Good morning, RVA: 1,026↗️ • 3↘️; it is Election Day

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, which is truly cold! Things’ll warm up later today, though, and we should see highs in the 60s. Look for temperatures to continue to increase throughout the week, too, leading to a pretty pleasant weekend.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,026↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 3↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 104↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 18, Henrico: 43, and Richmond: 43). Since this pandemic began, 438 people have died in the Richmond region. According to VDH’s Pandemic Dashboard, the Central Region, which is much larger than just Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield, is at “substantial community transmission.” That’s the highest level, and it’s the fourth consecutive week that the super region has seen that level of community transmission. If it makes you feel any better, we’re just on the edge between substantial and moderate? Looking a bit more locally, at the two numeric CDC K–12 School Metrics, and all three localities have a number of new cases per 100,000 persons within the last 14 days that’s considered “higher risk” (but are edging up into “highest risk”). Richmond and Henrico have a 14-day percent positivity that’s “lower risk” (4.2% and 4.7%), while Chesterfield’s has already crossed over into “moderate risk” (5.9%). The numbers and trends continue to be troubling, y’all! I don’t know if we’re at the point for a change in policy from our elected leaders or not, but, after the election, I’d think they should certainly feel more freedom to implement possibly unpopular but good and safe public policies. What a dumb sentence to have to write.

Here are 100% of the words I wrote about the presidential election on November 9th, 2016: “This is the space where I need to write something about Trump, but I don’t know what to say. I’m sad, angry, confused, and worried. Someone send me some hopeful thinkpieces.” The longread that day was this collection of opinions in the NYT about what a Trump presidency could bring, which, if you hate yourself, make for interesting reading this morning. Now, here we are, four years later—although 2016 simultaneously feels like both ages ago and just last week—and I’m feeling the same exact set of emotions again. However! Today is Election Day and not the day after. Tomorrow could bring with it an entirely different (and welcomed) set of feelings, or, with the last four years as context, could bring even fewer words than I had back in 2016. If you haven’t yet, please go vote. Polls are open until 7:00 PM, and you can find your polling location here.

RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras gave a quick presentation to the School Board last night about how the District will make the decision to return to in-person instruction or remain fully virtual for their second semester (PDF). Surveys to all families and staff begin next week and “will ask about comfort with/preference for: Remaining virtual for the second semester; Implementing a hybrid model (2 days in person, 3 days virtual — this would be require to implement physical distancing, as class sizes would need to be halved).” I’m kind of surprised to see this presented as such a binary choice without an option to return just the youngest students to in-person instruction. The District hopes to make a final reopening decision at their December 7th board meeting, which is, I think, the last board meeting of Current School Board before New School Board takes over. That’s stressful in a whole bunch of ways. Kenya Hunter at the Richmond Times Dispatch has a few more details.

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that the Hardee’s across the street from the Willow Lawn Pulse Station has sold to a Miami developer for $2.05 million. If you’ve ever been out that way and looked around, you know that the bus stop in front of that Hardee’s is always packed. This makes a ton of sense since it’s where you transfer from the Pulse to continue westward to the thousands of jobs along Broad Street out to Short Pump. Also: That bus stop sucks and is a shameful, shadeless post in the ground! This is an excellent opportunity to get a real bus stop with seating and shelter from the elements installed. I don’t know how we go about doing that—whether it’s working with the developer or the County or what—but we shouldn’t let the next owners redevelop that entire spot and leave the current, unacceptable bus stop. Someone tell me who to email.

To close, I want to quote from one of my favorite blogs, The Weekly Sift, writing about what could happen if Trump wins (or doesn’t win), if violence breaks out, or if foreign interference and misinformation flood our feeds: “I don’t even know how to evaluate scenarios like that. Are they likely? Crazy? Will we all laugh about this stuff by Friday? I have no idea. This I do know: We’ve never had to think this way before, and the difference this time around is Trump. All previous presidents have done their best to reassure the public. He is the first to actively try to destabilize the national mood, and push us all towards panic. No matter how this comes out, I will not forgive him for that.”

This morning’s longread

An Atlas of the Cosmos

This made me feel small and insignificant, which, to be honest, was just what I needed this morning.

The instruments will break the light apart sort of like a mail sorting machine, only with the spectrum of light from each galaxy. Depending on the story of each individual collection of photons, it will appear in the instrument as either redshifted or blueshifted. As light travels, the colors within the spectrum appear at different wavelengths — if an object is moving toward us its light is crunched and appears toward the blue part of the spectrum, whereas if an object is moving away, the light is stretched out and appears red. After traveling many billions of years, the journey of the light from all 40 million galaxies will end in a clean room inside of a dome on a mountaintop in Tucson, Arizona.

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