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🥶Sunny, breezy and below freezing, with highs at 33°. Sunset is at 4:11 p.m.
Today we’ve got an out-of-this world story involving three people from Massachusetts.
But first: Cannabis cafés are one step closer to reality in Massachusetts: the Cannabis Control Commission approved guidelines for dispensaries seeking to open lounges or tasting rooms, for temporary event licenses and for non-cannabis businesses that want to offer spaces where people can legally consume marijuana. These regulations have been a long time coming: the idea for social consumption sites was part of the ballot question that legalized recreational cannabis back in 2016. But the process will be slow — the first locations may take months, or even a year, to open.
“We know what our local pub looks like, but we don’t really understand what this looks like,” Commission Chair Shannon O’Brien said. “...I’m hoping that some of these things can go more quickly, but there is a lot of work to do with the municipalities to make sure that they are ready.”
Four Things to Know
1. With no action at the State House on Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s request to change how much of the city’s taxes come from residential properties and how much from businesses, Boston’s City Council kept the status quo for the 2026 property tax bills this week. Wu has been asking state lawmakers to allow the city to increase business taxes it can reduce the burden on residents. Homeowners will pay $12.40 per $1,000 of assessed value, up from $11.58 from last year. The commercial rate is $26.96 per $1,000.
“As residential property owners are set to pay their highest share in property taxes in over 40 years, our legislation awaits state approval that would stabilize taxes, protect residents and help businesses continue to benefit from strong city services.” Wu said.
2. Yesterday’s U.S. Senate vote rejecting an extension of health insurance subsidies means about 400,000 Massachusetts residents will see more expensive premiums next year. People who make 400% of the federal poverty level (that’s $60,000 for individuals and more for families) and get their health insurance through the Massachusetts Health Connector, about 26,000 Massachusetts residents, will lose their subsidies completely and see their costs about double.
“This is deeply disappointing,” said Alex Sheff, a policy director with Health Care for All Massachusetts. “Working families are going to end up facing impossible choices between paying a rent, buying groceries or keeping their insurance coverage.”
3. Tomorrow marks the final hockey game at Matthews Arena, Northeastern University’s 115-year-old hockey rink that hosted the first Celtics and Bruins games, political rallies, and concerts by Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, Phish, Ludacris, Bob Dylan and more. The university will demolish it and build a new arena.
“It’ll be bigger and greater,” Northeastern and Hockey Hall of Famer David Poile told The Associated Press. “But for those of us that were lucky enough to play there, we’ll always have those memories.” Tomorrow’s matchup is between the Northeastern men’s hockey team and Boston University.
4. The Great Recession of 2008-2010 had a lasting impact in Massachusetts: the amount of money the state gives cities and towns just returned to 2008 levels this year. With concerns about how municipalities can afford to keep up their services in the face of federal cuts and economic uncertainty, an organization that represents Massachusetts cities and towns is suggesting the state rethink how it collects and distributes tax revenue.
“I think residents are already feeling, and if they’re not yet feeling, are at risk of feeling service-level reductions,” Massachusetts Municipal Association executive director Adam Chapdelaine said. “Now, that could mean that the class size in the school district is going up, and that has an impact on you and your children. It could mean that recreational programs are being diminished. It could mean there’s been issues with settling a trash contract that has impacts on recycling and trash pickup.”
‘Pure illusion:’ Book shows Mars craze from century ago fueled by Massachusetts scientists
What do you see when you look at the photo of Mars above? The markings drawn on the planet were the work of Percival Lowell, a Harvard astronomer who looked at Mars through a telescope in the early 1900s and thought he saw a network of straight lines crisscrossing it.
Today, with better imaging and a robotic presence on the Red Planet, we know for certain that those lines aren’t really there. But Lowell believed them to be a series of canals, said David Baron, author of the book “The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America.”
“Percival Lowell came up with this elaborate theory,” Baron told NEPM reporter Karen Brown, “that the planet was running out of water and that the civilization on Mars, in order to survive, had to create this global irrigation network. And that’s what the canals were.”
Lowell hired a husband-and-wife team to help him with his theory: David Todd, an Amherst College astronomy professor, and writer and editor Mabel Loomis Todd. The Todds got a telescope moved from Amherst to Chile, where David Todd took 10,000 tiny photos of the planet, each about a quarter inch across.
The three were in large part responsible for the 20th-century fascination with Mars and with the idea that the planet was home to an advanced civilization.
“There were pastors sermonizing about the Martians in church. Alexander Graham Bell said he was totally on board. He saw no doubt that there was a civilization on Mars,” Baron told Brown. “It really became almost accepted fact.”
Baron said he believes we can still learn from the story of three Massachusetts residents who looked to the sky, saw something that wasn’t there, and convinced a lot of people that it was real.
“The cautionary part is just how easy it is for false ideas to spread, how easy it is for us as individuals to convince ourselves that things are true because we so wish they were true,” he said, “and to look at the evidence in a biased way that supports our beliefs and to discard anything that goes against us.”
You can hear more from Brown’s interview with Baron here.
Dig deeper:
-Particles of Thought podcast: Black Holes and Quantum Weirdness
-At long last, the mystery of lightning on Mars is solved
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