by Suzette Smith The Mercury provides its readers with interesting and useful news & culture reporting every single day. If you appreciate that, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. If you read something you like, something you don't like but are glad to know about, and/or something you can't find anywhere else consider a one-time tip. It all goes in the same pot and it all goes to the editorial team. Thanks for your support! Good Morning, Portland! It's dank today: currently drizzlin' with a high of 61 projected. By next week, we could be back, sitting' pretty in the high 70s, but for now the weekend is looking hella hygge. IN LOCAL NEWS:• The Portland Marathon is poised to completely wreck anyone trying to get to work downtown—or through the downtown to work—on Sunday morning. The bridge situations are jacked. Plan accordingly. • Vocal residents and business owners appear to have blocked plans to build a bottle drop—where people could have turned in cans for the ten-cent refund value—in the St. Johns neighborhood. Earlier in the year, Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative looked into building the drop at an abandoned site on N Lombard, but faced complaints about the potential of such a business attracting visible drug use. For now, advocates have maintained their distinctive local landmark, colloquially known as "the old half-burned down Dollar Tree," meet-up spot. • It's too bad we used "Sign of the Times" to headline a story about Jim & Patty’s Coffee earlier in the week, because the city auditor's office dinged city commissioner-turned-mayoral hopeful Rene Gonzalez yesterday, with a warning letter for failing to disclose who paid for a campaign sign of his near the Vista Bridge [not the one pictured above; that's just a yard sign]. Why does that matter? Because the Auditor's Office announced on Wednesday that they're reversing a previous "nah it good" they gave Gonzalez, related to the $6,400 in taxpayer money he spent, hiring a firm to edit embarrassing stuff from his Wikipedia page. • A complaint from a former BOLI staffer alleges that Portland City Council District 4 candidate Lisa Freeman "has a history of discrimination against people in the BIPOC community" and that she created “a hostile workplace for [the complainant] and other employees.” Freeman worked as a manager in the Community Safety Division from 2022 until earlier this year, when she left to campaign full-time. Taylor Griggs has more on the story. • Speaking of sick burns—a formal complaint being the sickest possible—this week's local news trivia quiz asks if you remember the substance of a burn-it-to-the-ground tweet from  City Commissioner Mingus Mapps' last week. Well, do yah? Test your might here. • Nonprofit hospital system PeaceHealth announced yesterday that it will acquire four Providence medical clinics in Clark County. And while PeaceHealth predates ZoomCare, it does own the McDonalds-of-seeing-a-doctor-and-getting-another-throat-swab-IDK chain of clinics. PeaceHealth acquired ZoomCare in 2018 and has worked to increase its number of clinics in the years since, including creating a ZoomCare Super option, which y'know—if you've had contact with ZoomCare you would want to be aware that they own these hospitals now. • Speaking of dropping my imaging scans into a dark hole from which they may never be recovered, there's a lot of hot ticket sales are dropping this morning, like Gang of Four and... Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: In Concert? You love that stuff. Check the list here. IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:• The International Longshoremen strike is on pause AKA over, with the implication that it could return, after union representatives announced they had received a new wage offer to "increase wages by 62 percent over the course of a new six-year contract," the New York Times reports.  #TrumpLongshoremensStrike is over. Another win for Dark Brandon. pic.twitter.com/tqbkfBh25k — Mike🌻 (@Antidote4BS) October 3, 2024 • Wired raised the alert earlier in the week that startup genetic testing company 23andMe is in financial trouble—and that might mean a bunch of weirdos are about to buy up your data. There's a call going around, urging users to delete their data or risk having it sold to whomever the new owners may be. Will that even work? Is this like saying your social media posts are your own and don't reflect on your employer? Only time (and further breaches) will tell. • ICYMI Fat Bear Week began with a jarring reminder of the natural world this week, when one wild contestant attacked and killed another, live on the webcams at Katmai National Park. Alaska national parks arranges the goofy annual event every year to teach about bear hibernation, encouraging animal-lovers to follow the progress of their favorite bears in a non-serious elimination bracket. “We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real,” said Mike Fitz, explore.org’s resident naturalist. “The risks that they face are real. Their lives can be hard, and their deaths can be painful.” • On Sunday, it will be exactly two years since Biden directed members of his cabinet to examine cannabis' drug schedule level. Not in much of a hurry, I see. • A proposition to my friends who don't vote: if you can't vote for the lesser evil if you can't vote for your own survival if you can't vote for the second Black and first female President if you can't vote for the candidate who will objectively harm people in Gaza the least vote for Elon Musk to suffer[image or embed] — ellie lockhart (she/they) (@eleanor.lockhart.contact) October 3, 2024 at 5:59 PM