Out of a discussion with abayer when I asked about an alternative to having to log to the global log for JENKINS-46944:

It would be nice if Pipeline offered a supported way to get to the current build log so that job properties that are being configured can log to the build log instead of having to spam the global system log.

Perhaps something like Stapler.getCurrentRequest() for (pipeline) builds?

Going through Thread.currentThread, if even possible, seems too brittle.