Flashfood, Banned Books, and Pleasant Temperatures
Cheers RVA!
Today will be mostly sunny with a high of 85 and a low of 63. The week ahead looks pleasant with mostly clear skies and highs in the low 80’s.
the juice:
Tariffs on imported goods will cause the cost of Dominion Energy’s offshore wind farm to increase by more than $500 million, according to Dave Ress at the RTD.
The project consists of 176 giant wind turbines nearly 30 miles off the Virginia Beach coast and is expected to provide 2600 MW of electricity, enough to power 660k homes.
It will be the largest offshore wind farm in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
The original cost was estimated at $9.8 billion, but is now set to cost $11.3 billion. Ress writes:
Dominion’s customers are on the hook for half of any cost overruns, until the total project cost hits $11.3 billion, at which point Dominion and the Stonepeak investment partnership, which has a half-interest in the project, will pay for any excess.
the pulp:
Former Governor Doug Wilder is suing VCU President Michael RAO and Chief Audit and Compliance Executive Suzanne Milton after receiving “malicious, unsubstantiated and retaliatory acts” from the two leaders, via WWBT.
Sixteen local Kroger Grocery Stores have partnered with Flashfood, a tech platform that aims to tackle food waste and food insecurity, to give customers access to deeply discounted meat, diary, produce and baked goods, via RVAHub.
the dive:
Jim Spencer for the Mercury offers a commentary on the conservative library review movement in Virginia’s public schools after a new report on banned books in school libraries was released by the state commission.
The report found that 63% of schools in Virginia removed no books from their shelves over the last five years.
Hanover County banned 125 titles from its schools during that period, accounting for 36% of all “book removal actions” by the state.
Spencer writes:
Banned books in Hanover don’t just include books about gender or sexual identity. The list also includes literary classics by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood, and National Book Award winner Kurt Vonnegut.
For would-be book banners, a single sex scene in hundreds of pages or a suggestion of white racism now serves as justification for exclusion from a school library.
As that continues, taboos grow. Hanover County dumped “The Freedom Writers Diary.” The book tells the story of a California teacher who taught students about the Holocaust by making them read and write about “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Read the full article here.
the vibe:
Have a productive day RVA!
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