll find to make the trip down to the river worth it. It's gonna be hot, so plan accordingly and get familiar with how to stay cool and how to spot the signs of heat-related illness (morbid dad stuff, I know, I know, but I can't help myself).
This morning's longread
What Do Female Incels Really Want?
Dang, this is an intense article for a Friday morning! I don't really know what to think but am still thinking about it a couple days later, so now you get to think about it.
Femcels are real, and their existence has meaning. But thinking of them as a unified group with specific political goals is less useful than thinking of them as overlooked individuals who are now being swept around the web, sometimes letting their insecurities and resentments lead them into unproductive conversations. The architecture of many of the forums they’ve ended up in encourages defensiveness, border-patrolling, exclusion, even aggression. For instance, while femcel culture is not inherently transphobic, there is an “overlap or amenability to transphobia,” Kay told me. Femcels, especially now, tend to find themselves on identity-based forums that are fixated on biological-essentialist ideas of gender—“women are like this, men are like that,” as Kay put it, more stagnant than revolutionary. “These spaces do just kind of become inward-looking, very defensive, rather than about imagining radical new futures,” she said.
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