Good morning, RVA! It's 47 °F, and temperatures should warm up to around 60 °F by this afternoon. We may see some rain this evening, too. If today’s damp and chillyish weather is not your cup of tea, worry not! The next couple of days look dry and sunny, and I definitely see some highs in the 80s later on in the 10-day forecast.
Water cooler
Yesterday, three elementary school students and three teachers were shot and killed in a mass shooting in Nashville. When faced with this specific repeated tragedy, I have a hard time putting words to what’s happening despite it recurring with a horrible frequency. Instead of reading a half dozen news sites and pull-to-refreshing timelines all day, I’ve started to wait for certain people in our community to lay out their thoughts—people with a better capacity for empathy and thoughtfulness than myself. RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras is one of those people, and you can read his response to this most recent school shooting in last night’s email. To quote a bit: “Above all else, I believe that strong, healthy, loving relationships at school and at home are the greatest safeguard we can offer our students and staff. That's why we've made significant investments in counselors, social workers, and psychologists over the past several years, and implemented community circles and a social-emotional learning curriculum. But our students need even more support, particularly post-pandemic. Towards that end, here's one very concrete thing you can do to help them: Demand that the General Assembly lift the cap on funding for support staff in our schools.” Given the lack of compassion from our federal and state Republican lawmakers and their complete unwillingness to move a single inch on commonsense gun safety legislation, one of the only avenues available to addressing violence in school is to provide schools with adequate funding. To that end, take three minutes this morning, email the legislators on the General Assembly’s budget committees (listed out for you in Kamras’s email), and ask them to lift the cap on school support staff and fund the Senate’s version of the budget.
Today, believe it or not, is an Election Day. Residents of the current 9th Senate District can vote for Rep. McClellan’s replacement until 7:00 PM. Del. Lamont Bagby is the Democratic candidate, and you can find out if you live in the 9th District here and find your polling place here. While the demographics of the district likely guarantee a Bagby victory, the previous paragraph should be enough to motivate you to get out and vote at some point today.
Em Holter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on a big federal grant that Richmond’s public housing authority just landed. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development dropped $14 million into the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s bank account to help fund the Authority’s new “Richmond Development Corporation.” I am definitely not an expert on how housing authority’s work—I did read a good article once!—but I think the idea here is to mash together whatever available public and private funding streams you can find to create as much affordable housing as possible. I do wonder what kind of affordable housing we’re talking about here and what sort of steps are being taken towards increasing our supply of actual public housing.
A quick and important scooter update: Now both Lime and Spin scooters begin the day with small fleets deployed on the Southside. Both companies do cluster their vehicles in Manchester, so residents of deeper Southside are still out of luck. This is definitely progress from a couple months back when each morning began with exactly zero scooters south of the river.
Richmond Magazine’s Stephanie Ganz did the hard and delicious work of coming up with a list of local snacks that cost less than $5. Empanadas, homemade pop-tarts, spring rolls—where to even start? Actually, you should spend some time clicking around this month’s issue of Richmond Magazine, there are bunch of food-related stories worth checking out.
With last night’s win, the Virginia Tech women’s basketball team has reached the Final Four for the first time in program history! The #1 Hokies will face #3 LSU on Friday at 7:00 PM.
This morning's longread
How Meat and Fossil Fuel Producers Watered Down the Latest IPCC Report
Nothing really surprised me in this article about the way politics influences how we use climate scientists’ research, and I don’t think you’ll be surprised by it either. However, the description of the IPCC process is pretty interesting and worth your time.
Rodrigo Rodriguez Tornquist, Argentina’s secretary for climate change, requested that the paragraph recommending plant-based diets be removed entirely. In a comment, he wrote that there is “no scientific basis for such affirmation on plant based protein diets,” according to documents obtained by Unearthed. He also requested that any reference to plant-based diets be removed from the final text. Brazil’s delegates made similar requests and supported Argentina’s comments. The final synthesis report released this week instead recommends “balanced, sustainable healthy diets acknowledging nutritional needs.” Meat and dairy, which are responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions aren’t mentioned at all.
If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
Picture of the Day
An overwhelmingly pink redbud.
