Good morning, RVA: Enforcing mandates, reading critically, and a shambling horde

The shambling zombie horde is one of my favorite Richmond cultural
institutions.

Good morning, RVA! It's 60 °F, and it's rainy. You should expect the rain to continue for most of the day, tapering off later this evening. This weekend looks lovely though, so get out there and enjoy it (after things dry off a bit).

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Kenya Hunter reports that Richmond Public Schools "has started its promised disciplinary measures for teachers and employees who are out of compliance with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate." Mandates aren't mandates if you don't enforce them! Unpaid suspensions begin this coming Monday, and I'm really interested to see how many folks choose leaving their job over getting a life-saving vaccine.

The Richmond Police Department will hold their third quarter crime briefing today, and afterwards their presentation should end up somewhere on their website. Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about police being a biased voice in the discussion around the creation of Richmond's Civilian Review Board. Today, I've got two press releases in my inbox from the RPD that I think are great, low-consequence examples of how police are treated as infallible sources by media, when, just like the rest of us, they get stuff wrong. First, RPD sent out a press release yesterday morning titled "Tow Truck Pirate" claiming an unlicensed tow truck was being used to "quickly steal vehicles throughout the city." Give "Richmond tow truck pirate" a quick Google, and you can see how the charming subject line and panic-inducing topic made it irresistible to write about. Then, later in the evening, RPD sent out another press release titled "UPDATE: Tow Truck Determined to Have Engaged in Lawful Tow." So not only was no one stealing cars with a tow truck, it was a single tow truck (legally) towing a single car: "the tow truck featured in today’s release about a possible vehicle theft has been identified and it has been determined the vehicle was lawfully towed." Not nearly as exciting as a rogue tow pirate sailing our streets snatching vehicles at their pleasure. This low-stakes example is a great reminder of how we always need to critically read releases and reporting where police are the only voice present. Michael Hobbes, host of the You're Wrong About and Maintenance Phase podcasts talks about this a lot, and I encourage you to give both podcasts a listen and to give him a follow on Twitter.

Meg Schiffres at VPM has a long pros-and-cons piece of the proposed Southside casino project, which you should read if you're looking for the whole backstory before filling out your ballot (the casino referendum is on the back of the ballot, btw). Two other casino items of note: The Cheats Movement podcast has an episode out featuring Lisa Speller, of ONE Casino, and Allan-Charles Chipman, one of my favorite local voices. I haven't finished listening to the entire thing yet, but so far, so good. Second, ONE Casino brought in Jamie Foxx to do some promotion on Twitter, which I find so bizarre.

Reminder! Tomorrow, Saturday October 30th, is the last day for early in-person voting at the registrar's office. If you can't bring yourself to spend a single minute of this weekend thinking about the future of our democracy (or trying to safely navigate to the registrar's office), you'll need to drag yourself out to your local polling place this coming Tuesday. I think the consequences of this year's gubernatorial election will be huge, so, one way or another, make it your beeswax to get out there and vote.

Also this Saturday—and maybe just as terrifying as the gubernatorial election—the 16th Annual Richmond Zombie Walk. This is one of my favorite things that happens in Richmond! 16 years going, and now we're all incredibly blasé about how one of our city's cultural institutions is a horde of zombies shambling through Carytown every year around Halloween. I love it. The horde itself arrives at the Byrd Theatre around 2:30 PM and will drag itself west, cross at Nansemond, and then stumble east back to the Byrd. If you'd like to join the zombies (sometimes it's easier to just join them), you can find all the rules and details here. The undead organizers are also looking for willing victims ("people to be turned into the undead in public"), which sounds great.

This morning's longread
First Bitcoin. Then GameStop. Now Tiny Tungsten Cubes.

Almost every sentence in this piece is weirder than the last—maybe the highlight of my week reading it.

Cubists like Mr. Morris got recent inspiration from a niche corner of online life: financial Twitter. Fintwit, as it is called, typically consists of investors small and large debating the direction of markets, the prospects for inflation and recipes for grilled meats. Lately, photos of smoked brisket have given away to pictures of cubes. Nic Carter, founding partner at the blockchain-focused venture-capital firm Castle Island Ventures, describes himself in his twitter bio as the “original tungpiller.” He said the physical heft of the cubes contrasts with the intangible nature of cryptomarkets. “We’re just deprived of physical totems of our affection, and so tungsten fills that hole in our hearts,” he said.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.