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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)

Articles:

• News:
  • https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/dysentery-cases-rise-in-portland-metro-area-health-department-reports/
  • https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2025/03/03/dysentery-portland-oregon/81175188007/
  • https://mynorthwest.com/ktth/ktth-opinion/rantz-homeless-fecal-matter-behind-explosion-shigella-cases-portland/3944857
• Local forum reports
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/askportland/comments/1ht35nm/what_can_i_do_about_the_human_feces_in_my/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/czpg2f/is_it_really_legal_to_take_a_dump_on_the_sidewalk/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Maine/comments/1gg4bjm/bodily_fluids_feces_found_in_front_of_business/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/120id9i/today_i_learned_about_the_multnomah_county_pooper/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/1iv05ga/this_city_never_ceases_to_amaze_me/

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.

Links:

• https://www.geekwire.com/2024/fans-upset-by-closure-of-living-computers-question-why-seattle-museum-couldnt-be-saved/
• https://www.christies.com/en/stories/paul-allen-computer-collection-d946162ef5744d7bb43c4459733bf9cf
• https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/firsts-history-computing-paul-g-allen-collection/lots/3726
• Auction sale summary ($10.25 million): https://www.christies.com/en/auction/pushing-boundaries-ingenuity-from-the-paul-g-allen-collection-30730?CID=sh_hub

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:

1. Ann Arbor, Michigan

2. Provo, Utah

3. Boulder, Colorado

4. College Station, Texas

5. Athens, Georgia

6. Tallahassee, Florida

7. Berkeley, California

8. Gainesville, Florida

9. Columbia, South Carolina

10. Syracuse, New York

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.

• Intel has laid off over 23,000 people since the end of 2022.
• Intel lost 16,000 of those jobs in 2024 alone
• In Nov 2024, Intel reported it had 108,900 workers – which puts it back to at 2018 employment levels, but is generating $18 billion less in annual revenue than 2018
• Productivity has dropped. In 2020, the company generated more than $700,000 in revenue per employee. By 2023, that figure had dropped to under $440,000.
• Employee count
  • 2024 Workforce: Intel reported 108,900 employees for the fiscal year ending in December 2024. 
  • Previous Employees Numbers: In 2022, Intel had 131,900 employees. 
    

Articles:

• https://www.statista.com/statistics/263567/employees-at-intel-since-2004/
• https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjyy811gtye

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.

Links:

• https://www.propublica.org/
• https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/states/OR