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🥵Hot, with highs around 90. Sunset is at 8:20 p.m.
I had my first experience with Waymo back in March, when my husband and I were enjoying a long weekend (sans kids!) in Miami. I’m not totally sure what I expected, and the choice was somewhat accidental as, unbeknownst to us, we ended up visiting the same weekend as Spring Break — in our defense, we were there to watch the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Rideshares and cabs were tough to come by, so when our Waymo, a driverless car service, sidled up to the curb, we knew we had to give it a shot.
Once you get past the sensors protruding from each side of the car (serious Roomba vibes) the ride was quite pleasant — and very, almost eerily, quiet. I did miss chatting with the driver, which is one of my favorite things to do when I’m traveling; I’ve found that the local drivers almost always have the best dining and sight-seeing recommendations. But it sure beat bobbing and weaving through the Spring Break crowds in 90-degree weather.
Throughout the ride we found ourselves asking: could this ever work back home in Boston? It was hard to imagine driverless cars navigating the windy one-ways of Boston as well as the downtown Miami grid. Turns out, we’re not the only ones asking that question. Edgar B. Herwick III and the Curiosity Desk have more on that below. But first: the news.
Ellen London
Managing editor, GBH News
Four Things to Know
1. About 19,000 Haitian people living and working in Massachusetts legally under the temporary protected status program — a program whose end the U.S. Supreme Court approved last month — now have an official date when their permits will expire: July 24, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Some employers are already putting workers with TPS on unpaid leave or laying them off entirely.
Boston City Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune said those companies shouldn’t preemptively let people go. “What employers should be doing is engaging in a conversation with employees about assistance for potential other mechanisms of work authorization,” Louijeune said. “I understand that the date is a moving target, and that has created chaos and uncertainty, which is the objective of this heinous administration.” Some people are pinning their hopes to keep living and working in the U.S. on Senate Bill 4814, which already passed the House and would extend the TPS program for Haitians for another 3 years.
2. The World Cup has Bostonians reflecting on the last month of sports, visitors, and camaraderie and wondering: could we make our city fun permanently?
“We’re not considered a fun place. Usually people consider that we’re kind of cold and not very welcoming,” said Casey Leonard of East Boston. “We showed the opposite, embracing the fans.”
3. Frank Ribaudo, who founded the queer nightclub and restaurant Club Café in the Back Bay, died last week at 81. He and his friends founded a gay-friendly gym called Metropolitan Health Club in 1983 after experiencing harassment at another local racquetball club, and Club Café grew out of a restaurant in the same building.
It became a place to gather and dance, but also one to fundraise and advocate during the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s. “In a very dark age, it was a place of light,” queer historian Russ López said. “And he was a person of light in a very dark age.”
4. If you’re looking for new local music: Boston’s Office of Tourism, Sports and Entertainment has put out its annual mixtape Dear Summer, a playlist of local artists. It spans neighborhoods and genres, with jazz, hip-hop, Afrobeats, Latin music and indie rock. You can find the full playlist here.
Chimel “Real P” Idiokitas, an artist and co-executive producer of the mixtape, said his teenage son helped with this year’s list. “He’s 16, very knee-deep into the Boston music scene and loves it,” Idiokitas told GBH’s Under the Radar. “So I’m fortunate enough to have great ears around me.”
Can Boston handle AI-powered self-driving cars?
For the last few months, the company Waymo has been sending cars around the city to map its winding, cow-pathed streets. Those cars have human drivers, but company officials hope that soon they’ll be able to send cars without drivers to pick up riders, like a taxi or rideshare car would.
Those driverless Waymos are already operating in other cities. But can they work in Boston? Edgar B. Herwick III, host of GBH’s Curiosity Desk, went for a drive with Jinhua Zhao, an MIT professor of cities and transportation. Zhao explained how the technology has advanced. A few years ago, programmers behind driverless cars would have to input just about every possible scenario a car might encounter: red lights, stop signs, pedestrians, bikes, other cars, stalled delivery trucks and so on. But the advent of large language models means they need less of that input.
“Boston’s not that different from the rest of the country,” Zhao said. “I cannot imagine all the other cities embracing it and Boston being an island.”
You can ride along with them here.
▶️More to watch from GBH News:
-Why is it so hard to buy a home in Massachusetts?
-The World Cup Effect: What Americans have learned from hosting a global tournament
-How Derrick Adams radiates Black joy through art
GBH Daily
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