Gresham neighbors reported shots fired, but the smoking remains turned out to be fireworks.
I’ve personally notice that in the last few years, that Portlanders have become increasingly paranoid. They report gunshots and explosions that turn out to be fireworks, they shine laser pointers at aircraft thinking they are spy helicopters, and so forth. It seems like local forums seem to have an increasing claims of tinfoil hat type paranoia.
Here’s a live updating list of homeless camps in Portland.
Yes, you read that right. Over 12.4 million pounds of garbage is generated by homeless camps a year in Portland. That’s often waste that ends up in rivers, burned under bridges, or just clutters the city.
Over 372 homeless died last year in the streets – more than 1 a day. Before legalization of open camping and drug use, that number was around 70-80.
Despite raising homeless funding from $80 million to $800 million, homelessness is getting better in other parts of the country but worse in Portland.
The policy failures are real and killing 4 times as many people a year than jail did. You can’t say failure any more clearly than that.
Someone on the Slickdeals forum did a write-up on all the states that have library systems that provide free passes to museums, parks, and other attractions. All you need is a library card and then you sign up/check out a pass for the provided locations/parks/museums.
I have tried to use this program in Oregon a few times – but the amount of passes they have is limited and I’ve never been able to actually score one for anything I really wanted to attend. But if you’re looking for cheap and have the time to keep trying, you may be able to score one.
If you live in the Portland area, you might also check out Portland Living on the Cheap as they sometimes have links to free/discount programs like this.
Railroad maintenance carts were replaced by trucks years ago, but a group of people have saved these rail little carts and still have events to ride the rails.
At Christmas they now make a run between small coastal towns to deliver presents.
In another sad year of killing people with ‘kindness’, Portland Oregon has had another record year of dead in the streets. The data on 2024 homeless deaths was just released and reported 372 homeless found dead on sidewalks and in city ditches.
If you want to know if your public health policy is working – you should measure it. The metrics here show that once Oregon legalized drug use, legalized camping, and provided free referrals and free drug treatment options – deaths went from around 80 per year to over 370. That’s going from around 1 death a week to more than one a day. How much is supposed compassion worth when jail did a much better job saving lives than the well meaning but misguided free drug use kits, drug legalization, free tents, and enablement?
Meanwhile, the city leaders pat themselves on the back because it’s just 22 less deaths than 2023.
St. André Bessette Catholic Church (a place I have volunteered at many times) will hold a memorial service for homeless that died due to Portland’s policies on Dec. 21.
“Don’t be so open minded your brain falls out”
When the poster child of quirky liberality calls your BS out, maybe you should listen? On a recent visit to Portland, David Sedaris got very little sympathy when he experienced the same thing many of us living here do every day. One of the increasingly rampant unleashed dogs belonging to a homeless person attacked and bit him.
How did Portlander’s respond to his bandaged leg? Victim shaming:
“You have to understand that these addicts, especially those with an opioid-use disorder, lead incredibly difficult lives,” the first person I spoke to, a woman with long, straight hair the color of spaghetti, said.
“How is that an excuse?” I asked. “Her dog bit me.”
“Well, you’re still better off than she and her friends are,” the woman continued.
Unfortunately, I had already finished signing her book.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/and-your-little-dog-too
He’s got the same treatment down the line – which has been exactly my experience when talking to Portlanders about these things too. You’ll get preach at about how much better off you are and how the behavior is justified. So you getting bit by a dog, your car getting stolen, your house broken into, hit by a driver with no insurance, or you getting assaulted by someone having a mental health crisis is your privilege speaking.
Sadly, he not even remotely the first. Increasingly large numbers of people are being attacked, mauled, and permanently disabled/disfigured by dogs owned by homeless in Portland. David Sedaris got pretty much the exact same response from ‘compassionate’ Portlanders that others permanently injured get: the lives of homeless folks are worse off than yours so you should shut up. The poor dogs are the focus here (certainly more important than you).
Mike Saxton, the owner of the Portland-based FreePlay Gaming Arcade, has decided to shutter the arcade after just six months of business. Turns out, the business model simply doesn’t work. The arcade needs to make £500 per day each weekend to reach the break-even point, yet it’s making less than half that. Some weekdays he makes zero.
Sadly, I think the retro arcade craze has definitely peaked and is waning. People have full access to games on handhelds, home consoles, and even their phones. Nostalgia runs in waves, and it seems the revival of 80’s and 90’s arcade games has peaked and is now subsiding.
Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock lives in Portland, Oregon, but he’s not at all excited about it.
In an interview with Polish website Onet, Brock had some harsh things to say about the city, as Willamette Week points out.
He admits he kind of ended up in Portland out of circumstance, but it’s not really where he’d like to live. He continued: “Portland is weird, but it’s kind of a crappy weird. It is the most vagrant-ridden… it’s really fuckin’ up my liberal mind. I’m just like, what a collection of human turds. Within the one week before I came on this tour, I had to run people out of my house. Twice with axes. Two people died. This is within 300 feet of my house. It’s just a constant shitshow of fights.
“And that’s just Portland keeping itself weird. That’s the saying: Keep Portland weird… It’s a cool city. But a lot of the keeping itself weird is actually just allowing people to be complete pieces of shit. And that’s exhausting.”
You can watch the video and read more here.
This projection mapping installation by Todd Moyer Designs was inspired by the machinery of a fabric loom. Projections create the illusion of rolling spools of yarn and woven textiles, while colorful laser beams emulate thread. Illoominated II was on display at the Portland Winter Light Festival 2025.
Why is Mississippi doing so well?
In 2013, the state passed a reform to require teachers to understand the science of reading (basically, phonics), deploy literacy coaches to schools, identify students struggling to read early and hold back students in third grade who weren’t ready to advance.
Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana have now done much the same, and have also made gains.
The original source of all this was a 2002 reading law in Florida that boosted student achievement in the Sunshine State.
https://nypost.com/2025/09/30/opinion/mississippi-is-no-miracle-its-the-future-of-education/
Meanwhile, Oregon, with some of the highest per-student spending, run for over a decade by a one of the most progressive Democratically controlled state legislatures in both the house and senate, continues to double-down on proven failed teaching methods and suspended all education standards to graduate in order to promote racial equality.
While Oregon is passing increasing numbers of functionally illiterate children on to adulthood, kids in Mississippi can read, and other countries children are doing this:
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