Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, and today is the last day of this week’s scorching hot temperatures. Expect highs near 100 °F with maybe some clouds floating around in the afternoon. Don’t get me wrong: Tomorrow still looks real hot, but it marks our transition to a string of days with highs in the 80s. Heck, in a week’s time, you may even need to wear socks!
Water cooler
Local bike and pedestrian advocate John Bolecek has a really well-written and absolutely brutal column in the Virginia Mercury about how long COVID has upended his life. Here’s John on his current condition, almost two years after getting a mild case of COVID back in January 2022: “I’ve never recovered to where I was before that energy crash and have been at a lower baseline ever since. I have to lie down 23 hours a day now and severely limit my activity so I don’t provoke more crashes. Even with careful pacing, I still provoke minor ones. My most limiting symptom is PEM, a medical term that means after expending too much energy all my symptoms get worse, I sleep worse and get weaker. I simply can’t recover like a healthy person, even after minor exertions.” It’s a scary read, but I wanted to share it for a few reasons. First, if you’re dealing with long COVID, you’re not alone, and John links to a lot of resources if you feel lost and underinformed. Second, you can follow John’s lead and reach out to Senator Kaine about his Long COVID Support Act bill. Third, while extremely intense, this is a reminder that we still don’t know a lot about this disease, and, while levels remain low in our region, they are increasing. As we head into the fall, it’s worth remembering the tools in our respiratory disease toolbox: Keep up with your vaccines (including whatever new hotness drops later this month), wash your hands, cover your cough, and, please, stay home if you’re sick!
Quick zoning update: On its second attempt, Planning Commission voted to recommend for approval—with amendments!—the new short-term rental ordinance (ORD. 2023-235, aka the Airbnb ordinance). I didn’t listen along so I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing the amendments are the two listed in red in this PDF. One would limit the amount of Airbnbs allowed in a multifamily building and one gets real specific about the primary residency requirement when the owner of a building is a company. Now this paper will head to full Council for their vote—maybe as soon as next week. Random aside: Before that vote takes place, I’d sure love to know which, if any, City Councilmembers presently own and operate Airbnbs.
Yesterday, the General Assembly did end up sending their better-late-than-never budget to the governor for his signature. He released a short statement thanking them for their hard work and noting that the process “took longer than needed.” I think he has yet to sign it, though? Theoretically, he can, if he wants, submit his own amendments at some point in the next week and send it back to the GA for another round of approvals. Maybe just a small amendment restoring the $100 million for upgrades to Richmond’s sewer system? The mayor put out his own statement kindly asking for just that.
John O’Connor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Todd “Parney” Parnell, the guy with the wacky pants at the Flying Squirrels games, will “step away from his position as day-to-day operations chief at the end of this season.” There’s no doubt in my mind that Parney is one of the core reasons why Richmond so quickly fell in love with the Squirrels, and I hope the team has someone with equally as wacky pants lined up to replace him. Parney will remain on with the team in a part-time advisory capacity.
Chesterfieldians! Tonight, from 7:00–8:30 PM at Manchester Middle (7401 Hull Street Road), the Sierra Club Falls of the James Group, the Chesterfield NAACP, and the Partnership for Smarter Growth will host a forum for Board of Supervisor candidates. Unlike Richmond, both Chesterfield and Henrico hold their local legislative elections off-cycle from the presidential elections. That means this coming November’s elections are extra exciting, with important and fun things to vote for at both the local and state level. Get excited and get out there to learn a bit more about who will represent you for the next four years. The event is free, but you can RSVP here.
This morning's longread
What Happened to Wirecutter?
I’ve been asking “what happened to Wirecutter” for a while now. I remember the most wonderful review of rice cookers from many years ago—I even used it as a longread because the dedication and thoroughness made reading it such a treat, whether you needed a rice cooker or not. Related: Everyone should read Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of TikTok and other online platforms.
The mere existence of a novella-length air-purifier review helps illustrate what may be the truth about Wirecutter, which is that it is a victim of its own, very real success. Wirecutter’s trajectory is the story of what the internet does to most great ideas: It forces them to scale, and then others replicate the concepts at varying levels of quality until, eventually, an economic, algorithmic wildfire is burning. The original is consumed and left in a scarred landscape. Has Wirecutter become less reliable? Or did the world and everyone around it change? Is there a place on an ever more commercialized web for long, obsessive letters from an anti-consumerist, gadget-loving friend? Or is the craft and care of the meticulous product review now a digital antique? The answer, like any good Wirecutter review, is full of contradictions: Yes.
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Picture of the Day
The moodiest hydrangea picture ever taken.
