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Good morning, Portland! Wring every drop of enjoyment you possibly can out of this glorious-looking weekend (and Pizza Week). I AM TEAM RAIN, and she returns Thursday. The streets will run with water! The skies will glow pearlescent with cloud. Look upon her and despair; if you don’t like rain why the hell do you live here?

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Firefighters from Hoodland, Clackamas, Gresham, and Estacada fire districts responded to a blaze glowing up the attic at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood on Thursday evening. According to a press release from Clackamas Fire, lodge employees discovered the fire and called it in around 9:30 pm. Clackamas declared the situation under control a little after 11 pm, and a 2:05 am alert said the crews had extinguished what appeared to be a roof / attic fire—continuing: “Investigators from the ATF and US Forest Service are on scene working to determine a cause. The lodge and the ski area will both be closed tomorrow, April 19th, while the damage is assessed.”

The fire at Timberline Lodge was declared under control at 11:12 p.m. The fire was kept to the roof & part of the attic, & didn’t spread any further. Crews are clearing the scene. The U.S. Forest Service will be conducting the investigation with the help of federal resources. pic.twitter.com/IRoTpyB0WV

— Clackamas Fire (@clackamasfire) April 19, 2024

• In 2020, Central City Concern closed its sobering program called CHIERS (which was an acronym, but I don’t have time to get into it, and it didn’t really describe the thing anyway), saying that the people coming to its sobering facility were suffering from maladies too complex for the services it could offer. Now, after several years without, Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards is leading an initiative to open a better resourced sobering center—though we don’t yet know where, or if the state will pony up the 25 million the county wants it to contribute. 

• In March, Multnomah County’s community health center leader Darnell “DJ” Rhodes resigned, despite working in the role for less than a year. The Oregonian reports that he had only recently been reinstated a couple months before, in January, after being put on paid leave since October for reasons that are not clear. What is clear is that just two weeks before he resigned he appears to have sent a selfie from his office to a county employee “of himself touching his finger to his mouth with the message, ‘You look finger lickin good.'”

• Hey, if you want to do any stuff to your voter registration do it before the upcoming voter registration deadline of April 30—actually maybe just do it right now. Change of address? Suddenly a Democrat for sneaky votey reasons? Nothing sneaky about it; it’s you’re right (!) and you can take care of it online.

• Despite the hubris of the city’s ongoing Vision Zero program, Portland’s traffic crash deaths continue. On Wednesday, Portland City Council adopted an update to the Vision Zero plan—the first such since 2019. Taylor Griggs reports: While deaths occurred all over the city, the majority were concentrated in areas that have historically been the site of the most crashes. About 75 percent of traffic deaths occurred on Portland’s busiest streets, which make up the city’s “high crash network,” and many of those were in East Portland.

• In this week’s Pop Quiz PDX Nike crimes and Air Goslings dreams:

• Your Friday morning ticket drop is arriving shortly, and our Mercury EverOut calendar team has drawn up a list of notables for your perusal. This week’s hottest show might be…uhhhh…. An Evening With Richard Dawkins and Friends? It’s a lukewarm week.

• I know I mentioned this in the intro, but don’t forget it’s Pizza Week. This guy is racing you for all that sweet / savory ‘za.

pic.twitter.com/ur68VhPg1P

— Possumeveryhour.io (@PossumEveryHour) April 14, 2024

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS: 

• Following a strike on Iran by Israel and a strike on Israel by Iran, the New York Times reports that Iranian officials confirmed a strike on a military air base near Isfahan, Iran. The conjecture at this time is that the strike wasn’t as big or bad as it could have been, and that there’s optimism that the respective militaries are just saving face, taking pot shots at each other while looking towards deescalation.

• Trump’s hush money trial jury! They got one. Alternates? Working on it. Opening statements could start Monday. What if you could have every moment in your life that you spent thinking about the former President back? 

• This week in cruel and unusual punishments that one would think the constitution would safeguard us from… but the constitution really doesn’t give a shit about people with uteruses… [Flash forward to ten years from now, I’m in the hot seat about something and am asked pointedly “didn’t you once say ‘the constitution really doesn’t give a shit about people with uteruses?'”  And I reply, “I typed that shit out, so I know I didn’t stutter.” -eds.] BUT I DIGRESS—US states that have allowed strict abortion laws to take hold are turning into horror shows for those trying to have children. You knew this. The Associated Press reports that in some cases the horror is caused simply by all the confusion over what is allowed and what isn’t. Anyone who has ever tried to impart information or teach a group of people something should have goosebumps at the thought.

• “I’ve had some tough words for the New York Times in this newsletter over the years,” media darling and Today in Tabs founder Rusty Foster wrote in his newsletter on Wednesday, “and how do they respond? With an incredibly thoughtful and generous #longread about me in Styles today. It’s actually pretty passive-aggressive, if you think about it?” I know many of our readers are Today-in-Tabs-ers so just making sure y’all saw it.

• Let’s clone something keeeeey-ute, biologists most certainly did not say when they used the genes of an endangered black-footed ferret to create two more clones recently—bringing the grand total to THREE ferrets thrust into existence where there would have been none. These three adorable abominations (adorb-inations?) were cloned from a ferret dubbed “Willa” who died (and was subsequently frozen) in the 1980s. The Associated Press has a fascinating (TO ME) story to relate to you about why the black-footed ferret genetic biodiversity gene pool is pathetically smol and which pet-cloning business the Fish and Wildlife Service has teamed up wiuth to fix that.

• Before I had a job that consumed all things, I tried to be an active participant in the gig economy by signing up for the pet-sitting app Rover. I’m great with dogs, I said. Everyone always wants me to watch their dogs, I rambled. Oh my god, there’s like ten pages of paperwork, I noted, abruptly abandoning my desire to be a participant in the dog-care gig economy. Well, it looks like they could have used my help because Gizmodo has uncovered several complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by the app’s users. Yes, with a percentages view, Rover is still largely a safe app, but when it goes wrong… that’s you’re dog, dude. Gizmodo excerpted ten of the FTC complaints.

Oh no, this made me laugh too hard. pic.twitter.com/bsrmvYFuON

— Amanda Deibert (@amandadeibert) April 14, 2024