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Weather: Mostly sunny with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 90s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Tuesday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the mid 70s. East winds 5 to 10 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: Docket sounding is scheduled for 10 a.m. before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in several cases, including those of CJ Nelson Sr., David Chenowith
The Palm Coast City Council meets at 9 a.m. at City Hall. It is of course the first meeting since the election, when Mayor David Alfin’s re-election bid was unsuccessful, as were Council members Nick Klufas’s and Ed Danko’s bids for County Commission seats. Both will resign by the end of November, as will Alfin. Today, the council will decide how and when to fill the District 4 seat vacated last week by Cathy Heighter, who abruptly resigned. The council is also set to approve the proposed new comprehensive plan, as well as a couple of developments’ regulatory steps. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Flagler County Canvassing Board meets today, hopefully for less time than it did last Friday and Saturday, at 10 a.m. at the Flagler County Supervisor of Elections office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The meeting is open to the public.
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club at the Flagler Beach Public Library meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
The NAACP Flagler Branch’s General Membership Meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 North U.S. Highway 1, Palm Coast (just north of Whiteview Parkway). The meeting is open to the public, including non-members. To become a member, go here.
Fall Horticultural Workshops at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE., 6:30 p.m on Tuesdays, 10 a.m. on Fridays. Join master gardeners from the UF/IFAS Agricultural Extension Office for these workshops that cover a variety of horticultural topics. $10 a workshop.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
Notably, first of two: From Statista: “400 years ago, in August 1619, the first ship with enslaved Africans destined for the United States arrived in what was then the colony of Virginia. But the cruel history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade begins much earlier and goes on much longer – for more than 350 years. In fact, many enslaved people lived in the English colonies in North America before that date. They came to the present-day U.S. via Spanish and Portuguese colonies, where enslaved Africans arrived as early as 1514, or were transferred as bounty from Spanish or Portuguese ships. The United States are heavily associated with slavery and the capture and forceful relocation of Africans. Around 300,000 disembarked in the U.S. directly, while many more arrived via the inter-American slave trade from the Caribbean or Latin America. It is estimated that almost 4.5 million enslaved Africans arrived in the Caribbean and another 3.2 million in present-day Brazil. Around 40 percent of Africans uprooted in slavery are believed to have come from Angola in Southern Africa, with another 30 percent who came from the Bay of Benin in West Africa. The numbers taken from database project SlaveVoyages.org indicate the number of Africans disembarking. Many more died on the way because of lack of food and water and horrid conditions aboard the slave ships. Others were uprooted in the trans-Saharan, the red sea and the Indian slave trade, which partly predated the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is estimated that close to 20 million people were forced to leave the African continent enslaved. By 1800, this had decimated the African population to half the size it would have been had slavery not occurred.”
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
June 2025
Nar-Anon Family Group
July 2025
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Flagler Beach Planning and Architectural Review Board
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
When we have had some of these slaves on board my master’s vessels to carry them to other islands, or to America, I have known our mates to commit these acts most shamefully, to the disgrace, not of Christians only, but of men. I have even known them gratify their brutal passion with females not ten years old; and these abominations some of them practised to such scandalous excess, that one of our captains discharged the mate and others on that account.
–From Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789).
Pogo says
@And there’s more
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=indentured+servitude
A change is gonna come — but to what?
Project 2025, oh, brave new world!
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=feudal+system
Ray W. says
Several months ago, I commented on a nuclear decommissioning company’s announcement that, instead of shutting down a Michigan-based plant, it intended to restart it, after spending billions on refurbishing and upgrading components, with much of the money coming from newly available federal and state funds.
The Wall Street Journal just ran a story (yet another of the hundreds of different meanings of the verb “to run”, though none of the uses mean “to stop”) on the progress of the restart.
According to the WSJ, the Michigan plant is 53 years old, which I know from many other readings over the years means that it had reached the limits of its original license to operate. Licenses to operate have a set year of operation (commonly 40 years) because, in part, metal fatigue under the high pressures of steam generation increases the likelihood of failure, which in the case of a nuclear plant can be catastrophic. In this case, the Journal wrote that the company is “inspecting and cleaning the 8,219 tubes that carry steam through each of the two 460-ton steam generators, as well as the concrete and steel pipes that suck 390,000 gallons a minute of Lake Michigan water into the plant’s secondary cooling system.”
If Florida-based Holtec International successfully proves to the NRC that license extension is safe, in part by agreeing to update the plant with designs that were not required in the 70s, some 600 full-time workers will operate the plant when it opens. The local government lost $1.6 million in taxes when the plant closed and more when some of the local laid-off employees moved away. Obviously, the reopening process will contribute its own revenues to local coffers. The restarted plant will generate enough electricity to power 800,000 homes.
Of the 22 American nuclear sites in the process of decommissioning, only “a handful of those reactors, … might be suitable to reopen, according to industry experts.” But “[u]tilities have asked regulators to extend the licenses of 14 aging reactors in the past year.” And “[n]early all of the nation’s 94 operating reactors have already had their licenses extended once, to 60 years, and two have been extended to 80 years — twice as long as the original licenses.”
But the big news in the story is that Holtec plans to expand on the site:
“Meanwhile, Holtec has asked the NRC for permission to build two 300-megawatt small modular reactors at the Palisades site that would use a new technology that generates less radioactive waste and doesn’t need a pressurized reactor vessel. Holtec wants to build them in 2026 and begin running them in 2030.”
Holtec is not alone. Two brand-new Georgia reactors recently opened, and a “next generation” nuclear plant is under construction in Wyoming.
Make of this what you will. Me? I agree with the Journal when it reports that energy demand is soaring in this country. “Data centers alone are projected to account for 8% of U.S. electricity demand by 2030, up from 3% in 2022.” It seems to me that the players in the energy marketplace are comparing costs. If Holtec can prove it cost-efficient to restore idled plants, then others might do the same. A few years ago, it was economically unfeasible to refurbish nuclear plant infrastructure for license extension. Now, it seems not.
I have my own concerns about 45-year-old welds and other forms of metal fatigue, cleaned and refurbished or not.
Ray W. says
The Cool Down, drawing source material from Interesting, reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) just approved the nation’s first “fourth-generation’ nuclear reactor, called the “Hermes.”
The Hermes reactor is cooled by “molten fluoride salt” instead of by the traditional “light water.” Molten fluoride salt has “excellent chemical stability and tremendous capacity for transferring heat.”
It uses a tri-structural isotopic particle (TRISO) “fuel pebble bed” with hundreds of “millimeter-sized” pellets of enriched uranium encased in a “multiple layers of a special ceramic” that provides each pellet with its own “containment and pressure vessel.” … “The ceramic casing is stronger and more resilient than the typical zirconium alloy, meaning it can withstand higher temperatures and neutron bombardment past the failure point of other fuels.”
Per the article, since each pebble is so small and isolated from other pebbles, the likelihood of a burst of radiation produced by a failed pebble “would be significantly lessened — and less likely to cause further damage, thanks to the coolant system.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
During yesterday’s third anniversary ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery of a suicide bombing attack at the Kabul airport that killed 13 Americans and 170 Afghans, former President Trump criticized the Biden-Harris administration for the tragic poorly planned exit of American soldiers from Afghanistan.
Later yesterday, while promoting his soon-to-be-released book, retired Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, also a former national security advisor for the Trump administration, replied when asked if Trump bore some part of the blame: “Oh, yes,” he said, adding, “The whole premise of talking to the Taliban before you leave Afghanistan … why the heck were we even doing that?”
General McMaster went on to state: “The Obama administration didn’t negotiate with al-Queda and Iraq on the way out. … If we are gonna leave why not just leave? What happened in these series of negotiations is we kind of threw the Afghans under the bus on the way out. … then forced them to release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on earth.”
From other sources, I understand that one of those most heinous people on earth we forced the Afghans to release is now the Taliban leader. Yes, we had their leader in custody, and the Trump administration let him go prior to the withdrawal as part of the agreement.
The Art of the Deal, my butt! I have long criticized the Biden administration for its role in the downfall of the Afghan government. Trump giving the Taliban their leader a year before the withdrawal? Foolishness writ large. As McMaster said, just leave. Don’t negotiate with the enemy. Don’t give them 5,000 hardliners prior to leaving. Don’t give them anything.
The article ends with a reference to the timing of the withdrawal of soldiers and the timing of the scrubbing of the Republican National Committee’s website of “content that previously praised the former president’s ‘historic peace agreement with the Taliban.'”
Make of this what you will. I ask every gullible FlaglerLive commenter to defend the negotiations, if he or she can.
Ray W. says
The City of Edmund, Oklahoma, recently agreed to pay $7.15 million to Glynn Simmons, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder he did not commit; he spent nearly 50 years in prison.
Emoji says
By the way… today is Hegel’s birthday (August 27, 1770). 🍻☕🎂
Ed P says
Does Mc Master have an axe to grind and a book to sell?
One man’s view may not provide us with 100% of the situation.
Just sayin.
Ray W. says
I agree with book motive possibility, Ed P. Thank you. That’s why I highlighted the fact in my comment by leading with it.
And thank you for not defending the stupidity of the Trump administration’s blunder. Two administrations can be dumb on the same issue, one after the other. Two administrations can be criticized and blamed for ineptitude, when warranted.
And the military’s role in the exit has to be considered. I can’t help but think of Churchill’s shock two years after he became Prime Minister when he learned that Singapore’s shore defenses, consisting of the largest artillery pieces in the Army’s inventory, were not located on turntables. Long before the outbreak of WWII, the British Army held responsibility to installing and maintaining the shore defenses of the vital trade route choke point. The Army installed 14″ naval guns with a range of 38,600 yards (22 miles) that pointed southward toward the sea. Churchill had never visited the site. He never saw that the guns couldn’t be turned around to face northward toward the Malay Peninsula. As a naval expert and First Lord of the Admiralty in WWI and WWII, he knew the Navy inside and out. But the Army controlled the defenses, and he didn’t know the details. When the Japanese Army simply landed in Malaysia and marched 100 miles south in four days down the primitive main road, there were no heavy guns available to bombard the road for the final 15 or so miles. Because naval guns on ships are in turrets, Churchill assumed that the main naval guns could be rotated to defend to the north and was shocked when he was told they couldn’t.
And thank you for not defending the fact that the Republican Party website praised the pact as “historic” all the way up to the bungled exit, when they immediately scrubbed the site of that wording.
On the other hand, despite monetary motives, McMaster offers a valid critique of the decision by the Trump administration’s negotiators to give in to the Taliban’s demand and give back the desired fighters before the date of leaving the country. Validity only let’s one stay in an argument, but at least you never said his point wasn’t valid, only that a motive allows one to question the point’s weight. After all, that a motive for money exists does not automatically disprove a fact, just as a motive for revenge does not automatically disprove a fact. A person can be truthful and moneygrubbing at the same time.
Just why did we agree to return thousands of Taliban fighters? If the number truly was 5000, then why did we agree to give back two brigades worth of valued soldiers and a number of political leaders a full year before we left? We expected the Afghan Army to stand on its own two feet during the exit, yet we gave its enemy their leader and two brigades worth of determined and seasoned fighters.
As an aside, I knew of the prisoner release long before McMaster’s comments. I criticized it before yesterday, just as I criticized the bungled Biden plan long ago. I didn’t know that it was as many as 5000 fighters and leaders, but I knew it was several thousand. In that facet of McMaster’s several claims, the number might be inflated due to monetary motive, but the fact that it happened cannot be challenged.
The only thing that can be debated now is the level of stupidity exercised by the Trump administration during its negotiations with the Taliban. Was it very stupid or extremely stupid for Trump to give back that many fighters and leaders a year before we left? I argue for extremely stupid, but I admit I might be wrong. It only might have been very stupid to agree to return fighters to the enemy while the fight was ongoing.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Emoji.