The fallout from winter storm Frida

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Central Virginians celebrated the holidays amid spring-like temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s. But the week of unseasonably warm weather ended abruptly with a snowstorm last Monday that brought 10 to 16 inches of wet heavy snow to the region.

The volume of snow snapped trees and branches, sending them across roads and powerlines and creating travel headaches along with extensive power outages.

Local electricity providers Rappahannock Electric Cooperative and Dominion Energy reported more than 300,000 regional customers lost electricity as a result of the storm. A week after the season’s first major storm, most outages had been resolved, but it was a worrisome week for many.

Dubbed winter storm Frida, the fast moving Jan. 3 storm toppled trees and utility lines, paralyzing much of Greene, Madison and Orange counties for the week. The widespread power outages shuttered businesses and prompted localities to open warming shelters at local fire stations.

Virginia Department of Transportation employees worked around the clock to open main roads by Tuesday but were hampered by the thousands of trees and downed utility lines throughout the nine-county Culpeper district. While both Interstates 64 and 66 were clear, major highways like U.S. Route 15, U.S. 33 and Route 20 were still in fair condition Tuesday morning with patches of ice and slush and secondary roads in the eastern part of Orange County were untouched until Wednesday, just before an additional 2-5 inches of snow fell on the region. Maintenance crews spread brine on area roads to keep them clear.

According to both REC and Dominion Energy, the storm’s impact on the electricity grid was significant.

“The damage that winter storm Frida left was historic in terms of the damage it inflicted on the electric grid,” said Casey Hollins, REC’s managing director of communications and public relations.

“We appreciate customers’ patience as our crews work to repair pockets of damage caused by fallen trees and power lines,” said Charlene Whitfield, senior vice president of power delivery for Dominion Energy Virginia. “The safety of our customers and crews is our number one priority, and we will continue to work around the clock until we have restored service to every customer.”

Patience was in short supply by Thursday, especially among Dominion Energy customers. The Dominion website gave confusing and often contradictory information. Customers checked the outage maps and called the hotline to learn the status of their outage and received no information or incomplete information. Often crews would be dispatched to repair a line and wouldn’t be able to access the problem until trees were cleared from the roadway. Other crews repaired damaged lines only to find further damage.

Dominion’s time estimates are based on a formula that takes into account the nature of the storm, the level of damage, the number of crews and trucks in the area and the number of outages. For customers left in the dark, the frustration was high.

“Estimates were for our power to be back on Tuesday evening,” said Gordonsville resident Miloh Johnson. “Wednesday morning came and nothing. Later on Wednesday we were teased by it flickering on and off a couple times before it was fully restored.”

REC has enhanced its outage map to more accurately show locations of current outages and has added estimated restoration time when possible. As of Saturday evening, the majority of Dominion and REC customers in the region had their power restored.

“We know this outage is frustrating—nearly a week is a very long time to go without power,” said REC’s Hollins.

Both companies brought in outside crews to help with the magnitude of damage. Workers from throughout the south came to help Dominion and REC deal with the aftermath of Frida.

Wesley Watkins, a lineman with Sumpter Utilities in South Carolina, was part of a crew working in western Orange County on Friday. Sumpter Utilities sent eight crews and trucks north to help local line workers. Watkins and his coworkers were surprised by the amount of damage.

“We’ve been working since we got here and expect to be here for at least three more days,” he said. “We can’t work on the lines until the trees are moved and the roads cleared. It’s been slow going. Once you fix one problem, a lot of times you find another.”

Both utility providers encourage customers to be mindful of safety and emphasized that people should not touch or drive over downed power lines. For customers using portable generators, they caution against refueling a running generator and remind users that generators should not be operated in enclosed areas. Exhaust from generators produces toxic carbon monoxide which can kill people and animals in areas without adequate ventilation.

With prolonged power outages coupled with low temperatures, localities opened warming centers for citizens to find some measure of relief.

Madison County declared a local state of emergency and the Madison County Volunteer Fire Department opened its doors to county residents needing a place to warm up. Over 48% of Madison County had no electricity on Tuesday when temperatures dipped into the teens. Orange County also opened warming centers at the Gordonsville Fire Department and at the Locust Grove Elementary School.

According to Madison Fire Chief Troy Coppage, the process went well.

“Everything has gone smoothly,” he said. “County supervisors acted quickly to declare a state of emergency and we were able to use our space as a warming center run by county social services.”

For the few restaurants and business that remained open on Monday, business was good but customers often had to wait much longer because of staffing woes. For Orange resident Bethany Kilby, a quick trip to order pizza for her family became an epic adventure.

“I went out to get a pizza on Monday,” said Kilby. “Pizza Hut was really understaffed and really busy because so many people had no electricity. I waited 45 minutes to get a pizza, way longer than normal.”

Area motels also experienced a bump in business with local residents without power choosing to check in to avoid the cold and out-of-town crews staying locally to assist with repairs to the power grid.

Following a second snow late in the week, area grocery stores were largely bereft of bread and prepared foods as many without power picked shelves clean for meals not requiring electricity to complete.

‘Fallout’ series from Amazon appoints showrunners, Jonathan Nolan to direct premiere

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“Fallout” was regarded as a spiritual successor to “Wasteland” and it took role-playing games to a new level

The live-action TV series based on the post-apocalyptic world of the “Fallout” video games has taken a big step closer to production as Variety reports that Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner are now attached to serve as co-showrunners.

Robertson-Dworet is best known for her work on the 2018 “Tomb Raider” film starring Alicia Vikander and for “Captain Marvel.” Wagner’s past credits include “Silicon Valley,” “Portlandia” and “The Office.”

In addition, Jonathan Nolan will direct the first episode of the series. Nolan was a writer on “Interstellar,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and arguably his best work, “Memento.” Nolan is also responsible for giving us “Westworld.” Feel free to interpret that as either a positive or a negative.

The Amazon-produced “Fallout” series was first announced in July 2020. “Fallout” is a series of post-apocalyptic role-playing video games created by Interplay Entertainment and set during the 21st, 22nd and 23rd centuries. What made it truly unique was the retro-futuristic, atompunk environment and aesthetic, influenced by the post-war culture of 1950s USA. It beautifully encapsulates the mood of the time that was, in essence, happiness in the home through nuclear technology on one side of the coin and the lurking fear of total annihilation on the other.

Related: Top sci-fi movies and TV shows to watch on Amazon Prime

The 1950s-themed retro-futuristic, atompunk aesthetic of “Fallout” was one of the game’s biggest appeals (Image credit: Microsoft/Bethesda)

“Fallout 3” was the first incarnation of the game developed by Bethesda Softworks and available for consoles (PS3 and Xbox 360) and it was an instant sensation in 2008. Aside from a lackluster conclusion, one of the biggest draws was whether or not to save, or nuke, the town of Megaton as — for reasons best left alone at this point — it had been built around live, unexploded atomic ordinance. The game won critical acclaim and a number of awards, including Best in Show at E3 that year.

“Fallout 4” was released in 2015 to an overwhelming reception — and the game was exceptional, with the major addition of being able to build settlements in the wastelands surrounding bombed-out Boston. Unfortunately, Bethesda became fixated on that world-building to the detriment of developing future gameplay. A number of spin-off games were produced, including “Fallout: New Vegas” developed by Obsidian Entertainment, which was a huge underground hit.

The last entry in the franchise was released back in 2018. Called “Fallout 76” it was the first online multiplayer version of the game that originally had no non-player characters (NPCs). However, later updates added these and subsequent character dialogue.

In early 2021, Microsoft finalized its $7.5 billion deal to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda (who also produced “Doom”) but there’s been little news on the “Fallout” front since then.

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Jerry Harris Was Our Hero

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Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty Images

If season one of Cheer was a high school home-game victory — sometimes emotionally charged but ultimately satisfying — then season two is the morning after the big championship loss, the dark cloud of season one’s beacon of positivity and joy, Jerry Harris, hanging over it.

If you haven’t seen the first season of Cheer, it’s difficult to overstate just how much of a feel-good hero Harris became, both in the series and in real life. Despite difficult circumstances — his single mother struggled to stay afloat financially and died when he was a teen — he was unequivocally the cheeriest cheerleader on Cheer. Harris neatly represented one of America’s favorite tropes: the poor but talented anomaly who makes it out of a bad situation through hard work and a positive attitude. The American Dream, etc., etc. It’s an irresistible story.

I remember being struck, too, by how deeply loved Harris was. First by his mother, who was barely making rent but made sure that she always had enough to pay the steep fees for her son’s beloved cheer gym, and then by his cheerleading community, which fundraised to keep him in the sport after his mother died. He was the person who brightened everyone else’s day, who helped keep his teammates going through difficult routines with his famed “mat-talk” skills.

Then in September 2020, Harris was arrested on the charge of production of child pornography. He was subsequently sued by twin brothers Sam and Charlie, survivors of his alleged abuse who were brave enough to go public with their story, and that December the FBI brought seven additional charges related to child pornography and sexual abuse of minors against him.

Harris was accused of targeting four minors in Florida, Illinois, and Texas between 2017, when he was 18 years old, and 2020. Through attorneys and spokespeople, he has denied all allegations, but in the September 2020 criminal complaint from Chicago federal court, Harris allegedly admitted to having solicited and received child pornography from “at least between 10 to 15 other individuals he knew were minors,” as well as sex with a 15-year-old minor at a cheer event in 2019 and other alleged misconduct. Currently he’s incarcerated in Illinois, awaiting trial. His bail was denied.

Season two of Cheer spans from the start of 2020 to June of last year. After a prologue previewing the highs and lows of the months to come, it opens with Navarro’s sudden rise to fame following the release of season one in early January — just under a year after, according to Charlie and Sam’s account, Harris allegedly pressured Charlie, who was 13 at the time, into sex in a bathroom at a cheer competition. We see the standout cast members — Lexi, La’Darius, Gabi, Morgan, Monica, and yes, Jerry, greeting their hordes of adoring and often very young fans.

There are Ellen appearances, morning-show interviews, Instagram ads, photo shoots, agents. We watch them all ride the high of their Netflix success, amid some grumbling from the non-famous cheerleaders. We’re also introduced to the team at Trinity Valley Community College, their rival school. And then we watch it all fall apart when the COVID-19 pandemic hits just a few weeks before their big competition in Daytona. And Harris is there, through it all, with his usual words of encouragement. There’s no indication that, late one night that February, he was allegedly texting 14-year-old Charlie an apology for “what I’ve done in the past” after blocking him on Snapchat.

Following the pandemic episode, Cheer finally directly addresses what we, the audience, already know. It’s clearly a shock and a production scramble. The producers even reuse some footage from the previous season in which Harris says, in a rare solemn tone, “I would probably be somewhere on a street right now. I would probably be in and out of jail. I would probably be upset at the world, and I would be hurting others because I would be hurt myself. I would not be where I am today without cheer.”

In confessionals, his teammates and coach talk mostly about their shock and bewilderment, their regret for not realizing, not helping to stop it. “We had a team meeting that night, and I … it really felt like a funeral,” coach Monica Aldama says before breaking down in tears. “I’m just scrolling through Twitter. And I see Jerry. This ain’t true. This ain’t — this can’t be true,” says La’Darius, recounting his initial discovery and reaction. “I started crying. And I called Gabi, and she is bawling.”

There’s a brief moment in season one that, for me, foreshadows the painful truth more clearly than any other. In the first episode of the series, Harris is shown in a dorm room, hanging out with teammates James, TT, and La’Darius, watching cheer videos on his phone. “Jerry listens to cheer 24/7,” says James in a voice-over. “He can show you each routine, every section … it’s crazy how much Jerry loves cheerleading.” Then TT says to Harris: “I don’t know how you sit there and watch, like, younger teams do competitions.”

They all joke about Harris’s obsession with knowing all the routines, all the details, the coaches, the parents, and he pulls up a younger team’s score sheets from a recent competition. Rewatching it, I thought of an elementary school employee from whom my classmates and I received daily hugs — a man we all loved who made us smile. A man who, a few years later, was arrested for sexually abusing one of those classmates. Everyone was shocked. He was hiding in plain sight with a jolly, cheerful persona that easily disguised behavior that might have otherwise raised alarm bells. Very few actual pedophiles are skulking around the edge of a playground, waiting to be discovered.

After grieving the Harris everyone loved and thought they knew, the show turns to the survivors of his abuse, interviewing first Sarah Klein, the attorney and advocate who is representing them; then Charlie and Sam themselves; and then their mother, Kristen. The interviews with the boys are the most heartbreaking to watch. After their mom describes what a safe haven cheerleading was for them, they recount being harassed, groomed, and, in Charlie’s case, eventually sexually assaulted. “It made me lose even more faith in having a safe community in cheer,” says Sam.

They wanted to have it both ways perhaps — to confront the bad stuff head-on so they could push through it and focus on the positive. It was something of a cheerleader’s mentality.

It was good to see the Cheer producers focus mostly on the survivors’ story. They even touched on the wider culture of abuse in cheer, interviewing the USA Today reporters who broke the story. And they included Klein’s condemnation of Coach Monica’s public response to the news, a much-criticized Instagram post in which she wrote about her devastation about the news, the importance of protecting children, her prayers for the victims and families, and a request for privacy.

Near the episode’s end, we hear from La’Darius again, whose voice has more ferocity than anyone else’s when he talks about what Harris did. “I would have snatched him up, if I ever would have known about any of this stuff,” he says. “I feel like it would have been worse than him going to jail. I don’t care how famous you are, I don’t care how much money you got, I don’t care how much people love you. That don’t give you the right to do stuff like this. Especially when one of your best friends you know went through something like that.”

As he revealed in season one, La’Darius — Harris’s best friend and roommate — is himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. More than anyone else at Navarro, La’Darius understands the impact Harris’s abuse has had on his victims’ lives. The anger and the hurt he feels is palpable.

Which is what makes the following episode so perplexing; Netflix’s description of it says that La’Darius “turns on Monica and the team in dramatic fashion.” In the episode’s Navarro portions, the camera focuses on Monica’s spiral into depression — in the fall of 2020 she’s on Dancing With the Stars, away from her team, causing distance from her cheerleaders and some drama among them, in particular with the new assistant coach, Kailee Peppers, who is taking over for Monica in her absence. When the news about Harris breaks, the tension escalates.

La’Darius, whose mother, it should be noted, was suddenly taken away by police when he was a child, starts feeling deserted and unseen by his coach. He sees Monica, he says at multiple points throughout the series, as a mother figure. So on top of finding out that his best friend has allegedly abused young boys, he’s also feeling discarded by the primary source of stability and nurturing in his life. After a conflict with Kailee, he decides to leave Navarro ahead of Monica’s return.

We hear from La’Darius in the beginning of the episode, but we mostly see the events unfold through the eyes of Monica and the other cheerleaders, who all seem more annoyed than sympathetic toward him. Upon Monica’s return to Navarro, she gets COVID-19 and is shown in bed, doom-scrolling, heartbroken by Harris’s transgressions and La’Darius’s departure, with emphasis placed on how difficult it was for Monica to receive so much negative press coverage. And that’s valid! It’s her experience. But then, that’s it. At this point, we’ve only reached the middle of the season, and for the next three episodes, the focus goes … right back to cheerleading.

There’s no further processing of the traumatic events that have just transpired. No negative attitudes allowed! Time to be positive and get ready for Daytona! If I was still reeling from merely watching those two episodes, I can’t imagine how the cheerleaders were all feeling — but there’s very little space given for them to address it or deal with their feelings, at least in the footage we’re shown.

It kind of makes sense — the Cheer directors never set out to make a documentary about abuse and trauma and the myriad ways they can affect people. I could almost hear the sigh of relief they all breathed as they concluded episode six — finally we can get back to why we came to Navarro in the first place. They wanted to have it both ways perhaps — to confront the bad stuff head-on so they could push through it and focus on the positive. It was something of a cheerleader’s mentality.

As for La’Darius, he’s essentially dropped from the story line for most of the second half of the season. As I watched, I constantly found myself wondering what was going on with him and whether he was okay, and really, whether any of them were okay. It’s one thing if he’d decided to stop filming and distance himself from production — that, of course, is understandable and explains some of this — but that everyone else seemed to just stop talking about it is less comprehensible. So when La’Darius and Monica tearfully repair their relationship in the final episode of the season, and he tells her that what happened wasn’t really about her, what was supposed to feel like a moment of closure, all tied up in a bow, just feels hollow and unsatisfying. Whatever pain and trauma his former best friend resurfaced remains unspoken, but it’s there — hiding in plain sight but never directly addressed.

And for me, that’s ultimately the problem with the show. Cheerleading is a sport that buys heavily into the ethos of toxic positivity, pushing down any negative feelings rather than allowing space to process and move through them. And that’s sort of what the Cheer directors are saying to us: It happened, it was bad, now let’s focus on this competition! Why are you still worried about all that? Of course, I’m not sure there’s any way they could have continued and ended the season that would have been truly satisfying. But I wish the creators had accepted and even embraced that they were making a different show this season instead of trying to make it everything at once. As we learned from the Daytona competition outcome, if you keep going and going with a smile on your face and your feelings pushed down, eventually you will falter.

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Logan Paul Refunded $3.5 Million for Fake Pokemon Card Purchase, Fallout Hits Card Collecting Community

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Logan Paul has gotten his money back after discovering that a $3.5 million purchase of Pokemon cards contained counterfeit cases, but lawsuits and other fallout from the scandal is still brewing. Yesterday, Logan Paul revealed that a highly touted purchase of a box supposedly containing six 1st Edition Base Set Pokemon booster cases actually contained resealed boxes full of GI Joe cards. This followed ComicBook.com (and many other sites) reporting on evidence that suggested the cards were in fact fake. PokeBeach, one of the leading Pokemon card sites covering this story, has provided additional details about the fallout from this fraudulent purchase, including news that Paul did receive a refund for his purchase.

The news story has caused an uproar in the card collecting community, specifically the wider sports card collecting community. PokeBeach cites the Instagram account @cardporn, which follows the card collecting community, when discussing some updates about the story. Cardporn notes that Paul received a $3.5 million refund from the collector he purchased the set from, a card collector named Matt Allen. Allen appears in Logan Paul’s video and seemed genuinely stunned that the box was a counterfeit. However, PokeBeach notes that Allen is having trouble getting the $2.7 million he paid for the box, which went to two sources – Jacob Gabay (or @cardkahuna on Instagram) and Jameel Mohammad (@shopmeelypops on Instagram). You can see CardPorn’s full comments on the situation below:

The authenticator at the heart of the scandal, Baseball Card Exchange, released their own statement about their authentication process. They noted that they operated in good faith and that they were re-examining their authentication processes in light of the issues. As a result of the fake, Baseball Card Exchange is stopping review of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh booster cases and boxes until they revise their authentication process.

PokeBeach’s story also contains several more details about the history of the counterfeit case, including its possible ties to a well-known scammer and a back and forth between one of the YouTubers who broke news that the case was likely fake and one of the former owners of the box. This story has exposed a lot of the underlying shadiness in the card collecting community and we hope that you’ll give it a read.

One of the big questions remaining is whether or not Paul had any suspicions the booster case was fake. The cynical take is that Paul was in a “no lose” scenario – either he wound up with six authentic cases of 1st Edition Base Set booster packs or he could dominate the news cycle by hyping his purchase of the box and then playing the victim when the fakes were discovered, knowing that he’d get the money back. However, Paul did appear on a livestream hosted by fellow Pokemon card collector Michael Goldstein a week ago and admitted that he relied heavily on the fact that the cards were authenticated by Baseball Card Exchange. Goldstein has his own ties to the story, having helped vet the box’s authenticity, but both he and Paul seemed genuinely concerned in the video.

Expect the fallout to continue in the coming weeks and months.

Manuals for a Starfield watch made by the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy manufacturers have leaked

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Images of a special Starfield-themed watch have leaked online.

Just below, you can see a post on the Starfield subreddit, which claims to show a number of images from an unannounced Starfield-themed watch, and the same user also claims to have a found a draft instruction manual for the watch itself, which shows the watch will offer Bluetooth support for mobile devices. That manual suggests the device is being made by The Wand Company, a UK-based prop designer that helped make the collectible Pip-Boy that shipped with certain editions of Fallout 4.

This new watch certainly looks pretty flashy, not to mention expensive. It’s adorned with a number of designs, which we can only assume means the watch face itself is interchangeable, and there’s also settings that’ll show you the current temperature and humidity. This actually isn’t the first time we’ve seen this watch: it featured in a behind-the-scenes video for Starfield last year in June 2021.

Underneath the subreddit post, some commenters think this watch is what’ll arrive with the Collector’s Edition of Starfield. Right now, all we know about the expensive edition of Bethesda’s new game is that it features something in a fancy box, but we don’t know what’s actually in the box itself. If the watch is buried in the Collector’s Edition box, that’d surely make it one expensive purchase.

The user who found the manuals, YouTuber SquiddyVonn, suggests that the watch could also make up a significant part of Starfield’s UI. In a video, they note that its display box appears in last year’s trailer, and that it device could be the equivalent of the Pip-Boy for Bethesda’s next game.

Right now, Starfield is on track to launch later this year on November 11, for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, being available on day one through the Xbox Game Pass subscription service. The new game marks Bethesda’s first new IP in over two decades, so it’s safe to say expectations are pretty damn high for the new spacefaring RPG.

That launch date might be a fair way off, but you can already check out some recent Starfield concept art of the various worlds we’ll be exploring.