Good Morning, RVA: Doughnuts!

The weather we’ve got queued up for this weekend looks…not the best. But maybe it’ll be fine!

June 3, 2016; 7:11 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Magalie L’Abbé

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and the rain has returned. Beginning this afternoon through tomorrow there’s a decent chance of thunderstorms. Then, late tomorrow afternoon through Sunday, we’ve got another round of possible storms. Same goes for Sunday, too. Fingers crossed that everything magically slips by us and my weekend at the pool is not ruined.

Water cooler

It’s National Doughnut Day! This means doughnuts are weirder, maybe free, and you’ll have to stand in line longer to get one than any other day of the year. Sugar Shack and Duck Donuts have some deals you may want to check out. Early Bird Biscuit will have a doughnut biscuit?!

The Commonwealth Institute released a report detailing the lack of state-level funding Virginia provides to its low-income public school students. Richmond has a much higher percentage (for now) of low-income students than its neighbors, so underfunding in this way impacts Richmond more and is one of the reasons why comparing Richmond to Chesterfield / Henrico is not super fair. The report says that if funding levels had been raised by the General Assembly, RPS would have seen $10 million more this fiscal year. We can argue about the mayor’s $500,000 security detail all we want, but that’s pennies compared to an extra ten million bucks from the state–which would have gone a long way to closing RPS’s $18 million budget gap. State funding accounts for 36% of the 2016-2017 general fund revenue for Richmond Public Schools. That’s almost $100,000,000. If we want to truly fund our public schools, we’ve got to start working on state-level policy, too.

Here’s an article about a weird / interesting thing: an “adventure park and lifestyle center” in Chesterfield County. What does that mean? I’m not sure! But it involves some apartments, a man-made lake, and sounds kind of like West Broad Village, but with, like, water skiing? I dunno. Dude from Sweet Frog is involved and owns the land, so it’s definitely more than a pie-in-the-sky plan.

Intern Chris sat down and interviewed his history teacher, Chad Ingold, a guy who also happens to be running for mayor. They talk about education, what makes a good teacher vs. a good mayor, and then there’s a video of Chad rapping. Yes!

I think we need to start a 6th Street Marketplace drinking game.

Despite the chance of bad weather hanging over us for the entire weekend, there’s still a ton of stuff to going on–including the dry-surfaces-required Chalk Up the Town, which has already been canceled once due to rain and, augh, I feel so bad for them! Heavy hitters over the next couple of days: The Greek Festival ft. baklava, RVA Tonight ft. Governor Terry McAuliffe, and Broad Appétit ft. a trillion local restaurants. If you can believe it, even more things exist to do, luckily Rachel and Val have done all the hard event research for you.

Sports!

• Squirrels blanked Bowie, 3-0. Over the course of the weekend, Richmond hosts Harrisburg before leaving town for a week–so get your baseball fix in now, while you can!
• Kickers head out to take on FC Cincinnati tomorrow at 7:00 PM.
• Nats begin a series with the Reds tonight at 7:10 PM.

This morning’s longread

The Achilles Wheel of the Mars Curiosity Rover

Space science people are maybe my most favorite of the science people.

The Curiosity rover arrived at Mount Sharp in September of 2014, and has been exploring and ascending it – slowly – ever since. The wheels are certainly the weakest point of the rover and are likely to be the ultimate source of its failure: its Achilles wheel, if you will. There was a good reason for the thin aluminum, as even making them even one millimeter thicker would have added a kettlebell’s worth of weight, and the novel landing was made possible by the light, thin wheels.

This morning’s Instagram

https://instagram.com/p/BGJyBvHG878/

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June 3, 2016 7:11 AM 0