Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and today looks like another stunner. You can expect highs in the 80s, less wind than yesterday, and dry, beautiful skies. I’m taking advantage of today’s excellent weather to do bike month stuff, and you should too.
Water cooler
Whether you have children or not, you should read RPS Superintendent Kamras’s email from last night about the racist murders in Buffalo. The whole thing is worth your time—including the list of resources to help you talk with kids about racism and violence—but here’s a great excerpt: “At the core of this heinous attack is the pernicious idea that ‘real’ Americans are White and Christian and that everyone else is an interloper, scheming to ‘take over’ the country. This worldview has a long and ugly history in our nation, our state, and our city. For centuries, it has nourished violence against Black Americans, and anyone else considered ‘other’ by those who cling to this wretched ideology. We all have a part to play in denouncing it. Calling out those who espouse this odiousness, and actively working to right the wrongs created by it, is a responsibility for us all – and especially for those of us who are White. The hard and exhausting work of fighting the seemingly eternal tide of racist lies and villainy cannot rest solely on the shoulders of Black, Latino, and Asian Americans. Tragedies like this weekend's are also why we must teach so-called ‘divisive’ concepts in our schools. We need all of our children – of all backgrounds – to understand the full history of our nation so that they can prevent the ugliness of our past and present from becoming the reality of our future. In short, if our students graduate having passed all their SOLs, but lacking a deep sense of responsibility for each other, then we will have failed them miserably.”
A quick COVID-19 update: Yesterday the FDA authorized Pfizer boosters for kids aged 5–11. CNN reports that the CDC’s advisory committee will meet tomorrow to discuss the newly eligible age group—a step which needs to happen before you can walk on down to your local pharmacy and get your kids boosted. Vaccination and boostering continues to be the most effective way to prevent little ones from getting COVID-19, so if you spend a lot of time with a grubby-but-cute 5–11yo, make some plans to get them boosted as soon as this weekend.
Mike Platania a Richmond BizSense reports on eight new townhomes that may come to the 1800 block of W. Cary Street, and I kind of love this developer’s thought process! They can build four homes on the property by right—just six inches short of the width necessary to build five. Instead of submitting a Special Use Permit for that, they went back to the drawing board and came up with a plan for “building two rows of four townhomes that share a rear wall. That proposal would bring eight new homes to the neighborhood.” While you could certainly put even more homes on that piece of land, I think Richmond needs more of this kind of gentle density wherever possible. To quote the developer: “One thing we like to do, for better or for worse, is intensify land use and challenge norms with density. If we look at ever-growing demand and dwindling supply of housing in Richmond’s neighborhoods, that has to be part of the answer...We have to think outside the box about how we use land in the city and in the central locations everyone wants to be in.”
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz has an explainer about the changes coming to Virginia’s Medicaid program whenever the federal government ends its public health emergency. Here’s the really helpful gist: “In March 2020, Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act, the first of a series of emergency funding bills that provided a higher federal matching share to pay for state Medicaid programs...In return, the state could not kick people off the Medicaid rolls, even if they no longer met eligibility requirements. Once the federal government ends the public health emergency, states must begin redetermining eligibility and, as early as Aug. 1, they can remove people from the program.” The Department of Medical Assistance Services, whose director is resigning, will need to audit over 2 million people who count on Medicaid for their health care. Sounds like a TON of work, and, near the bottom of the article, Martz points to the organizations working to make sure folks don’t slip through the cracks and end up without coverage.
Via /r/rva, six great safety tips for The Return of River Season. Number one for me: No glass at the river! At all! Ever! There are plenty of ways to bring whatever thing you’d like to drink down to the James river that don’t involve glass—like, idk, cans. And when you’re done drinking it, make sure to pack out any trash on your way back.
This morning's longread
When to worry about an asteroid striking Earth
Critical new horrors to learn about on a Wednesday in 2022.
The next major upcoming mission dedicated to planetary defense is NEO Surveyor, NASA’s long-planned space telescope aiming to discover at least 90% of the city-killer NEOs. Terrestrial telescopes aren’t as well suited for this task because of limiting factors, such as weather, the Sun’s interference and the inflating number of satellites. And yet NASA’s FY 2023 presidential budget request proposed a $100 million cut to the mission, delaying its launch to 2028 at best. This is a setback because taking all the necessary steps for identifying asteroids and predicting if and when they will strike Earth is vital to adequately deflect them. No other space agencies are currently planning to build such a telescope. Despite only barely beginning to recover from a pandemic, we haven’t internalized that low-probability yet high-impact events can catch us by surprise.
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