💉 Good morning, RVA: Getchyer new COVID-19 boosters!, so many fans, and a candidate forum

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and, no fooling, my weather app says today’s highs will climb to a mere 83 °F! We’re only partway through September, so I do think it’s a bit too early to declare victory over the long hot summer, but still! You can expect clear skies and highs right in the 80s for the next bunch of days. Get out there and enjoy it—shred ‘till you’re dead, ride till you die, walk around your neighborhood, slip into the forest, or explore your alleyways. We’re heading straight for Richmond in the Fall, the best time of year!
 

Water cooler

Yesterday, CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met and gave their stamp of approval to the new Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, and then, later in the day, the CDC director signed off, opening the doors to updated COVID-19 boosters at a pharmacy or medical provider near you. Katelyn Jetelina, aka Your Local Epidemiologist, has the cliff notes from the ACIP meeting, but the gist is: “Everyone 6 months and older is eligible for an updated COVID-19 vaccine this fall.” Sounds like CDC recommends you wait at least two months since your last vaccination to get the new one, though, so maybe pull up your calendar and do a bit of date math if you got boosted over the summer. I’m excited to make my own appointment, and I hope we’re creeping towards a world where COVID-19 vaccines become part of an annual (or twice annual) regular, boring vaccination process—just like flu, just another thing on your todo list.
 

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that, as soon as this fall, VCU will start tearing down the buildings it owns near the Diamond District to make way for their new athletics village. While I guess the courts, fields, and support buildings that make up the athletic village are not strictly part of the City’s Diamond District plans, this seems like the first visible step towards completely transforming that part of town over the next handful of years.
 

RICToday reports that 428,541 fans funneled into the Diamond to catch a Flying Squirrels game this past season—good for “earning Richmond the title of Double-A Attendance Champions.” That’s pretty impressive given the status of the facilities and speaks to the quality of the product on display (which is a gross way of describing “having fun watching sports, eating food, and drinking beer with your pals”).
 

I liked this thread from /r/rva: “Any restaurant sports where I can get mid-quality sandwiches for $8–10?” Sandwiches are, generally, delicious, but sometimes you don’t want to spend $17 for one and that’s OK. Personally, I second the Garnett’s recommendation! They’ve got some good happy hour deals that you should check out, too.
 

Tonight, from 7:00–8:30 PM at Reynolds Community College’s Parham campus, you can join the Sierra Club, Partnership for Smarter Growth, and the Henrico Conservation Action Network for a board of supervisors candidate forum. This should sounds familiar because the same folks just hosted a Chesterfield forum a couple days back. While there’s plenty to get excited about on this coming November’s ballot—regardless of where you live in Virginia—folks in the counties have the added excitement of local legislators. There is no excuse—absolutely zero!—for failing to vote if you’re able this fall! If you can’t make tonight’s event, you can stream it online.
 

This morning’s longread

M51 (MIRI image)

It’s been awhile, James Webb Space Telescope! Check out this mid-infrared image of M51, a “grand design” spiral galaxy that’s 27 million light years away. Make sure you take a look at the comparison between a near-infrared image of the same galaxy and this zoomable version, too.
 

The gravitational influence of M51’s smaller companion is thought to be partially responsible for the stately nature of the galaxy’s prominent and distinct spiral arms. If you would like to learn more about this squabbling pair of galactic neighbours, you can explore earlier observations of M51 by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope here. This Webb observation of M51 is one of a series of observations collectively titled Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers, or FEAST. The FEAST observations were designed to shed light on the interplay between stellar feedback and star formation in environments outside of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Stellar feedback is the term used to describe the outpouring of energy from stars into the environments which form them, and is a crucial process in determining the rates at which stars form. Understanding stellar feedback is vital to building accurate universal models of star formation.
 

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

A hilariously common view in Richmond’s #1 best new entertainment district.