There seems to be another outbreak of measles in the Portland metro area – something that seems to be becoming a weekly occurrence.
Another sad development by one of the most ‘progressive’ states in the country: outbreaks of measles. Currently, more than one in three (36%) Oregon schools report MMR vaccination rates under 93% and are therefore at high risk of a measles outbreak. A population must have 95% vaccination rate for herd immunity.
Wildfires are a thing. They will be increasing as some areas of the country dry out – and due to over-protective conservation efforts that have led to unhealthy, overforested public lands.
Watch Duty gives live updated maps based on satellite hotspot monitoring. It can sometimes see hotspots that aren’t there due to smoke covering, but nothing is faster and more updated than live satellite data.
Zoom.earth gives you live satellite imagery if you want to see how smoke is blowing and up-to-date images.
PSU just made a shocking claim. It forecasts Multnomah County is likely to have more than 17,000 less school-aged children in the next decade.
Combine that with decades of fiscal mismanagement that prioritized failed performative social justice activities over student safety, educational failure (Oregon is dead last in reading), and it’s no wonder Portland schools are ranked some of the lowest in the country and are now facing the need to close up to 20 schools.
This on top of being one of only 6 major US cities that had year over year shrinking populations since 2020.
The Chris Baum Project does some local shows semi-regularly and they’re honestly one of the better Steely Dan cover bands I’ve ever run across.
Microlandia is a city builder cut from a different cloth. The city-builder developed by Information Superhighway Games is designed to be “brutally honest”. Roads are expensive, traffic jams can cost your citizens their jobs, and uncontrolled rent prices can trigger a homelessness crisis. And they’re making it even more ‘real’.
Cities are not clockwork, they are chaos machines with a mayor attached. Most of what breaks your plans is not the ordinary day, it is the ugly little surprise that arrives precisely because you acted as if it could not. Version 1.5 leans into that reality: crime is no longer a single checkbox; it’s a spectrum of consequences that can become a death spiral every single day.”
Perhaps it’s something Portland’s leadership should learn about it’s Doom Loop. I think simulators like this may be important ways to cut out a lot of politicalization of problems. Economics and the laws of unintended consequences are often MUCH more likely the cause of many problems in our society when more politically charged arguments often have much more dubious connections and policy changes based on them often result in much worse results.
Oregon’s unemployment rate is now the 3rd highest in the nation.
It’s no surprise that Oregon’s unemployment rate has been climbing. It’s the 9th least affordable state in the nation by income.
It sure ain’t pretty. Estimates are there are 16,000 workers left, but that’s down from 23,000 Oregon employees as recently as 2024 – which was also a decline from the years before that.
Intel’s global workforce has also declined from nearly 132,000 employees in 2022 to around 81,000 in 2026.
The state’s economic development agency, warned that Oregon’s semiconductor industry could become “insignificant” globally if the state doesn’t nurture new companies.
Portland has plenty of left-wing domestic terrorism. Unable to make reasoned arguments or actual contributions to make the world better, their intellectual level is that of throwing bricks at places at night, running around fully masked committing acts of violence, doxxing people, and dousing things in gas and burning them.
Portland Tech conferences: https://dev.events/NA/US/OR/Portland/tech
List of various tech networking aggregators: https://www.macslist.org/working-in-portland/join-portlands-tech-community-local-networking-opportunities
The Tech Transition Hub connects you to free career support, training, and resources designed to help you move back into stable, meaningful work: https://www.pcc.edu/opportunity-center/jobs/tech-transition-hub/