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Weather: Partly cloudy. Highs in the mid 50s. Lows in the lower 40s.
- 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. See previous podcasts here. Today’s guests: County Administrator Heidi Petito and County Commissioner Greg Hansen. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
‘The Niceties,’ at Palm Coast’s City Repertory Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, 160 Cypress Point Parkway (City Marketplace, Suite B207), Palm Coast. $25 for Adults, $15 for Students. Book here. An urgent debate about race, history and power by Eleanor Burgess. Zoe, a Black student, meets her white professor to discuss a paper on slavery’s impact on the American Revolution. What starts as a polite clash of perspectives erupts into a riveting debate. Praised for its gut instinct and talent, The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess offers a wholly satisfying evening of theater. The Saturday performance will be followed by discussion panel.
See:
1964 The Beatles Tribute at the Fitz (Flagler Auditorium), 5500 State Road 100, Palm Coast, 7 p.m. $64 to $64. Book here. Since the early eighties, “1964”…The Tribute has been thrilling audiences around the globe by taking them on journey through a quintessential moment in music history that will live forever. Over twenty years of researching and performing have made “1964” masters of their craft. They are hailed by critics and fans alike as THE most authentic and endearing Beatles tribute….which has earned them the distinction from Rolling Stone magazine as the “Best Beatles Tribute on Earth”. “1964” recreates an early ‘60s live Beatle concert with period instruments, clothing, hairstyles, and onstage banter with an accuracy that is unmatched. If you have any questions please call the box office at (386)437-7547. The show starts at 7:00 PM. The doors will open at 6:30 PM.
The 14th Annual Health and Fitness Fair at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., with free donuts and coffee until it lasts.
The Friday Blue Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Flagler Democratic Office at 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214 (above Cue Note) at City Marketplace. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
‘One Slight Hitch,’ at Daytona Playhouse, 100 Jessamine Blvd., Daytona Beach, Adults $25, Seniors $24, Youth $15, 7:30 p.m. except Sunday matinees and special March 1 matinee. It’s Courtney’s wedding day, and mom is making sure everything is perfect. Then, like in any good farce, the doorbell rings, and all hell breaks loose. So much for perfect.
Notably: Over the last few years The New Yorker and a few other publications have nervously reported about the rise of the “survivalist” movement: “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich” was one such piece in 2017, “What Drives Doomsday Preppers” in 2018: “Most people are not prepared for disasters. A lot of people like to think they are, and there’s so much to prepping. It’s not just having food, it’s having a mindset. You have to realize that people are not gonna come take care of you. You really have to be able to take care of yourself. After the apocalypse, most of the people you love are gone, most of your friends are gone, everything you love to eat are gone. It’s like the beginning of mankind all over again.” The question is, why are you the one still around? In August the magazine had “Real-Estate Shopping for the Apocalypse,” and this summary: “Thirty-nine percent of Americans believe that we’re living in end times, and the market for underground hideouts is heating up.” And more recently–published the day before the election–“The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War.” Charles Bethea reports: “According to an analysis of FEMA data, some twenty million Americans are actively preparing for cataclysm—roughly twice as many as in 2017. Political violence, including the spectre of civil war, is one of the reasons. A recent study conducted by researchers at U.C. Davis concluded that one in three adults in the U.S., including up to half of Republicans, feel that violence is “usually or always justified” to advance certain political objectives (say, returning Trump to the White House). In May, Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, told the Financial Times that he believed there was about a thirty-five-per-cent chance of civil war breaking out in America. “We are now on the brink,” Dalio said, noting that a modern civil war—though it might not involve muskets—would see the fracturing of states and widespread defiance of federal law.” Every time I wade through one of these pieces two thoughts recur: the survivalists are close cousins of the Civil War reenactors who seemed to have peaked in the slightly more peaceful but no less militia-rich 1990s, when they were looking for some way to validate their apocalyptic lusts. Also, and more obviously, the eagerness for an apocalypse. These survivalists want the country to fall apart. They want to go from prepping to doing, from reenactment to stars of the show. They’re like the clueless wannabe heroes who wear camouflage and camouflage their language in brawny vocabulary as they wait for the Revelation to go into action, never knowing that whatever apocalypse may strike, if it ever does, will be nothing like they imagine, or at least more Cormac McCarthy than Dalio. Nor does it seem to occur to them that the brink is of their own making. It’s not what they’re preparing for. It’s what they want.
—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.
May 2025
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Friday Blue Forum
Murder at Shivering Timbers Murder Mystery Dinner Show Fundraiser
RockabillieWillie At City Repertory Theatre
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Meeting
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
Murder at Shivering Timbers Murder Mystery Dinner Show Fundraiser
RockabillieWillie At City Repertory Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
“Some politicians are even speaking about civil war publicly. In July, after Trump selected J. D. Vance as his running mate, George Lang, a Republican state senator in Ohio, told a crowd at a campaign rally, “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” He went on, “And if we come down to a civil war I’m glad we got people like . . . Bikers for Trump on our side.” Lang later apologized for the incendiary remarks, but he is hardly alone in expressing such sentiment. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, recently referred to a “second American revolution,” now under way, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” The pro-Trump commentator Tim Pool has invoked “civil war” dozens of times on X, where he has more than two million followers. Marjorie Taylor Greene prefers calling for “a national divorce.” Trump increasingly refers to the “enemies within.” It’s not just rhetoric. A Reuters investigation identified more than two hundred cases of political violence between January 6, 2021, and August of last year, and noted that “America is grappling with the biggest and most sustained increase in political violence since the 1970s.”
—Charles Bethea’s The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War,” The New Yorker, Nov. 4, 2024. .
Pogo says
@FWIW
Three ideas — improved by explanation; a sample:
“…3) Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
This line from Ludwig Wittgenstein is often used to mean, “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, then shut up.” But as Rugnetta explains, the German philosopher intended something more abstract.
Wittgenstein was interested in the relationship between language and reality, and the ways in which the former is capable of representing the latter. Ultimately, he argued, we can’t have knowledge of aspects of reality that aren’t representable through language. We cannot speak of them, and therefore cannot claim knowledge about them…”
Learn more
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/17/7229547/philosophy-quotes-misunderstood-wittgenstein-sartre-descartes
James says
Have you heard?…
“He who saves his country does not violate any law.”
Or perhaps it could be restated as… “He who works to save his country violates NO law .”
It reminds me of an interesting debate I’ve had (to myself) regarding love. Among the many interesting observations I had on the topic, one in particular stands out. Some people love other people… their spouse, their children … and perhaps humanity on the whole. Some love nature and the natural world… and ultimately, creation as a whole… which (usually) extends back to humanity. But then of course, their are those who love specific aspects of life… the material aspects, sometimes just as ardently. This last observation shouldn’t be taken as a condemnation of such people. The situation is a muddle, as such people are capable of also caring for many other things in life… the more poetic, romantic ideals that one usually speaks of when one speaks of love. There is no consensus amongst individuals as to what they love, only perhaps that there is such a thing for which they experience love… and thus, the existence of such an emotion.
Put simply, different people love different things.
And so too it is with countries… particularly a country such as America. One which is composed of a myriad of people of differing backgrounds and experiences, shaped by both the past and present, working towards a vision of tomorrow.
The problem with such statement as “He who saves his country violates any laws,” pre-assumes there is a unified vision of what that country should be. Which is incompatible with what America is… as it is… in my opinion.
Furthermore, just as in the case of love, who is to say what is the right vision of America. Which opens the door to a spiral of competing visions that go no where at best, and at worse, lead to destruction.
Which is why we are a nation of laws.
And to consider otherwise is to justify the nations destruction… and by any means without regard to any quarter, either of man or God.
It is a statement with NO precedence… it is the most dangerous statement to be uttered in a democratic country such as America.
Just say’n an opinion.
James says
@Pogo
“… he argued we cannot have knowledge of aspects of reality that aren’t representable through language. …”
I recall he also grappled with the question of whether or not there was a “private language,” or some such concept. … It’s been quite a long time since I took that philosophy of language course back in college.
By the way, your comment brings to mind another observation of mine… freedom of speech, (as noted once long ago by Stan “the Man” Lee) like great power, requires great responsibility.
Responsibility that comes from wisdom and maturity… to decern what is worth saying. And perhaps when and where… and with whom. That is perhaps what is truly lacking in public discourse nowadays. But then perhaps it’s always been a rare and valuable commodity.
For as Ray W. has mentioned many times here, “words have consequences.”
But no more so than from our leadership.
Just another observation.
Pogo says
@Anyone
…have an observation(s) about putin detonating a neutron bomb in the federal government?
Just asking.
James says
@Pogo and Myself
As I reconsidered my prior comment to you, I feel I should note that Wittgenstein usually was speaking in the abstract… as in the case of the question of such a thing as a “private language.”
Which now that I think about it, was probably only a “tangential aside” from the main topics covered in the philosophy of language course. Despite its mention of “language,” the idea seems more concerned with more general epistemological or perhaps ontological questions… although both of those subjects are at the heart of much of the matter of the philosophy of language… which could perhaps be argued is at the heart of much of what’s left of modern concern in philosophy.
Brings to mind one of my old professors. One who was of the opinion (and fond of proclaiming it whenever his name was mentioned… Wittgenstein, that is) that “Wittgenstein was a mystic.”
And I suppose your comment, and my reflections, helped perhaps to clarify what he meant by that proclamation all those years ago.
Relatively speaking… I suppose he was… to some extent.
Justa reminisce’n.
Someone says
Any word on exactly who works for DOGE?… Anyone?
Not going to hold my breath waiting on a response.
That’ll be like waiting for Trump to release his tax returns… and we all know how long that took.
Sherry says
The DOGE Crime Syndicate:
Less than three years before Elon Musk tapped him to take part in a sweeping overhaul of the US government, Edward Coristine, then 17, was the subject of a heated dispute between two executives at the Arizona-based cybersecurity firm where he was an intern.
At issue was whether to allow Coristine to keep his job even though he was suspected of leaking proprietary information to a competitor.
“You’re willing to risk our entire network to a 17-year-old?” one frustrated executive asked the company’s CEO in 2022. “Are you for real right now?”
In a recording of the call, reviewed by CNN, Marshal Webb, the CEO of Path Network, a company that offers services to protect businesses from cyberattacks, defended his decision.
He said he wanted to allow Coristine to continue with his internship, in part, because he didn’t want to make him “an enemy” or have him “running amok” with information he was suspected of taking. Webb allowed him to stay with the proviso that the young employee “not be exposed to anything that’s really sensitive.”
That was then.
Today, the 19-year-old, once known by the online moniker “Big Balls,” is part of Musk’s controversial effort to remake the federal government. He is a “senior advisor” with access to various departments, including Homeland Security, FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The details of Coristine’s role with the government are not clear. But his young age and relative lack of experience have raised concerns about his overall suitability for such potentially sensitive work.
Some government experts have questioned whether Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency – under which Coristine works – has appropriately followed all rules meant to protect US government data.
“The federal government has more data on American citizens than almost any other institution and so if we’re going to just remove the guardrails that protect that data, there’s no saying which actors may gain access to that,” said Nick Bednar, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who specializes in the executive branch. “That data is very valuable to know where people have invested their money, to know their social security numbers, their bank account information.”
Pogo says
@Sherry
One of the single best “comments” ever posted on this site — ever.
President musk, and his minions (elected and otherwise — he owns them all) are on a rampage of illegality. If putin, xi jinping, kim jong un, and ali khamenei planned to destroy this country they couldn’t excel the destruction, subversion, and neutralizing of its defences that musk and trump are engaged in.
Sherry says
Thanks so very much Pogo! There was a time when “the truth will set you free”. . . unfortunately, I’ve lost the belief that “everyone” cares about the truth.