Your primary go-to resources:

• Portland Startups Slack — With more than 8,000 profiles — many of them, admittedly, lurking or long dormant — the Portland Startups Slack still holds a special place in the community as the spot to find and connect with folks. With a stack of channels to focus conversations around whatever most interests you, it’s probably your most straightforward path to getting plugged in. Best of all, it’s totally free and open to anyone with an interest in Portland startups.
• Portland Startup Events + Calagator — Two calendars, one job: helping you find where the community is gathering. The Portland Startup Events calendar on Luma pulls together a running list of what’s coming up. And Calagator — the open-source, aggregated tech calendar that’s weathered a decade-plus of fits and starts — still gets the job done, so you don’t have to go hunting across Eventbrite and Meetup and Luma and whatever else. Between the two, you can keep tabs on what’s happening when. Or promote the events you’re organizing. Also, Wyrl has started aggregating events, as well.

Important community nodes:

• AI Portland — “A gathering of enthusiasts, professionals, and the AI-curious from all walks of life, committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome to explore, learn, and innovate. Whether you’re taking your first steps into the world of AI or you’re a seasoned professional looking to push the boundaries of what’s possible, AI Portland offers a space to collaborate, share knowledge, and drive positive change.”
• Portland AI Engineers — “A community of software developers passionate about building practical applications using generative AI technologies. Our core focus is on solving real-world problems by leveraging language models and AI tools.”
• Rose City Techies — “An inclusive community of techies dedicated to building, creating, and exploring the future of technology together. This is a place for those who want to find inspiration and forge meaningful connections, all focused on the central theme of our work. Rose City Techies is founded on non-traditional and creative perspectives, offering a fresh approach to the tech and startup scene.”

Monthly-ish gatherings:

• Demolicious
• OEN PubTalks
• TiE PitchClub
• Startup Conversations in the Couve

And hopefully, that gets you going. Have additional questions…? Come ask on the Portland Startups Slack and we’ll get you the help you need. Have other resources…? Submit a pull request and we’ll get them added.

Tough Shit with Oregon Humanities: Featuring Sankar Raman, JT Flowers, Kayla Kennett, and Georgia Lee Hussey – Tomorrow Theater

Tough Shit is an onstage conversation about the most challenging questions Portlanders are facing. We’ll bring together four people with very different experiences of and perspectives on the city to talk through some shit with help from the audience and a moderator. The questions will be tough, and this shit will not be resolved in one night; We expect to leave with more questions than answers, plus some renewed hope for the future. And if not, well….

Founders Better World Coffee: Tuesday 7/7, Tue, Jul 7, 2026, 8:00 AM | Meetup

Around 9:00am after some great coffee and way too much caffeine we’re going to B-Line Urban Delivery a Certified B Corporation seeking to enrich the fabric of our cities by reducing congestion and CO2 emissions, developing local green-collar jobs, partnering with local manufacturers and small businesses, doing our share to help those in need in our community, and generally believing in the premise that business can be a catalyst for positive change and has a responsibility to the common good.

The Great Blogging Collapse: What Happened to 100 Successful Blogs? [Study] | DanielStanica.com — Daniel Stanica — Advise, Broker, and Invest in Digital Assets

This is a cohort study, not a representative sample. I am not claiming that two-thirds of all blogs on the internet lost their traffic. I am claiming something narrower and harder to wriggle out of: of the specific blogs publicly celebrated as the model’s biggest winners, two-thirds lost the majority of their traffic.

Monique Cardwell exits Greater Portland Inc. for Delaware role – Portland Business Journal

Monique Claiborne Cardwell is departing the regional economic development organization Greater Portland Inc., where she has served as president and CEO since 2021.

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 7/1/2026 – AlleyWatch

Able Made, a soccer-inspired sustainable apparel and accessories company that sells off-pitch soccer-style clothing, has raised $2M in Seed funding from Oregon Sports Angels, Jeff Mostyn, Sara Toussaint, and Mark Hochgesang. The company was founded by Suzanne McKenzie in 2012.

Outdoor School | The Reser

Set in the nostalgia of 1990’s Portland and the timeless beauty of the Oregon woods, we follow charismatic Melvin Shambry, a 12-year-old navigating a childhood shaped by instability, homelessness, and limited access to opportunity.

Amazon carbon footprint jumps 16% as AI demand tests climate pledge

Amazon’s carbon footprint jumped 16% last year after several years of little or no increase. The company emitted nearly 80.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025. By comparison, that’s slightly higher than the nation of New Zealand’s emissions.

Majority of Americans support banning social media for kids under 16 | Pew Research Center

Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults support banning anyone under the age of 16 from using social media sites, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The survey comes as governments around the world weigh new restrictions on teens’ use of social media.

Crunchbase Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits

Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, surpassing the $440 billion invested in all of 2025 and setting a new high for startup investment in any half-year period on record, Crunchbase data shows.

US in talks with AI companies over voluntary standards for new models

The US government is negotiating voluntary standards with AI companies covering how new models get released, according to the Financial Times, with an announcement said to be possible within the next week.

Why I’m Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass

Unfortunately, times have changed. Google management has quietly abandoned the goals to become carbon-neutral because of the AI model energy usage. Worse, the current Google management is now signing deals with the US Ministry of War—where “any lawful purpose” by the current US government has already been repeatedly demonstrated to be in violation of international laws. None of this is being debated or communicated within the company. It is just decided by top-level management (I was part of the management chain before, and I hadn’t heard of any of these changes through internal channels). With my moral and ethical principles, I cannot—explicitly or implicitly, directly or transitively—support the current and ongoing actions of the “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality” US Ministry of War. Given Google’s top-level management direction and recent doubling-down, this unfortunately leaves me with the only choice to resign.

Now we’re getting AI fake news complaining about how AI fake news is the death of real news | Nieman Journalism Lab

Whatever the truth is, it’s a useful reminder that AI has made fakery easy enough that it can come from unexpected directions — even in a niche you know a lot about and which you wouldn’t expect to be worth the effort.

The Biggest Reality Check for First-Time Startup Founders | by Shray Talks | Jun, 2026 | Medium

What I was not prepared for was realizing that people rarely believe in an idea that has not yet proven itself, regardless of how convinced I was that it could become something meaningful. It was difficult to accept that my excitement, conviction, and long-term vision did not automatically translate into commitment from the people I hired or collaborated with.

World Cup boosts Oregon Latino-owned businesses after Trump slowdown • Oregon Capital Chronicle

Oregon Latino business owners say soccer watch parties bring in more customers after months of decline because of political uncertainty

Two simple prosperity proposals • Oregon Capital Chronicle

The report runs 452 pages. Some of its ideas are very specific, such as those concerning taxes and spending, and some still seem a little more vague, even if numbers are attached (such as a recommendation to reduce regulations by a set percentage, without more specificity on which regulations exactly should be dropped). But at least two ideas have deeper implications for the way things are or should be done in Oregon.

Commuter Pass Program — Central Eastside Industrial Council

The Central Eastside Commuter Pass is a Hop Card designed for individuals who live or work in the Central Eastside Industrial District, a collaboration between Central Eastside Industrial Council (CEIC), Transportation & Parking Advisory Committee (TPAC), Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), and TriMet. For only $17 per month, get unlimited rides on all TriMet services for six months, making it one of the best and most affordable ways to get around the district.

Autoresearch: The feedback loop behind self-improving agents

We’ve heard a lot about loops at the AI Engineer World’s Fair this week. Another buzzword is autoresearch, which involves building an “outer loop” where agents help maintain and improve the primary system, using feedback signals, evals and human input to make progress over time.

As the US turns 250, a forgotten founding influence helps explain its current unease

As Americans celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, how faithful is the U.S. today to its founding principles? I’m a political philosophy scholar who studies constitutional government. In my view, an especially helpful approach to answering such questions is to revisit the towering but neglected influence of the French philosopher Montesquieu on the founding of this country.

Ashton Kutcher leaving Sound Ventures to launch new VC firm with Morgan Beller | TechCrunch

Ashton Kutcher is stepping away from Sound Ventures — the firm he co-founded with Guy Oseary 11 years ago — to start a separate VC fund, the Wall Street Journal reported. The actor and investor’s new firm is being co-founded with Morgan Beller, who until recently was a general partner at seed-focused VC outfit NFX and previously co-led cryptocurrency project Libra at Meta. Beller also spent nearly three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Google Reader was building the wrong future

But those recommendations—and the users behind them—were what set Google Reader apart from other RSS readers. It had, at launch, an option to sort feeds by relevance, an early attempt at a personalized feed (one that Arrington noted didn’t work, at launch at least). But more tantalizing, you could follow other people in Google Reader, and see what they were reading. You could share anything, either from the RSS feeds you followed or from the wider web, with your followers in Google Reader. No commentary, no need to think up a pithy title or expand on the takeaways. Just links, as almost a proto-link blog or newsletter, with no connection between the articles other than being a few of your favorite things.

Tech Investors Will Be Sweating the Dog Days of Summer in More Ways Than One

Long gone are the days when summer offered respite from the dramas of markets and business cycles, and this year especially there are likely to be few languid days for anyone in the venture and AI industries.

The Internet I Grew Up With Doesn’t Exist Anymore – cleberg.net

Once upon a time, the internet didn’t even exist. When it did, the internet was a place. It was a place you went. You selectively chose to visit the internet, based on your own free will.

The AI jobs debate just got messier | TechCrunch

The report found that companies spending heavily on AI are growing headcount faster, even in the entry-level roles that many fear are doomed. According to the report, “high-intensity adopters” — firms that spend on average $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months — saw headcount increase 10.2%.

Ignore 90% of AI — A Defensive Field Guide for Small Business Owners — Signal + Noise

The AI market is noisy by design — every vendor wants urgency, every headline wants fear, every demo wants you to confuse possibility with priority. This is a filter for owners who need leverage, not another sales call.

Trump drops restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models | TechCrunch

The U.S. has lifted a requirement that Anthropic obtain a license before exporting its Mythos and Fable models abroad, a requirement that effectively cut off public access to what are widely considered the most advanced AI models released to date.

The ‘Father of the Internet’ is finally retiring | TechCrunch

Vinton Cerf will step down from his role as Google’s chief internet evangelist next week, marking the conclusion of one of the most influential careers in technology history.

Why I Stopped Arguing With People | A Geek’s Page

Over the years I’ve slowly stopped arguing. Not because I stopped caring about being right, but because I finally understood what an argument actually is, and what it can and cannot do. Here is what changed my mind.

The best startup pitch deck ever built

What does the perfect pitch deck look like? To answer that question, we selected the absolute best slides from our slide library, OpenDeck, and combined them to create “the best pitch deck ever”.

Airport Overhaul Is Officially Complete

The maze of construction walls have officially lifted and the next iteration of Portland International Airport is complete. After 11 years of planning and phased construction, the Port of Portland wrapped up Oregon’s largest public infrastructure project to date on Tuesday, June 30—$2.15 billion later.

Claude Code agents: what they actually are | Data Science Collective

A ground-up guide to subagents In Claude Code for practitioners who want to understand the feature before building with it.

Central Oregon sees a drop in homelessness after years of steady rise • Oregon Capital Chronicle

Nearly 1,700 individuals experienced homelessness across three central Oregon counties in 2026, a 19.1% drop from about 2,100 people in 2025, according to the Homeless Leadership Coalition’s point-in-time count.

Woodstock Food Carts: Coming To Woodstock Blvd in Portland – Bridgetown Bites

They look to open in this summer. The owners write, “This is a prime location with great visibility, strong neighborhood vibes, and a community that loves good food.”

How public celebrations quietly remake what it means to be American

Public celebrations – such as parades, festivals and even road races – can help with this. They play a critical role in society, incorporating the newest Americans into the community and creating a greater sense of belonging for everyone.

Things I Think I Think – Q2 2026 — Chris Neumann

There is a magical time once every 4 years when the world comes together around the beautiful game. Given all of the geopolitical changes that have taken place over the past few years, it’s hard not to smile at the fact that cohost United States will play its first elimination game today, on Canada Day, while Canada will next take to the pitch on the 4th of July.

Spotlight: Eric Fruits and Joe Cortright — Oregon Journalism Project

Two economists have sharply different takes on the recommendations by Gov. Tina Kotek’s Prosperity Council.

Exclusive: No More Side Hustles: Why AI Startup Omnea Will Give Employees $250K To Openly Plan Their Next Startup

“Starting a business, you don’t want to speak to investors who you don’t know. You want to speak to people you know and trust, who want you to succeed and know what they’re talking about,” said Ben Freeman, founder and CEO of Omnea, in an exclusive interview with Crunchbase News explaining why the company decided to start the initiative. “And ideally, you want to get the advice of your colleagues. But it’s always taboo — telling your colleagues you want to go start something and quit your job. I don’t think it needs to be.”

We Need To Save Venture Capital From Bad Data

When I moved into investing, it was a shock to me how far behind the industry was, comparatively. Today, as every financial institution scrambles to prove it has an AI strategy, the pressure to do something visible with the technology overrides the desire to do something useful with it. The way most investment teams adopt AI today is, to put it charitably, misguided.

Sip and Learn Tickets, Wednesday, July 15  •  8 AM – 10 AM | Eventbrite

This isn’t your typical networking event. It’s part coffee break, part storytelling circle, and part growth session — where founders, creatives, and dreamers come together to share the ups, the downs, and everything in between.

Let It Crash: How to Steer What Comes After

The products of a technology bubble are more durable than the bubble itself. Technological fervor drags an absurd amount of capital into the new thing and pours it into infrastructure that no rational, sober investor would have built that fast. Britain got a railway network out of railway mania. The 1990s gave us the fiber that carried everything we built in the 2000s, laid by companies that mostly went bankrupt laying it. The investors lost their shirts; the rails and the fiber stayed.

The primitive is the product | Amplify Partners

And once you get the primitive right, it becomes the building block that everyone else standardizes around. The abstraction ultimately becomes the interface, the interface becomes the ecosystem, and the ecosystem becomes your competitive advantage.

The Founder’s Guide to Secondaries: Getting Liquid Before the Exit.

Selling your shares privately, without an exit, is now a bigger source of liquidity than the entire IPO market.

1803 Fund buys Albina industrial properties for redevelopment – Portland Business Journal

“These properties are part of a neighborhood called The Low End — a name with roots in Albina’s early days, given its proximity to the river’s flood plain,” 1803 Fund CEO Rukaiyah Adams said in a statement. “Our vision connects Albina Riverside, The Low End, and the surrounding neighborhoods into one thriving district.”

The twilight of the chatbots – by Ethan Mollick

But abstract graphs only get you so far, and they can hide how jagged the frontier is (and also the fact that the open weights models, while very impressive, do not always perform as well as their benchmarks would indicate). To get real insight, you need to try using AI for different use cases and rigorously assess how good they are in the areas that matter to you.

1. Governor Kotek signed SB 1507 as expected. But she also said something about QSBS that you need to hear
2. Why is no one talking about Oregon eliminating QSBS tax breaks?
3. Long-time innovation ecosystem builder Dwayne Johnson shares insights on Oregon economic woes
4. Quietly raising one of the largest rounds in Portland startup history: Panthalassa’s $140M Series B
5. Oregon AI Accelerator reveals inaugural cohort
6. Silicon Forest Tech Summit 2026: It’s back and promising to be bigger than ever
7. Three ways to immediately engage with folks from the Portland startup community
8. Anthropic plans to pop by Portland for a Claude Code Hackathon
9. Investing $125M in downtown Portland garners Jeff Swickard two buildings and a new UpStart tenant
10. Portland Metro Region Innovation Hub loses another executive director

Honorable mentions

• Business Oregon has $125k for someone to tell us how innovative we’ve been for the last 5 years
• Portland venture capital just hit a 10-year low. Good.
• QQ: Do you feel represented by Portland Mayor Wilson’s new Central City Roundtable…?
• Remembering Joshua Baer, the godfather of the Austin, Texas, startup community
• My response to the Oregon Governor’s Prosperity Council
• An imperfect and meandering history of Portland startup incubators and accelerators

Our Place helps people discover local life, connect with others, and cultivate a sense of belonging sooner. We believe no one should have to wait years, or rely on luck, to feel at home where they live. Because belonging shouldn’t happen by accident.

Bailey Romatoski and Yuuki Sasao-Ruef built it around that idea — with a fixed-price model for the places and organizers on it, so what you see is “no engagement-driven algorithms, no pay-to-win advertising.” A handful of Portland spots are already on board as founding partners, including Ground Kontrol and the Portland Art Museum.

If you’ve ever wished feeling at home somewhere didn’t take quite so long, it’s worth a look. The iOS app is live now. With Android on the way soon. Find your people at Our Place.

LocalFirst PDX is a community of Portlanders, independent businesses, and the editorial layer that connects them. We’re shoppers choosing our neighbors over national brands. We’re business owners who want to be found by the people who already live here. And we’re the platform making it as easy to shop Portland-first as it is to default to Amazon.

To try it for yourself, visit LocalFirst PDX.

America’s Seed Fund Summit – America’s Seed Fund

Join the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for America’s Seed Fund Summit, taking place across the month of July. The Summit includes virtual and in-person events connecting entrepreneurs, innovators, and researchers from across the country to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, also known as America’s Seed Fund. The programs are the nation’s largest source of early-stage, non-dilutive funding for high-growth technology startups.

Seattle’s Shadow C-Suite — Ascend.vc

A non-exhaustive list of C-Suite execs at tech giants headquartered elsewhere — who call the Emerald City home.

Elevate Capital Annual Investor Meeting: A Decade of Inclusion and the Future of Agentic AI – Elevate Capital

“Early-stage mentorship is one of the most important factors when choosing a venture partner; someone who is hands-on and helps the company and its leaders grow,” said Allie. “Elevate Edge guides founders to shift from ‘working in the business’ to ‘working on the business,’ and equipping them with the tools to scale.”

In San Francisco’s A.I. Era, Even $180,000 Tech Salaries Are No Longer Enough – The New York Times

San Francisco has long wrestled with affordability, but the issue has been magnified as OpenAI, Anthropic and other start-ups have attracted a flood of A.I. workers. The overall cost of living in the city sits 65.6 percent higher than the national average, according to the latest data from the Cost of Living Index by the Council for Community and Economic Research.

Oregon’s minimum wage rises 50 cents per hour this week • Oregon Capital Chronicle

In the Portland metro, the floor for hourly wages will rise to $16.80. In 15 counties and parts of three counties in the Willamette Valley, Northwest Coast and southern Oregon, the minimum wage rises to $15.55 per hour, and in 18 mostly rural eastern Oregon counties, the minimum hourly wage will be $14.55. The rural wage is always $1 less than the standard wage, and the Portland minimum wage is always $1.25 more due to the higher cost of living.

Technological Involution | rohan ganapavarapu

Very few people have deep conviction in technology, or really even understand technology in vivo.

Introducing the C1 Autonomous Worker

We built the future state. For the first time, the system that governs your enterprise can also run it. C1AWs are agents that run work loops, carry state, execute code, and act on your behalf across C1’s full API surface.

Techworks on Tap 2026 » Techworks

Join us for Techworks on Tap 2026—a vibrant, purpose-driven happy hour happening Thursday, July 16 from 4:00–6:00 PM at Metropolitan Tavern in Portland. This isn’t just networking—it’s an engaging evening where tech leaders, founders, and innovators come together to share insights, ask bold questions, and explore real solutions to real challenges.

Portland to raise parking meter rates again. How much will you pay? – oregonlive.com

Three of the city’s five parking meter districts will see rates rise by 20 cents per hour, according to changes adopted last month by the Portland City Council.

AI Didn’t Kill Self-Help. We Did.

For me, it’s writing this blog post myself, and pledging to write every post after it myself. Josh Bernoff inspired me to only write posts that come from my actual writing, not just because it’s my voice (beautiful, imperfect, and unique), but because it forces me to think. The act of doing, and thinking about that doing, is the most important learning.

August PubTalk: The Science of Startup Success

On Wednesday, August 12th Cara Turano, President and Executive Director of Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, will be sitting down for an engaging fireside chat with Thomas Thurston, a researcher, investor, and strategist known for uncovering the hidden forces that shape markets and innovation.

The Data-Center Panic Is Overblown – The Atlantic

Most of the complaints inflate the costs of data centers and overlook the fact that, in some contexts at least, they can bring real benefits. If saying no is good politics, it isn’t always good policy.

Semiconductor Startup Opens Door to US Big Tech… Gyeonggi Innovation Center Achieves Intel NDA and PoC Results – 벤처스퀘어

The Gyeonggi Innovation Center operated a program for approximately four months from February to May of this year in cooperation with the Portland economic promotion agency GPI (Greater Portland Inc.), the Oregon economic development agency Business Oregon, and the Silicon Forest Partnership.

The Moda Center, Lloyd Center, and Portland’s Generational Need to Think Big

At a time when we need big, catalytic ideas and initiatives that reflect broad, long-term thinking, it seems our civic dialogue is increasingly consumed by political theater, performance, and agreements coming from the fringes, rather than the prioritization of policy and plans that can actually solve our problems.

‘Prosperity Council’ wish list for Gov. Tina Kotek: lower taxes, less regulation, more land – OPB

“People love Oregon; they do not love what’s going on in Oregon,” said Renée James, a tech executive who co-chaired the Prosperity Council alongside Curtis Robinhold, executive director of the Port of Portland. “We’re just not competitive. That’s not even a judgment – it’s just fact.”

Nearly every proposed Oregon initiative won’t make it onto the November ballot • Oregon Capital Chronicle

Initiative Petition 28, an effort led by Portland-based vegan advocates to ban harming or killing all animals with almost no exceptions, had submitted 138,300 signatures as of Wednesday to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. That’s 20,000 signatures more than what they need to qualify for the ballot. The secretary of state still needs to verify those signatures before the petition can secure a spot on the ballot.

Moneyball for Physical AI – by Animesh Garg

This essay builds a framework for the marginal utility of data, and uses it to discuss value accrual in Physical AI. We take the perspective of the scaling laws that guide how loss behaves with data, and the unit economics that govern what a dollar of data is worth. Together they give an approximate marginal utility per dollar, the on-base percentage of physical AI.

Crunchbase Data: Q2 Brought The Most Billion-Dollar Startup Exits Since 2021

Overall, we’re still well behind the prior high in terms of the number of big exits, as you can see charted below. The IPO and SPAC boom of five years ago will be hard to match for exit count.

The Bifurcation of Capital is Inevitable – by Kyle Harrison

Gin rummy is the perfect metaphor, because it names the thing most investors can’t help themselves but get focused on; selling as often as buying. Just one example from this past week was Mohnish Pabrai, a self-described “clone“ of Warren Buffett, explaining why he put 77% of his portfolio into Micron in 2023 and then sold all of it just six months later, before Micron’s stock went up 15x…

What If There Is No Moat Yet? | Tomasz Tunguz

Lagging moats are earned through years of execution. Economies of scale, brand, channel relationships, embedded workflows. They cannot be drawn on a competitive landscape matrix because they are not built yet.

How I Build Software in June 2026

Some things are quicker, but some things still take too long. Oddly, the complexity and limits of LLMs make building software both easier and harder.

Weekly Review: The Hard Half – by Sam Keen – Altered Craft

A pattern runs through this issue: the model is no longer the whole job. The work has moved to the system around it, the loop you engineer, the harness that runs it, the sandbox that contains it, and the provider and version-control layers that support it. The news side counts the cost of all that, from liquid-cooled data centers to the token bills arriving as the subsidies end.

Tweens Curated the Latest Portland Art Museum Show

The show came out of a collaboration between PAM and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art, an education-focused museum inside King Elementary in Northeast Portland. Founded in 2014 by Portland State University professors and artists Lisa Jarrett and Harrell Fletcher, the program gives kids hands-on experience working as curators, preparators, artists, gallerists, writers and docents.

Celebrate People like Om Malik and Susan Wojcicki When They’re Alive. That’s the Best Chance We Have To Make Tech Good Again. – Hunter Walk – Medium

See how people can be wildly successful but also kind, giving, approachable?

Intel’s Chip Business Shows Signs of Life After Years of Struggle – The New York Times

It is the centerpiece of President Trump’s drive to make more chips in the United States, but the company still has a long way to go before it can be called a complete turnaround.

An “infovore” shares his chats – by ChatGPT Pro Community

“The world is so interesting and so rich and so open-ended that the more you learn, the more you want to keep on going,” he adds. That curiosity shows up in almost everything he does: he reads two to three books a day, writes daily, has documented thousands of restaurants he’s visited since 2006, and has traveled to roughly 105 countries, including 33 trips to Mexico, seven to Brazil, and time living in Europe and New Zealand.

Zane Sparling, reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive, dies of cancer at 33 – oregonlive.com

“He was the kind of reporter every newsroom needs. Someone who knows where to go, who to find, what to ask and can quickly write stories that stand out,” Gunderson said. “With Zane, though, the stories were about a half-tick more entertaining than your average senior reporter, and no matter the day he’d already had, he’d happily jump on a late-breaking assignment.”

Token Tightening

Just a few months ago, heavily subsidized AI plans and a manic push by corporations to get their employees familiar with the technology led to aggressive tokenmaxxing, or measuring AI adoption by how many tokens employees use. That era appears to be over.

Oregon’s minimum wage rises Wednesday, but the pay hike reaches a smaller share of the workforce – oregonlive.com

Minimum-wage workers get a pay bump Wednesday, with wages rising 50 cents an hour across Oregon to keep pace with inflation. While welcome news for employees earning the minimum wage, the impact is likely to be muted given the small share of workers on that end of the wage spectrum.

“Burtual” Reality: AI in healthcare, round two

We brought back the panel from our AI + Healthcare event for round two. No live audience, no time limit, just Megan and Nicole finally asking the questions we didn’t get to. Janet Johnson (AI Governance Group), Dr. Arpi Chalian, and Burt Rosen joined us again.

Kotek says she supports Prosperity Council economic recommendations – Portland Business Journal

She suggested she would reverse a policy change she signed into law this spring and would instead reinstate a tax exclusion for gains made on the sale of qualified small business stocks. Kotek has said she signed Senate Bill 1507, which disconnected the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) provision from the federal tax code, to soften the blow from the Trump Administration’s 2025 tax cuts.

Everyone’s talking about AI and like it or not, it’s now a part of our every day lives. There are plenty of seminars and workshops on how to use AI in your small business, but they lack an understanding of your business’s unique value proposition – Authenticity. This Shop Talk is designed to be an open discussion with your peers on the benefits and downsides and how to best engage with AI. We will have small business champion and AI subject matter expert, Isaiah Steinfeld of Neue Alchemy to listen and answer any questions. This is also a great opportunity to connect, collaborate and network with peers.

The event takes place Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 9:00AM. Register on Eventbrite.