This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
☀️Sunny with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 8:19 p.m.
Let’s start with a bit of good news: tree pollen season is almost over. So if you’ve been sneezy, itchy and watery-eyed on and off since March, things are probably going to start looking up for you — unless you’re also allergic to grass or ragweed, which are just starting their seasons.
GBH Meteorologist Dave Epstein has an explanation for why this season might have felt so intense: dryer conditions can worsen allergy symptoms. “With roughly 18% of Massachusetts in severe drought, and virtually the entire state drier than average, there’s nothing to regularly cleanse the air,” he wrote. “If we were in a rainy, wet June, there would still be pollen released from the trees and the grass, but it would most certainly end up getting washed from the atmosphere on a more regular basis.”
He also talks about the psychology of allergy seasons: “Declinism and rosy retrospection are terms for cognitive biases that lead us to believe the past wasn’t as bad as it really was. Sometimes you might even hear the term ‘allergy amnesia,’” Epstein wrote. “Because of the availability heuristic — our tendency to judge how common something is by how easily it comes to mind — our brains are acutely aware of this week’s runny nose and itchy eyes, whereas the symptoms from five years ago are forgotten.” Read more of his analysis here.
Four Things to Know
1. The Massachusetts House unanimously passed a data privacy bill last week. The bill would make it illegal for companies to collect or sell data like people’s exact locations (though they would still be able to collect location data, as long as it’s not precise within 1,750 feet.) Since the Senate passed a different version of the bill last year, lawmakers will now need to reconcile the differences before it can become law.
One of those differences: who can sue if tech companies violate the law. The House version allows both state officials and residents to take a company to court if it collects data from more than 2 million Massachusetts residents a year and doesn’t follow the new regulations. The Senate version allows only the state’s attorney general’s office to take the companies to court. “If the AG’s office takes on a case against Meta or Google, that’s those three attorneys — or whatever it is — in the privacy division’s life for seven years. They’re not going to have time to do anything else,” said Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director at the Washington, D.C.–based Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC. “That private right of action is really important both to ensure individuals can enforce their rights and also to kind of motivate that compliance by companies.”
2. About 65,000 people in Massachusetts are losing their health care coordinators — workers who help people experiencing homelessness, poverty and addiction navigate medical care. The MassHealth Community Partners program is shutting down at the end of June because of last year’s federal cuts to Medicaid.
“We are our patients’ first call when a crisis comes. It’s pretty scary to think that at the end of this month, that first call is going to have to become someone else,” said Logan Reimbold-Thomas, a case manager with Boston Health Care for the Homeless. “...The burden is going to be borne mostly by the hospitals, but also by the criminal justice system, as more folks probably are incarcerated out of this. It’s just really sad.”
3. Boston’s first World Cup match starts Saturday: Haiti vs. Scotland in Foxborough. Since the city is expecting a lot of big events this summer — the World Cup, Sail Boston, America 250 celebrations and more — city officials have opened a command center to coordinate logistics.
The Special Events Command Center in the Seaport includes staff in public safety, transportation, public health and emergency management. Agencies from Boston, Massachusetts and the federal level will be able to communicate more easily in case of an emergency.
4. Among the thousands of people who came to Boston’s Pride for the People parade Saturday was Horatio Marchione of Somerville, who wore pink mesh gloves and a blue scrunchie.
“To me, just like my existence feels like a protest right now with our government and what they’re trying to do nationwide,” said Marchione, who is transgender. “Just the fact that I can wear the trans colors outside is great, that I can do that in Boston, but just my existence right now feels threatened. So that’s why I’m here.”
Boston law enforcement experts call vulgar texts in Karen Read lawsuit ‘appalling’
Karen Read and her attorneys last week filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police and the Canton Police Department, which investigated her in connection with the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. A jury acquitted Read in connection with O’Keefe’s death last year.
In the complaint are vulgar and bigoted texts and other messages that former State Trooper Michael Proctor and former Canton Police Sgt. Sean Goode sent — some of which you might have already seen if you followed the case, and others that are now entering the public record for the first time.
Suffolk Law professor Rosanna Cavallaro told GBH’s Diane Adame she found the messages “appalling” but not surprising.
“I think that it suggests these are not attitudes ‘I need to keep secret that are bizarre or unacceptable.’ Instead, ‘these are attitudes that I can share freely with my colleagues because they have these attitudes too,’” she said. “If they had any sense in the 15 or 20 years that they have each served as police officers that there would have been consequences for this, they would have concealed it.”
Cavallaro shared more of her thoughts here.
Dig deeper:
-Canton looks to heal, but differences of opinion remain after Karen Read’s acquittal
-Karen Read sues police agencies that investigated her Boston police boyfriend’s death
-What makes the Karen Read trial so interesting to so many people?
GBH Daily
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