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Weather: Mostly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 90s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Heat index values up to 106. Tuesday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent.
- 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: Tyler Habdas is sentenced at 8:30 a.m. by Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse. A jury in a July trial found Habdas guilty on nine charges involving video voyeurism of his 12-year-old stepdaughter. He faces second and third degree felony charges that together add up to a maximum of 75 years in prison, though his scoresheet will place him at considerably below that number, while the judge retains discretion on the sentence. See: “Jury Finds Man Guilty on 9 Counts in Video Voyeurism of 12-Year-Old Stepdaughter in Her Bathroom.”
The Flagler County Commission meets at 9 a.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 E. Moody Boulevard, Building 2, Bunnell. Access meeting agendas and materials here. The five county commissioners and their email addresses are listed here. Meetings stream live on the Flagler County YouTube page.
The Flagler County School Board holds a workshop at 3 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The board meets again at 5:15 p.m. to adopt its budget and tax rate for the fiscal year.
The Palm Coast City Council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
Flagler Beach’s Planning and Architectural Review Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 S 2nd Street. For agendas and minutes, go here.
The Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board meets at 6 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The board consists of Carl Lilavois, Chair; Manuel Madaleno, Nealon Joseph, Gary Masten and Lyn Lafferty.
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.
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Notably: The New York Post maintains a “complete collection of the best Donald Trump New York Post covers.” I don’t know how complete it is, since it starts in 1990. I recall in my high school and college years, when I commuted on the 7 and 6 lines, the Post would come out in the afternoon and Trump’s face would often be underfoot already, back when just about everyone on the train read something, a quarter read the Post in the evening commute, to the extent that it could be read before junking it on the train’s floor. Any Trump headline oozed with sleaze though Trump on the cover of the New York Post was always a tautology, the Post being the essence of sleaze. Long gone were the days when the paper Alexander Hamilton launched in 1801 had (to his Hoboken bloodied grief) was a liberal tabloid, starting in 1829 under William Cullen Bryant: it opposed the Bank of the United States but supported Andrew Jackson, the republic’s first Trumpian type. Then it opposed the other Andrew’s impeachment. By 1967 it was the only afternoon paper left in New York, but then came the Schiff family’s sale, in 1976, to Rupert Murdoch. That was the end of the Post as a newspaper, the beginning of the Post as a roll of sleaze, and the beginning of Rupert’s bromance with Donald Trump, not long afterward. Crime, sex, scandal, gore, no distinction between reporting and the conservative screeds on the editorial page. A natural home for Trump. But it always posted a loss. By 1988, Murdoch had lost $150 million (I’m getting all this from the Kenneth T. Jackson’s fabulous Encyclopedia of New York). He sold it to Peter Kalikow so he could have his Fox News TV empire, but only until 1993, when Murdoch bought it back. Here we are. Still Trump. Still sleaze. Still Murdoch.
—P.T.
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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.
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Flagler County Canvassing Board Meeting
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Flagler Tiger Bay Club Guest Speaker: Carlos M. Cruz
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Blue 24 Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
It’s Back! Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
For the full calendar, go here.
Near the end of Donald Trump’s first year in power, for instance, The New York Times reported that, before taking office, he had “told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.” This Hobbesian view of the presidency—that every single day is a war of all against all—is novel and out of sync with much of the presidential past.”
–From Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (2018).
Ray W. says
Ford’s EV division COO, Marin Gjaja, told The Cool Down that for was both pivoting to smaller, less expensive EVs and developing a new lithium-iron-phosphate battery line.
“Our sense,’ Gjaja said, “is the uptake on electric vehicles will be on smaller vehicles over time. That’s where you will see the most acceleration because that’s the group that’s going to be most sensitive to fuel costs.”
As for the batteries, they are more affordable and durable. Per Gjaja, the LFP batteries are “basically indestructible” and can be handle far more charging cycles that current lithium-ion batteries.
Make of this what you will. Me? Battery development is so rapid these day that long-term investments in what might be considered accepted battery technology are relatively risky. I don’t see advances in battery aspects slowing down. Investing billions in factories to build today’s widely used liquid-state lithium batteries might be for naught if solid-state batteries come to swamp the sector with cheaper, more powerful, lighter, and more easily chargeable options.
And it might be that the luxury high-end EV market is saturated with products from more than a dozen manufacturers. The target market for that type of personal transportation is much smaller than the city-car marketplace.