It’s about to get very very cold. You’ve got one more day of tolerable chill before the truly nightmarish cold arrives this weekend, with sub-freezing temperatures expected Sunday through all of next week. Here's our comprehensive advice for preparing for a snowstorm. Check Seattle’s Winter Storm Response center for updates regarding city services. Sign up for AlertSeattle to get notified of emergencies and shutdowns. Here’s how to prepare your pipes. Here are details on shelters — there’s a whopping two of them, and they’re only open at night, which seems … insufficient. There’s also a privately-run shelter in West Seattle, which needs volunteers.

Everyone seems pretty relaxed about the fact that chunks are falling off of the Ship Canal Bridge. Enough chunks have fallen off of it that WSDOT has now put up fencing around the park beneath it. The “temporary closure” is expected to last a few years while they conduct repairs through 2028. WSDOT says it’s perfectly safe, though they don’t keep records of how many pieces have fallen off. This follows an emergency repair in 2018, when a hole appeared in the deck, and a 2020 report indicating that dozens of bridges around Seattle are in “concerning” condition and getting worse. Seems bad!

So long, Gameworks. With very little notice, it appears that Seattle Gameworks is closing for good today. Here’s a wistful thread about the company’s rise and fall — and don’t forget to drop a few quarters at the remaining local arcades like Coindexters, Full Tilt, Ice Box, and more.

current word on the street is that remaining gameworks venues are currently winding down, despite the company not admitting it all yet

its best days were long ago, but i think what was one of the last stabs to keep arcade games ubiquitous in the states deserves a thread ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/XrdB33XWPN
— ted 🥳 (@ted90909) December 22, 2021

Finally, an excuse not to eat salad. There’s been a Listeria outbreak traced to Fresh Express salads — check out the list of brands included here. You’ll need to deep-clean your fridge if you’ve got a suspect package of greens, since the bacteria can survive in refrigerators. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but this is a particularly bad time to need hospitalization.

Hey do you like telling people about greenways? Maybe you could be the new Comms Director at Seattle Neighborhood Greenways! Or do you like to turn money into something beautiful? You could be the new Development Director! They’re hiring, is what I’m trying to say.

Seattle’s improving. This new Instagram account celebrates each little victory of new housing and less parking around town.

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A post shared by Improving Seattle (@improvingseattle)

Speaking of improvements … A bunch of new housing is hopefully coming soon to Broadway — 95 new units, “100% publicly-funded affordable housing”! Ground-floor retail! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Sorry, Mud Bay and Jai Thai, you’re great, but this is better.

Hello ostrich. My latest obsession is this live cam at a watering hole in Namibia. So far I’ve seen ostrich, oryx, jackal, and a hare, and I’m very annoyed that my partner caught a glimpse of a giraffe when I wasn’t looking.

Got a small queer business? The GSBA (Washington’s LGBTQ chamber of commerce) is launching a Business Academy to help small business owners learn the ins and outs of running a company, with a 13-month track as well as a 6-month quickie version. Applications open on January 3.

Let’s go to Portland. Cascade Bike Club will resume their Seattle-to-Portland fundraiser ride in July of 2022.

Or how about Australia? Qantas is thinking about doing direct Sydney-Seattle flights … just as soon as this pandemic thing wraps up and business travel resumes, which should be happening any minute now.

No matter how bad you screw something up, you probably didn’t screw it up this bad. At what point do you think they realized this wasn’t going the way they planned — when their passenger-side tire fell into the planting area maybe?

Well the protected bike lane on NE 43rd is working as well as can be expected. pic.twitter.com/YsBOaHkciE
— Ray Dubicki (@RayDubicki) December 23, 2021

Some miners found a dinosaur egg. It’s fossilized, so it can’t be hatched, no matter how long you sit on it. The embryo features traits previously only seen in avian dinosaurs. The wildest thing about it is that they found it two decades ago, but it just sat in a box for years until someone got around to looking at it.

I’ve got a new hobby.

From now on my thing is photoshopping microphones into pictures of yawning rabbits pic.twitter.com/c1hqm7kqhH
— Matt Baume (@MattBaume) December 23, 2021