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Good Morning, Portland: The forecast is RAIN FOREVER AND BORING. From now until Tuesday it's going to rain in as uninteresting a way as possible. Next week we might see an atmospheric river form, but for now we are in the doing rain forever and boring.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Portland City  Council passed a 🎸a new land use fee 🎸 Wednesday that will seek to charge landlords who lease or permit buildings / property to be used as detention facilities with 💅damages💅 if those ✨detention facilities✨ end up costing the city a ton amount of money. NOW, that's some vague language for a SPECIFIC situation—this relates to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in South Portland. If you are a legislative wonk you may have some feelings about that. For everyone else I added emojis around the important words. Even better, Mercury reporter Jeremiah Hayden breaks it down! 

• On Tuesday, Portland Public School Board voted to approve paying an out-of-state firm—the Texas-based Procedeo—to "oversee the modernization of three high schools and the planned Center for Black Student Excellence over the next five years," the Oregonian's Julia Silverman reports. Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong pitched the move to the board by arguing that consolidating the project would get the work done on time and on budget, as opposed to what's been happening with it up until now. This is something folks are het up about due to a variety of issues: PPS literally HAS an Office of School Modernization so why should the school district spend more on an out-of-state firm? Does the area really need as many high schools as it has—at the size they are? Silverman's piece unpacks Tuesday' pre-vote discussion and links to her previous reporting. She's been covering this one closely.

• Tim Boyle is being weird again: The Columbia Sportswear CEO appeared in a new ad, challenging people who believe that our planet is flat to prove it to him. “Well, just go snap a picture. Send it to us. And you get the assets of the company. All of it.” I used to think my friends' conspiracy theories were funny too, until they stopped vaccinating their children. It's a promo stunt, IDK.

• Local journalist and author Leah Sottile took to Bluesky last night to point out that even as Oregon Public Broadcasting CEO Rachel Smolkin assured listeners that the public radio station had closed a funding gap of $5 million, Sottile learned that her true crime podcast Hush would not renew for a third season.

On the day that @opb.org CEO Rachel Smolkin posted this video, saying OPB’s funding gap of $5 million was closed, I was also told by the Chief Content Officer that Hush was canceled. Eighty percent of my income, and my health insurance - gone. I was given no reason for the cancellation. 1/x

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— Leah Sottile (@leahsottile.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 2:04 PM

• If you missed the screening of Christine Turner's documentary Sun Ra: Do the Impossible in November at the Hollywood... the screening tonight at Mono Space is... SOLD OUT. But when one considers the 'junket' of venues that cool things travel through—on their cosmic trajectories, looping in and out of Portland—it hasn't shown at Tomorrow Theater yet, nor Cinema 21. There's hope! And while you wait, read a review of the doc by Jesse Carston—who actually asserted their doctoral thesis on Sun Ra's personal mythos!

• The Mercury’s Holiday Drink Week is in currently in full swing, and LISTEN the food weeks keep the lights on, dammit! People like'm! The drinks have goofy names like Please "Pear" With Us and Rumpkin. And at the end of the day these are basically lists of places supporting the Merc with their sticky bar dollars. You have a week to try their silly drink. IT'S DARK OUTSIDE SO MUCH NOW.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• GET TO THE LUIGI NEWS, I hear you cry. Where once there was no Luigi Mangione news, today there is some. That's because of a suppression hearing in New York, requested by Mangione's attorneys, who seek to bar some evidence from his trial. Mangione was accused of killing UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson last year, and before his arrest he allegedly lead police on a multi-day manhunt across several states. At the currently ongoing suppression hearings, Mangione's attorneys argue that law enforcement didn't have a warrant when they searched his backpack, so its contents should not be admissible and that his initial statements should also not be admissible because the officers hadn't yet told Mangione his Miranda warnings. For those of you who CANNOT GET ENOUGH LUIGI, CBS is [Borat voice] running a liveblog.

• A widely criticized advisory committee on immunization practices will convene Thursday and Friday to "rethink" the current childhood vaccination schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In June, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 of the committee's seated members and replaced them with a smaller, hand-picked group.

• New Zealand Police are waiting for a man accused of swallowing "an ornate Fabergé octopus pendant" to... uh... produce evidence of his... theft? On November 28, the man allegedly swallowed the pendant at Partridge Jewelers in Auckland. More about the fantastic object in this guy's stomach (ALLEGEDLY): The egg in question is "crafted from gold, painted with green enamel and encrusted with 183 diamonds and two sapphires." An item description continues: “The egg opens to reveal an 18ct yellow gold octopus nestled inside, adorned with white diamond suckers and black diamond eye."

• As we head into the great darkness that is winter holidays [PAUSE FOR OBLIGATORY HOLIDAY ISSUE PLUG] don't forget that sometimes there just isn't all that much news. I mean, THERE IS. But sometimes a newspaper's skeleton crew is handing you a baked potato wrapped in twine, like "people sure do love potatoes."