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Weather: Patchy fog in the morning. Mostly sunny with a chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Friday Night: Mostly cloudy in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. A slight chance of thunderstorms. A chance of showers, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30 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:
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. Today, David welcomes Ray Stevens and Andrew Werner, the two candidates in the runoff for District 3 of the Palm Coast City Council, in a face-off. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, 6400 North Oceanshore Blvd., Palm Coast, 10 a.m. Join a Ranger the First Friday of every month for a garden walk. Learn about the history of Washington Oaks while exploring the formal gardens. The walk is approximately one hour. No registration required. Walk included with park entry fee. Participants meet in the Garden parking lot. The event is free with paid admission fee to the state park: $5 per vehicle. (Limit 2-8 people per vehicle) $4 per single-occupant.
The Blue 24 Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
First Friday in Flagler Beach, the monthly festival of music, food and leisure, is scheduled for this evening at Downtown’s Veterans Park, 105 South 2nd Street, from 5 to 9 p.m. The event is overseen by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and run by Laverne M. Shank Jr. and Surf 97.3
Free Family Art Night: “Textured Turtles”, Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens, 78 East Granada Boulevard, Ormond Beach. All art supplies are provided. No art experience is needed, and all ages are welcome. Free Family Art Night is a popular, monthly program typically scheduled on the first Friday of each month to coordinate with the free, family-friendly movie shown outdoors at Rockefeller Gardens. The two programs offer a stimulating evening for families, at no charge, in the heart of downtown Ormond Beach. Our art program takes place in the OMAM Classroom, rain or shine, but the City’s outdoor movies are weather dependent. Movie information can be found here or call The Casements at 386-676-3216.
 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: One of an endless number of arresting lines in Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection, his new book of short stories just out: “These were Napster-era proto-memes, which would later progress to “Benny Lava,” “Tunak Tunak,” “Yatta!”,”kind of the “Gangnam Style” of their time–the stuff that goes viral because it allows white people to enjoy Asian cultural products from a safe distance of mockery, like when straight dudes dress in drag “as a bit.”)” Speaking of which…
—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
For the full calendar, go here.
So she quits podcasts too, leaving her nothing to do but stream all nine seasons of the American version of The Office, then all nine seasons again, and again, that fucking melodica theme song playing from her laptop’s trebly speakers over and over until her mind feels bleached by screenlight. She brings the American version of The Office into the bathroom with her so she doesn’t have to be alone there, and can’t fall asleep without it playing at quarter-volume beside her, sipping off her weed pen and dully prodding herself with her vibrator while watching this prechewed slop, so pandering and room-temperature, so American, this homeopathic dose of comedy that yet manages to perfectly silence some companionship-starved lobe in her brain until she nods off and wakes to her vibrator and laptop both dead.
–From Tony Tulathimutte’s “Pics” in Rejection (2024).
Ray W, says
The monthly BLS jobs report issued this morning. Expectations for 150k new jobs were dashed as the economy added 254k jobs. The national unemployment rate dropped to 4.1%, close to the 4.0% number economists identify as a target number in a full economy. 6.8 million people meet the definition of unemployed.
Joe Breuseulas, Chief Economist for RSM, U.S., LLP, told a Post reporter:
“This is what an economy at full employment looks like in an economy best described as robustly expanding.”
ABC News reported:
“U.S. hiring surged in September, blowing past economist expectations and rebuking concern about weakness in the labor market.”
And “Despite an overall slowdown this year, the job market has proven resilient. Hiring has continued at a solid pace; meanwhile, the unemployment rate has climbed but remains near a 50-year low.”
Make of this what you will. Me? As time marches on, the broken wheel of the gullible among us thumps out its rhythmic tale of supposed economic woe. To the gullible, the past three years of unparalleled pandemic rebound economic growth has actually been a “destroyed” economy. Each of a string of new positive number after new positive number really means we are worse off than we were four years ago. As Nietzsche wrote: “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
The truth? The pandemic upended economies all around the world. Entire regional economies suffered as governors like Ron DeSantis ordered shut-downs. The American economy went immediately into a deep recession, with two straight quarters of shrinking GDP and millions and millions of people losing their jobs. Many immigrants actually left the country. Perhaps they thought that if they had to starve for want of work, it would be better to starve among family and community.
Nation after nation began enacting stimulus spending plans. America set out on the most ambitious unfunded stimulus spending spree in history: $5.9 trillion to be spread out over 10 years, with most being spent up front. Nearly $5 trillion has been spent by now, by both the Trump and Biden administrations. The inflation rate began rising during the last months of the Trump administration; it rose to barely over 2.5% when he grudgingly left office. It peaked at 9.1% in 2022, but efforts by the independent Fed have brought it down to 2.5% and dropping. Millions of jobs were created and filled by immigrants, because the native-born population total has flatlined in recent years as American women have been birthing fewer and fewer babies for about two decades. Overall inflation has been closely tracked by overall wage growth, so that the average American makes more money at the same time the basic goods cost more.
Ray W, says
Senator J.D. Vance suggested that today’s job report should be disregarded because undocumented immigrants took all of the jobs. He argued that compared to last year, there are 825,000 fewer native-born Americans working. A University of Michigan economist quickly pointed out that as aging Baby Boomers retire, the number of American-born workers drops.
Make of this what you will. Me? How do we get such unqualified candidates for such important positions. Senator Vance doesn’t even know enough to understand that American women have been having fewer and fewer babies over a long stretch of time and that aging Baby Boomers are retiring out of the workforce!
Of course we have fewer Americans working in the overall labor pool. We need every immigrant we can get to replace those who are retiring because there aren’t enough American-born children entering the workplace to replace them. Those who think immigration is bad have it backwards. Without immigrants, our economy stalls. Simple as that.
Ray W, says
Evidence of yet another breakthrough in battery technology.
McGill University researchers announced the development of a polymer-filled porous ceramic membrane that acts as a bridge between a solid-state lithium-ion battery’s electrolyte and its electrodes. I have already commented on other research in this area.
In current solid-state batteries, a phenomenon known as “interfacial resistance” creates a bottleneck that makes such batteries less efficient and reduces the maximum amount of energy they can discharge.
Make of this what you will. Me? If another of the hurdles to developing reliable solid-state batteries has been surmounted, then we are another step closer to transitioning to batteries that charge faster, discharge faster, last longer by multiples of charging cycles, are more energy dense, and are lighter than comparable liquid-state lithium-ion batteries, with the plus that they are less prone to catching fire when damaged.
Ray W, says
Susan Rice, a former Ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor, is one of over 700 Republican, Democratic, and Independent “very senior national security leaders” who co-signed a letter opposing Donald Trump and supporting Kamala Harris that was recently released.
During an interview, Ms. Rice said:
“The fundamentals of national security — that America needs to be strong, that we need to stand with our allies, we need to stand for our values, we have to mean what we say. These are very fundamental things that never used to be under serious question. And along comes Donald Trump, who really is like the Neville Chamberlin of the Republican Party.” … “He’s an appeaser, he’s a surrender monkey, and that’s what we’re seeing in his approach to Ukraine.”
The reporter wrote of a recent statement by former President Trump:
“Trump, after meeting with the Ukrainian leader last week, lauded his relationship with Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggesting he could broker an end to the ware ‘very quickly,’ and that would work out for both sides.”
Make of this what you will. Me? Why should any brokered deal work out for Russia? Why even project that idea? Russia invaded, without provocation, the Ukraine, violating a treaty signed decades ago in which the former president of the Russian Federation agreed to never invade the Ukraine. After the treaty was signed by all parties, including the United States, the Ukrainian government gave up its stockpile of nuclear weapons. The United States promised annual military aid to the Ukrainian people and also promised to intervene with additional military aid and assistance should Russia ever invade.
Again, why should Russia even gain the smallest parcels of Ukrainian land in a Trump-proposed settlement?