Our big weekend MISCmedia MAIL leads off with the discovery of ginormous magma pools beneath the Cascades, just ready to spew forth. Among our other (NOT necessarily lighter) topics: the future of Nikkita Oliver and her movement; a suit against Ride the Ducks’ owner; fiscal trouble for our “other” local, woman-founded, sex-toy retailer; and Cobain-related blather re-purposed as Cornell-related blather.

Apparently very few Seattle voters have sent in their primary-election ballots. If any of you are among those, get to it, darn it! We also mention an attempt to trash the Northwest’s public-power heritage; the ever-hotter Eastside state-senate race; the vanishing sword ferns; and “Why I Don’t Hate Seafair” part XXVII.

Seattle’s higher minimum wage: Boon or Bust? Depends on whose research study you read, and how they set up their criteria. MISCmedia MAIL today also covers a possible state budget breakthrough; reactions to the partial, provisional travel-ban reinstatement; and pictures of the hard-working, often world-weary people harvesting our state’s farm bounty.

MISCmedia MAIL today discusses the mayor’s big (albeit still tentative) arena deal; attempts to reach common ground with local Muslims and/or Republicans; non-techbro reasons for the housing crisis; and the Mariners’ comeback all the way to .500! But these are all minor stories compared to the big event of the day, our own spectacular b-day party for both the newsletter and for myself, 6:30 p.m. tonight at the tenacious Two Bells in bountiful Belltown.

The unspecified “clear threat” reported by Evergreen State College brass is, at least partly, the fallout from a heated email exchange about race and the limits of white “progressivism.” Your weekend MISCmedia MAIL also mentions local officials refusing to go backwards on climate change; another reason why encampment sweeps put people in danger; a guy who says he can build affordable housing units at half price; and a guy who wants to break up Amazon.

Your big weekend e-missive begins with an unexpected (but not undeserved) honor for one of our state’s greatest. We continue on to mention more mayoral-race and Murray-case developments; stories of people caught up in the big anti-immigrant scares; the close of the Burlington shooter’s sad life story; and the reasons we need Earth Day and the March for Science.

The “ZAPP” archive of self-published zines, originally assembled by volunteers working out of Hugo House, has a new and safe home; though the ZAPP folks apparently had no say in it. As they say, it’s “complicated.” We also examine the need to re-re-clean-up Gas Works Park; Bill Gates vs. the proposed federal budget; a new “health scare of the week;” and national recognition to a great local artist.

The day with a name-coincidence to everybody’s favorite “irrational number” brings to mind why rationality matters. Also on this day: saving what little film incentives WA’s got; Daniel Ramirez Medina speaks; a snag for an Af-Am community group that wants to take over a big block in the CD; and the UW and Gonzaga b-ball women both start their NCAA tourney runs right here.

Another endangered tree-dwelling critter is the locus of another call for protecting forest habitats. Further subjects in this installment include claims of “green” big-computing centers; a change at a local alt-media mainstay; light-rail station escalators still too-often broke; and a beloved Capitol Hill eatery dies (again).

As a safety-net-hostile, ethics-hostile Congress prepares to convene, we continue to focus on local stuff, including another dead orca; state Sen. Baumgartner’s latest power-grab attempt; Amazon bashed for, well, just about everything; and fire trucks crashing into each other.

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.

On a palindromic date we view evidence of “reverse molecules” in space; Tacoma’s downtown falcons; more Orlando reactions here and in DC; jail inmates allegedly forced to take drugs; the state’s regressive tax system used as a selling point for zillionaire homes; and a creepy “joke” by the anti-trans initiative boss.

The Nooze-day for Tooze-day includes a victory for bike-share lovers; genuine Nancy Pearl ice cream; more fallout from the Legislature’s school-funding punt; a creepy Cobain art show (that doesn’t even show him); and someone who likes Amazon’s physical bookstore.

'before shot' via nytimes.com; many of these home lots were second or summer homes

As many of you know, I grew up in northern Snohomish County.

Arlington, Darrington, Oso, Smokey Point, and the Mountain Loop Highway are all places I regularly visited with my mother on antique-buying trips, or bicycled through, or on church or school trips.

My parents briefly owned a second home in what became the landslide zone.

My brother still lives near there.

He has a friend-of-a-friend who was one of the first landslide victims helicoptered to Harborview. Another friend-of-a-friend is the parent of one of the still-missing children.

If you pray or meditate, the still-missing people there, and their loved ones and/or survivors, are worth remembering.

soundersfc.com

• Turns out there’s a word for these massive fan-made visual displays at soccer matches. The word is “tifo.”
• The NY Times notes that Amazon hasn’t asked for a dime in extra tax breaks for its big Seattle development schemes.
• Meanwhile, could Amazon start its own wireless cell-phone network?
• Even the rarified realm of Seattle sushi, there are problematic “bigot diners.”
• After almost 50 years, the Francine Seders Gallery in Phinney Ridge closes this December.
• After 22 years, the radio station known as “The Mountain” is leaving the air, sort of. An Internet feed and a digital sub-channel will continue the format (but will they have live DJs?).
• The UW experiment in “mind control” won’t immediately lead to anything useful, like helping disabled people regain control of their limbs or anything.
• “Celebrity architects” don’t always design monumental, scenery-dominating houses in the countryside for fat cat clients. Sometimes they do it for themselves.
• In keeping with my occasional claims that we’re entering a long attention span generation, the Guardian claims that big epic novels “are back.”
• It’s not just McDonald’s workers who are getting screwed over. Franchise operators allege the company’s been overcharging them with rent and fees.
• Coca-Cola’s marketing a stevia-sweetened “Coca-Cola Life” drink, with vague claims of “healthiness,” but only in Argentina.
• Could the building blocks of life on Earth have come here from Mars?
• It turns out that Larry Summers, the onetime Harvard president who may be nominated to head the Federal Reserve, was involved in the World Trade Organization and its 1999 efforts to force big financial deregulation upon all its member countries. (You may remember a little protest when the outfit had its convention here.)