So it looks as if we all got through Christmas in one piece, more or less — good job, everyone!

Chances seems pretty good that you might have accumulated some new stuff during the holiday, and let’s start this week by trying to put that in some kind of perspective. Here’s a New York Times story about new work to visualize a 2018 study that essentially served as a global inventory of stuff, both natural and unnatural. So humans, for example, weigh about 120 million tons, all 8 billion of us. But we’re far outweighed by the stuff we have created, most of it within the last century or so: As the story reports, there are now 1.3 trillion tons of man-made stuff on the planet. That includes 600 billion tons of concrete, and about 400 billion tons of sand, gravel and other aggregate materials used in construction. We have built ourselves 2 billion cars — and 70 billion tons of asphalt to accommodate them.

As many of you know, I feel bad about the state of my garage, which is crammed with stuff. Now I feel worse, even though I suspect my garage only contributes a couple of billion tons to the total.

The number of people in the United States who are homeless has increased by 18% since 2023, federal officials say. The causes range from a lack of affordable housing to a variety of natural disasters to an influx of migrants, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said. And everyone agrees that the number cited in the new federal report — 770,000 souls — is an undercount, for a number of reasons. One bright spot: Homelessness among military veterans continues to decline. In part, that’s because of widespread (and bipartisan) agreement that veterans should not be homeless. No argument here. But should it be that much of a jump to expand that agreement so that it includes everyone?

In what could be the most predictable poll result of the year, The Associated Press reports that many Americans are turning away from political news, at least in the short run. “People are mentally exhausted,” one Democrat told the AP. “Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off.” Maybe. But there’s some concern at CNN and MSNBC as to whether viewership will bounce back after Donald Trump takes office. Meanwhile, ratings are up at Fox News.

In yet another fairly predictable AP poll, most Americans say they’ll be spending New Year’s Eve at home — and many don’t particularly care if they stay up until midnight. The AP also reports that most Americans still plan to make new year’s resolutions, but in a finding that did surprise me, millennials and Gen Z types are more likely than older Americans to do so. Could it be that we older Americans have just given up?

It wasn’t quite seven inches from the noonday sun, as the Santana hit “Smooth” says, but it was close enough: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018 to get a close-up look at the sun, passed within 3.8 million miles of the star this week — and sent a message on Thursday confirming that it had survived the trip. It’s the closest that any man-made object has gotten to the sun. Now, let’s see if NASA can figure out a way to spring those two astronauts from the International Space Station.

Jude Law is the headliner in a new movie, “The Order,” which is based on the FBI’s attempts to take down The Order, a Pacific Northwest-based terrorist group that held anti-Semitic beliefs, robbed banks and sought to overthrow the government. In the movie — now streaming on Amazon Prime Video — Nicholas Hoult (almost as ubiquitous these days as Law was a few years ago) plays the leader of The Order, Robert Jay Matthews. Matthews was a big fan of “The Turner Diaries,” the novel that’s been called the bible of the racist right. The only reason I bring any of this to your attention is because of this fact, which The Oregonian’s Kristi Turnquist mentions in her story about the movie: “The Turner Diaries” was written by William Luther Pierce, who taught physics in the early 1960s at Oregon State University. To be fair, he wrote the novel after he left OSU in 1965.

Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic had a fascinating conversation with journalist Julia Angwin about how legacy media outlets can win back the trust of readers. Her provocative prescription: Take a page from YouTubers and other online content creators.

The Atlantic’s science, technology and health desk has compiled 77 of the most interesting facts that its reporters and editors came across as they worked on stories in 2024. Armed with this list of facts, you will be the star of your New Year’s Eve party — if, of course, you’re going out. Otherwise, just read the list to your dog, who will be impressed. (That’s their job.) And speaking of dogs:

On Dec. 15, Athena, a 4-year-old German shepherd-husky mix, escaped from her Florida home and managed to stay lost (or, perhaps, evaded the people searching for her) for more than a week. In the early morning hours of Christmas Eve, Athena — perhaps weary of her escapade — returned to the front door of her home and rang the doorbell to be let in. There’s one week a year when a story like this, charming as it is, could make national news — and this is it.

That’s it for this weekend. Have a safe New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and we’ll gather back here next weekend to start taking stock of 2025.