The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!

Good afternoon, Portland! DID YOU SEE? It rained for like five minutes. World, BACK ON! Oh, it's done raining? WORLD IS BACK OFF. With the world back off, I suppose we should get into the news:

IN LOCAL NEWS:

If you've been following the city of Portland's ongoing problems with the US Department of Justice (DOJ)—Portland police are not in compliance with a 2014 settlement and haven't been for 17 months—today OPB reports that city attorneys say the DOJ is misinterpreting police programs and shifting its requirements. 

Now some nice news: Portland's champions of underground and cult cinema Church of Film celebrate their ninth anniversary today. That's nine years sharing of introspective foreign shorts and nightmare cartoons with the city's adoring, weird-loving audiences.

• Today in “things that are not where they should be,” there's a trampoline in Johnson Creek. I just hope the industrious youths who dragged it over there had many an epic bounce and that all their bones remain whole. 

• Author Kevin Sampsell is a known face at most Powell's books readings—but for the past seven years he has also fostered a passionate found media collage practice. Arts writer Andrew Jankowski calls his new book, which collects nearly 200 of his works, "a jubilant celebration of bizarre, jarring, and defiant imagery."

• We've all heard that choking during sex is dangerous. But... is it REALLY dangerous? Or just regular ole dangerous? In the week's Savage Love, Dan brings in sex researcher Dr. Debby Herbenick to discuss her research into breath and choking play.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:

• US health officials plan to employ a new approach to distributing monkeypox vaccinations: They're going to give out smaller doses, which some research suggests is practically as effective. There are some complications to the new approach—the injection method is different. Perhaps the most infuriating thing is that initially monkeypox vaccinations were comparatively abundant, but the CDC's paperwork was so prohibitively complicated that some doctors said they could only manage to give out 3-4 doses a day.

• For fans of large media institutions fucking up, CBS News deleted a social media link to its recently released documentary, Arming Ukraine. Not only did documentary incorrectly report how much aid was reaching the front lines, but it failed to consider why not all aid should go to the front lines. The documentary also included an interview with now disgraced Amnesty International adviser Donatella Rovera, who wrote a report that led to the resignation of the organization's Ukraine office director last week. In her report, Rovera alleged that the Ukrainian military's placement of soldiers and weapons near civilians was tantamount to a war crime—completely ignoring that Ukraine's army is trying to defend those civilians from an active invasion.

• More scandalous, gossipy stories are emerging from yesterday's Mar-a-Lago raid, including how the story leaked in the first place:

• Despite all the sorrow wrought by the internet, it certainly has hipped us to some incredible styles.

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Betches Media (@betches)