To start things off for the year so big they named a teen magazine after it, and for the 31st consecutive year (really!), we proudly present the MISCmedia In/Out List, the most trusted (and only accurate) list of its kind in this and all other known content platforms.

As always, this list compiles what will become torrid and tepid in the coming year, not necessarily what’s torrid and tepid now. If you believe everything hot now will just keep getting hotter, I’ve got some Samsung 7 phones to sell you.

I think pretty much all of us (even Sounders FC and Husky football fans) would consider this past year to have been, overall, a dud, a bomb, a Dumpster® fire; with even scarier days looming ahead. Nevertheless, we have news items to discuss in the here-n’-now, such as St. Mark’s Cathedral calling bigotry a sin; the pre-upzoning U District as America’s most competitive housing market; Mt. Rainier as one of the world’s “most dangerous volcanoes;” and dozens of places to go on the big night.

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.

In our midweek missive: An activist on how white “allies” can work for racial justice without, you know, taking everything over; park-and-ride lots’ popularity; still hyper-inflating home prices; good news for Queen City Grill diners; and yet another tragic celebrity death.

Following the holiday break we catch up with tales of hospital execs who really don’t want Obamacare to get gutted; the BBC discovering Seattle as a hotbed of the Resistance; Amazon’s potential future with driverless trucks; and the welcome, forthcoming return of King Donut-Teriyaki-Laundromat!

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.

I still disagree with the longstanding lefty meme that everybody outside “our” subculture is a fascist. And, I still insist we have to drop that notion if anything good is to survive. In more news-y news, there’s a condo tower planned for the International District, a little real-estate paperwork fee that does a lot for housing; two teenage boys implicated in the Mt. Vernon cop shooting; and an idea to build more Space Needles! (But not necessarily more Chihuly galleries.)

Here comes the solstice, whether you believe in days getting brighter or not. Further subjects this day: whether to tear down some of Seattle’s seawalls; Hanford-developed biofuel from sewage; the uphill drive facing Inslee’s tax plan; a defaced portrait of a black musician; and a Time magazine prophecy proven true more than 20 years later.

We’re still experiencing the effects of WWII to our region’s environment, and not just at Hanford. Also, as we count down to the solstice, we examine disputed tales of a protest at an Olympia park restroom; a possible alternative mode of housing for at-risk adults; the connection between both would-be arena developers and a former newspaper empire; and the end of one of our fave small-biz combos, King Donut-Teriyaki-Laundromat.

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.

Meet the South Park family who just might be role models for us all. Further subjects this day include a tragedy compounded by a sincere journalistic error compounded by a fake-news site’s disdain for facts; a victory for tenants; the end of the tussle to replace Pramila Jayapal in Olympia; and more on the Sounders’ triumph.

The Sounders came back from last place in the MLS West to win the whole proverbial shebang! In non-Euro-style-sports happenings, there’s a drive to keep a white guy from being appointed to a “majority-minority” Legislative seat; Fukushima radiation hits the coast; and the Mama’s building could be named a historic landmark.

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.