We finally have something to look forward to this year! (Two things, if you count the possibility of a little snow on Tuesday.) Additional topics include a local eco-activist’s part of a global effort to keep once-futuristic electronic gadgets out of dumps and landfills; the just-started and already deadlocked Legislature; how urban growth affects plant/animal evolution; and Teatro ZinZanni’s site getting sold off.

A local musician/artist became a trolling target during the ridiculously false (even more so than most) far-right conspiracy known as “pizzagate.” In more rational discourse, we explore the breakdown of bipartisanship in the Legislature (even before the session’s start); more complications toward police reform; Amazon’s apparel expansion; and another beloved local figure needing help.

Our Thursday e-roundup concerns a Mexican-born Seattle artist with a new twist on Day of the Dead iconography; a new phone area code for the region; a man who allegedly held his own family hostage with a bow and arrow (among other things); one more Amazon skyscraper site; and yet another iconic figure’s demise.

Despite the materialistic and/or post-pagan trappings of the season, the oft re-imagined, re-interpreted figure of Jesus remains at the core of our society’s yearly winter-solstice rituals. And he really is a great guy if you separate what he said and did from what some of his supposed followers have said and done.

Meanwhile, in Friday’s news we’ve got a call for an environmental study on a 15-year-old oil pier; big fines against a payday lender; more “youth jail” dispute developments; and the possible peak/slowdown of the overheated local apartment market.

A new report depicts the state’s mental-health system (which Gov. Inslee has already vowed to fix up) as a shambles. Other items today discuss whether Af-Am cultural institutions can follow the population into the ‘burbs; new plans to support “affordable” housing; the fish factory at the ex-Weyerhaeuser campus is dead; the coal-train scheme in Whatcom County may be resurrected; and the usual dozens of weekend activity options.

We need all the socio-political allies we can get these days, even within the pages of Teen Vogue! We look as well at Amazon’s at-long-last charitable streak; a church sex-abuse victim who doesn’t like what the church said about her legal fight; the governor proposing a “carbon tax” while a state investment board puts money into the petrochemical biz; and a (justly) long-forgotten novelty sport.

Some business interests want to turn downtown Seattle into “a 24-hour city.” People walking and shopping and being entertained and high-fiving one another in the streets when the only people who should normally be awake (aside from insomniacs like me) are hungry newborns and their parents. Can this be accomplished; and if so, would we even like it? We also ponder Bill Gates’s strange comparison between the next president and JFK; a temporary win for homeowners who don’t like back-yard cottages; Boeing management proving as indifferent to St. Louis as it is to Seattle; and why Sounders fans don’t watch a parade, they march in it.

Finally! Snow in the city, spectacular and beautiful (and rare and very temporary). Non-meteorological topics this day include gift books for the budding political activist in your family; a new, almost-1,200-unit residential complex; another local alt-media source needing support; a woman who videoed her own racial hate crime; and the usual umpteen weekend things-2-do.

Seventy-five years since Pearl Harbor, and not only are some dorks thinking of the Japanese American internment as a model for future endeavors, but also a serious totalitarian threat faces us not from without but from within. In relatively lighter topics, we’ve found one person who doesn’t like the new spiffy Wallingford transfer station; a local troll-avenger just might become the subject of a scripted TV series; a hotel project’s potential threat to the Chinatown-International District; and Seattle’s now home to America’s No. 5 airline.

Another day of no white stuff on the ground (probably) sees us discussing a GOP legislator’s attempt to negate public-school funding (and non-discrimination); an aborted scheme to put surveillance cams into a middle-school cafeteria; and Amazon’s latest “real world” retail concept.

Snow in Seattle is rarely forecast. Those forecasts, in turn, often don’t come true. What will happen this time? Further topics today include a victory (for now) at Standing Rock; a big “March Against Hate;” Airbnb working with the Urban League; another longtime local biz asking for your help; and Husky and Seahawk football blowout wins (albeit the latter with a price).

Even if there was the political will to “break up” Amazon, as one group wants, how would that apply to its bookselling operations, and would it do the book biz good or ill? We additionally ramble on about where all our construction dirt goes; an endangered butterfly living at Joint Base Lewis-McChord; memories of the local “sex industry” in the ’40s; and a tour of the Krusteaz pancake-mix factory!

Don’t think of today as a dispute between racial justice and shopping. Think of it as a potential meeting of racial justice and holiday compassion. Also: One of Belltown’s longest-running gourmet eateries threatened; art and music against the new DC regime; and Olympia’s police chief doesn’t like “fracking sand” trains through his town either.

Instead of insulting and dismissing rural/suburban voters, I’ve got a better idea: reach out to them! Support the people there (and they ARE there) who’ve been struggling for freedom and equality, against entrenched social/political/economic machines. Back in newsier news, we’ve got a big-big solar farm for Eastern Washington; a one-day walkout by what we used to call “community” college faculty; and a Presidential medal for the Gateses.

Should we form an indie nation of western states? Join up with Canada? Do you know how darn-near impossible it’d be? In more real-world coverage, we view a settlement in the coal-train suit; EMP becoming “MoPOP” (no relation to KEXP’s show “WoPop”); King County’s aging homeowner population; and a wood-fueled jet plane!