I think you pretty much got your answer from previous commentators. It is largely symbolic but it does also mean Richmond would have to rely on State Police and not local police or sheriffs. That means, for example, you'd need VSP to witness something or someone would have to report it VSP, not the local police. You also wouldn't have courts in that county issuing warrants either. It's not that you can't enforce it, it's that it makes it difficult/annoying to do so. (Lots of laws on the books fall into this category btw. You likely commit felonies every day without realizing it.)
Honestly it's not that different from say state Marijuana legalization. The big difference here is scale, it's just one state vs the country. But for example, there's literally nothing stopping the DEA right now from going in themselves and rounding up marijuana business owners in Denver for violating federal law. DEA did it to medical marijuana dispensaries in CA for years. The reason they don't do this now is it's unpopular so politicians don't want to help fund it and burn local bridges to do it.
Pretty cool and quite rare:
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/what-is-a-horseshoe-cloud/351132
Send the pic to the NWS, Accuweather, and Weatherunderground on twitter. They might appreciate it.
Guess this as good a time as any to recommend downloading and using Waze for real-time traffic updates & navigation including alternate routes and user-reported police/speed traps.
One of my favorite sci-fi authors, S.M. Stirling, used the Eagle in a trilogy he wrote. Really cool to see it in real life. The Island trilogy
If you want to learn more about Barbara Johns and her context in Virginia/US history, I suggest checking out the book "Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County." It's a fantastic read.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-states-of-north-america
If it crashes look in the section in the description called "Bugs and Fixes", apparently some people get different errors at times when downloading.
If you're not already using it, you may want to use Waze on your road trip. It can help you avoid speed traps and traffic jams - both of which are found in great supply here in the Commonwealth.
Crowds? Good luck. Seems everyone bought hiking shoes and bikes during the pandemic.
Trails - Check out hikingupward and alltrails.
Can't remember off the top of my head but probably around 3mi. It's a half day kinda trip if you go from Blacksburg, hike and drive back. Shenandoah is considerably further. If you go that route, I enjoyed hiking South River Falls Loop
If you are interested in Civil War history, the town of New Market is close to Luray, and the New Market Battlefield Historical Park has a great museum and a really nice battlefield hiking trail...IMO, it's one of the five best Civil War battlefield site visits, even though it wasn't a major battle.
Other people have already suggested this, but I will second that you should really drive some chunk of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park or Blue Ridge Parkway, various VA state parks.
If you haven't gotten your BG tickets already, groupon has a decent deal on them with the added bonus that you can also stop by Water Country, which is right down the street.
I would also suggest that you get there as early as possible. On Holiday weekends the park tends to fill up quickly, in some cases they may even reach capacity. Arriving early, as the park is opening, means closer parking, much shorter lines for getting your tickets, and would allow you to get a few rides in before the lines start getting long.
It'll definitely be quiet here during the holidays but may still be a bit too cold for many outdoor activities.
How big of a savings are you looking for? I found these:
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/ringling.com
Also did you check Craigslist? A lot of people find they can't go and sell their tickets.
No, it is not an exception. The ACLU has a 93-year history of encouraging free speech and free expression from across the political spectrum. Just this year, they defended Milo Yiannopoulos's right to advertise his far-right positions. They even took a lot of heat for that from would-be donors, in the interest of standing up for free speech. Give them some credit.
And yes, those rights were upheld, the rally went forward as planned--even got a bit lively. Have you been living under a rock?
Depends on where in Georgia to where in PA. Anywhere in Western PA as a destination or from Western GA as a starting point I would suggest I-81.
If headed to Philly or starting somewhere like Savannah then I would go through Norfolk to cross the bay and head up through MD and DE.
Otherwise...if your mother has a smart phone, download the Waze app and show her how to plug in the destination. It will calculate the best route, accounting for traffic.
https://www.waze.com/livemap can give you route options accounting for traffic, but obviously you need to be running the app as you drive to get updates. This will only show current conditions.
HIGHLY HIGHLY EVER SO HIGHLY recommend the Ring of Fire series and its offshoots (you'll see) by Eric Flint. Quick synopsis, a small West Virginia mining town gets sent back to 1632 in Germany and then things happen. Flint wrote some, collaborated with others on some (David Weber most notably) and then had other writers come in and do whole books in the series. Ring of Fire
Then there's Bronze Age time travel: Jason Thanou
My MOM is a HUGE fan of Outlander, books and show...
Here is an illuminating oral history.
That club already exists. It's what TST came in to counter. They call it the "Good News Club".
Yes actually. Even non-slaveholding whites participated in upholding the slave state directly as part of slave patrols.
A project like this was done a few years back in partnership between a photographer and some researchers. I highly recommend the book Lost Communities of Viriginia, which combines both images and detailed stories about the places featured.
Oh man- very much misread the question. Thanks for the catch!
@manwich666, this year’a election (as far as Va is concerned) are at the local level. I thought it was a general, Virginia politics question. National politics is generally coming down to your stance on abortion, aid to Ukraine, clean energy investments, and voter access. If you do any other research than that, try to either find sources from both sides to compare (Fox vs CNN) or try to use more middle ground sources (Wall Street Journal vs NPR, both are more center right or center left).
I’ve included a link to VPAP so you can see which elections are held in which years for research.
https://www.elections.virginia.gov/media/boardpapers/calendar/2022-2026-5-year-Calendar.pdf
You’re going to want to look at specific candidate literature for this years local elections.
Last thing is this book has a good general Republican vs Democrat ideology without endorsing either.
If anyone wants to learn more about this I highly recommend this book/audiobook.
https://www.amazon.com/Call-Me-God-audiobook/dp/B07XTNPTJ1
It details basically every day of the shooting and really gives an impression of how it must have felt to live in the DC area at the time. It also gives a lot of attention to each victim and their families.
William and Mary's geology department has a pretty good non-technical page about the geology of virginia, and breaks down the 5 geologic provinces in the state. I can't remember it off the top of my head, but I usually refer students to it when i give a talk at a school.
There's also a book called roadside geology of virginia that's really good, and gives you a good insight into the state https://www.amazon.com/Roadside-Geology-Virginia/dp/0878421998 I may have a few extra copies of it at work, I can dig around for one the next time I'm physically in the office.
A bit specific to government but this was very interesting: The Grandees of Government: The Origins and Persistence of Undemocratic Politics in Virginia
> From the formation of the first institutions of representative government and the use of slavery in the seventeenth century through the American Revolution, the Civil War, the civil rights movement, and into the twenty-first century, Virginia’s history has been marked by obstacles to democratic change. In The Grandees of Government, Brent Tarter offers an extended commentary based in primary sources on how these undemocratic institutions and ideas arose, and how they were both perpetuated and challenged.
It’s written by a well regarded historian of Virginia history.
https://www.amazon.com/Grandees-Government-Persistence-Undemocratic-Politics/dp/0813934311
Snow boots, warm gloves and hat, quality snow shovel, don’t drive if they’re calling for snow (not you, everyone else), snow salt, this for your windshield
Take it back. Put a Bernie sticker right beside it. Or modify it like this : https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Tread-Me-Uterus-Pro-Choice/dp/B07T7L9DJ7
Exactly, I’m sure the publishers and authors of these books are loving the sales and free advertising this has generated.
Everyone started getting DSL and then Cable, and discovered they didn't need AOL any longer. They tried to sell DSL service but the telcos worked against that and it eventually failed.
>“It’s not about the books; it’s about them trying to kind of entice kids to something as if it’s forbidden fruit,” she said. “It’s using the language of pushers. It’s just incredibly inappropriate."
When you try to ban books what do you expect to happen? You entice kids merely by trying to ban something and making it “forbidden”. The sign is merely pointing this out.
I mean Maus is a bestseller on Amazon and now out of stock precisely because some parent wanted it banned. I’m sure the kids were coming to the librarians and asking about these books so they put them on display. I guess a more appropriate sign would have read “Books that some parents want banned”? Our kids are not as fragile as some parents think. Some parents appear to be quite fragile though!
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Maus-Art-Spiegelman/dp/0679406417
Why do you keep referring to it as a "false" state of emergency given the events and arrests described in the article?
Here's a nice deep dive for you:
Ok, definitely don't give up! I'm wondering where you got your info re: Humpbacks being closed. I hadn't heard anything and according to Alltrails it seems to be fine - just might be a bit icy? Someone reported doing it 9 days ago.
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/virginia/humpback-rocks-recreation-area
The PSN servers are probably rate limited, or you don’t have the proper ports open on your router. What does https://fast.com give you (Netflix’s quick and simple anon speed test)?
Also a good one: http://internethealthtest.org
Unless your home has fiber and cable connections, it’s unlikely the residents have a choice in ISP anymore than they have a choice in electric power provider.
Rose River Loop is one of my favorites. Bring a bathing suit. Lots of waterfalls and swimming holes along it. It’s also not much of an elevation gain and almost all wooded so pretty cool on hot days.
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/virginia/rose-river-trail
Hiking Trails:
https://www.alltrails.com/parks/us/virginia/shenandoah-national-park
There is a very active Shenandoah National Park Hikers Facebook group.
If you are looking for things to do outside the park here are a few ideas:
There are several caverns a few miles west of the park. Luray Caverns is probably the most well known. I like Grand Caverns.
There are several breweries and wineries scattered all around the park. Some offer live music occasionally.
We’re coming up on fair season. There are a lot of local community fairs as well as the larger county fairs.
So, to get a bit more info. If 5 Hours gets you to the Front Royal area, then it will be ~1.5 hours to get to Waynesboro.
So if you dont want to head south, and stay up in the Northern part of the Park. I would recommend looking at the WV/VA Boarder. I know there are several camp sites there, that may still be open.
Places like:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/gwj/recarea/?recid=74043
or do something like my wife and I did, Drive around until we found a pull off. And hiked in a bit.
I know a lot of good places a little South of that, but that may just put you over the edge for driving.
Also take a look at this: https://www.alltrails.com/explore?b_tl_lat=38.801724509895&b_tl_lng=-78.25492858886719&b_br_lat=38.71859933861917&b_br_lng=-78.0911636352539
And find a blue blaze off the AT and follow it East to the boarder of the park. Sometime they end at some back roads. You might be able to park there and camp, but thats a hit or miss.
PLEASE if you stay in Richmond consider this amazing bed and breakfast - The William House. My folks stayed there for the night and the couple that live there, Pat and Mike, do an amazing job.
OMG that software is horrible. I was able to book an appointment for today only because I understood what was probably going underneath.
It kept crashing when going to the next step, but at least a token arg was in the URL so I was counting on it at least being written to the DB where I was in the app process. So patiently refreshed the browser and waited for it to come up with an app error over and over until I was able to eventually register ok.
It's mainly a scaling issue. I can't believe they can't scale it up appropriately. These days it isn't that hard
So you think businesses should be allowed to discriminate as they did decades ago? https://www.sutori.com/item/lunch-counter-sit-ins-1960-the-greensboro-sit-ins-were-a-series-of-nonviolent
Eastern Shore Road Trips (Vol. 1): 27 One-Day Adventures on Delmarva Paperback – October 7, 2020
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735674117/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_G874CD7RGK46ZSPFBMBE
There’s also a Volume 2
Wow, that's a run-on sentence that I can't figure out. There are a ton of passport photo apps, here a are a few: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.handyapps.passportphoto&hl=en&gl=US
If you have an iphone you can search for those. Cripes.
Buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Mount-Rogers-National-Recreational-Guidebook/dp/1621903842
And this map:
https://www.amazon.com/National-Recreation-Jefferson-Geographic-Illustrated/dp/1566953138
You'll probably never run out of trails to hike
My wife has a book of all of Virginia’s Historical Markers. You can buy it on Amazon.
Scott is an elected official official. A Virginia delegate. Would it be okay for a white delegate so say “blaq peepuh” or something like that? Talbert swan is a racist antisemitic homophobe Farrakhan supporter who has written books supporting conversion therapy https://www.amazon.com/Closing-Closet-Testimonies-Deliverance-Homosexuality/dp/0971635528/ref=nodl_
Not sure why you're downvoting me for explaining it to you, and I somehow doubt you watched Mr. Jillette explain it already, but what you just advocated for is using government force to enrich the collective. That is horrifyingly dystopian, especially when you realize that from a politician's perspective enriching themselves is their top priority and enriching their winning coalition is only a side benefit. Your attitude is what leads to what China is doing to Hong Kong right now.
> Shit - Liberty doesn't even require an application.
A kid from Brown faked being an evangelical Christian to spend a semester there, then wrote a whole book about the experience.
As I recall, in order to get accepted all he had to do was write an essay about how Jesus influenced his life. He bullshitted two pages and got accepted. The actually classes were not so easy he claimed - the religious coursework was especially difficult (though perhaps not so for kids who grew up on it). The online programs however are run exactly like the for-profits colleges (easy, useless, expensive, very profitable).
He also made the place sound very cult-like, though the kids themselves seemed like good people (being taken advantage of). It was a truly fascinating read.