#Sounds of PDX

[idroveatank]

shout out to @the-birth-of-art phish at moda center portland ore 4/20/25

[bettergeology]

Need to be soothed? Have some gentle waves lapping on the banks of Oregon's Willamette River, near downtown Portland.

Video from May, 2020.

[page-2-ids]

ID: A flag with nine horizontal stripes, all the same size. The colors are, from top to bottom, dark gray, blue-gray, sky blue-gray, light gray, orange, light gray, sky blue-gray, blue-gray, and dark gray. END ID

PDXSoundsalbumic: A gender related to the Luis Assing album PDX Sounds

The colors come from the cover of the album

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The meritocracy to eugenics pipeline

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. After that, it's LONDON (Jul 1) and MANCHESTER (Jul 2).

It's kinda weird how, the more oligarchic our society gets, the more racist it gets. Why is the rise of billionaires attended by a revival of discredited eugenic ideas, dressed up in modern euphemisms like "race realism" and "human diversity"?

I think the answer lies in JK Galbraith's observation that "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

The theory of markets goes like this: a market is a giant computer that is always crunching all kinds of "signals" about what people want and how much they want it, and which companies and individuals are most suited to different roles within the system. The laissez-faire proposition is that if we just resist the temptation to futz with the computer (to "distort the market"), it will select the best person for each position: workers, consumers, and, of course, "capital allocators" who decide where the money goes and thus what gets made.

The vast, distributed market computer is said to be superior to any kind of "central planning" because it can integrate new facts quickly and adjust production to suit varying needs. Let rents rise too high and the computer will trigger the subroutine that brings "self-interested" ("greedy") people into the market to build more housing and get a share of those sky-high rents, "coming back into equilibrium." But allow a bureaucracy to gum up the computer with a bunch of rules about how that housing should be built and the "lure new homebuilders" program will crash. Likewise, if the government steps in to cap the price of rents, the "price signal" will be silenced and that "new homebuilders" program won't even be triggered.

There's some logic to this. There are plenty of good things that market actors do that are motivated by self-interest rather than altruism. When Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their Pagerank algorithm and revolutionized internet search, they weren't just solving a cool computer science problem – they were hoping to get rich.

But here's the thing: if you let Larry and Sergey tap the capital markets – if they can put on a convincing show for the "capital allocators" – then the market will happily supply them with the billions they need to buy and neutralize their competitors, to create barriers to entry for superior search engines, and become the "central planners" that market theory so deplores. If your business can't get any market oxygen, if no audience ever discovers your creative endeavors, does it matter if the central planner who decided you don't deserve a chance is elected or nominated by "the market"?

Here's how self-proclaimed market enthusiasts answer that question: all Larry and Sergey are doing here is another form of "capital allocation." They're allocating attention, deciding what can and can't be seen, in just the same way that a investor decides what will and won't be funded. If an investor doesn't fund promising projects, then some other investor will come along, fund them, get rich, and poach the funds that were once given to less-successful rivals. In the same way, if Google allocates attention badly, then someone will start a better search engine that's better at allocating attention, and we will switch to that new search engine, and Google will fail.

Again, this sounds reasonable, but a little scrutiny reveals it to be circular reasoning. Google has dominated search for a quarter of a century now. It has a 90% market share. According to the theory of self-correcting markets, this means that Google is very good at allocating our attention. What's more, if it feels like Google actually sucks at this – like Google's search-results are garbage – that doesn't mean Google it bad at search. It doesn't mean that Google is sacrificing quality to improve its bottom line (say, by scaling back on anti-spam spending, or by increasing the load of ads on a search results page).

It just means that doing better than Google is impossible. You can tell it's impossible, because it hasn't happened.

QED.

Google wasn't the first search engine, and it would be weird if it were the last. The internet and the world have changed a lot and the special skills, organizational structures and leadership that Google assembled to address the internet of the 2000s and the 2010s is unlikely to be the absolute perfect mix for the 2020s. And history teaches us that the kinds of people who can assemble thee skills, structures and leaders to succeed in one era are unlikely to be able to change over to the ideal mix for the next era.

Interpreting the persistent fact of Google's 90% market-share despite its plummeting quality as evidence of Google's excellence requires an incredible act of mental gymnastics. Rather than accepting the proposition that Google both dominates and sucks because it is excellent, we should at least consider the possibility that Google dominates while sucking because it cheats. And hey, wouldn't you know it, three federal courts have found Google to be a monopolist in three different ways in just a year.

Now, the market trufans will tell you that these judges who called Google a cheater are just futzers who can't keep their fingers off the beautiful, flawless market computer. By dragging Google into court, forcing its executives to answer impertinent questions, and publishing their emails, the court system is "distorting the market." Google is the best, because it is the biggest, and once it stops being the best, it will be toppled.

This makes perfect sense to people who buy the underlying logic of market-as-computer. For the rest of us, it strains credulity.

Now, think for a minute of the people who got rich off of Google. You have the founders – like Sergey Brin, who arrived in America as a penniless refugee and is now one of the richest people in the history of the human species. He got his fortune by building something that billions of us used trillions of times (maybe even quadrillions of times) – the greatest search engine the world had ever seen.

Brin isn't the only person who got rich off Google, of course. There are plenty of Googlers who performed different kinds of labor – coding, sure, but also accountancy, HR, graphic design, even catering in the company's famous cafeterias – who became "post-economic" (a euphemism for "so rich they don't ever need to think about money ever again") thanks to their role in Google's success.

There's a pretty good argument to be made that these people "earned" their money, in the sense that they did a job and that job generated some money and they took it home. We can argue about whether the share of the profits that went to different people was fair, or whether the people whose spending generated that profit got a good deal, or whether the product itself was good or ethical. But what is inarguable is that this was money that people got for doing something.

Then there's Google's investors. They made a lot of money, especially the early investors. Again, we can argue about whether investors should be rewarded for speculation, but there's no question that the investors in Google took a risk and got something back. They could have lost it all. In some meaningful sense, they made a good choice and were rewarded for it.

But now let's think about the next generation. The odds that these billionaires, centimillionaires and decimillionaires will spawn the next generation of 1%ers, 0.1%ers, and 0.0001%ers are very high. Right now, in America, the biggest predictor of being rich is having rich parents. Every billionaire on the Forbes under-30 list inherited their wealth:

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/forbes-billionaires-under-30-inherited-203930435.html

The wealthy have created a system of dynastic wealth that puts the aristocratic method of primogenitor in the shade. Every scion of every one-percenter can have their own fortune and start their own dynasty, without lifting a finger. Their sole job is to sign the paperwork put before them by "wealth managers":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Yes, it's true that some of the very richest people on Earth got their money by investing, rather than inheriting it. Bill Gates's investment income growth exceeds even the growth of the world's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who never did anything of note apart from emerging from an extremely lucky orifice and then simply accruing:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

But Bill Gates's wealth accumulation from investing exceeds the wealth he accumulated by founding and running the most successful company in history (at the time). Doing work never pays as much as allocating capital. And Gates's children? They can assume a Bettencourtian posture on a divan, mouths yawning wide for the passage of peeled grapes, and their fortunes will grow still larger. Same goes for their children, and their children's children.

Capitalism's self-mythologizing insists that the invisible hand owes no allegiance to yesterday's champions. The mere fact that the market rewarded you for allocating capital wisely during your tenure does not entitle your offspring to continue to allocate wealth in the years and centuries to come – not unless they, too, are capital allocators of such supremacy that they are superior to everyone born hereafter and will make the decisions that make the whole world better off.

Because that's the justification for inequality: that the market relentlessly seeks out the people with the skill and foresight to do things and invest in things that improve the world for all of us. If we interrupt that market process with regulations, taxes, or other "distorting" factors, then the market's quest for the right person for the right job will be thwarted and all of us will end up poorer. If we want the benefits of the invisible hand, we must not jostle the invisible elbow!

That's the justification for abolishing welfare, public education, public health, affirmative action, DEI, and any other programs that redistribute wealth to the least among us. If we get in the way of the market's selection process, we'll elevate incompetents to roles of power and importance and they will bungle those roles in ways that hurt us all. As Boris Johnson put it: "the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for [big] cornflakes to get to the top":

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/28/boris-johnson-iq-intelligence-gordon-gekko

Which leaves the servants and defenders of the invisible hand with a rather awkward question: how is it that today, capital allocation is a hereditary role? We used to have the idea that fitness to allocate capital – that is, to govern the economy and the lives of all of the rest of us – was a situational matter. The rule was "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations": "The first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it."

That's the lesson of the rags to riches story*: that out there, amongst the teeming grubby billions, lurks untold genius, waiting to be anointed by the market and turned loose to make us all better off.

In America, these stories are sometimes called "Horatio Alger" stories, after the writer who penned endless millionaire-pleasing fables about urchins who were adopted by wealthy older men who saw their promise and raised them to be captains of industry. However, in real life, Horatio Alger was a pedophile who adopted young boys and raped them:

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/horatio-alger-hundred-year-old-secret/

Perhaps your life was saved by a surgeon who came from humble origins but made it through med school courtesy of Pell Grants. Perhaps you thrilled to a novel or a film made by an artist from a working class family who got their break through an NEA grant. Maybe the software you rely on every day, or the game that fills your evenings, was created by someone who learned their coding skills at a public library or publicly funded after-school program.

The presence among us of people who achieved social mobility and made our lives better is evidence that people are being born every moment with something to contribute that is markedly different, and higher in social status, than the role their parents played. Even if you stipulate that the person who cleans your toilet has been correctly sorted into a toilet-cleaning job by the invisible hand, it's clear that the invisible hand would prefer that at least some of those toilet-cleaners' kids should do something else for a living.

And yet, wealth remains stubbornly hereditary. Our capital allocators – who, during the post-war, post-New Deal era were often drawn from working families – are now increasingly, relentlessly born to that role.

For the wealthy, this is the origin of the meritocracy to eugenics pipeline. If power and privilege are inherited – and they are, ever moreso every day – then either we live in an extremely unfair society in which the privileged and the powerful have rigged the game…or the invisible hand has created a subspecies of thoroughbred humans who were literally born to rule.

This is the thesis of the ultra-rich, the moral justification for rigging the system so that their failsons and faildaughters will give rise to faildestinies of failgrandkids and failgreat-grandkids, whose emergence from history's luckiest orifices guarantees them a lifelong tenure ordering other people around. It's the justification for some people being born to own the places where the rest of us live, and the rest of us paying them half our salaries just so we don't end up sleeping on the sidewalk.

"Hereditary meritocracy" is just a polite way of saying "eugenics." It starts from the premise of the infallible invisible hand and then attributes all inequality in society to the hand's perfect judgment, its genetic insight in picking the best people for the best jobs. If people of one race are consistently on top of the pile, that's the market telling you something about their genomes. If men consistently fare better in the economy than women, the invisible hand is trying to say something about the Y chromosome for anyone with ears to hear.

Capitalism's winners have always needed "a superior moral justification for selfishness," a discreet varnish to shine up the old divine right of kings. Think of the millionaire who created a "Nobel Prize sperm-bank" (and then fraudulently fathered hundreds of children because he couldn't find any Nobelists willing to make a deposit):

https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/07/nobel-prize-sperm-bank-human-tragicomedy-about-eugenics/

Or the billionaire founder of Telegram who has fathered over 100 children in a bid to pass on his "superior genes":

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/tech/pavel-durov-telegram-profile-intl

Think of Trump and his endless boasting about his "good blood" and praise for the "bloodlines" of Henry Ford and other vicious antisemites:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/22/trump-criticized-praising-bloodlines-henry-ford-anti-semite/5242361002/

Or Elon Musk, building a compound where he hopes to LARP as Immortan Joe, with a harem of women who have borne his legion of children, who will carry on his genetic legacy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-children-compound.html

Inequality is a hell of a drug. There's plenty of evidence that becoming a billionaire rots your brain, and being born into a dynastic fortune is a thoroughly miserable experience:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

The stories that rich people tell themselves about why this is the only way things can be ("There is no alternative" -M. Thatcher) always end up being stories about superior blood. Eugenics and inequality are inseparable companions.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/20/big-cornflakes-energy/#caliper-pilled

[pacificnorthwesterngothic]

Hello PNWG (and followers!) - Burning PDX question. I moved here recently and in many of the shops/restaurants the staff say “Welcome In!” when you enter.

To me this is weird phrasing (not just “welcome” or “hello” for example) and I’ve NEVER heard this phrase so frequently before in my life. Is this PDX specific? Is it new to the region in the last ten-ish years? Am I just hearing it all the time now that I’m paying attention? Also I should say I’m not mad about it. It’s delightful.

Hey, welcome in to the PNW! 😁

I hope our winter is treating you well.

Disclaimer: I have nothing other than anecdotal evidence to back this up.

I have mostly heard people reporting on the novelty of “welcome in” when they move to either the Midwest or the PNW. I have also seen people associate it with Starbucks which is, ofc, a Seattle chain whose employee handbook might have reflected those roots.

So here’s my theory…

The Midwest and PNW are two regions with a lot of Scandinavian settlement:

And how does one say “welcome” in Scandinavian languages?

Swedish: Välkommen

Norwegian: Velkommen

Danish: Velkommen

Icelandic: Velkomin

Faroese: Vælkomin

So my tin-hat theory is that formal/polite speech in these regions maybe has a Scandinavian influence. (German settlement is a possible wildcard factor.)

Formal/polite language tends to not change much over time. If Scandinavian words snuck into common usage because they looked like English, I imagine they could get fossilised as normal “polite” speech because 1.) no one expects formal speech to sound normal and, thus, 2.) no one tends to ask why or where formal language comes from.

Like, we all know “ma’am” having an apostrophe there means that something was shortened… but how many people on the street would immediately say, without hesitation, what the full form of that word is?

But that’s my crackpot theory. I’m excited to hear everyone else’s!

[gaza-giving-tree]

Imagine waking up to the sound of bombing, your home shaking violently, the walls cracking as destruction closes in around you. There is no time to grab your belongings, no time to gather your family—just the need to run, and the hope to survive. But where do you go when every place you’ve sought refuge before has already been bombed?

Images: Khaled, before and after the start of the war.

Story written by @rumiandroses

For Khaled, his sister Dina, and their family of 15 people, this has been their reality over and over again. They lost their home in Gaza City to relentless airstrikes. They fled to a school shelter, only for it to be bombed as well. Seeking safety, they moved to another displacement camp, but the occupation bombed that school, too.

Now, displaced once more in Deir al-Balah, they live in a small, makeshift tent that provides little protection from the sun, cold, and the relentless swarm of insects.

Khaled, once a university student studying graphic design, dreaming of a future in his field, now spends every moment fighting for survival. Dina, his sister, suffers from a severe gluten allergy, causing constant pain and illness in an environment where proper food is impossible to find.

Beyond their struggles, they are also caring for their elderly and sick parents and grandfather:

Ali (85), their disabled grandfather

Zuhair (65), their father

Kifa (62), their mother, who suffers from high blood pressure

One of their brothers, who is injured

With no income, no home, and no medical supplies, their situation grows more desperate each day.

Every donation, no matter how small, provides a lifeline—helping Khaled, Dina, and their family afford food, medicine, and a safer place to live.

You can donate to Khaled and Dina’s Chuffed campaign [HERE].

This campaign has been vetted by PDX Pigeon Mutual Aid. One of their organizers, Nastya, is sponsoring the campaign and explains the organization’s vetting process below:

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Okay, I have confirmed I have told my nearest and dearest off of the internet, so now I can say it with my whole chest:

After 15 years in PDX, we're moving. To Houston, as a matter of fact. We looked at a lot of different places. Houston won because it seems the most likely place I can breathe most of the year, the cost of living is noticeably lower than PDX (at least 25%), and it's also got direct flights to every place we want easy access to. Including back to PDX. And to Seattle so we can keep ECCC in our rotation. And Sean's mom's town. And the town she's planning to move to in a couple of years.

"OMG BUT TEXAS?!" I've heard in various concerned tones, including today when three of Sean's friends all said it like we were moving to the moon.

Yes, in fact, Texas. And no, not Austin, which is routinely compared to PDX. I want something different. We both do. And Houston is a purple city, and that sounds really fucking nice at this point. There's so much great in PDX, but I have been tired of how wild the blue politics go for a good while. Lots of rapture leftists in these parts, if you get me.

Austin also has no direct flights to Sean's mom, and we are so fucking tired of connecting flights. To get from PDX to that airport is an 18-hour travel day every single time. From Houston to the same place? No more time than an average work day and shorter than that, most likely.

And, Houston also puts us closer to my family, but to get to them via air, we'd have to fly to where Sean's mom is, then drive 2 hours, which is why ease of flights to Sean's mom were the bigger concern. Honestly, we'll probably just drive to my folks. It's like 8 hours. That's easy. We can bring the dog.

We're excited. It's odd to be at the age where "Can we find a place that meets our needs and puts us closer to family" is both a real thing that is happening but to also have the monetary security to do it. I won't have to look for a new job. I can take mine with me. Sean will have to find one, but he cleans pools, and we're moving to Texas. He's very good at his job and even has a couple of certifications under his belt. So.

If anyone wants to recommend a fave restaurant/park/yarn store/comic book shop/place to pay magic the gathering, feel free to message me. We know there's more driving in our future by moving to Houston, so let's see if we can't make some plans to ruin our new tires.

[goodluckclove]

Asking in slight nerves because the thought is exciting but also scary because NEW

Is Akadi, spicy? Are there less spicefull options? Is it SPICY spicy or just, lots of flavor?

Okay so most won't get the context for this. I'll explain.

I think there's a lot of facets about myself that sound like brags, but aren't. In my opinion there's one thing I bring up that I absolutely do intend as a bit of a brag, because I didn't pursue it on purpose and I think it's really really cool. And that's the year or so I spent working for the co-owner of AKADI PDX, a West African restaurant in Portland that's pretty beloved.

They briefly tried to open a small African market, and I found a job listing on Craigslist looking for market staff. I applied and ended up being hired a few days before opening. The owner, George, asked if I wanted to be manager. I politely declined, as I'd never managed a market before and was trying to stop jumping into jobs I don't have any idea how to do. Also I'm only half-white - but I'm entirely not black - and with my utter lack of knowledge when it comes to African cooking, having me be manager felt like a really weird look.

Unfortunately George is the type of chill that borders on wizardry, and I somehow ended up being manager. Unable to really understand how that happened but knowing that I needed a job, I spent the better part of a month diving into learning absolutely everything I could about every item in the market. I learned a ton about African spices and wines, their flavor profiles, and what they could be used for.

Clove story? Clove story.

George ended up really liking me. I don't think I was at all a good manager, but he told me multiple times that I was sold the most out of anyone on our small team. Because, as I said, I decided I needed to learn way more about our inventory than what was objectively needed.

Uh, so I left there to work at my Terrible Copywriting Job. It was one of the few jobs I left on good terms. I learned recently that House of Flavor closed down, but AKADI is still doing great and George has told me before that I could reach out whenever for a reservation.

Chef Fatou, George's wife, is the head chef and one of the coolest people I've ever met. I hadn't spoken to her much because she was way busy in the restaurant. She might think I'm weird because the few times we've interacted I was star struck by this super cool brilliant chef who radiates a fascinating intensity. If I remember correctly she is the creator of the spice mix that's used in AKADI sauce, which is sold in a few niche grocery stores across the Pacific Northwest. It's vegan and gluten-free. The spicy is not overwhelmingly spicy. It's got a kick, but it's far more focused on the tomato base and notes of ginger and garlic. It is super versatile. I used to use it as a base on pizza and hooooly shit. I would consider it accessible to most.

And suya powder is a similar story. It's spicy, but the spice comes from the inclusion of chili powder that's part of a whole spice mix. There's a big nutty element - I think from ground peanuts or peanut butter. The other spices might vary depending on the brand you get, but you'll often find nutmeg, paprika, garlic and onion. There's a lot that pairs with and compliments the spice.

I'm sure there are aspects of African cooking that are wildly spicy. I admit I haven't been able to explore it more in a while, because it's been hard to find a new African market I like that isn't across town where I used to live. But I found one recently. I haven't been yet, but I want to check it out once I start building up more energy. I am absolutely dying to find this African fried rice powder that is one of the tastiest things I've ever had. You can add it to the rice as it cooks in the machine and it comes out gold and incredible.

[jennyfromthebes]

this is a very silly request but do you have a list of the tmg songs that mention/are about portland? you posted rose quarter drifting yesterday and it made me curious if there are many more songs that mention/reference pdx!

hi there! I don't personally have a list but I'll point you to the Geographical References page on the tMG wiki! References are sorted by state, so here's what it says for Oregon:

Birth of Serpents, Bring Our Curses Home, Harlem Roulette, Moth and Worm, Pure Sound, Standard Bitter Love Song #8, Steal Smoked Fish, Third Snow Song, We Shall All Be Healed (Rose Quarter Drifting), White Cedar, Wizard Buys a Hat, You're in Maya

I feel like this might be missing some, but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head; in any case it's a good starting point! enjoy :)

[bvzzkil]

world peace // in god we trust, patricide, & let him be filthy still

credit: diy archive pdx

the hotbox, portland, oregon

amazing sound, amazing band. not much else to it. there doesnt seem to be many pv bands out there nowadays but the ones that exist fucking rip. world peace is good, hirs collective is good, polish, sex prisoner, etc etc etc idgaf just listen to some powerviolence today. also on another note gel did an audiotree set and im gonna listen to it and review it maybe today

[screamingforyears]

MINI_REVIEW(s): The review template of choice for the TL;DR Tribe…

‘FLAMBOYANT NONVIOLENT’ is the debut LP from @fawn.music.official & it finds the PDX-based duo of vocalist/guitarist/bassist Ida No & keyboardist/percussionist @nat.walker.music celebrating “the uniqueness in every human” across 14 cosmically blissed tracks that pull all manner of synth_waving, lucidly hazed & girl_grouping under one neon colored ElectroPop umbrella as evidenced on the YES affirming “Simulations”

‘DELUXE’ is the brand new EP from @panthermodern__ & it finds the Los Angeles-based project of audio/visualist/Sextilist Brady Keehn going the fuck off across 4 FULL CAPACITY tracks that manage to further the PM sound while continuing the sweaty assed dancefloor vibing we’ve come to expect as you find yourself once again immersed in an EBM swirl of clarion synths, jungled beats & sassed vox as witnessed on “Last Wave”

‘SPIRITUAL CRAMP’ (@bluegrapemusic) is the long-awaited self-titled LP from @spiritualcramptv & it finds the veteran San Francisco-based outfit firing on all cylinders across a 10-track spread as vocalist Michael Bingham serves as our energized MC while holding court over all kinds of garage’y riffs, herky-jerky PostPunk-isms & modish/Clash-esque posturing as heard on the aptly titled “Clashing At the Party”

‘PARASITE’ is the nasty ass debut LP from @stomachdoom & it finds the Geneva, IL-based duo of John Hoffman (Weekend Nachos, LEDGE) & Adam Tomlinson (Sea Of Shit, Sick/Tired) serving up thee vibe across 8 gut-wrenching tracks that revel in their absolute bleakness as we’re lead down a path of power_violenced, savagely sudge’d & ferociously filth’d DoomMetal as evidenced on opener “Crawl Space (Loom Ext.)”

[doktordismemberment]

Ragana

The label description didn't make it sound like this would be my thing but I really dig this track. Lo-fi blackened slowcore that kinda reminds me of Duster with black metal vocals before kicking in with faster stuff that sounds like the "Cascadian" black metal stuff that was all the rage back when I lived in PDX.

End of the day it's pretty and angry and desperate sounding and it's pressing the right buttons for me right now so I'm probably gonna pre order it.

Also: The singer of Ragana's voice reminds me a lot of the woman who fronted Fuckmorgue if anyone wants a completely obscure comparison.

[doomedandstoned]

PDX Sludge Beast VIRAL TYRANT Cuts Loose New Music Video

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

There's a new voice of doom echoing from dank halls all around the Rose City. Met VIRAL TYRANT, dubbed "a new breed of sonic, sludge-laden force from the mixed temperate rainforest and concrete jungle of Portland, Oregon."

Tapping into the Dungeons & Dragons and horror films, extreme metal and video games for inspiration, the band rails against "dehumanization and group think" with a potent blend of doom, sludge, thrash, grunge, prog, and even black metal. Let's be clear: this isn't an album covering different genres, but one unique strain of metal "woven cohesively together to forge a sound of complex, yet grounded blackened, psychedelic sludge."

Today, Doomed & Stoned brings you the third single from the band's upcoming album, 'Vultures Like You' (2023). "A Savage, Ensnared" introduces us to a place where there's no justice, no peace, no mercy, and is so beautifully accompanied by a music video from Dark Sprite Video

Viral Tyrant bassist Casey Martin reflects on the meaning of the song:

When I approached the idea of lyrics, I started with the way the song sounded. It reminded me of this lone warrior/gunslinger sorta character trope and ran with it. It was approaching the elections at the time and the BLM protests were winding down here in Portland. I wanted to take the opportunity to write a protest song.

I always thought that we need more messages of revolution and catharsis interwoven into our popular culture that reveal the truths of the world and not just a bunch of songs so focused on ego and shallow ethos. I wanted to instill a mood of pessimism and angst. Of frustration and anger. Of cathartic vengeance for freedom and human rights.

I imagined a disembodied narrator like in the Conan The Barbarian film telling a tale that keeps repeating time and time again. The Everyman character of the song is inspired by the struggles of the disenfranchised and the working class from whom imperialism keeps the truth buried.

Viral Tyrant's brand of heaviness pierces deep into the modern psyche, with razor sharp riffs, gruff vocals, and tales not soon forgotten. Vultures Like You comes out July 21st on multiple formats via Ripple Music (pre-order here). Stick it on a playlist with High on Fire, Phantom Hound, Serial Hawk, and Cough.

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[anyavamps]

Featured Band: Twin Tribes Location: Brownsville, Texas Genre: Darkwave, Post Punk

Clip from 6-17-25 show at WONDER BALROOM (PDX)

[sweaterkittensahoy]

So, I've been following the whole Resilient Jenkins stuff that comes out of tiktok via youtube. If you don't know what's up with it, Ammy Robinson has several videos on her channel about it and does a good job sticking to concise points for what is a wildly meandering situation at this point.

Anyway, shortest version: A "I wanna be tik tok famous " woman, her deadbeat boyfriend, and their seven kids were living in a 1 bedroom apartment somewhere in PDX. They got evicted for lack of rent payments and also, possibly, fire code violation.

I am not going to talk on the many, many parts of this story that I have very large opinions on because I don't want anyone to mistake my anger at these adults with any sort of anger towards poor people in general. I do not have anger towards poor people. I have anger towards shitty people.

That being said: They had 4 cats. When they got evicted, they announced via tiktok that they were going to make all the cats "outdoor cats."

People went, "So, you're dumping your cats??? Because that sounds like dumping your cats."

And the woman--who is the face of the family (and I will say one mean thing about her and it's that I want to slap that blaccent she puts on to sound tough out of her entire mouth) -- made several videos about how people are "making claims" that she's gonna dump the cats. And that she's been "accused," and saying she won't explain herself because "you all wouldn't listen anyway!" Etc.

Anyway, they did dump the cats. And then she posted a video justifying herself saying, "Well, no one who offered to help could take them, and I called all the shelters, and they're full up!"

You fucking liar.

PDX shelters very rarely fill up. We have such a high rate of adoption in this city that a LOT of animals get sent from out of state because we basically always have room for more animals (Bean is from Fresno). And, by the way, I checked. The Oregon Humane Society space here can hold 120 cats for adoption and only has 56 in that area right now.

FUCKING. LIAR.

And if you're thinking, "Well, but do they charge if you are surrendering your own pets?" I don't know, but I know that's at least a semi-common thing, in which case, either lie and say you found them somewhere or ask one of the many people who offered to help to drop them off for you so you so it's not a lie to say "No, these are not my cats," to the intake person.

Anyway, a group of people got together to try and find these poor cats, and someone found one of them, and the poor kitty was very thin in a way that simply cannot be from recently getting abandoned but speaks, instead, to long-term mistreatment. And she was still so sweet to the rescuer. Poor baby.

That's my one thought on this entire situation that I'm willing to put in a post. The rest of my thoughts are not as easily stated as "You fucking lying shitwit. I know for certain you didn't even fucking try."

[emthought]

Saw Death Cab's IG post about today being the tenth anniversary of Kintsugi.

When the album came out, I'd just dropped out of grad school and was in the thick of my worst depressive episode. I was hesitant to listen at first because what if I didn't like it, I didn't want another thing to let me down (yeah, I know how overdramatic that sounds). But I finally did a few weeks after the release date and was floored in the best way.

One of my fave DCF records that came at exactly the time I needed it. I'd moved back to PDX from SoCal and felt like the line "how can I stay in the sun when the rain flows all through my veins?" was written for me. "There's a dumpster in the driveway with all the plans that came undone" was me dropping out of school because of my anxiety. Listening made me feel so much less alone.

Happy 10 years, Kintsugi. I'll have you on repeat all day.