Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
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.
