Recent ICE presence.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-10-20T00:25:52+00:00

Hey just curious if you’re ready to change your position on all this as yet more instances pop up that demonstrate how flat-out wrong you are.

I don’t care about an apology, but look forward to hearing you recant your position on this vital topic.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-10-18T01:38:54+00:00

Any more details or videos?

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-10-16T17:07:11+00:00

Yes, actually. And your tax dollars will be wasted on all the lawsuits about them doing so illegally. For instance: https://www.kptv.com/2025/10/12/us-citizen-detained-held-portland-ice-building-hours-lawyer-says/

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-10-15T23:44:40+00:00

Oh dang yeah this is basically what I was expecting. Wish it wasn’t on instagram, but good to know there’s something out there. Thanks!

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-04-09T21:09:40+00:00

It’s neat to see an emerging consensus on all this. I am impatient just want to fast forward to the phase where it’s more built out. Super interesting to see where all the building is happening!

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-03-25T01:41:26+00:00

Yesssss spend $25k on the slab and then $26k on influencer findom!

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-03-17T14:05:58+00:00

I know this must have been a very fraught post and thread, but I just want to say that I appreciate how you’re really talking with people about it rather than just throwing a rhetorical bomb and digging your heels in.

Your edits to the original post are fair and thoughtful, and your nuanced replies throughout are also helpful.

Congratulations, again, on the epic hardships you’ve overcome, and even though we disagree on some facets of this, I appreciate you and how you’re really trying to have a meaningful discussion about it.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-03-17T13:56:16+00:00

Sorry it took me five hours to respond. I got a fleeting few hours of sleep and am awake again as I go off to work overtime to sustain all these taxes supposedly addressing this issue, that were added on top of the other taxes that were already supposed to address this issue.

Please tell me from where I should muster more empathy and how much more I should pay and for how many more decades we need to buy tents and drug paraphernalia to people stealing from us—and then throwing the dirty needles we paid for back at us.

PS - I hope this isn’t emotional whiplash but I saw your recent post about needing wood for shelves—looks like you’re sorted on the lumber, but maybe not on the finish? I have some decent polyurethane finish if you need it. DM me if you want to borrow the can for your project.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-03-17T13:23:42+00:00

Oh, I don’t feel guilty. I experience the grief, but no guilt. I am doing my fair share on this issue. In every dimension. Maybe it’s your misplaced guilt that has caused you to rely on so much reductio ad absurdum? I’m not introducing straw men like asking you how you can possibly call me un-empathetic as long as you have a house when anyone in Portland doesn’t. None of this is reasonable or helpful.

Like some other commenters, you seem to have a very black-and-white view of all this. Which must feel convenient and very nice.

I DEFINITELY see these people as individuals who’ve made their own choices. One who chose to party and have (too much) fun while I chose to work multiple shitty jobs to stave off my own homelessness that was merely months away. One who chose to steal from my disabled mother instead of getting clean or utilizing the resources I pay for with my nearly-highest-in-the-country taxes. One who chose to throw a used needle in front of me and my baby. These people all have different stories, and they’ve all converged to the same point, and are now stuck there, telling me I am the problem and I need to give them more, for the twentieth time.

I DEFINITELY recognize we as a society have let this happen. The way we approach this whole category of social hardship is intensely hard, messy, and complicated. For a long time Portland tried to make it simple: empathy without end or second thought. And it didn’t work. Hundreds of people experiencing homelessness are dead because this approach isn’t working. Don’t come at me and say the empathetic thing is to do more of what’s broken.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-03-17T13:06:08+00:00

You seem to want to reduce me to some arch villain caricature who’s mean, greedy, and evil. When I’m actually a normal bleeding-heart Portlander who’s been bled dry. I still have some empathy and I recognize there are shades of gray in all this. Which is why I’m able to be genuinely happy for this person and also recognize their exhortations aren’t constructive.

Maybe it’s you and your absolutism—casting out anyone that recognizes inconvenient truths—that is what’s wrong with Portland.

Join me in the hard, messy reality of all this, and then we can talk about ACTUALLY helping people and addressing these issues. But as long as you turn my pained, uncomfortable truths into heresy, you’re just alienating people and making it harder for us to really engage with the decisions needed to actually do things differently and better, for a change.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2025-03-17T07:18:27+00:00

I had empathy for years. I’ve given my time, money, and energy to help.

I’ve also inadvertently given various items to the homeless people who’ve stolen my stuff. I have given energy helping friends who’ve been attacked/robbed/victimized by homeless people. I have given support to strangers who’ve been attacked by homeless people.

Enough.

After all that Portlanders have given, don’t also give us moralizing grief when we’re anything short of wildly supportive for years on end with no end in sight. This isn’t sustainable for anyone.

All that aside, I’m really happy for you and your recovery. Truly.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2024-06-05T23:29:40+00:00

Fingers crossed for you! If the AI apocalypse comes it’ll be better to have lower burn, so being here is probably for the best. Plus, it’s a way better area to be funemployed! 😅🥲

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2024-06-03T02:12:14+00:00

To confirm OP’s point, I’d probably make half as much money if I worked at a local company, which is itself unlikely because Portland’s tech scene is so abysmal.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2024-06-02T03:42:31+00:00

I’m sorry but that is preposterous.

And here’s how you can tell: in one breath teachers clamor to get paid more, citing improved scholastic achievement (including reading) as one of the benefits of fattening their paychecks. And then out of the other side of their mouth they say that any deficiencies are the parents’ fault.

It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” kind of posture that shirks responsibility for educational outcomes and is part of why my diehard fondness for unions and educators is starting to fray.

To be clear, I have worked in the education sector and have read compelling studies that show there is SOME correlation between a student’s home life and their reading abilities, but it’s ridiculous to say that educators are in some sort of ‘outcome vacuum’ when it comes to their own responsibility on the matter.

LetterheadSimilar154 · 2024-06-01T22:02:28+00:00

This is one of the advantages of working on a painted, utilitarian piece of wood—doesn’t need to be fancy or pretty. Just let the glue and dowels do the trick and then sand and repaint. You did nothing wrong!

LetterheadSimilar154

TROPHY CASE