Elizabeth Weise
Appearances
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
Back in 2021, streetlights in some cities across the US, at least 30 states are involved, started to suddenly stop being white and start being purple.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
which kind of freaked people out but photographers love it and it turns out there's this like all these photographers who are who are kind of chasing around after this mysterious purple glow because they love the kinds of images they get when they photograph under it and as cities are working to change out the lights the photographers are kind of in a race against time to get the shots before this really cool light goes away so it's kind of funny
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
It is pretty cool looking. Yeah. We have a nice photo gallery in the story and, and also I've got links to some of the photographer's work. It's just, it's cool. So it's not the purple, like a black light. They really are just this kind of strong violet color, which is, is pretty cool looking though. It's in fact not what the Department of Transportation wants or allows.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
Streetlights are supposed to be white, so they are busy replacing the bulbs.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
So this is kind of fascinating. So if you go back to like the mid 2000s, remember, we had all these sodium vapor streetlights that were kind of weirdly yellow and those had been put in partly as an energy saving method. They were a somewhat newer technology and a lot of people really hated that yellow. And then in the mid 2000s, LEDs got cheap enough that we could have them in streetlights.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
And LEDs are great because they save energy, they save money, they last a really long time. So they save even more money because you don't have to replace them very often. So that was all beautiful. But LEDs don't emit white light. What you do is you get LEDs of different colors together. And when they mix, they emit white light, which is pretty much what the sun does.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
The sun's light is actually a mixture of all colors. It's not white, but that's how our eyes perceive it. So if you want to make an LED light that is white,
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
the way that it's usually done in these streetlights is you have a royal blue led and you top it with this silicon phosphor layer that is yellow and then some of the light from the led gets through and is blue but some of it is filtered through the phosphor silicon layer and is yellow. And together, those two things we perceive as white light.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
Some of the batches that were made, and they've clearly been widely distributed because these have shown up not just in more than 30 states, but also in Canada and in Ireland, that silicon phosphor layer started to crack and eventually fall off. And so instead of You know, it's kind of like you put a filter in front of the light and it's suddenly a different color.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
That filter went away and suddenly they're just emitting purple light.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
Nobody has attributed any massive pileups or anything to them, if that's what you're wondering. The lighting experts have said that, you know, one thing is drivers really rely on color.
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
as a way to identify objects that are either next to the roadway or in the roadway so if the purple light makes things take on a different color it might be harder especially if you're driving quickly to identify them fast and to react to them also there's concerns that these lights they're just you know they're kind of surprising and they can be a little glary and so it might distract drivers and create some issues so that's why they're being replaced though in some places people are saying no we really like these and
The Excerpt
Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
The cities are like, yeah, no, we really kind of need to go back to white.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
Yeah, so they are like everywhere here in San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin, LA. The ones that you'll see around are run by Waymo, which is a Google-owned company. They're actually electric Jaguars. They're very nice cars. And then they've got kind of all this wedding cake-esque stuff on top of them that is part of the system that allows them to drive without a driver.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
So this is the fascinating thing to me and why I actually wrote this story. Because two years ago, I wrote a story about how everybody in San Francisco was freaking out about them. You know, they're driving into crime scenes. They're getting in the way of firefighters. Bicyclists are terrified. They're really dangerous. And it's just the end of civilization as we know it, which it often is here.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
And then I was actually out at a bar about a month and a half ago. And I was looking out at the street because we were outside. And I realized that probably every other, every third person who was getting dropped off or picked up at the bar was not coming in an Uber or a Lyft or a taxi. They were coming in a Waymo. And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. That shifted really fast.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
So then I started doing interviews.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
The surprising thing to me was women love these things. And it's because they say, you know, I'm fine getting in an Uber or Lyft in the daytime and I'm cool if I'm up with a bunch of friends. But if I have to get in a car late at night with some guy I don't know, you know, I'm not so thrilled about it. And this is true. Pretty much any woman you talk to has got some story about
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
a driver going back to taxi days, but Ubers and Lyfts too. I mean, it's not necessarily that they're harassing you, but they want to talk. They want to hear about your family. Do you have a boyfriend? What do you do for work? Oh, well, I don't think that's a good job for a woman. I mean, and sometimes you just don't want to have to deal with that. And that's what these women said.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
It's like, it's so restful to get in a car and not have to kind of steal yourself for that interaction.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
So they have gotten a lot better. The software that they use has gone through multiple iterations. I think they're up to six now. They're just better drivers than they were. I mean, they were never really dangerous, but they're much smoother now. But the thing that everybody mentioned, men, women, everybody is, you know, one, they're still a little more expensive.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
They can be a lot more expensive depending on time of day, though. People said, but you don't have to tip because there's no driver. And then there's a lot of them, but there are nowhere near as many of them as there are Lyfts and Ubers or taxis. And so sometimes you have to wait. And so a lot of people said, you know, I'll check both apps on my phone.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
And if it's going to be 15 minutes, then I'll find another way home. But if it's going to be the same amount of time and just a little more money, I'll do a Waymo.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
Realistically, there's maybe 1,500 of these cars on the roads in the United States at this point. So it's a drop in the bucket. It hasn't hit yet. I have no doubt it will.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
Waymo's not the only company that's doing this. There's one called Zoox out of Amazon. They have these very cute little, they look like little beetles that wander around. Tesla, we hear, is also working on this. And then there's some companies in Europe. So Waymo's not the only one. It is expanding and will be appearing in Washington, D.C., Atlanta.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
in Miami by next year, presumably, unless the regulatory environment changes. Companies are throwing a lot of money at these things now with a theory that eventually they'll make money at the other side. So we'll see how it all plays out.
The Excerpt
Supreme Court continues to block deportations under wartime law
Happy to be here. It's been fun.