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This weekend, the skies above your head may contain a giant shark... blimp.
This weekend, the skies above your head may contain a giant shark... blimp. courtesy of Discovery

Good Afternoon, Portland! We're looking at a delightful weekend of reasonable 80-degree days and cool, crisp evenings. Monday is going top be 93 so I WILL BE turning inside out, in a Cronenberg-esque fashion. But that's also the first day of NACHO WEEK—and I may be convinced to flip right-side-in for tasty totchos.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson will finally stand trial for riot charges, related to his leading members of his right-wing organization to incite a street brawl at the now-defunct Northeast Portland bar Cider Riot, on May 1, 2019. It's been three years since the chaos of that day so Mercury News Editor Alex Zielinski has the refresher.

• This weekend, the skies above your head may contain a giant shark... blimp. The Discovery Channel plans to fly a 179 foot long Shark Week blimp over Portland and other cities in the Pacific Northwest—like Eugene, Salem, and Medford. You're most likely to catch her toothy majesty over Portland on Saturday July 9 and Sunday July 10.

• Fuji to Hood Festival pairs Oregon breweries with Japanese brewers to make craft beers from each region's most cherished ingredients. Read about how the fest got started and what brewers came up with this year:

• So much happened in Portland's food world this week! A classical music-themed bar opened on North Mississippi, ThiccBoi closed up operations—after only recently reopening at Metalwood Salvage—and we bid adieu to longstanding French confection and tapas spot Pix Pâtisserie. But the word is that vending machine is staying.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:

• Today President Biden signed an executive order pledging that his administration will work to protect the safety of those seeking and providing abortions. He directed his secretary of health and human services to develop a report about how to possibly protect abortion access and asked the chair of the Federal Trade Commission to think on protecting the privacy of reproductive care-seeking consumers. It's... not a lot, but signals resistance to inevitable legislation that would seek to criminalize healthcare-seeking US residents.

• A statement filed with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission suggests that Elon Musk has bailed on his $44 billion agreement to buy the social media site. "You didn't have to cut me off / Make out like it never happened / And that we were nothing," Twitter did not say. Musk's team blamed the billionaire/platform breakup on Twitter being informationally withholding.

• Speaking of how Twitter is bad, a number of jokes posted about the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe led right-wing French politician Damien Rieu to mistakenly identify developer Hideo Kojima (Death Stranding, Metal Gear Solid) as the assassin. He's not.

• Finally, to understand the top five hottest birds in the sky, you must first understand that all birds are gay:

@parisnicholson #greenscreen Top 5 Hottest Birds #top5 #hot #birds #science #gay #peacock #raven #hummingbird #biology #flamingo #ranking #rank #ranked ♬ Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) - Kate Bush