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Good Morning, Portland! This weekend’s weather is lookin’ FINE. Keep your eyes peeled in the physical world, because the Mercury’s second print guide comes out next week! Woo! Now, the sooner we news, the sooner we chill. 😔💀

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• While environmental experts point to trees as one of the best solutions for both climate action and mitigation, the city of Portland has had more than a little trouble not killing the city’s—and it's not just the ones we forgot to water. Mercury reporter Taylor Griggs draws together the weird lattice of volunteers, activists, and government workers planting trees in Portland. Can't they start a tree group chat or something?

• Remember that "Portland Is a Schmidt Show" billboard that sort of looked like a positive campaign? Well, the city's maddest grandads are at it again. People for Portland put up a new Schmidt Show billboard downtown, and KOIN wrote a whole-ass article on it. Nothing says mad grandad more than wind-up chattering teeth.

• On this week’s Citycast Portland, Oregonian reporter Zane Sparling asks the question we’ve all been wondering. Will the Multnomah County district attorney race just be another vibes election?

• This article is weirdly couched around the idea that one of the Dave's Killer Bread co-founders (not Dave Dahl, a relative) is selling a Lake Oswego mansion—and that they are also a drag burlesque artist and having a great time. It's a person of interest selling mansion story, sure. But people seemed pretty confused which Dahl this was yesterday, so I thought I'd clarify. It's Shobi. They perform as Mona Trambona and / or Rainbow Rod.

• ICYMI, can't put it much better than Leah Sottile does here:

• It's Friday, so tickets are about to go on sale. Today in courting the hate mail, don't sleep on Monet X Change at the Aladdin. Turn away from harbinger of the mid-pocalpyse Travis Scott at Moda Center.

• Are you scrambling to find the money for Beyoncé tickets and silver outfits? You may feel seen by this week's music news column Hear in Portland. Music Critic Jenni Moore has all that, a Renaissance dance party rec, and two new local releases that deserve your attention. 

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• Southwest pilots and American Airlines flight attendants have both authorized their respective unions to call for labor strikes, due to prolonged disappointment with ongoing contract negotiations. CNN reports an actual strike is unlikely, but pilots and flight attendants have been "holding informational picketing events" at airports. Flight attendants at United have also been demonstrating. Speaking of which, Powell's worker union will hold a one-day strike on Labor Day, Monday September 4. We also won't have a Good Morning, News on that day… on account of Labor Day. 

• Friday used to be about news dumps and Trump results, but lately it's been all about insurrectionist former Proud Boys receiving very long prison sentences. The courts sentenced two such former Proud Boys leaders Thursday—Joseph Biggs received 17 years, and Zachary Rehl received 15 years. In both cases, they received about half the time that federal prosecutors recommended.

• I feel fairly confident that I have already seen the Eras Tour several times over on TikTok, but I predict that the true fans will enjoy slumber party style binge sessions in local (well probably...) chain movie houses, when the filmed version of Taylor Swift's Era's Tour hits theaters, starting October 13. 

• Paris has banned rental e-scooters after just five years—wow, has it really only been five years? Anyway, remember when e-scooters were terrible, and then the pandemic happened and we realized they are 1) fun and 2) just not a big problem in the grand scheme of things? Honestly, proud of us.

• Students in Russian high schools received revised textbooks upon returning to class this year, with 28 pages of rewritten text, describing the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The New York Times reports that the new pages describe Ukraine as an “ultranationalist state” where “opposition is forbidden.” I'll have another round of irony for the whole table.

• If you’re in search of a Friday morning longread, allow me to recommend this wonderful Werner Herzog essay from his upcoming memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All excerpt in the New Yorker. Of course, it includes Herzog crying with someone about their deceased pet: “We sat together crying for a long time and said nothing.” Ugh I love it.

• All week I have been the "god gives his biggest challenges to his funniest little guys" meme, but now that it rained a little I'm:

 
 
 
 
 
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