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Happened upon this around 1:00 AM. Portland Police cordoned off dozens of blocks around, presumably, a suspect’s car, abandoned on Burnside eastbound at Third Ave. The car sat with doors open and a shoe on the ground on each side; they didn’t match. Police left the area cordoned off from around 12:30, when a massiveContinue reading “Portland Saturday Night”

“This is the part where I disappear into the night.” I said over my shoulder, not intending to be heard. “What? You don’t want a ride home?” “No, I’m going somewhere else.” I lied, all but running as I picked up my pace, giving in to an old familiar impulse to flee social awkwardness, andContinue reading “Larry and Tonto”

Portland police today reported nine shootings over a 16 hour stretch in Portland’s Wild Wild East According to the Portland Police Bureau’s Enhanced Community Safety Team, the shootings began just after noon on Tuesday, Aug. 31, and continued through the early morning hours of Wednesday, Sept. 1. A glimmer of hope there is however; JohnContinue reading ““You Killed his Fucking Dog?!””

Under a gray sky the vast abandoned parking lot documented the waves of consumers that once sustained the boarded-up department store set back in it like a temple. These ruins of the suddenly but definitively ended pre-woke era made for a locale ideal metaphorically as well as geographically for the Proud Boys’ “Summer of Love”Continue reading “Postmodern Postmortem”

As far as I can tell the road to the airport is open here in Portland, just the usual traffic, and of course the internet and broadcast media are up for the moment. Nonetheless progressive Portland breathlessly awaits an invasion tomorrow by religious fundamentalists hellbent on taking the country back to the Dark Ages. PatriotContinue reading “Portghanistan”

A palpable arousal has overtaken the refugee resettlement community in Portland, as they gear up to receive an influx of Afghan refugees For Oregon organizations that contract with the federal government to help refugees resettle in the US, the sobering headlines meant an immediate shift in workload. “The pace of what happened—I can’t wrap myContinue reading “Invade, Abandon, Invite”

Wherein our hero falters and redeems himself… Nicholas Taleb writes about risk in investing and in general, and burst onto the scene with his widely praised The Black Swan. For those of use who may have read The Black Swan and then got on with our lives, his real vocation is now Being Nicholas Taleb,Continue reading “And Never the Twain Shall Bro”

Repeating myself from a couple of posts ago, it’s a cliche but the decidedly anti-religious secular order of the present feels very much like religion. It has its own fantastic mythology, its own miracles, its own faith as bulwark against undermining by reason or empiricism. It works as a received religion, despite confusing its apologetics,Continue reading “Mirabile Dindu”

It’s a cliché but the West’s secular post-religious dispensation feels very religious. Its values are opposed to the religion it displaced (despite it wearing the language of routed Christian morality like a skin suit) and the successful campaign against Western decency advanced a good deal on a Jewish critique of Christian shame as unnatural, taughtContinue reading “Sunday Sermon: For Shame”