Morning irony at the Portland DEQ (our AQI is 164 right now from local wildfires)
Kjerstin Johnson
@kajerstin.bsky.social
writer living in Portland, OR. Formerly: Bitch, Rethinking Schools, The Nib, The Ringer, Yes! Media. kjerstinj.com
PSU-AAUP is fighting to defend the future of higher education in Oregon. "We call on President Ann Cudd to pause these layoffs and to work with PSU-AAUP to build political solutions that can return PSU to productive growth." —Bill Knight, PSU-AAUP President @psuaaup.bsky.social
I have been biking to and from the PSU campus from Portland's East Side for 15 years now, and I still can't get over the new protected 4th Ave bike lane. I feel like I am getting away with something when I use it.
At crowded KEXP coffee shop in Seattle and have figured out the people around me are either 1. Here to watch World Cup at 4pm 2. Teen girls ready for this concert tonight
I very much appreciate this statement of solidarity by Muslims for Just Futures about the Prairieland Sentencing. www.muslimsforjustfutures.org/blog/mjfstat...
Statement on the Prairieland Sentencing — Muslims for Just Futures
Muslims for Just Futures is horrified by the extreme sentences handed down today in the Prairieland case . These sentences, ranging from 30 to 100 years, are death by incarceration.
muslimsforjustfutures.org
Very sad to lose not just a great local reporter but a great person too. www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...
Zane Sparling, reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive, dies of cancer at 33
“He wanted his identity to be a reporter, and that’s what it was,” his father said.
oregonlive.com
Really enjoyed Beck Underwood's THE LURE OF PONIES: A SPELLBOUND ATTIC MYSTERY — a feature-length stop-motion mystery, which had its West Coast premiere at the Clinton Street Theater yesterday. I am not even sure it has a YouTube trailer but there is more info here: www.spellboundattic.com
The @portlandmercury.com transportation issue is out today, in print and online! I edited this one (with the help of my amazing colleagues) and am very proud of it. Check it out for important transpo news, features on bike racing and skateboarding, and much more!! 🚲🚊🛹🛼
The Mercury's JOYRIDE Issue Is Out Now! - Portland Mercury
The Mercury‘s April issue is called “Joyride,” and it’s all about transportation in Portland. Whether you get around by car, bus, bike/unicycle/electric tricycle, foot, or any other mode, transportation likely plays a significant role in your life. So you should care about it! And this issue has something for everyone. Get your hands on news […]
portlandmercury.com
Literary criticism has not fared well in the economy of clicks and amid the rise of AI. Lydia Kiesling explains how the book review became book list slop.
List and Shout | Lydia Kiesling
The labor involved in making lists was as close to the opposite of a transcendent reading experience as a disillusioned culture worker could get.
thebaffler.com
When Amy Goodman has to move on from last night’s election results and read the rest of the headlines
With Zohran’s victory, I shall begin my slow return to social media …. it is time 🪽🌝🪐💫
Me watching the Slanted! Enchanted! footage in the PAVEMENTS movie
Really enjoyed Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age by @amandahess.bsky.social. The final chapter was like a mini-millennial-mom version of Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger.
Mahmoud Khalil emerges from airport security with his wife Noor and newborn, legal team and Rep. AOC.
Portland: Rupert Kinnard will be at @floatingworld.bsky.social tomorrow (Saturday) 5-7! We're lucky to have a alt-comics legend in town. I wrote about why I think his new book is important here: www.portlandmercury.com/Comics/2025/...
Book Review: Rediscover Portland Cartoonist Rupert Kinnard and 50 Years of Black, Gay Comic History
You’ve probably seen Rupert Kinnard’s smile if you’ve passed the downtown Portland mural on NW Couch at Broadway. A wheelchair user since a car accident in 1996, Kinnard sits between Kathleen Saadat a...
portlandmercury.com
An inside look at the Catch-22 the federal attorneys and immigration agencies are working to deport people legally seeking asylum in the U.S. Essentially, requiring people to show up to court, dropping the court case and then having immigration officers grab that person for deportation.
Asylum seeker’s courthouse arrest illustrates Trump administration’s latest immigration enforcement tactic
Legal experts say some asylum seekers are being moved from a process with legal protections into expedited removal, which has "almost none."
opb.org
Kinnard's new book from @stackeddeckpress.bsky.social is the first available since a hard-to-find 1992 book. I hope it can introduce more people to his work and legacy as a Black, queer comics artist. Please order a copy and/or ask your local public library or academic library to order one too!
Book Review: Rediscover Portland Cartoonist Rupert Kinnard and 50 Years of Black, Gay Comic History
You’ve probably seen Rupert Kinnard’s smile if you’ve passed the downtown Portland mural on NW Couch at Broadway. A wheelchair user since a car accident in 1996, Kinnard sits between Kathleen Saadat a...
portlandmercury.com
A lot going on today, as there is everyday, but also I wrote about Portland comics artist Rupert Kinnard's new book! He'll be at @floatingworld.bsky.social this Saturday.
Portland Mercury@portlandmercury.com · last yr.Rupert Kinnard’s 'Cathartic Comics' ran in the pages of alt weeklies and queer newspapers in the ’80s and ’90s. A new collection of this Portland cartoonist's largely out-of-print work explores his activism and art, which came from a uniquely Black, gay, and intersectional perspective.
give me a sec... i just learned "Utahn" is a word www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/u...
I found this whole interview very edifying after seeing MOUNTAINHEAD (2025) !
Democracy Now!@democracynow.org · last yr.Karen Hao on How AI Colonialism Is Threatening the World: Part 2
Isn’t David Lynch saying (if he said it at all) that AI is bad? We all have sharp knives, but we use them to chop vegetables and not murder people.
horrified and saddened by murder of Jonathan Joss 💔
Loved every line of this great, bittersweet recollection about making an independent magazine when the economics of media—and really, the very concept of “media”—was upended
dan sinker@dansinker.com · last yr.For more than a year, I’ve been writing essays about Punk Planet, the miracle of a magazine I worked on for 13 years. All that time I’ve been dreading writing this ending, because the reality is this: Sometimes things end and you never get over it. dansinker.com/posts/202…
NEW: The US government has collected DNA from over 100,000 migrant children—including a 4-year-old—and uploaded their genetic profiles into a national biometric database meant for sex offenders and violent criminals. www.wired.com/story/cbp-dn...
The US Is Storing Migrant Children’s DNA in a Criminal Database
Customs and Border Protection has swabbed the DNA of migrant children as young as 4, whose genetic data is uploaded to an FBI-run database that can track them if they commit crimes in the future.
wired.com
A researcher monitoring Axial Seamount, 300 miles off the coast of Oregon, says the eruption is expected to happen before the year is over.
Marine life's latest hotspot could be an underwater volcano primed to erupt off Oregon
A researcher monitoring Axial Seamount, 300 miles off the coast of Oregon, says the eruption is expected to happen before the year is over.
npr.org
Going insane reading this Politico story about Musk's AI servers poisoning the air of a 90% Black community in Memphis followed immediately by this Washington Post story about states lining up their own communities to host the next ones
