Good morning, RVA! It's 43 °F, cold, and rainy. Expect temperatures to stay right about where they are and for the chance of rain to stick around until this evening. Such a bleh compared to yesterday's absolutely incredible weather.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 3,294↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 2↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 250↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 73, Henrico: 115, and Richmond: 62). Since this pandemic began, 503 people have died in the Richmond region. The state's seven-day average of new cases sits at 3,837 following a couple of days with more than 4,000 new cases reported. And, locally, over the weekend we hit a grim milestone of more than 500 COVID-19 deaths. However, I think we have cause to feel hope! On Friday evening, the FDA issued emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine. That means as soon as 10:30 AM this morning, COVID-19 vaccine will start showing up around the country. I know it's boring, especially when folks are getting sick each and every day, but the logistics of shipping millions and millions of a thing—something that requires dry ice and ultra-cold storage—to locations all across an enormous county fascinates me! When the world slows down a little, I'd love to read more about it. Also, remember! The Governor's new restrictions took effect this morning. You'll need to stay at home from 12:00–5:00 AM, wear a mask when outdoors with other folks, keep your gatherings to 10 or fewer folks, and work from home if you can do so.
Today's the day! City Council will vote on the City's new master plan, Richmond 300, at their regularly-scheduled meeting tonight. If you'd like to submit a public comment in support of the plan, you can do so until 10:00 AM. Last week, I didn't really know what to expect at tonight's meeting, but, after reading this piece from Chris Suarez in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, I think it'll easily pass this evening, maybe even unanimously. And that's because of you! Councilmembers didn't magically change their minds over the last 14 days—they listened to constituent emails and tweets and facebooks and whatevers pouring in and reconsidered their positions. While it is annoying to spend our civic energy pushing a plan that's been in the works for years across the finish line, I'm glad y'all decided to do so! Civics: Sometimes it works. Totally related: Also on tonight's agenda is ORD. 2020-152, which will rename the portion of Jefferson Davis Highway located within the City.
Michael Schwartz at Richmond BizSense thinks someone wants to build a casino on the Movieland property at the corner of Arthur Ashe and Leigh. You all know how I feel about casinos. But! I think I will wait until I have some more information before angrily pulling up all of the Richmond 300 recommendations for that part of town.
You know I love digital detective stories! Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a good one about researcher Shelby Driskill's (re)discovery of a cemetery for enslaved people on the University of Richmond campus. You can read Driskill's full report here.
The Electoral College, in as much as it is a singular thing, meets today to do the actual electing part of the presidential election. In Virginia, that means you can stream the meeting here, which begins at 12:00 PM and has a very long and stately agenda. If you want to entertain dark thoughts, you can read through this NYT piece about how and why Congress could (but won't) overturn the Electoral College's results.
The Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will host a COVID-19 testing event today at Diversity Richmond (1407 Sherwood Avenue) from 2:00–4:00 PM. Planning on spending time with family over the holidays? Get tested, quarantine, and make good public-health decisions.
This morning's patron longread
Designed to Deceive: Do These People Look Real to You?
Submitted by Patron Abigail. This piece in the NYT about AI-generated faces is worth it just to move through the hundreds of blended faces frame by frame. When does your brain register a face as a man vs. a woman? Fascinating.
The creation of these types of fake images only became possible in recent years thanks to a new type of artificial intelligence called a generative adversarial network. In essence, you feed a computer program a bunch of photos of real people. It studies them and tries to come up with its own photos of people, while another part of the system tries to detect which of those photos are fake. The back-and-forth makes the end product ever more indistinguishable from the real thing. The portraits in this story were created by The Times using GAN software that was made publicly available by the computer graphics company Nvidia.
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