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Good Morning, Portland! Yesterday it was cold for a minute in the evening, but that's all over now. We're topping out in the low 90s this weekend.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• A few hot, new Trimet service updates will drop on August 27, but we'll see if that actually does anything about the sheer number of trains that seem to keep breaking due to mechanical issues while I'm riding them. Also, the Hollywood Transit Center elevator is now only for fare-paying riders. At this point, I figure the elevator at Hollywood Transit Center is Trimet's very own Winchester Mystery House, and they have to keep doing shit to it to confuse the ghosts chasing them.

Heads up: Beginning August 28, 2023, the elevator at Hollywood Transit Center will only be accessible to riders with a valid fare.

— TriMet (@trimet) August 21, 2023

• A new documentary "The Elephant 6 Recording Co" digs into the '90s music collective behind indie psych-pop groups like Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal, and The Minders. Portland has just two screenings, but the one at Clinton Street Theater features music and a post-film Q&A with the Minders' Martyn Leaper. #blessed

• If you like your comics filled with indie grime, you'll want to get over to the former Ulta Beauty Salon in the Lloyd Center this weekend for Permanent Damage PDX. If you like your cartoons the same, Clinton Street screens such shorts the night before.

• People keep asking me if it's ethical to shop at Powell's, in light of the store's labor union having such a hard time with contract negotiation—and it is. At least until Monday September 4, when the union plans to hold a one-day Unfair Labor Practice Strike. If you support the workers you won't want to shop on that day.

• There's no way in heaven you're tired of BURGER WEEK, but if you're tired of listening to us taking about Burger Week, today's episode of City Cast Portland features the show's host Claudia Meza and Eater PDX editor Brooke Jackson-Glidden talking about what burgers look good and how important it is to tip your server well. YES, that is a conversation you could just have with your family, friends, coworkers, bitter enemies, etc., but in this episode you can find out which of them identifies as "a little spicy B."

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
•  Former President Donald Trump declined to participate in last night's debate between eight Republican presidential candidates for the 2024 election (fuck, that's soon). There's plenty of analysis out there this morning, including an entire Politico article devoted to candidate body language, but this analysis is my favorite:

Last night's GOP debate was insufficiently anti-trans for the New York Times. pic.twitter.com/AXZEYGuFnh

— Patrick Smith (@pksmid) August 24, 2023

• Who could have foreseen this? Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner Group—a mercenary military group who generally worked for Russian interests, but who also intimated a short lived coup attempt in June—is believed to have been on a plane that crashed Wednesday, in a northwest region outside Moscow.

• We covered India landing on the moon in yesterday's morning news, but I'm not sure we mentioned they were in a bit of a race with Russia—Russia's unmanned craft crashed on Sunday due to problems with the thrusters. RIP to those Russian engineers anyway tho. 

@washingtonpost

India landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon Wednesday, just days after a Russian vehicle crashed into the surface after firing its thrusters for too long. India’s spacecraft, without any astronauts on board, landed at about 8:30 a.m. Eastern time near the moon’s south pole, an area that several nations covet because it contains water in the form of ice in permanently shadowed craters.

♬ original sound - We are a newspaper.

• Today in desperate bids for attention: Mugshots of the persons involved in the new Fulton, Georgia RICO case, leveled against Trump and his allies, have been peppering the internet this week. Apparently the organizer behind the rally which became the primordial ooze that evolved into the Jan 6 Capitol attack made one of her own—despite not being part of the Georgia indictment.

• It's Thursday, so you know shit is gonna be weird today. 

@theowisseh_ When the music video doesn’t match the song part 2😂😂😂 @loveliveserve ♬ original sound - Theo