Maybe you could find a place in NoVa that is in-person once per week?

If an employer needs to raise pay in order to attract enough qualified candidates to fill open positions, then they will do that regardless of whether a union is present. If they don’t do that, then that has more to do with the employer’s incompetence than with the employees’ bargaining power.

I used to live in Chicago which has an incredibly powerful teacher’s union. Teachers get paid pretty well (median salary over $80k/year in a fairly inexpensive city), but from a school quality perspective the main results were frequent long strikes that closed the schools down and staying remote-only during COVID for far longer than other school districts around the country (which obviously impacted the poorest students the most).

I have yet to see any non-biased evidence that public sector unionization results in better quality public services.

There’s very little evidence (I.e. non-biased scientific studies) showing that unionization has a positive impact on job performance, and there’s quite a bit of evidence that unionization has a negative impact on job performance. Though admittedly, most of the studies that are out there focus on the private sector rather than the public sector.

There is lots of evidence however that unions increase pay and improve working conditions.

So if your concern is that school principals are underpaid and have poor working conditions, then unionization is likely to help that - but only at the expense of an already-tight RPS budget.

If your concern is that RPS principals aren’t doing as good a job as they should be, then unionization is likely a step in the wrong direction.

If Milwaukee sends me a bunch of free stuff to replace all my DeWalt tools, then I’d be more than happy to switch my allegiance.

Right, but big plants don’t drive CoL increases because they are built far outside the city, and the people that work there typically live/build houses in more suburban/rural outlying areas where there aren’t many constraints on land availability (so people moving there do not really increase the prices).

The Gulf Coast has hundreds of large manufacturing facilities that employ millions of people, and is one of the fastest-growing areas of the country in terms of population. Yet Gulf Coast cities have some of the lowest CoL in the country.

Out of those three sectors, financial is the only one that has the potential to drive big CoL increases. IT and manufacturing aren’t particularly high-paid industries, and manufacturing plants (and the people who work there) are almost always located far outside the city limits.

RVA’s COL is below the country’s average, and I don’t see that changing any time in the foreseeable future.

Portland and Austin both became tech hubs, which is what drove up COL in those cities. Richmond doesn’t have anything that is particularly attractive to large tech companies.

The newest 20v DeWalt brushless drill is the best drill I’ve ever owned. Feels as powerful as one of those big plug-in drills from the 90s, except it’s battery-powered and super compact. Just be careful with the torque setting - the first time I used it the screw head plunged straight through the piece of plywood I was working on even though the torque was only set to 4 or 5…

It’s possible to do both though? Henrico voters just overwhelmingly passed a massive bond measure to improve schools, emergency services, and other community services. The expenses for these projects are already paid for by existing taxes, so there’s no need to keep the extra tax revenue from juiced property values.

Different states have different levels of competition. Virginia is one of the least-competitive states, while Texas is one of the most competitive (and we see how well that has worked out for them).

Dominion doesn’t get to decide what their generation mix will be - that gets decided by the State Corporation Commission.

Dominion always wants to build new low-carbon energy plants, because their profit is based primarily on the size of their capital base. The more new plants they get to build, the higher their allowable profit.

The SCC’s job is to provide approval/denial to the things that Dominion wants to build, by balancing concerns such as reliability, affordability, and GHG emissions.

At the end of the day, the costs of RGGI do indeed provide and incentive to transition to low-carbon energy, because it makes green generation “cheaper” in the SCC’s decision-making calculus.

Real GDP growth has been positive for the last two quarters - I don’t know of any definition that says we are currently in a recession.

It’s definitely not bullshit - but we also aren’t experiencing what most experts would call an economic downturn right now.

It’s white liberals who think that black people are “tricked” into voting against their best interests. Good thing we have all these white Richmonders who vote in large enough numbers to save black Richmonders from themselves! /s

Oof, that’s rough.

I have a friend who worked for a fast-growing tech startup throughout 2020 and 2021. They went permanently remote pretty early on, while also growing at a rapid pace. He was mentoring a handful of new hires (straight out of college), and it seemed like almost every one of them was having some sort of mental crisis due to the difficult onboarding and loneliness.

I think that’s the big thing people miss when talking about remote work. If you’ve been in your job for many years, it’s probably true that you can be just as effective while being 100% remote, because you know what to do and who you need to talk to. If you’re starting a new job but you’ve been in the workforce a while, it might take you a bit longer to get up to speed, but you’ll get there eventually.

But for those who are brand new in the workforce and don’t have that prior experience of building effective professional relationships, it’s really, really tough, and may end up having a long-term negative career impact as these new hires fail to thrive in their first real job.

My office is an “open office” type place which is the only reason I prefer 2 days/week there instead of 3 - but I do like being in the same place as my teammates on those two days!

I have also switched jobs a couple times in the last two years, and I can’t imagine trying to get up to speed while working fully remotely. I feel like I was able to get to a “full contributor” level at my current job within 2-3 months - probably would take me at least twice as long as that if I wasn’t able to have face-to-face conversations with my coworkers.

1 day a week makes a big difference! In my experience you start getting diminishing returns after that - 2 days a week is even better than 1, 3 days a week is maybe just a tiny bit better still, and 4-5 days per week are actually worse.

Then again, I actually like my job, office, and coworkers - so my experiences/preferences might be different from most others.

Do yourself a favor and purchase a copy of the Sibley Guide to Trees.

Hope you like it! I’ve become obsessed with trees since moving to RVA a couple years ago, and listening to the podcast has been super fun.

Word of warning though: the hosts are located in Portland, OR, and therefore have a bit of a west coast bias. For example, they admit that they generally like conifers more than hardwood trees - which is pretty clearly a wrong opinion if you ask me. They also get some facts wrong every once in a while when it comes to some of our local trees. But they’re generally very interesting and entertaining!

Completely Arbortrary - a podcast about trees! Each episode they do a deep dive into one specific tree species, as well as one other tree-themed topic that is related to that episode’s tree. It’s great!

Coco + Hazel isn’t very good, IMO. I think they use Dreyer’s ice cream, which is one of the cheaper/lower quality brands you can get in the supermarket.

If you’re looking for Sechuan food, Chengdu is better than anything in Charlottesville. Peter Chang is also very good, though a bit more in the “modern” side.

General Tso isn’t Sechuan though….

Seems more like a typo.

Nate’s is much closer to NY style than Chewy’s. Chewy’s bagels are sourdough, which makes them interesting/unique/delicious, but very different flavor and texture compared to an NY bagel.