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Weather: A chance of showers, then showers and thunderstorms likely after 8am. Sunny, with a high near 90. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Friday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely before 2am, then a chance of showers. Partly cloudy, with a low around 75. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
- 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. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock, 2 to 5 p.m., Picnic Shelter behind the Hammock Community Center at 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast. It’s a free event. Bring your Acoustic stringed Instrument (no amplifiers), and a folding chair and join other local amateur musicians for a jam session. Audiences and singers are also welcome. A “Jam Circle” format is where musicians sit around the circle. Each musician in turn gets to call out a song and musical key, and then lead the rest in singing/playing. Then it’s on to the next person in the circle. Depending upon the song, the musicians may take turns playing/improvising a verse and a chorus. It’s lots of Fun! Folks who just want to watch or sing generally sit on the periphery or next to their musician partner. This is a monthly event on the 4th Friday of every month.
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.
Notably: Reading André Gide’s journals, I have reached the summer of 1914. “We expect the worst,” he wrote on July 28, the official day of the start of the war, though he did not necessarily know it yet. He notices what we all noticed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: “There is, despite everything, some comfort in seeing, in the face of this dreadful threat, particular interests disappear, and dissensions, discord; in France, emulation quickly becomes a kind of fury that pushes each citizen to heroic self-denial.” A few days later, “We are about to enter a long tunnel full of blood and shadows,” and the seasons of “fake news” (“fausses nouvelles”), he wrote. The fever of a quick victory over Germany grips him momentarily, but just as quickly he sees the poison of propaganda overwhelm French society. Gide reveals “his loathing of the mercenary spirit that he discovers in the new patriotism” (as Vernon Parrington wrote of another writer in another context). It all seems again identical to the way American society abandoned nobility in favor of crass jingoism after 9/11 . Gide looks around and sees how “never, without doubt, had the silliness, the filth, the ugliness of popular stupidity been revealed in a more compromising and shameful manner.” But this line struck me to be as much about our present in 2025 as it was his in 1914. It evokes the line by the French writer François Maspero writing about David Rousset’s small book on surviving Dachau. Rousset analyzes the Nazi concentration camp system by defining it not “as a monstrous aberration due to the extreme consequences of the war,” Maspero wrote, “but as an integral part of society, product of its ideology, essential part of its economy.” And here we are.
—P.T.
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.
September 2025
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
‘All Shook Up,’ at Daytona Playhouse
‘Nunsense,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
‘All Shook Up,’ at Daytona Playhouse
‘Nunsense,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
I’d worship the demon of the times, trample on every law, break every duty, neglect every bond, overlook every obligation to which no punishment was annexed. I’d set myself calumniating my rich neighbors. I’d call all passive, inoffensive men by the name of inimical. I’d plunder or detain the entrusted deposits. I’d trade on public moneys, though contrary to my oath. Oath! Chaff for good Whigs, and only fit to bind a few conscientious Royalists! I’d build my new fortune on the depreciation of the money. I’d inform against every man who would make any difference betwixt it and silver, whilst I, secure from any discovery or suspicion by my good name, would privately exchange ten for one. I’d pocket the fines of poor militiamen extracted from their heart’s blood. I’d become obdurate, merciless, and unjust. I’d grow rich, ” fas vel nefas. ” I’d send others a-fighting, whilst I stayed at home to trade and to rule. I’d become a clamorous American, a modern Whig, and offer every night incense to the god Arimanes. “
–Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur, cited in Vernon Parrington’s Modern Currents in American Thought (1927).
Pogo says
@P.T.
Not the regular gilding of the lily — by God, well said.
Elsewhere:
Scullery of hell welcomes the return of native son: little jimmy returns to his roots…
Details
https://www.google.com/search?q=dobson
Pogo says
Pogo says
@Actually news
… in the rest of the world:
Kids these days
https://www.google.com/search?q=palm+coast+man+hacking+and+crypto+crime
Fury road says
Republicans have no issues with retaliation. So they wont mind being held accountable for their pedophile protection, theft of trillions, fraud, destruction of democracy, violation of the constitution, and countless crimes against humanity !
Have you all seen the ever growing list of republicans and republican officials charged with sex crimes?
Maybe we should scalp them like our ancestors would have done. Still nicer than the concentration camp option.
Ray W, says
Here is a different take on the concept of appeasement as practiced by those who claim that ending the Ukrainian resistance to Russian invasion will stop the killing:
Oleksandra Matviychuk, the Ukrainian lawyer and founder of the Center for Civil Liberty in 2007, which organization earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was interviewed by Gary Kasparov, the former chess Grand Master and later political opponent of the Putin administration, on his podsite, Autocracy in America. During her interview, Matviychuk said:
“I know that some politicians abroad, they have this wishful thinking that ‘The war is so horrible’, that ‘Okay, occupation is not good, but at least it’ll stop the war and decrease human suffering.” But believe me: I document war crimes in occupied territories for 11 years. Occupation doesn’t stop human suffering. Occupation just makes human suffering invisible.'”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
If any FlaglerLive reader truly wants to see cessation of the killing in the Ukraine, then give the Ukrainians the weaponry and economic support that forces every last Russian out of sovereign Ukrainian territory no matter how long it takes.
Matvyichuk knows what she is talking about. Any occupied portion of the Ukraine that is ceded to Russia through appeasement and surrender will see continuing bloodshed and human misery, only the blood that will continue to be shed behind the wall of Russian occupation will be Ukrainian blood, and no longer be Russian blood. Winston Churchill knew this over 100 years ago. He knew this 80 years ago. European political leaders know this, now. Matvyichuk knows this, too.
Ray W, says
Following the lead of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Tesla, Volkswagen is instituting an option that it calls a “performance subscription service” to its British EV buyers, an option that forces buyers to pay extra to access all the horsepower that has been designed into the vehicle.
The ID.3 Pure EV comes standard with 148 horsepower. If a buyer wants 20 extra horsepower, he or she must pay either an $876 lifetime one-time payment, or $223 per year, or $22 per month just to access the extra power that already is in the vehicle.
For insurance purposes, the car is rated at 168 horsepower, even if the owner doesn’t pay extra to access the 168 horsepower.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Car buyers have long had the option to pay less for a four-banger or pay more for a V6 or a V8.
But electric cars are different. There may be a time when a car shopper can buy one car with a set amount of power and have five or six options to pay more for different amounts of additional power on demand.
Could there soon come a time when a purchaser can buy a standard full-size electric truck with 3oo horsepower and then, when needing to tow a large load on a trailer, go online to purchase for one-day-only access to an additional 200 horsepower?
Ray W, says
According to AFP, yesterday a federal judge ordered the removal within 60 days of temporary fencing, all lighting, all generators, and any waste and sewage treatment systems at the immigrant detention center recently erected in the wetlands of south Florida. No further detainees are to be brought to the site.
While I have not read the judge’s order, the news outlet writes that the plaintiffs argued to the court that, among other things, none of the required environmental impact studies had been prepared for review prior to the construction of the facility.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
According to a Cool Down article, “the changing climate, coupled with new tariffs targeting coffee-producing nations, may lead to even higher costs for your morning caffeine fix.”
The global $31 billion industry has grown in product quantity by 60% over the past 30 years, but extreme weather and extended drought in both Brazil and Vietnam have surged coffee prices to a 47-year high. The reporter does not write whether the figure is adjusted for inflation.
There are only a few regions across the world in which “traditionally ideal” climate conditions for coffee growing predominates. Rising temperatures have been pushing coffee production out of some of the most ideal growing regions. Brazil primarily grows arabica beans. Vietnam primarily grows robusta beans, which require less water than do arabica beans. Liberica beans, a lesser-known coffee bean, require even less water and some growers have begun experiments with growing that product.
Vietnam’s new tariff rate is 20%. Brazil’s? 50%.
According to David Ortega, a food and economics policy professor at Michigan State University told the reporter:
“We have not seen tariffs of this magnitude before. … There’s no playbook for this.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
Seeking Alpha reports that Aker BP, an oil exploration company, located one of the largest oil deposits in Norway’s Yggdrasil area that had been found in a decade. The field, spread over three exploration licenses, is expected to yield between 94 and 134 million barrels of oil, beginning in 2027.
Aker BP anticipates total production from the Yggdrasil area to reach as much as much as one billion barrels of oil.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
At current extraction rates of over 100 million barrels of crude oil per day, this find will supply roughly one day’s worth of the world’s current demand. But the overall anticipated yield from the entire field may be enough for some three years’ worth of daily demand.
Ray W, says
Newsweek is reporting that AriZona Iced Tea is considering raising the price of its tallboy tea products to an unnamed point above the $0.99 price point that it has been at since the early 90s.
In February, a 25% tariff was placed on imported aluminum. In June, the tariff level was raised to 50%
AriZona imports 20% of the aluminum it uses in its canned products.
Don Vultaggio, AriZona Beverage Company founder, said to the New York Times:
“At some point the consumer is going to have to pay the price. … I hate even the thought of it. … It would be a hell of a shame after 30-plus years.”
Make of this what you will.
Sherry says
Just another (of many) instance where the “fascist” trump administration simply “FIRES” anyone who has the audacity to divulge any information that “Lord trump” doesn’t like:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Ray W, says
CBS NEWS quotes a former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner, Erica Groshen, who the news outlet that revisions to BLS jobs estimates are a “feature” and not a “bug” in the agency’s reporting process. She added that a large revision of the BLS jobs numbers is not a “failure” of the BLS to do its job:
“It’s not a failure and it’s not bias. It’s not like the commissioner said, ‘Oh, I think I’m going to change that numbers (sic)’. The commissioner has no power, no ability to do that.”
Michelle Evermore, former Department of Labor employee and senior fellow at The Century Foundation, agreed with Ms. Groshen. Ms. Evermore said, “[h]aving worked with BLS for years, it’s impossible to cook the books as things stand.”
Explained Ms. Groshen:
“The BLS wants to get the information as accurate as possible, but it doesn’t want to wait too long to put out information that’s useful. … So it puts out preliminary numbers, saying they are an estimate, then it gathers more information and improves that estimate.”
According to the reporter:
“The BLS surveys both households and businesses for its monthly jobs report. After releasing an initial report, it’s common for the agency to issue revisions to the prior monthly figure, as more accurate data is collected over time.
“That’s because while some survey recipients respond to the agency’s surveys immediately, others report data late. In the interest of reporting employment information is a timely manner, though, the BLS initially issues its monthly jobs report based on an incomplete collection of responses.”
The director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, Jeff Strohl, told the reporter that the BLS knows that the monthly jobs numbers will be revised, but “…since currency of the data is still important”, … the timeliness of the release is considered more important than the “100% accuracy” that can be obtained over time. Director Strohl stated that initially 70% of surveyed persons and businesses respond on time. A month later, 90%-95%, or 150,000 more persons or businesses, will have responded.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
At least one gullibly stupid FlaglerLive commenter bought into the lie issued by our president that the most recent BLS jobs data was not as transparent as it ought to be. When the BLS labels its initial jobs figure an “estimate”, as it has been doing for decades, it is being completely transparent and honest about the limitations of the report.
Ray W, says
Interesting Engineering devoted a story to a new cheaper and more efficient method of producing hydrogen from seawater, an energy source that can be used to produce steel or electrical power. Most hydrogen for energy use is currently produced from fresh water because any currently used hydrogen producing catalyzing process involving seawater exposes metal electrodes to chloride atoms.
Carbon cloth, due to its conductivity, flexibility, low cost, and corrosion resistance, offers an alternative to metal electrodes, but “carbon cloth electrodes” cannot withstand high electrical current operations for more than 100 hours, which is “a basic threshold for industrial use.”
Researchers with the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) immersed a carbon cloth-based electrode in a concentrated nitric acid bath for one hour at a temperature of 100 degrees Centigrade inside an enclosed “treatment vessel”. The enclosed treatment vessel was needed to prevent fluctuating acid concentrations.
The reporter wrote:
“The treated carbon cloth became highly hydrophilic, allowing cobalt, molybdenum, and ruthenium ions to spread out evenly.”
And it was reported that the treated carbon cloth maintained initial performance levels for more than 800 hours of continuous operation at 500 mA/cm-squared without evidence of leaching of ruthenium or cobalt into the electrolyte, “underscoring the material’s corrosion resistance and structural stability.”
“Overpotential” is a term related to the cost of producing hydrogen. The treated carbon cloth reduced “overpotential” by 25%, when compared to current means of producing hydrogen from fresh water, i.e., via a cobalt-molybdenum catalyst. And the new process is roughly 1.3 times more efficient in producing hydrogen than the conventional process.
One of the researchers said:
“We plan to further advance the technology to the demonstration level through extended durability testing beyond 1,000 hours and research on scaling up to large-area cell modules and stacks.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Major gas turbine companies, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Power division, have been experimenting for many decades with hydrogen as a substitute for natural gas being injected into their combined cycle gas turbine electrical generating plants. Many of the experiments involve blends of both natural gas and hydrogen. The ideal would be a system that could run solely an abundant supply of hydrogen.
The major engineering drawback to hydrogen is the flashover that occurs with hydrogen use, meaning that hydrogen ignites faster and burns more completely at a higher temperature than does natural gas. For these reasons natural gas injection systems differ from those that inject hydrogen directly into the turbine’s combustion area.
The economic drawback to hydrogen use is the current cost of producing hydrogen in quantities sufficient for industrial use at a price competitive with natural gas.
I have seen a video of a single rotor hydrogen-powered test mule engine operating on the hydrogen separated from oxygen by direct injection of fresh water into a 300-degree Centigrade metal wire catalyst chamber; the metal catalyst instantaneously separates enough hydrogen for the test mule engine to run independent of any other fuel source. But a test mule is not a full-sized gas-turbine system.
Ray W, says
In light of the fact that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act set a deadline to take away government subsidies for both wind and solar energy projects, the Wall Street Journal investigated whether solar and wind power could thrive without subsidies.
The reporter asked why the sky isn’t falling for wind and solar?
He answers:
“First, [wind and solar] are no longer the nascent technologies they were when they started receiving subsidies. The two renewable sources have been cheap relative to natural gas-fired power without subsidies for at least a decade.
“Utility-scale solar today is 84% cheaper than it was 16 years ago; onshore wind costs have come down 56% over that period, according to Lazard. Even paired with battery storage, solar and wind remains cost competitive compared with natural gas, according to Lazard.”
The reporter added:
“In the short-term, of course, there will be some pain. Initially, there will be a glut of solar and wind developers rushing to find power purchasers before the deadline to qualify for subsidies, possibly creating a buyer’s market.
“Not all will make it. …
“Longer term, it looks like a seller’s market. Power demand is rising for the first time in a while. Artificial intelligence is one driver. So, too, is the broad shift from fossil fuels to electricity for things such as space and water heating and cars.
“Meanwhile, competing energy sources also face obstacles. Nuclear power takes a prohibitively long time to build. And the cost of building a new gas-fired power plant is almost double what it was five years ago. …
“Skilled labor to build out natural gas-fired power has also been scarce. If the U.S. adds more capacity to export natural gas, as the Trump administration wants, that could put upward pressure on the price of the commodity going forward.
“Speed is another benefit. Solar and battery storage can take 12 to 18 months to build; wind projects take about two years. … A combined-cycle natural gas power plant takes three or four years. …”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Thank goodness I have been commenting to FlaglerLive readers for years on the fact that wind and solar power have been less expensive over the lifetime of either type of project than the lifetime costs for natural gas, coal and nuclear power.
The WSJ reporter twice refers to Lazard, which is the energy industry’s standard source for the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for new builds across power sources. LCOE means lifetime costs divided by energy production, and it calculates the present value of the total cost of building and operating a power plant over an assumed lifetime.
I found references to Lazard’s LCOE in a July 1, 2025, article published by pv magazine.
Unsubsidized utility-scale solar projects range from an LCOE of $0.038 per kWh to $0.78 per kWh.
Unsubsidized onshore wind ranges from an LCOE of $0.037 per kWh to $0.086 per kWh.
The pv magazine reporter writes:
“On an unsubsidized $/MWh basis, renewable energy remains the most cost-competitive form of generation. As such, renewable energy will continue to play a key role in the buildout of new power generation in the U.S. … This is particularly true in the current high power demand environment, where renewables stand out as both the lowest cost and quickest to deploy generation resource.”
Ray W, says
AUTOPOST reports that in the first quarter of 2025, CATL led the worldwide battery storage capacity production race by holding a 29.6% share of the total marketplace, with its giga-watthour (GWh) production rising 36% year-over-year to 39.3 GWh of battery storage capacity produced.
The math is fairly simple. If a company makes an EV battery with a storage capacity of 50 KWh, and the company makes 20,000 of the batteries, then the sum of the batteries’ storage capacity is 1 million KWh’s. A GWh is one billion KWh’s.
LG Energy Solution, a South Korean company, held second place behind CATL, with production of 28.9 total GWh’s of battery storage capacity produced, up 15.6% year-over-year. The company’s market share slumped from 23.9% to 21.8%.
SK On, another South Korean battery company, held third place with 13.4 GWh of battery storage capacity produced, up 24.1% year-over-year, though its market share dropped from 10.3% to 10.1%.
Samsung SDI, a third South Korean battery company saw its market share fall from 11.1% to 7.8%, on total battery storage capacity manufactured falling year-over-year by 11.2% to 10.3 GWh.
Panasonic, a major Tesla supplier, and a Japanese company, saw an 8.7% decrease in GWh production to 9.4 GWh; it held fifth place overall in GWh production.
BYD GWh production grew 127.5% to 9.1 GWh for the quarter, good enough to rise to sixth place.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I don’t know how many companies make EV batteries. None of the American companies made the top six, nor did any of the European battery makers.
Sherry says
She said sarcastically. . . Just stop publishing “factual data” and FIRE anyone who disagrees with “Lord trump” and all will be right with the Maga world!!!