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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The annual Portland Winter Light Festival is hitting it’s 10th year and runs from Feb 7-15th. Definitely go check it out – it was a lot of fun last year.
PBOT has 5 of its new snowplows and have asked the public to help them name them. You have until Jan 22nd to submit your votes.
[02/03/2025 Results are in!]
The Big Leplowski, Beverly Clear-y, Brrrrnside, Salt and Thaw, Plowy McPlowface
citiesbydiana does some hilarious parodies of various city stereotypes. Here’s the one for Portland and it’s pretty accurate.
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Portland’s homeless don’t just camp on the streets – they’re also living on ramshackle and abandoned boats at an ever-increasing rate. Unfortunately, they are a source of a lot of solid human waste and pollution – especially when they sink or are abandoned. Recently they’ve been parking them right in the middle of downtown right beside OMSI children’s museum or St Johns.
The problem is only getting worse. 44 boats were removed from the river in 2024 through funding from the Oregon State Marine Board and the American Rescue Plan Act. Over the past three years, a total of 88 boats were retrieved from the river including 25 in 2022 and 19 in 2023. It doesn’t help that the parks department is forced to store the boats for 30 days before they can clean up the mess.
Either way, it’s costing us millions to get rid of them.
In a step sideways; the city is spending a lot to dispose of voluntarily surrendered boats before they’re abandoned. It prevents them from being abandoned/taken by homeless, but still costs taxpayers to dispose of them.
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The Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg, IN is a respectable local donut shop. What sets it apart, however, is the fact they are still using Commodore 64’s for their cash registers.
A recent series of photos on X attracted a lot of attention this week, as it showed staff at the Hilligoss Bakery apparently processing orders on a Commodore 64-based register system. Commenters pointed out that the last publicly posted picture of the register was taken in 2021, so Tom’s Hardware decided to give them a call—and staff duly verified that the systems were still in use.
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A 2024 report on city finances report gave Portland a full on ‘F’ for the state of it’s finances. Primarily due to the incredible debt burden of each resident. This isn’t a surprise considering Portland has the second highest tax rates in the country, and is currently facing a $27 million budget shortfall (especially as it’s tax base flees across the state line to Vancouver and businesses increasingly are leaving as well)
Read more about the state of the cities finances as well as thoughts of your favorite other major US cities.
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