The 93rd sojourn takes off from Sacramento, slowly
w/: ‘Tacoma’s Zohran' + Dame’s dollars + mo’ ethnic cleansing
In my Fresno State roommate’s Sacramento backyard I am warming up. Writing wise, with this sentence. The ones that follow, too.
Playing scales, if you will indulge my grandiosity.
By nine I need to be on turn my focus to the movie I came down to write. Now is 7:30 on Wednesday morning, and this Friday newsletter is looking to be the least newsy edition yet. My expectation is for this sojourn to go borderline canned, compared to the wild frenzy of deadline. Totes different room, very different prose.
Bet on this email being better put together than what comes out of the usual rear-loaded way.
Imagine being such a fuck-up that you get the two greatest rappers alive killed and that’s only the second most notorious chapter of your life.
Budget-priced Oregon weed is uplifting me in this suburban Sac backyard.
Musing on the putrid, in-fucking-defensible local NBA team, I am reminded of a meet-up with Adam Davis, executive director of Oregon Humanities. Earlier this week—the guy who hired me to do Northwest Mixtape through OH’s Conversation Project—joined Cousin Lev and me for a podcast conversation that I will make available to over the weekend. Excepting about five minutes in which Lev (righteously) rants about the Whites House defunding of America’s humanities councils, we strictly talk NBA. Adam happens to be suing Trump in Portland’s federal district court.
And, in what may become a recurring podcast feature, I express remorse to a former producer or boss for having been too high for a gig.
The first podcast apology went out to spring guest and former WeedWeek producer Hannah Smith. In studio I was often charming, insightful, and far, far to gone to make the tech part of our relationship good. In that June episode, Hannah righteously minimized my transgression and even found a way to compliment me.
Adam did something else, and it was hella interesting.
We met in 2015, a month or so after I started trying to turn my talk at Cornell’s Conference on Capitalism into a hip hop conversations gig. Just a few years out of moving from Venice, Southern California, I was still getting a handle on Portland, never mind the culture of a pretty straight non-profit like OH.
At the same time I landed the Oregon Humanities gig I was settling in as unofficial Uncle to the critical theory program at PNCA. (The primary responsibility being incessant teasing for their questionable decision to study critical theory) My former partner was administrating the program and I became super tight with a few of these bright grad students. They kept me young at a critical part of my intellectual development, and those friendships remain invaluable to me.
The moment he and I walked into Oregon Humanities, I knew we had insufficiently calibrated how stoned was the right amount of stoned for the room.
One of the critical theory students was Kevin, a painter from Arkansas, and our thing was getting just absurdly stoned. (I know. We did not invent this.) On the afternoon that Kevin and I went to that first Oregon Humanities mixer, we thought of ourselves as having dialed things back a notch or two. The problem with guestimating this way though is that it fails to take into account the standards of others. That decade ago, Kevin and I had been ensconced with an art school bunch that was very much of 2010s cannabis culture. Some Saturday nights a few of us would hang out after hours at a Japanese restaurant in Southeast and smoke ourselves into oblivion while the chefs and cooks played poker. My then-partner, not a pot person, would drive me home.
I don’t get high like that anymore. Not on purpose.
We really aren’t going to talk hoops for a while
Perhaps a season of Seattle SuperSonics stories will sate you.
Even if we had come in deadass sober he and I would have stood out.
Kevin was about 15 years younger than the median partygoer age, stands about 6-3 and had long, blond hair to go with his striking blue eyes. Let me go out on a limb and guess that I was the only Black in this Oregon Humanities conference room, I knew there had been bad mis-calibrations of how stoned was the right amount of stoned.
Alas, we had not. If we had been in a Just Say No era cautionary comic book, stink lines would have been coming off us. Perhaps in 2015 there were people in the room tastefully buzzed on newly legal edibles. We’ll likely never know.
But I do know that we were a minor spectacle. Adam said a thing that surprised me when I brought it up on the podcast. He didn’t deny that Kevin and I were the highest in the room.
“Maybe you were just ahead of your time,” he said. A that is analysis that I will happily take.”
Pride Month as anger ignitor
The next No Kings protest will be on July 14. Sit tight.
Speaking of too much, let’s do 9+1.
10 Wait, Tacoma has its own Zohran?
As much as June’s seismic NYC primary indicated a tolerance for socialism among the young and a new paradigm for discussing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the vote represents the opportunity to reduce top-down expressions of political power. Across America, the as-yet-uncelebrated winners in the Zohran Mandami race are public servants who’ve shined in unglamorous local concerns, such as public transit.
Like the sensational New York bellwether, Tacoma mayoral candidate Katie Wilson is young, unapologetically progressive, and the bane of local political elites.
The Urbanist
A win by long-time pol Bruce Harrell looked to be a foregone conclusion until Wilson got into the race.
The Transit Riders Union General Secretary is credited with helping to pioneer the JumpStart Seattle progressive payroll tax, which saved the City from deep cuts and boosted affordable housing investment amidst the recession.
Lil Hit
The Milwaukee Bucks cut Damian Lillard after he tore a hammy, and they’ll be paying dude a record-breaking amount of money to be gone.
Yahoo
9 How undervalued is the Fever lady?
Reacting to The Athletic’s reporting on the WNBA’s most popular player—not to be confused with the league’s best player—the always insightful Dominique Foxworth offers perspective on Clark’s billion-dollar valuation.
By way of comparison, her day job pay “[i]s obviously absurd to the value she’s created,” he says.
The Dominique Foxworth Show / The Athletic
Clark’s WNBA salary is just over $78,000 per year.
“In my lifetime, we had Muhammad Ali, we had Michael Jordan, we had Tiger Woods, and to me, it’s early, but we have Caitlin Clark,” offered John Kosner, a former ESPN executive turned industry consultant. “People who don’t care and don’t follow the sport that she plays (in) have been driven not just to watch, but to watch avidly.”
The Athletic report was followed by controversy as Clark’s peers voted her the league’s ninth-best guard in All-Star voting.
Lil Hit
Spotify’s ownership invested $700 million in AI military defense, so now you can’t hear Deerhoof songs on that platform. Cool
KQED
Caen
If you aren’t planning for 2026 election interference you are not a serious political leader…
The only reason for passing such an widely-despised bill is that that you are planning to skip an election…
The extent to which support for diversity, equity, and inclusion are being shamefully disappeared is illustrated by the unnamed sources expressing routine ideas about fairness in this free NY Times article…
As Trump threatens to imprison NYC’s next expected mayor, keep in mind the linguistic and rhetorical tools that are key to how the POTUS spreads lies…
It may turn out that the most leader-y thing I’ll have done is forge this path of poverty…
8 Our left out ladies of legal weed
Sometimes a single story can contain multitudes. Though not especially well written, this wide-ranging take brings into account ways in which cannabis legalization has failed to open doors for women.
Despite its avenue of inquiry, the author asks whether it’s fair to say that social equity has failed when the industry as a whole has struggled.
Dame Magazine
The report tackles another topic worth scrutinizing: Bias against type. “(I realized) that was absolutely happening to me—not just a gender bias, but a mom bias, like I was rejected or not even considered for roles because they knew I was a mom,” said one mother.
Lil Hit
To the surprise of no one, using AI as a trip sitter isn’t a risk-free endeavor. Yet, people are doing it.
Massachusetts Technology Review
Do you get anything extra out of this Substack, a quality—or qualities—beyond the acquisition of information? Are you occasionally delighted? Do you sometimes feel less alone?
If none of this applies to you, awesome. Cozy all the up to the lip of the paywall, and then walk away. You are free to scavenge amid the free emails and paywalls inadvertently let down. But if you have felt less bummed out going into a weekend or a notch less hopeless, give thought to this unique avenue of gratitude expression.
7 Oregon legislators cave to Meta and Alphabet
Senate Bill 686 was going to make Meta and Google pay for the newsroom-generated content that powers their platforms. Then the Big Tech’s lawyers began showing up in Salem. This week, the forward-looking legislation was left for dead.
The Oregonian
If passed SB 686 would have been incentivized tech companies to enter paid agreements with individual publishers or pay a annual lump sum to all Oregon digital newsrooms.
On a Tuesday floor vote, the bill fell just one vote shy of the threshold for passage.
Every Senate Republican opposed the bill.
Lil Hit
Sure, you like Zohran Mamdani, but have you ever tried Zohran Mamdani on weed?
Celeb Stoner
Caen you feel the love tonight?
Imagine being such a fuck up that you get the two greatest rappers alive killed and that’s only the second most notorious chapter of your life…
Last week it hit me that I live in a bubble of of people who know who Dave Eggers is…
Y’all weren’t really rockin with me when I was pushing this program…
…still think I was being unreasonable or impatient?
For those of you who don’t buy the top content, here’s a gratuitous mention that San Francisco Hash Week is upon us…
From time to time I wonder how much that Depth Reporting award that California Newspaper Publishers Association gave me a couple of years would be worth if I hadn’t been writing about race and weed…
But that’s as useless as wondering how The No-No would have helped me if Dock Ellis had not been tripping when he had that singular outing…
6 The federal parks lies feel egregious, but may have a larger purpose
Muir Woods, Tule Lake, the Sutro Baths, and Alcatraz are all national parks that contain valuable tales of American racism. As is happening with military locales, their history is being white washed in preparation for the impending Nazi future.
48 Hills
All inappropriately patriotic historical content will be removed by September 27.
The Interior Department order to wipe out this history is tragi-comedically called, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
Lil hit
Kevin Durant, Allen Iverson, Chris Webber, Ricky Williams, Mike Tyson, Matt Barnes, Wyclef Jean and others have formed the “Coalition of Athletes and Entertainers Supporting President Trump’s Policy Objectives.” They have signed this letter.
Marijuana Moment
5 ICE victims: Crowded in Tacoma, sent to Alaska, present whereabouts unknown
ICE airlifted about 40 men from Tacoma’s Northwest Detention Center on June 8, according to the Alaska Department of Corrections. The reason given was severe overcrowding in the wake of the ethnic cleansing uptick demanded by Washington.
Those detainees were flown to Anchorage and held in a city jail. As of Monday no one would account for the former Washington residents.
Anchorage Daily News
Last week the ACLU of Alaska sent a letter to state officials demanding that the immigrants be removed from the Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility and that additional transfers be halted “unless and until constitutionally adequate conditions of confinement and attorney access can be guaranteed.”
“[F]or security reasons,” Department of Corrections spokesperson Betsy Holley declined to say where they were taken. And by “security reasons” Holley might mean that she’s insecure about the morality of these kidnappings.
Lil Hit
This scathing editorial leads me to believe that the seat of Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) will very much be up for grabs, and broken Medicaid promises will be the reason.
Fresno Bee
Dance the Caen-Caen
A lot is wrong with the world, but Oregon is trying to bring back the old-school dime bag. And that’s not nothin…
ODOT layoffs are expected to have begun by Monday…
It’s liberal politeness that makes being perplexed their default when dirty motherfuckers do dirty motherfucker things, and the inappropriateness of this reaction incenses me…
Libs need to call in folks who have hands-on experience with nasty-necked dirt dobbers…
Word is that Sacramento’s starting backcourt will be Dennis Schroeder and Russell Westbrook, which would have to be the league’s worst?
4 On Tuesday, Cali’s legal weed deathwatch began
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