Good morning, RVA! It's 41 °F right now, but later today we’ll see highs in the 70s! Do keep an eye out for a bit of rain later this evening, though—something I’m going to pretend won’t happen because these bikes won’t ride themselves. This weekend a brief cold(ish) front moves through, bringing with it rain and gusty winds, so prepare to batten if need be. Next week looks really beautiful, and I think we’ll get a small taste of it this weekend. Enjoy!
Water cooler
As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 0, 71, and 30, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 3.3. Most of the country and nearly the entirety of the Commonwealth sits at a low COVID-19 Community Level (just three Virginia counties are in the yellow), and it’s been that way for a bunch of a weeks in a row now. Three years into this thing, and it’s time to get rid of these recurring COVID-19 updates—or at least move them to monthly. I think that’s a big deal and a good sign of where we are in the lifespan of this pandemic. Of course, should case rates spike and hospitals start to fill up as a result of some newly unleashed variant, I may change my mind, but, for now, this sort of data-centric update is no longer needed! That makes me feel some sort of hard-to-identify emotion!
Ian M. Stewart at VPM reports on last week’s Crash Analysis Studio hosted by Strong Towns and has some of the recommendations that resulted. The number one recommendation, which will surprise literally zero readers of this email, is to narrow the road immediately using temporary materials (like those big orange barrels). This will both slow drivers and shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians, making it safer for everyone. See! It’s not just a random guy with a newsletter that thinks these things but also experts from national advocacy organizations who work on these problems daily. Richmond could implement quick and temporary changes like this immediately after someone is hurt or killed on our streets—to help prevent future crashes—but, for some reason, we’re stubbornly unwilling to do so.
Also from VPM, Megan Pauly sat down with Angela Jones, RPS’s Director of Culture, Climate, and Student Services, to talk about the District’s policies and procedures for when gun violence impacts students. It’s a depressing interview, but I think it does a good job at showing just some of the thoughtfulness RPS puts in to responding to some truly horrible situations.
Richmond BizSense’s Jack Jacob reports that the Willow Lawn Dollar Tree closed, and the new tenant remains a mystery. /r/rva gets my hopes up by suggesting it might be a Trader Joe’s, which, while exciting, is probably unlikely. But maybe!
Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the tiniest update on the process to fill Lamont Bagby’s old House of Delegates seat. So far we’ve got one candidate declared, but the Governor has to first decide if he’ll even call a special election. I guess he can decide not to and just wait until November? I’m sure there are smart rules around this—I can totally see how if a seat opened in, say, October, you wouldn’t want to go through the hassle of a special election with another election just weeks away.
Yesterday, President Donald Trump was indicted. Regardless of how shocked you are, it’s big news: No president in history has ever been charged with a crime. If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the proceedings, I recommend subscribing to indictment.fyi, an as-needed newsletter written by the same guy who did impeachment.fyi back when those were a thing. It’s hard to have thoughts this early on, but I’ve already seen some bad takes from Republicans and national media focused on how this indictment will “test democracy” or is a “sad day for America.” My mental trick to prevent my brain from sympathizing with this rhetoric, which, for some reason it desperately wants to do, is to flip the framing back on to the crimes committed. A president committing crimes is a test for democracy. A president committing crimes is a sad day for America. Indictments and the legal processes that follows are how this whole thing is supposed to work.
The #1 Virginia Tech Hokies face the #3 LSU Tigers in the 2023 Women’s Final Four tonight at 6:00 PM. The winner will take on either #1 South Carolina or #2 Iowa in the National Championship Game at 2:30 PM on Sunday. Exciting stuff, and good luck Hokies!
This morning's longread
We should ban TikTok(‘s surveillance)
I think Cory Doctorow has it right in this take on Congress’s recent flirtations with banning TikTok. How about, instead of banning TikTok, we ban technology companies in general from spying on us, collecting our personal data, and doing gross things with it?
The same goes for commercial surveillance: once you collect massive, nonconsensual dossiers on every technology user alive, you don't get to act surprised when cops and spies show up and order your company to serve as deputies for a massive, off-the-books warrantless surveillance project. Hell, a cynic might even say that commercial surveillance companies are betting on this. The surveillance public-private partnership is a vicious cycle: corporations let cops and spies plunder our data; then the cops and spies lobby against privacy laws that would prevent these corporations from spying on us. Which makes the RESTRICT Act an especially foolish project. If the Chinese state wants to procure data on Americans, it need not convince us to install Tiktok. It can simply plunk down a credit card with any of the many unregulated data-brokers who feed the American tech giants the dossiers that the NSA and local cops rely on.
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Picture of the Day
Yesssss azalea season, full speed ahead!
