I don’t make much art or anything else very interesting these days, so when the hosting for this site expired a week or two ago, I thought to myself, “Do I really need a vanity website anymore?” The ready answer was “no”, although I did have a bit of sadness at the thought of discarding this site that I’ve maintained in some version for over 25 years. I made a note to myself to take a few days to think about it, and if I decided to keep it, come up with some valid justification for doing so.
Anyway, a few days ago came the news that the website Vice was being killed by the private equity raiders that bought it, and it made me think of all the other sites on the Internet that have been bought and gutted for parts or otherwise turned into garbage (Google search) for short-term profits. I know that’s not just happening online – it’s happening in a bunch of other industries (see my first link, below). The thought of maintaining my own private little patch of the Internet outside the influence of Mark Zuckerburg or Elon Musk or Blackstone Group or some other group of billionaire creeps suddenly became a lot more appealing.
I still don’t know what I’ll do with this site, but I’ll go ahead and keep it. I’m plenty busy with other projects, so it might be that I don’t touch it again for another three or four years.
For now, here’s some of the links I’ve been reading this week:
- NPR: “After his wife died, he joined nurses to push for new staffing rules in hospitals“. A man’s wife died unexpectedly in an ICU unit and it was likely due a shortage of nurses. As the article explains, the hospital is run by a for-profit company and since they can’t bill patients directly for nurses’ labor, they instead try to cut costs and maintain a level of staffing that is actually life-threatening.
- NPR: “Scientists scanning the seafloor discover a long-lost Stone Age ‘megastructure’“. “Megastructure” made this sound a lot more exciting than what it is: a half-mile, 1.5′ tall wall of rocks, probably used for hunting purposes. It’s still pretty interesting, just not, like, a caveman fort or anything like that.
- Freaky Trigger: “Aard Labour 2: High Society“. This is the latest in the series of posts reviewing and evaluating the 6,000 page run of the comic Cerebus by weirdo/extreme-misogynist Dave Sims. When I was in my late teens I had a roommate that had the “High Society” and “Church and State” collections of the comics and I read some of them but ultimately found them to be not for me – there was something off-putting to them that I couldn’t put my finger on although they were fun in sections. The writer of these posts is doing a good job of breaking down the good and bad.
- Washington Post: “Tax records reveal the lucrative world of covid misinformation“. This isn’t stated in the article but it’s basically a story about the nexus of QAnon anti-vax conspiracies and right wing grifters.
- Prospect: “The Neglected History of the State of Israel“. If you oppose Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (in the West Bank, too, not just Gaza), you’re going to get called anti-Semitic by some people who I think are either saying that naively or disingenuously. Not all Jews want to kill their Arabic neighbors, but there sure is a far-right extremist party that wants to do exactly that, and it’s not too hard to find evidence of their success. The linked article provides some historic context for that group, which includes Netanyahu. It’s linked in the article, but it references the Isaac Chotiner interview with settler Daniella Weiss, which is still such a shocking thing to read that I’ve linked it here.
- Wikipedia: “List of unusual deaths“. A jumping off point in case you want to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Portland specific links:
- Portland Mercury: “Portland Rideshare Drivers Call for Government Reform to Fix Unfair Working Conditions“. I don’t use rideshares because I don’t like where the money goes (*gestures up to my opening paragraphs*) but I hope these drivers get better protections. Specifically, I hope Oregon passes a law like Washington’s.
- Street Roots: “City adopts Enhanced Service District recommendations amidst criticism“. This article is mostly a reminder that Downtown Clean & Safe is run by and feeds money into the Portland Business Association, creating a fucked-up situation where residents, businesses, and local government are forced to pay into the service but the money pays for lobbying on things that are against the city’s best interests. It’s wonky and I have a hard time wrapping my head around some of it, but it’s a pretty good example of something that seems pretty corrupt, but it technically isn’t since we’ve codified it into law.
- Willamette Week: “State Records Suggest Multnomah County Deputies Let Hoover Gang Members Beat Up Jailhouse Rivals“. Portland-doomerism has become such an editorial slant of WW that I have to metaphorically hold my nose to read their articles (as an example: a real estate article describing commercial vacancy in Portland “since the pandemic began, George Floyd was murdered, and all hell broke loose.“), but they still do some good reporting. Have you ever read a story about the downtown jail that doesn’t make you think that everyone working there needs to be fired? I’m sure that the three bad apples referenced in this story aren’t evidence of a deeper rot…
- Willamette Week: “Wrestlemaniac: The Rise and Fall of Billy Jack Haynes and the Oregon Wrestling Federation“. Katherine Dunn’s writing for the paper back in the 80s is usually worth a ready and this one is no exception.
- OPB: “Ballot proposal would undo Portland’s new police accountability system“. I’m really concerned that we’re going to see a hard-swerve to the right in Portland’s elections this year, so I could see this awful thing passing. I hope I’m wrong!!
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