Good morning, RVA! It's 23 °F, which is definitely cold, but highs today should reach up into the 50s, which is definitely a bit more pleasant than yesterday. Warmer(ish) temperatures and sunny skies continue over the next couple of days, so get out there any enjoy it if you have an easy-breezy and short holiday week.
Water cooler
This past Friday, Governor Youngkin announced his “Make Virginia Home” housing plan to “promote increasing the supply of attainable, affordable, and accessible housing across the Commonwealth.” I’d love to see the actual legislation behind this plan, but, for now, all we’ve got is the aforelinked short list of talking points—which do contain some good words like “comprehensive reforms of Virginia’s land use and zoning laws” and “increasing the supply of land for housing.” It also mentions providing a “more efficient way” for projects to meet mandated wetland and stream mitigation requirements, which reminds me a lot of this longread from last week criticizing how federal NEPA standards bog down important infrastructure. Of course, with these sorts of things, the devil is in the details. Will the zoning reforms make it easier to build single-family homes while preventing incredibly needed multi-family housing? How will increasing the supply of land for housing impact green spaces? Will any of part of this plan approach development in a sustainable way, and will any of the housing that gets built follow sustainability and climate best practices? I have no idea, but I think you can forgive me for starting from a fairly skeptical place given the current administration’s approach to every other issue thus far.
Patrick Larsen at VPM reports on last week’s meeting of the Richmond Coalition for Healthcare Equity, the group organizing around Richmond Community Hospital in the East End and Bon Secours’ use of 340B funds. Larsen provides a good synopsis of the issue: “Richmond Community is supposed to benefit from a federal program called 340B – which allows the facility to purchase medicine at a discount, while charging close to full price to insured patients and their insurers, leaving the difference to be reinvested. Bon Secours registered a series of clinics in wealthier parts of the city through Richmond Community, allowing the hospital to buy deeply discounted drugs, despite a well-insured patient base.” The Coalition has a bunch of actions they’d like to see from Bon Secours—including investing 100% of its profits from the 340B program in the East End—and will meet again on December 15th to figure out some next steps.
This sort of thread pops up on /r/rva every so often, and it’s always an enjoyable scroll: “What are the best dive bars in RVA?” Regardless of your definition of “dive bar,” you’ll probably agree with a lot of these. One question I always have about dive bars: Can you open a new dive bar? Or is a dive bar necessarily a place that’s been around forever?
Kind of related, RIC Today has a funny list of restaurants that are actually open on Mondays. Monday has always been a challenging day to grab lunch or dinner out in Richmond, and that’s only gotten more challenging over the course of the pandemic. Don’t show up to just peer sadly through the window of your favorite spot, check this list before you head out to your Monday lunch plans.
Maybe take a late lunch, knock off work entirely, and watch USA vs. Wales in the World Cup? Karri Peifer at Axios Richmond has a list of six local places you can catch the game.
Right now, as we speak, NASA’s Orion spacecraft is approaching the moon, and, because we live in an age of wonder, you can watch a livestream of the actual spaceship in actual space zooming by the actual moon. Incredible! At 7:44 AM this morning, Orion will perform a “close approach of the lunar surface on its way to a distant retrograde orbit, a highly stable orbit thousands of miles beyond the moon.” Orion will hang out in lunar orbit until the first week of December, when it will begin its trip home with a splashdown back on earth anticipated on December 11th.
This morning's longread
Astronomy Picture of the Day: Artemis 1 Moonshot
Not so much a longread as a really, really incredible picture of last week’s Artemis 1 launch. Perfectly timed to go alongside today’s lunar flyby!
When the Artemis 1 mission's Orion spacecraft makes its November 21 powered flyby of the Moon, denizens of planet Earth will see the Moon in a waning crescent phase. The spacecraft will approach to within about 130 kilometers of the lunar surface on its way to a distant retrograde orbit some 70,000 kilometers beyond the Moon. But the Moon was at last quarter for the November 16 launch and near the horizon in the dark early hours after midnight. It's captured here in skies over Kennedy Space Center along with the SLS rocket engines and solid rocket boosters lofting the uncrewed Orion to space. Ragged fringes appearing along the bright edge of the sunlit lunar nearside are caused as pressure waves generated by the rocket's passage change the index of refraction along the camera's line of sight.
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Picture of the Day
One of the really cool installations at this year’s InLight.
