🤔 What do shrooms and Uber have in common?

It’s Tuesday, Boston.

❣️ But not just any Tuesday. It’s Giving Tuesday, a year-round movement encouraging people to do good. This year, you can help by giving to Globe Santa, so we can bring books and toys to children in need.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Ballot questions preview

• Electricity rates dropping

• Relive the Eras tour (again)

Up first...

BEACON HILL

Your ballot questions primer

There may be 34 days left in 2023, but all eyes are already on next November. Oh yeah, we're talking about the 2024 statewide ballot questions.

🗳️ Every other year, a few questions often join the candidates on your ballot. For example: Should taxes increase for high earners? Or, should undocumented immigrants be allowed to get a driver’s license? And residents get to vote them into law, or not. But those Qs must go through a lengthy process to get on the ballot in the first place.

✍️ Which brings us to: Gathering signatures. The biggest hurdle these campaigns face is a deadline that just passed: Collecting and submitting at least 74,574 signatures from registered voters in support of their issue to election officials. Six campaigns say they have the signatures they need, and — if those signatures are certified — will presumably continue their journey to the 2024 ballot. 

Here’s what’s likely moving forward:

🔎 Auditing the legislature. State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s proposal would change state law to mandate audits of the state Legislature on Beacon Hill, which DiZolglio criticizes for having “closed-door, opaque operations.” The campaign seems to be widely supported by voters, but not by some high-level state officials. In fact, Attorney General Andrea Campbell said the auditor “does not currently have the legal authority to audit the Legislature without the Legislature’s consent.”

💸 Tipped minimum wage. Advocacy group One Fair Wage is campaigning to phase out tipped minimum wage and replace it with the state minimum wage ($15) by 2029. The hope is that increased pay will improve the lives of restaurant workers who struggle to afford the cost of living with their current wages, but some restaurant higher-ups oppose the idea on the grounds that it would financially burden businesses.

🍄 Therapeutic magic mushrooms. A group called Massachusetts for Mental Health Options seems to have crossed the signature threshold despite a slightly bumpy road. Their campaign would allow voters to decide whether folks 21 years and older can use plant-based psychedelics at licensed therapy centers. Plus: It would decriminalize possession of some psychedelics, including magic mushrooms. 

🚗 Rideshare reclassification and unionization. Two separate campaigns involving rideshare workers have seemingly cleared the hurdle. One would reclassify “gig workers” (like rideshare workers) as independent contractors and provide new benefits. Back in 2022, the Supreme Judicial Court tossed out a similar ballot question that was backed by big corporations like Uber, Lyft, and Instacart, but some drivers who’d rather have their independent contractor status are hoping to reintroduce the question in 2024. The other question would allow rideshare workers to unionize. 

📓 See-ya, MCAS. The Mass. Teachers Association say that they have well over the signatures required to ask voters whether to keep the MCAS, standardized “exit” exams that public high school students in Mass. must pass in order to graduate. Advocates have long argued that these tests privilege good test takers, while unfairly punishing those who struggle with tests, like students who don’t speak fluent English and students with disabilities. 

— Written by Gia Orsino

QUICK QUESTION

🧼 We’re doing some research: Do you have a skincare routine? 

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🔌 Boston electricity rates (literally) just dropped. The city just announced a set of new and improved (a.k.a. cheaper and greener) electricity rates through Boston’s Community Choice Electricity program. The BCCE will use a new contracted supplier, Direct Energy, to provide rates that offer more renewable energy and cost less than Eversource’s Basic Service Rate. The new plan will go into effect in December 2023, and for seven months, is guaranteed to be cheaper than the utility. In fact, an average household that uses BCCE should save about $15 a month compared to Eversource’s Basic Rate. So if you’re thinking about switching providers, you can find out more here.

✈️ Travel Tuesday deals on deck. Although it might not be as established as its siblings Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there are many deals to be found on Travel Tuesday, which was established by Hopper in 2017. To investigate all the best hotel and flight deals, check out the official Travel Tuesday site. For more localized deal-finding, take a peek at Boston.com’s Travel Tuesday overview. And for an easy place to start: JetBlue has a Cyber Monday sale that runs through Wednesday with one-way flights starting at $49.

💰 But the Tuesday deals don’t stop with travel. Tonight, DW French (the hot new French Brasserie in The Fenway) is debuting something truly magical: “All you can frites” night, where every Tuesday evening from 4 to 10 p.m., the restaurant is serving up a deal of either steak, mussels, or pasta, plus all-you-can-eat fries, salad, and bread for $40 a person. Or, for a total steal, hit up new movie theater Alamo Drafthouse in the Seaport for their weekly BFD Tuesday deal where you can watch unlimited movies for literally just $7. Get tickets here.

🎬 Looking for your next watch? Swifties, Beyhive: Get ready. True stans already know that Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Movie will be available to rent on demand on — when else — her birthday, Dec. 13, and Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour Film will be premiering in theaters on Dec. 1. And if you didn’t know yet, we won’t tell. If, for some reason, neither of those movies interest you, the Globe’s film critic Odie Henderson rounded up his favorite holiday movies, from classics like “Miracle on 34th Street” to cult classics like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”

— Written by Gia Orsino

ONE LAST THING

How to: Be a jerk on an airplane

If you haven’t noticed, the past few years have seen a rise in … how do we put this lightly … people doing some truly unhinged things on airplanes. 

The Globe’s travel writer, Christopher Muther, certainly has, and he put together a guide for “How to act like a rude jerk while traveling,” where he rounds up some of the most iconic recent airplane meltdowns and provides a succinct list of how exactly to freak out and/or bother your fellow passengers while in the air.

Items include: Doing gross things with your bare feet, yelling, getting super drunk, or getting into a fight over reclining seats. But, there are truly infinite ways to do it if you get creative enough. Check out the piece here.

— Written by Gia Orsino

🛩️ Thanks for reading! If you think we’re exaggerating about in-flight behavior, just check out the FAA’s data on unruly passengers. Yikes.

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