🏝️ Good morning, RVA: Affirmative action, new laws, and two logistical notes

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and today you should expect highs near 90 °F, maybe a bit of rain this evening, and another round of bad air. DEQ has forecasted a yellow, or “moderate,” day ahead of us, with an AQI below 100. However, my current weather app shows 152, just over the edge into the red “unhealthy” zone and about where we ended up yesterday. Make smart decisions about exerting yourself outside, take lots of breaks, and remember: Hydrate or diedrate!
 

Water cooler

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in college admissions with a 6–3 vote. SCOTUSblog has the easy-to-understand analysis that I was looking for, and quotes Justice Sotomayor, in the dissenting opinion, saying, the decision had rolled “back decades of precedent and momentous progress" and "cement[ed] a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society.” The Washington Post put together some data visualizations on how banning affirmative action has impacted enrollment diversity in the handful of sates that have done so at the state level. Also, Connor Scribner at VPM talked to some local universities about the impact the decision will have on their admission policies. It’s all very bleak. You have to wonder how long President Biden will allow the Supreme Court to grind important American systems into dust without taking a single step to reform the Court—or even threatening to do so!
 

David Ress at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a long list of just some of the laws that go into effect tomorrow, July 1st. Related, the Virginia Mercury’s Meghan McIntyre reports that Pornhub has blocked all of Virginia ahead of the Commonwealth’s new age-verification law.
 

I think I pulled out the Jaws “just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water” joke a bit too early, because Richmond’s Charter Review Commission just announced four more public meetings. However! The Commission plans to finalize their recommendations and send them to Council on July 31st, so these truly are the last set of meetings for folks to share with the Commission their thoughts and feelings on restructuring Richmond’s government. I don’t know how much their final recommendations will deviate from their draft, and I definitely don’t know how Council will react! I’m looking forward to those discussions, though (probably at some point later this fall).
 

If you don’t yet have Fourth of July plans, which, gasp, RIC Today has put together a short list of firework options. This year, maybe explore a new place to go watch the rockets red glare!
 

Two logistical notes! First note, tomorrow I leave for my annual two-week vacation, and that means no Good Morning, RVA in your inboxes until July 17th! I think, at least I hope, you will all survive and remain well-informed about whatever’s going on in Richmond—especially as it relate to zoning, rezoning, and sewer infrastructure. I really appreciate these longer breaks away from this email and feel like my writing and my brainthoughts get better and sharper after a dedicated fallow time—I highly recommend it! Second note, an update on this year’s pledge drive and my goal to increase monthly Patron donations by $381: As of this morning, y’all, the readers of this email, have chipped in $405 or 106% of the goal! Thank you for that. I’m deeply appreciative and always impressed at the generosity of the folks who read this email. And it’s not just y’all’s willingness to support GMRVA with actual American currency, but your willingness to say a kind word, ask a thoughtful question, or share an interesting link. I almost never get an angry, hostile, or mean email—truly fewer than a dozen over the last six or seven years. I don’t think I’ve ever been part of a better online community than this one, so thanks for that! OK, catch you again in two weeks! Have fun, and stay hydrated!
 

This morning’s longread

Bed Rotting and Loud Quitting

As I put real life aside for two weeks and head out on vacation, I thought it fitting to wrap up with this Anne Helen Petersen longread about work. I highlighted a bunch of stuff in this piece as I read through it, and it’s got me thinking about my own workplace and coworkers (at least for the next couple of hours before my brain entirely disconnects into vacation mode).
 

And as Refinery29 writer Sabdhbh O’Sullivan smartly points out, the impulse to do nothing is not new — what is new (and what’s weirding people out) is the willingness to give it a repellant label. “In the same vein as the fairly recent goblin mode or going feral, it deliberately evokes a sense of grossness,” O’Sullivan writes. “Linguistically, a duvet day feels gentle and generous, while rotting in bed conjures up a sense of decay, of life collapsing in on itself. Bed rotting doesn’t shy away from the sticky experience of staying in the same clothes all day or the lethargy that can come from lying down for hours on end.” The grossness is the point — because, as O’Sullivan argues, it points to the bleak dichotomy of contemporary capitalistic life, in which you are either “an active member of society” or “decaying at home,” and we all know it’s a moral failure to be gross, to decay, to “not get ready,” to “let yourself go.”
 

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Picture of the Day

I’ve got a real coneflower situation going on this year.