The Willamette Valley has long been known for being one of the worst allergy locations in the world.
Oregon Allergy Associates have a website that reports the regular pollen counts – and types. Hopefully it can help determine when to take allergy meds.
“Something has to change in Oregon schools,” Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University told the Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee on Education last month. “More money did not produce any kind of bumper increase in student outcomes. ”
Despite passing record taxes and that nearly doubled school funding to some of the highest per-student funding (from $9,543 per student to $17,161 per student), Oregon has had 10 years of continually declining student outcomes across all metrics.
The cherry on top came from the National Report Card. It was a damning report for Oregon. Oregon student achievement has declined for 10 straight years until it is now nearly dead last. It’s a sad continuation of one of the most dysfunctional school systems in the country despite over 20 years of completely Democratically controlled policies.
How bad are these scores in real terms?
Oregon fourth graders who were tested in early 2024 ranked second worst in the country in math and tied with 10 other states for third worst in reading. Eighth graders tested in the same time period, who are now halfway through their first year in high school, performed far below the national average in math but close to the middle of the pack in reading.
A full third of Oregon’s then-fourth graders who took the federal test scored “below basic” on the math section, meaning that they could not complete foundational tasks like identifying whole numbers on a number line or locate the lines of symmetry in shapes like triangles and rhombuses.
Forty-eight percent scored “below basic” in reading, meaning that they could not yet determine the sequence of events described in a passage, nor could they fully determine the meaning of a familiar word using context clues. The national average was 41%.
It drew silence from countless Oregon school and government leaders that have been doubling down on supposedly progressive policies – policies that we now have over 10 years of data show are failing dramatically.
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A sad side effect of a very permissive city-wide camping policy means that public sanitation has reached dangerous levels. To the level that we’re having outbreaks of communicable diseases related to feces.
Bans on urban camping and home codes have been a thing since Hooverville days. Public sanitation can become life and death health concern for urban residents. Sadly, it appears Portland has reached that tipping point, despite spending $75,000 a month on 130 public toilets (that were all destroyed or stolen)
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The estate of Paul Allen has decided to close the Living Computer Museum and Labs mid 2024. All the equipment was sold off at during several high profile Christies auctions.
It’s a terrible loss to computing history in my opinion.
Update: check out the links below if you want to look at some of the amazing items that were sold.
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Gen Z is making very different choices than millennials. This is something especially true for cities like Portland, OR that went from one of the fastest growing cities in the US to the 6th fastest SHRINKING cities with the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country.
A financial services company used data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to determine which U.S. cities saw the most Gen Zers move in throughout 2022:
Live bands doing the music scores done live alongside the movie – like old silent film days? Yes please.
I’ve seen a few of these over the years from various different bands/groups – such as Mood Area 52 when they did Nosferatu at the Mission Theater in 2013 and the hugely popular showing of Dario Argento’s Suspiria accompanied by the Italian prog-rock band Goblin lead by original keyboardist Claudio Simonetti.
Pigeon Milk seems to be infrequently doing some shows like this as well. They don’t seem to have any schedule or even a website. Looks like you’ll have to use your local event tracking sites to find them.
Here’s a clip of them from the Kelly’s showing of the movie 2001.
The AirNow website is not only good for getting air quality measurements for your area, but also checking in on the current smoke and fire maps.
Sadly, this is now just as required checking as weather information when going camping or hiking in the Pacific Northwest. A trend that is almost certainly going to get worse due to decades of misguided over-conservation forest management.
Visual Economist provides this neat breakdown of the US economy by state
Some bad numbers for Intel.
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It’s long been a dirty secret in Portland that the non-profits have board members and CEO’s making $100,000’s a year – and they often serve on multiple boards. Worse, many of their well-meaning employees find themselves serving in dangerous conditions working with dangerously sick or mentally ill homeless with little training or protection. Sadly, in too many cases, many barely even make the equivalent of minimum wage.
How do you find this all out? Well – tax records are public. ProPublica has an amazing website that has copies of their W-2’s and breaks down their costs.
For example: Urban League of Portland made $24.7 million last year. The CEO of this nonprofit? He made $400,000. A good non-profit should use 90% or more of their income for programs and actually helping people. Urban League? Only around 70%
I highly recommend everyone check out the non-profits they give to and see if they’re actually using the money wisely – or just to make their CEO’s and board members rich.
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