Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F, and today's weather looks amazing. Expect highs in the mid 70s, plenty of sunshine, and lots of time after work or school to wander around looking at all of the new plants popping up. Get yourself one of those plant identifier apps and learn about what's growing in your neighborhood!
Water cooler
I need to rethink how and what I'm looking at each Tuesday to track our coronaprogress regionally and in the Commonwealth. I don't love focusing on just cases, although they're way way down. The hospital graph is no longer available on the Virginia Department of Health's data dashboard, and that dataset has too many datapoints to easily graph on Virginia's open data website, which bums me out. You can still easily get at COVID-19 deaths, though, which is something. I guess I could start up the ol' coronacounts spreadsheet again, but that—unless I can automate the snot out of it—doesn't sound like it'd necessarily be a good use of my time. I'll keep thinking on it. Until then, read Katelyn Jetelina's newest State of Affairs post about how differently the omicron subvariant (BA.2) has spread in different parts of the world. Here's her bottom line: "BA.2 now makes up 23% of cases in the U.S. and we expect this to increase to 100% over time. We don’t know what BA.2 will look like in the U.S. We could see a second hump, like Europe, or no overall increase, like South Africa. Or, perhaps we may see an increase in only some states. (This is exactly what happened with Alpha and has my vote.)"
City Council has a busy day today, with a meeting of both the Public Safety and the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committees, plus a special bonus meeting of the full Council and the School Board at 6:00 PM at the Main Library to talk about, as the agenda puts it, "New George Wythe High School." That last one should be a real page turner. As for the less dramatic meetings (maybe!) the Public Safety Committee will look at ORD. 2022-091, the Mayor's ordinance to set up a Civilian Review Board to his own preferred specifications. This paper was technically referred to the Governmental Operations committee tomorrow, but Public Safety will also discuss it today. LUHT will host four presentations, and surely at least one will make you want to tune in: 1) Path to Equity, 2) and update on the Diamond District's Request for Interest process, 3) North-South BRT and the Fall Line Trail, and 4) BridgePark RVA. All interesting and probably worth your time! You can tune in live or listen later on the City's legislative website.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Chris Suarez reports on yesterday's Council budget meeting, which, by the way, is already up on the Boring Show and ready for your listening pleasure. Suarez focuses on the question I had yesterday about how will the City afford rising debt payments if Council goes along with the Mayor's plan to lower the real estate tax to get folks to vote for Casino 2.0. The Administration plans to cover those rising debt costs with revenue from future economic development, which I think definitely should be part of the picture, but, in my opinion, isn't a predictable enough source of revenue to warrant fiddling with the real estate tax. These elevated debt payments hit in about six years. Do you know what six years from now will look like? Could you have guessed what 2022 would look like back in 2016?
A Chris Suarez double header! Suarez also reports that we're slowly creeping towards the vote on Casino 2.0, clearing legal hurdles as they arise. Importantly, the State budget (because legislation is weird) will ultimately decide whether or not Richmond can hold its second casino vote—and that process is currently on hold as the General Assembly couldn't agree on a budget before their session ended. Now we'll wait for the Governor to call a special session so the GA can, theoretically, reach a compromise. Again, legislation is weird.
From Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense, all you need is the caption from the header image: "A 15-story tower may soon replace this parking lot in Monroe Ward." Tap through to remind yourself of all the development and infill coming to Monroe Ward.
Via /r/rva, a very important thread: Where can one find the best baguette in Richmond?
This morning's longread
How to make holographic chocolate
I don't know what I'd use holographic chocolate for, but now I must make it.
The key is to use a surface with tiny grooves as a mold for molten chocolate. Think of the rainbow shine of a CD. It has those colors because of microscopic pits that encode data, which are small enough that they also cause light waves to interfere with each other in an effect known as diffraction. You’ll be using a thin, grooved sheet called a diffraction grating as your mold. When you melt chocolate onto a grating, the chocolate seeps into all the little grooves. When the chocolate hardens and you lift the grating off, the chocolate itself will have the grating pattern on its surface. If you shine white light on the chocolate, you’ll see a rainbow. If you use a laser to shine just one color of light on the candy, the chocolate will diffract light into spots. Technically speaking, you’ve created a simple hologram.
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