Just saw another Waymo Zeekr scouting my street and felt a twinge of regret over not buying that aluminum bat
The number of entities lobbying Portland officials doubled in 2025 Q1, the first year of the new 12-member Council. While lobbying includes unsolicited messages, its activity centers on personal meetings. Councilors have to agree to meet with groups. WW is mad that more groups are getting meetings.
Willamette Week@wweek.com · 6h agoThe City Council has devolved into cliques and put-downs more suited to a high school cafeteria than a body that decides this city’s future.
People are catching on! Privacy is dead! New ethical terrain! Yes! ❤️ www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Maybe once a week I remember Charles Taylor’s observation that “Our peasant ancestors would have thought us insane” if they knew that we “go to movies about the uncanny in order to experience a frisson”
lauren@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 18h agoI've never seen so much talent, effort and money spent on art that's fundamentally about its own inability to do anything substantially more meaningful than making you feel stuff. My only other thought is: "michael stuhlbarg master class"
“In justifying the closings, Emanuel said it was wrong to leave students in schools that had become severely underenrolled, were consistently low-performing, and were falling apart.”
After 10 years, Chicago school closings have left big holes, and promises unkept
Ten years ago Chicago Public Schools leaders voted to close 50 public schools. WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times examined the promises made to students and communities in 2013.
npr.org
I get that maintenance is expensive! But it personally makes me distrustful of the narrative that PPS has to close schools for cost reasons when they are simultaneously trying to sell it as a community good.
Behold! The reemergence of spiritual belief in public life:
Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · 2d agoKroger plans to lay off 37% of its corporate employees over the next three years. Its CEO believes AI will help eliminate duplicative work, allowing the company to cut prices and invest more in store employees. Whether or not you believe in AI productivity gains, your CEO does.
An hour after reading this I can’t restate the argument or tell you who or what the culprit is. Is it declining enrollment because of birth rates or because of racist white parents and the stigma of a “failing” school? Underfunding because of Measures 5 and 50 or because of PERS obligations or both?
joan@joanbybike.bsky.social · 2d agoSchool board director Rashelle Chase-Miller wrote about school closings rashelleforpps.substack.com/p/my-view-fr...
Recent dreams have been uncharted. Brand new people showing up I’ve liked to meet. Dazzling subterranean water features (what does it mean??) in unfamiliar segments of the continent. Streets untrod by these two feet. I’m on a wavelength. Excited to see what new adventures the night has in store
If someone wants to do the work of digging through the lobbying data to match votes with lobbyists and interactions, I can add links from Big Blink
David Binnig@binnig.bsky.social · 2d agoI made* a site with Portland City Council voting statistics — who votes with whom, most common vote breakdowns, who’s in the majority most often: pdxcouncilstats.com
“we have councilors who believe that their role is to serve as a board of directors to a CEO mayor” !!! Vote for Jamey Evenstar
Jamey Evenstar@jameyevenstar.bsky.social · 2d agoI get asked a lot about how I think the new government is working. I spent two years on the Charter Transition Team helping to implement the will of the voters, so I have a LOT of thoughts. We need a council with the courage to lead instead of deferring to the mayor.
i do think this is the core of it. a lot of these guys have a sort of naive techno-optimism that will offset them from having to care about politics or power, which is why looking at politics annoys them and why he assumes people who post here must think the world is doomed to get worse
Between the gloating and resignation I’m seeing on linkedin, aside from what friends tell me, it does appear that most software will be coded and compiled by AI, going forward — primarily because the processes AI tools excel at (speed, efficiency, etc) match the values tech has cultivated for itself
Miles and miles of farmland, truck stops, and roadside attractions between “I can understand why people want to live here” and “I want to live here”
jamelle@jamellebouie.net · 3d agoi know i’m getting old when i visit my hometown — which i was desperate to escape — and think, “you know, this place isn’t so bad”
And I think we are in for a VERY rough two years at least, in ways that are extremely difficult to predict with specificity. We will have a destructive president who may shift in the post-midterms to simply working to exact revenge on what he sees as an ungrateful electorate.
Eating an almond croissant that looks like a stegosaurus
This is why we don’t applaud ourselves for looking past our differences and crossing the aisle
pnwpolicyangel aka Angelita 👼@pnwpolicyangel.bsky.social · 3d agoNovick slammed his hook on my desk, trembled with anger, publicly lashed out. Clark says inappropriate things all the time just not in the mic. Ppl have heard Zimmerman yelling in the offices! They just code switch better and/or they use that force against those with less power so ppl don’t care
The Oregonian is part of the PMC and pays dues to fund the same lobbying machine and PACs run by Chamber CEO Andrew Hoan Hoan’s entire job is weaponizing corporate cash to manipulate Portland politics.
Me: *slams buzzer* What is a car dealership? Ken Jennings: Yes! Bizarre little men. You're still in control of the board.
open borders now@radtranslib.bsky.social · 4d agoAmerican small business owners largely see themselves as lower-level rentiers in a quasi-feudal economy as opposed to service providers in a competitive market economy, and part of that means not having to actually be competent at providing services
“Abstraction is funny that way — it doesn’t give up its secrets.”
The Met’s Krasner and Pollock Show Is a Breathtaking Upending
If you’re looking for bias or reparations, these volatile contents are all on the surface, quietly and neatly presented.
hyperallergic.com
Go to any Jewish gathering. You won’t hear a single word about mild physical complaints. Everyone remarks on how great they feel. Especially digestion-wise.
Regardless of the outcome of the election (vote for Angelita!) it’s vital that we continue to attack the performance of respectability in the interest of genuine respect and care
Rylie 🌹@rylieringtail.bsky.social · 4d agoTalked with a Kellie Torres voter and she said she liked Tiffany but not Angelita. Tiffany and Angelita aren’t much different in policy, this is an opinion built on “decorum”. Latinas are not allowed to speak lest they lose the white woman vote
I am monitoring this because I am a journalist who has written extensively about the effects of climate change on the California and the West Coast and also because I'm going to miss our beaches after this weekend because I don't think we are going to have them anymore
Flooding hits California coast from high tides ahead of Tropical Storm Rachel
Residents took to kayaks and filling sandbags as flooding inundated low-lying areas of Southern California Friday morning driven by high tides and powerful surf ahead of Tropical Storm Rachel swirling...
apnews.com
Sincerely stunned by how radical this AI encyclical is. Maybe you need training in religious studies to catch what’s going on but: the danger that accompanies the loss of eyewitnesses? the risk of “a selective or distorted rewriting of the past”? Holy shit
Received so many likes this week I want to throw away my phone
Since his first week in office, Dan’s been signaling to the city’s most deranged and depraved that his door is open to their desires. He reliably votes against oversight and good governance and he struts around town like he’s proud to abet corruption. His tenure’s been a net negative for the city
Portland Mercury@portlandmercury.com · 5d agoA Multnomah County judge ordered Councilor Dan Ryan to preserve evidence on his personal phone until an ongoing public records lawsuit is resolved. “This is not a game of cat and mouse," Judge David Rees said. "There are some indications that those games are being played, and it has to stop today."