Get your snowshoes ready. We’re enjoying a light dusting this morning, but the main event is still to come: The exact forecast is still a bit up in the air (haha) but this Tuesday could get real blizzardy… by Seattle standards, which means 2-5 inches of snow. Temperatures will warm toward the end of the week, leaving us with a decidedly non-snowy Christmas. In fact, we may get thunderstorms, which certainly would add some pizzazz to the holiday lights.

And remember to shovel. It’s the responsibility of landlords to keep the sidewalk clear in front of their buildings. If your landlord leaves the path un-shoveled, send me an email so we can name and shame them.

Vision Zero plan completes 90-day review; now to begin the review of the review. SDOT Director Greg Spotts noted this weekend that he’s going over the first draft of a report on his department’s work to get serious traffic injuries down to zero by 2030. Once he’s done reviewing it, it’ll go to the public around the middle of January, then to boards, commissions, and committees for feedback. In the meantime, drivers killed a 25-year-old man this weekend in SoDo. He was struck by multiple cars as he rode a scooter in the street, as required by law. It’s one more life to add to the SoDo death spike, as illustrated below. Hopefully, Greg knows someone who can do something about this.

Utter chaos on Twitter this weekend. If you sent a bunch of penguins into an airplane cockpit, they’d have a better chance of landing the plane safely than Elon Musk does of keeping Twitter aloft. This weekend he banned some more journalists and then reinstated them, announced a new policy prohibiting the posting of links to other social media sites, and then changed his mind and rescinded it. He also asked if he should step down as head of the company and said there would be no one to replace him if he did. So… who even knows anymore. It’s bad enough that I created a Mastodon account yesterday.

The future of magic: Here’s a great interview with Wizards of the Coast CEO Cynthia Williams about what’s in store for Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. The next year is shaping up to be pretty busy, between the D&D movie coming out and Universes Beyond for MTG and, impressively, a lot of growth in the MTG/Warhammer space.

Car killer caught. A little over a year ago, a drunk driver killed Michael Colmant near Seward Park. Police were having trouble assembling a case against the suspect, Julian Hamilton, but a $51,000 reward helped jog the memory of a witness who directed cops to the evidence they needed. Hamilton confessed his guilt, and now he and a second suspect are in custody.

Please remember to secure your buoyant balloon creatures. I’ve dreamed of leaving meetings in exactly this fashion.

An aortic aneurysm killed Grant Wahl. We have more information about the death of sports writer Grant Wahl, who passed away while covering the World Cup. It was a previously-undetected heart condition that had silently been worsening for years, according to his family. His brother, Eric, is asking people at risk (“tall, lanky guys with long arm-spans… and narrow fingers”) to get a heart-specific health check-up.

Sidewalk unveiling! It’s been 84 years since the pavement here was last visible, and now thanks to the Seattle Street Fixers the street is once again passable. But for how long???

Goodbye, P-22. A celebrity mountain lion who roamed the hills of Los Angeles for many years has been euthanized due to a mix of ailments related to old age and what appears to be a recent injury sustained when a driver hit him with a car. In a statement, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife wrote that this “underscores the need for thoughtful construction of wildlife crossings and well-planned spaces that provide wild animals room to roam.”

Another masterpiece from the Blethen Board of Suburban Essayists. If you’re too busy to wander five towns over and ask grumbling old-timers in porch rocking chairs what’s on their minds, don’t worry, the Seattle Times is here to fill you in. In an editorial last Friday, the editorial board weighed in on the state’s housing crisis, and their chief concern seems to be that there’s TOO MUCH of it. How else to explain the hand-wringing over anticipated bills in 2023 that would expand opportunities for new home-building? In particular, they claim that “Advocates who call for the most aggressive state preemption of local zoning laws are loath to add any affordability requirements,” which is bullshit. I don’t know if they’ve actually spoken to any “advocates” or if they’re just going on ~vibes~, but anybody who’s seriously talking about establishing minimum standards for density has equity and affordability at the top of their list of priorities. Last week I spoke to multiple city council members, a representative from the Association of Washington Cities, and Rep. Jessica Bateman about what’s ACTUALLY on tap for housing in the 2023 session, and will have an article about it in the next few days. One that actually cites its sources, just like how newspapers used to do!

And now a very important message from Bea Arthur.

Matt Baume covered geek culture, queer news, and city infrastructure, and would leap at the flimsiest of excuses to write about furries. A writer, podcaster, and videomaker, he resides on Capitol Hill...