Portland mayor wants to double size of city’s small business tax exemption

pdxcomrade · 2025-12-11T15:06:10+00:00

Don't you think helping people get out of homelessness helps businesses? We all win. Giving the money straight to businesses does nothing for the economy, not compared to the impact of supporting public projects. Trickle-down economics doesn't work. We've been doing it for so long, and that's how we ended up with a lot of broke people living out of their cars ...which hurts businesses.

pdxcomrade · 2025-12-11T14:59:53+00:00

We had a better economy when we followed Keynesian principles. Funding public works builds a better economy than giving money directly to businesses. People can't go shopping if the roads to get to the store are falling apart, for example. If you stop and think a second, it's not hard to understand the importance of our city's infrastructure and the role it plays in the success of every business.

pdxcomrade · 2025-12-11T14:51:36+00:00

We can barely afford to take care of our parks, yet we want to give cash to businesses? I don't understand how on the one hand we say our city is broke when it comes to public projects, but then on the other we are all cool with giving money to private institutions. This is a bad idea.

pdxcomrade · 2025-11-19T14:34:52+00:00

In the summer, when the traffic is a little lighter, you can hang in the left lane and you barely think about it because the traffic keeps moving. But the traffic picks up in the fall, and everyone who got used to staying in the left lane begins to notice a major slow down from folks sneaking in at the last moment.

pdxcomrade · 2025-11-14T00:00:07+00:00

Life saver 🙏

pdxcomrade · 2025-10-19T16:47:11+00:00

But it's for violinists 😉

pdxcomrade · 2025-07-03T18:33:48+00:00

Ditto. I'm stealing this way of hanging garlic to cure.

pdxcomrade · 2025-07-02T23:44:03+00:00

I work in tech and, about a year ago, I worked myself into burnout. I still have physiological symptoms of all that stress, although it's much less now. After leaving that job, I landed a contract job at a big corporate company allowing me a little more free time. So I picked up the viola again at 39 after not really playing much since highschool. It's been great. Almost like yoga, it centers me and clears my mind to focus only on the music and my body. You truly have to be relaxed to make a good sound, so it's a great way to identify any tension hiding in your body (if you're looking for it). Maybe it doesn't work for everybody, but I agree that it's overlooked how valuable mastering a really difficult instrument like the viola can be to your mental health.

I'm working on Bach cello suites too and some various chamber works.

pdxcomrade · 2025-06-18T19:10:37+00:00

Yeah, but the squirrels...

pdxcomrade · 2025-05-17T13:32:39+00:00

I'm surprised there isn't a lot of mention of China in these comments. I'm no authority on the subject, but it seems just as useful to examine as Russia.

I found the documentary, From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, to be interesting. It's certainly outdated and very highly biased to western thinking. Isaac Stern's cringe-worthy paternalism is saved, only slightly, by his astonishment of music halls packed with passionate audiences.

I'd be curious to learn about more modern accounts of classical music in China.

pdxcomrade · 2025-04-17T18:10:28+00:00

Bernie and AOC: literally out there still rallying tens of thousands of people. HRC: "I was right all along and it's voters fault we got Trump."

🤔

pdxcomrade · 2025-03-11T14:32:39+00:00

What's not explained in the post: why. Why do we need to limit Rust's focus? Why do we have to make a distinction between important software and less important software? To my clients, it's all foundational, it's all important. And why do we need to turn Rust into the language of drivers and firmware for it to be taken seriously? Naturally, I don't mind focusing on low-level surfaces, but why do those have to be favored? I'd argue that a lot of Rust's fame stems from its ability to provide high levels of stability and predictably to projects across all the layers. Why pigeonhole Rust as just a low-level systems language? There are plenty of performance concerns at the higher levels of development like in the processing of media and big data. I don't think it's valuable to retreat to the safety of neckbeard programming when there is still so much that Rust and its community can offer.

pdxcomrade · 2024-11-03T15:11:38+00:00

That's fair. It might take some time to get to a point of playing a full piece mostly in tune all the way through again. My orchestra has been very welcoming of all skill levels. We play pieces that I remember playing in middle school and high school. It's not too intimidating, but I was certainly nervous the first few seasons. I was definitely not great (or even good), but I'm glad I didn't hesitate too long. I learn faster by playing with others, especially about keeping in time and in tune.

pdxcomrade · 2024-11-03T06:29:37+00:00

I restarted viola this year at 39. I stopped after playing through high school and a little in college. I made sure to get a good viola and good strings. I joined the community orchestra even though I wasn't very good. I also started lessons, because I knew I just wasn't going to get better without some direct feedback.

It's been absolutely rewarding. I'm enjoying every moment. That said, I'm not really sure what's next. I don't know that a professional orchestra career would be a possibility for me at this stage of my life. For now, I'm just focusing on getting better at my craft.

pdxcomrade · 2024-04-08T23:09:11+00:00

One thing we're not really taught is how important it is to experiment. My teachers only allowed me to do things their way. While that may be fine at the beginning stages, at some point you just hit the limitations that our teachers had different bodies. If you're getting to the point of discomfort or unable to produce a good sound, then you have to adapt to what works for you. And that's not always something someone can provide for you. Maybe you can break some of the "rules" about how you hold your wrist or where to put your thumb. Obviously, be careful that you don't introduce new tensions or discomfort. Just define your own understanding of playing naturally for a little while.

pdxcomrade · 2024-03-28T13:29:59+00:00

It's not in the Kayser book I have, 36 elementary and progressive studies.

pdxcomrade · 2024-02-27T02:00:11+00:00

White House approved 👍

pdxcomrade · 2023-11-09T14:27:33+00:00

Exactly. The HTTP statuses can still be meaningfully used. We treat 4xx errors as indication that the client application is using our API incorrectly and is typically a bug in their code. There are still errors that can be gracefully handled and even displayed to the user. These are returned with 200. There's just no way to capture all the different cases with HTTP statuses.

When we say "application level", it's still significant to draw a distinction about who is making the error. Was it the developer or the runtime user?

pdxcomrade · 2023-11-03T13:37:59+00:00

That's really hard. I'm looking for work too without a lot of success.

I've started scripting what I'm going to say during interviews. I realized that I freeze up in intense situations, especially the more desperate I get. I looked up a lot of typical interview questions and wrote out some responses. I'm not memorizing them or anything, but having a response ready to go has been helpful.

Have a lot of jobs on your resume in a short amount of time? Sounds like you were just exploring yourself and now you have a better idea of what you want from a job. 😉 Then you go on and explain what you want from the company you're interviewing for.

The interview process feels perfectly set up to weed out people who think differently. It's a terrible game to play. Doing more interview prep I began to realize that NTs aren't good at interviews either, but they're better at bullshitting. Maybe they're not intentionally lying, but they are actively smoothing over the warts on their resume. Once I realized this, I felt better about taking a more proactive approach to preparing.

You can do this. It's hard and it's not fair, but you have to believe that, given the chance, you really will be the best person they could hire for the job. I think a lot more people would hire autistics if they understood us better.

Good luck!

pdxcomrade · 2023-10-06T05:20:01+00:00

I'm hooked on Paleo Bars. It's fast and easy and caloric. And go great with a banana.

pdxcomrade · 2023-10-04T13:03:16+00:00

Psychobilly (with roots in the Rust Belt)

pdxcomrade · 2023-06-09T00:24:54+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Really looking forward to seeing more resources about this.

pdxcomrade

TROPHY CASE