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Weather: Patchy fog in the morning. Sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Saturday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Lows in the lower 60s. West winds around 5 mph.
- 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:
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at its new location on South 2nd Street, right in front of City Hall, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts 68th informal town hall with coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. at his law office at 301 South Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. All subjects, all interested residents or non-residents welcome. On the agenda: Golf course sale, Veranda Bay, the pier project, and more. Today’s special guest: City Manager Dale Martin.
Peps Art Walk, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every second and fourth Saturday, Beachfront Grille, 2444 South Oceanshore Boulevard, Flagler Beach. Step into the magical vibes of Unique Handcrafted vendors gathering in one location, selling handmade goods. Makers, crafters, artists, of all kinds found here. From honey to baked goods, wooden surfboards, to painted surfboards, silverware jewelry to clothing, birdbaths to inked glass, beachy furniture to foot fashions, candles to soaps, air fresheners to home decor and SO much more! Peps Art Walk happens on the last Saturday of every month. A grassroots market that began in May of 2022 has grown steadily into an event with over 30 vendors and many loyal patrons. The event is free, food and drink on site, parking is free, and a raffle is held to raise money for local charity Whispering Meadows Ranch. Kid friendly, dog friendly, great music and good vibes. Come out to support our hometown artist community!
‘Around the World in 80 Days’ at City Rep Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Adults, $25, youth, $15. Buckle up for a whirlwind journey with CRT’s revival of Around the World in 80 Days! This high-energy adaptation of the Jules Verne classic follows fearless Phileas Fogg as he races across the globe. With clever staging, quick-changing characters, and nonstop laughs, it’s a theatrical adventure full of heart, hilarity, and wonder. A fast-paced, fantastical adventure for the whole family
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Byblos: The mailman did not deliver a Library of America book yesterday, but Selected Letters of John Updike, an 875-page tome listed for $55, but that I got for free for some reason, because apparently Amazon owed me money. The book is published by Knopf, Updike’s lifelong publisher. I was disappointed that the binding did not follow Updike’s uniform style for the six decades he published his 60-some books, though the printed pages’ design and fonts does. Updike paid loving attention to all the mechanics of his books down to binding and paper quality. He had a printer’s instincts, and was briefly a newspaper copy boy while in college. (He indulges his affection for the trade with erotic abandon—typesetting is its own Song of Songs—in Rabbit Redux.) I am a bit hesitant to read the book because my 1980s and 90s infatuation with Updike began to wane after that, and in the last decade and a half turned to reserved admiration and frequent distaste. Not for the style, which never fails, but I could no longer stomach the mean, the demeaning, the endless sexism, the occasional Twain-like bigotry of the American abroad (certain American cities among his abroads), the Darwinian prism of the near-totality of his fictional characters’ relationships. I kept turning pages more impatient with their shallowness than amazed by the prose. But here are the letters–to editors, to wives and ex-wives, to lovers, I assume, because from the few pages I’ve gleaned, he is even looser with coarse language in his letters than he was in his novels, and it took nothing to happen on a blow job reference: an Updike obsession in and out of his novels, evidently. I never believed that his fictions were mostly fictions. Adam Begley in his admiring biography from 2014 confirmed that most of what he wrote was, not unlike Gide, basically journaling off his life, just as James Schiff, who edited this volume of letters, does in his warm and inviting introduction: “What is most telling, though, is the degree to which he mined his own life for material, and his belief that what made his fiction successful was something literal about its truthfulness.” Still difficult to resist, from the little I’ve gleaned so far. He’s 11 years old, and his letters to comic strip artists are germs of his later artistry as a book critic, by far superior to so many of his novels, his later novels especially. Here he is, at 15, writing Harold Gray, the cartoonist of Little Orphan Annie: “Your draughtsmanship is beyond reproach. The drawing is simple and clear, but extremely effective. You could tell just by looking at the faces who is the trouble maker and who isn’t, without any dialogue. The facial features, the big, blunt fingered hands, the way you handle light and shadows are all excellently done. Even the talk balloons are good, the lettering small and clean, the margins wide, and the connection between the speaker and his remark wiggles a little, all of which, to my eye, is as artistic as you can get.” Of course I’ll read the book. He is habitually lovely in his letters: “This is the land of wool, and I haven’t seen a single sheep yet,” he writes his younger daughter Miranda during a 1974 trip to Australia, the year he is hot and heavy into his affair with Martha Bernhard, though he’s waiting Miranda from Australia, on a trip that included a ménage à trois with two women. Martha is the woman he left Miranda’s mother for: “Guess my attempt to be lovable yesterday drew mixed reviews,” he writes Martha two weeks after his return from Australia. “I write this uncertain if my status is still loverly at all. Well, what can I say, except that you discouraged my timid and tentative offer to be true to you (and Mary), wanted the truth, and got it.” By which he meant that he confessed to both of them, clearly boasting, that he had slept with two women in Australia, at the same time. They were his roommates. “That throughout I had no doubt that my heart lay with that bundle of blue letters and the 35-year-old snapshot. That the curious quality of our physical encounters-I, rapturous but addled; you gorgeous and giving and serene—in a way bid me try my wings once more, so they could be better folded next time you and I met. And so they were. That I was struck, too, by your dancing in my arms telling me David was so fuckable but that after all we bring to each other a sexuality that is not exclusive. And that I loved your questions, which were specific but very much to the point, as only you could know-only you among women I have known, that is, know that lovemaking is not a shapeless warm muddle but has its degrees and stages, like the hierarchies of angels, and hence its levels of betrayal. That my failure to invite being blown may constitute, in this sad little saga of down under, a patch of beleaguered loyalty. Forgive me what needs forgiving; I am sorry mostly for your grief.” The letter goes on, with love declarations as he sleeps next to his wife in his children’s house, ending with: “Fact and fiction–help me to keep them straight.” He never did. But I still love–is love too strong a word? I still can’t get away from him.
—P.T.
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December 2025
Santa in Bunnell
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
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn
‘Greetings,’ A Christmas Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
For the full calendar, go here.
You’re going to spoil me rotten, with your generous post-opus letters, that so uncannily zero in on the point of it all, and so jubilantly rejoice with me over the sections that I liked as well. May I come all humbly to earn even a particle of your kind words and your hopeful prophesy of a long productive future. I feel, down deep, on my last legs, unless Martha gets me to Florida for senescence reversal. I used to wonder, gazing at my venerable grandfather, how people could stand being that close to death, and not scream all the time. The answer, I begin to realize, is (I) they don’t feel any closer to death than a baby, and (2) what can they do about it anyway? So glad you liked my two Anns, so different except in that they are both seen mostly in bed. So glad you noticed the changing shape of pussies as the single most quietly pivotal event of our times. [* Reference to characters and evolving grooming habits in his novel Memories of the Ford Administration.] What do women think about, while they studiously bend over their crotches, razor in hand, consulting the template of the newest high-thigh swimsuit cut?
–From A John Updike letter to Philip Roth, Dec. 14, 1992, in Selected Letters of John Updike (2025).
James says
No gold cutlery set, yet…
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/nov/22/the-white-house-gold-rush-is-on/
… Trump strikes me as a very 1970s-ish type, perhaps a solid platinum fondue set with genuine ivory or ebony handled serving forks? Although I’m not sure, is it safe to cook with platinum pots or eat with platinum utensils?
Just curious… not a problem I’ll ever have.
James says
Oh well, I guess the $30 “MegaChef” will have to do…
https://www.homedepot.com/p/MegaChef-Enameled-Cast-Iron-Fondue-Pot-with-6-Serving-Forks-in-Green-985122089M/333198144
Endless dark money says
Brown people are disappeared with republicans in charge! If one doesn’t have rights than no one truly does! Stop the maga terrorist!
Ray W. says
While sources differ, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that in 2024 global electricity demand rose by 4.3% last year, or by 1.172 terrawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity consumed.
From other sources, worldwide renewable electricity supply from all types grew by some 15.1% (858 TWh), and took an approximately three-quarter share of the rise in demand, electricity output by natural gas sources grew by 170 TWh. Electricity supplied by coal rose by 90 TWh.
As an aside, Norway’s clean energy electricity sector reached 98% of its electricity grid needs. A great majority of that clean energy supply came from hydro-power sources, but solar and wind contributions continue to rise.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
While renewable electricity supply is rising faster than supply from fossil fuels, overall electricity demand still outpaces that added to the grid from renewables. Renewable electricity supply has already passed that from coal and renewables are closing in on natural gas.
Ray W. says
According to a tiny news outlet, IEEE Spectrum, a 2009 British-based start-up electric motor design firm, named Yokeless And Segmented Architecture (YASA), was purchased by Mercedes-Benz in 2021.
Prior to purchase, YASA provided motors to Ferrari in its SF90 hybrid vehicle.
YASA developed a new “radial-flux” electric motor design.
Last May, YASA opened a Yarnton, England-based factory with a 25,000 motor production capacity per year. A Mercedes-Benz factory is being retrofitted to ramp up production of the motor to another 100,000 units per year, with these motors to be fitted in AMG high-performance vehicles.
According to a CAR and DRIVER story, the AMG GT XX prototype, with three electric motors that produce a combined 1341 horsepower, will go into production in 2026.
The motor, which weighs 27.9 pounds, generates a peak output of 1,005 horsepower. Unofficially, the power-to-weight ratio of 59 kilowatts per kilogram is a world record for electric motors.
Testing reveals that the motor can continuously produce between 469 and 536 horsepower. This past August, a Mercedes EV prototype fitted with three YASA motors that could, if commercialized, compete in an SUV class that includes the Porsche Taycan drove on a test track roughly 25,000 miles in 7.5 days.
Said Tim Foolmer, founder of YASA:
“And this isn’t a concept on a screen — it’s running right now, on the dynos. … We’ve built an electric motor that’s significantly more power-dense than anything before it, all with scalable materials and processes.”
Radial-flux motors, used by Tesla, “are shaped like a sausage roll. A spinning rotor is housed within a stationary stator. The lines of magnetic flux are oriented radially, perpendicular to the motor’s central shaft. These flux lines represent the interacting magnetic fields of the permanent magnets in the rotor and electromagnets in the stator. It is that interaction that provides torque.”
Axial-flux motors are shaped “like a pancake.” In YASA’s configuration, a pair of much-larger rotors are positioned on either side of the stator, and notably, all three have roughly the same diameter. Magnetic flux is oriented axially, parallel to the shaft. Because torque is proportional to the rotor diameter squared, an axial-flux design can generate substantially more torque than a comparable radial-flux unit. The dual permanent-magnetic rotors double the key torque-generating components, and ensure a short magnetic path, which enhances efficiency by reducing losses in the magnetic field.”
The compact motor can fit between an engine and a transmission in a hybrid-design. In a pure EV design, the configuration can be made to fit inside a drive wheel, or flat within the width of the car.
A YASA engineer told the reporter that the axial-flux motor, using a “Soft Magnetic Composite” material with a “very high magnetic permeability”, is about one-third the mass and length of a comparable radial-flux motor, a size configuration that can ripple through a vehicle’s design. The soft magnetic composite material can be pressure-formed into shapes that reduced “eddy current losses, and lessens the cooling burden.”
Wrote the reporter, taken from a company statement:
“Cascading gains in vehicle architecture could eliminate at least 200 kilograms from today’s EVs, … about half the motors themselves, the rest from smaller batteries, brakes, and lighter-weight supporting structures.” YASA’s axial-flux motor uses 5 pounds of steel, whereas comparable radial-flux motors use up to 30 pounds of steel.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Just as a thought exercise, could a single YASA motor limited to 400 horsepower, be fitted into a lightweight mid-sized sedan, something like a Toyota Camry?
A Camry gas-powered car comes with a 17 gallon gas tank. Eliminating that reduces weight by about 115 pounds. A standard Camry engine weighs 360 pounds. I couldn’t find a weight for a Camry continuously variable transmission, but I estimate no more than 200 pounds, give or take, and perhaps as low as 150 pounds. Eliminating the radiator and fluids might be another 30 or so pounds.
With a 28 pound electric motor, and eliminating 650 or so pounds in engine and paraphernalia, that means a 625-pound EV battery pack would be equal in weight to an ICE package.
I searched for the average weight of an EV battery pack. Depending on the size of the vehicle, with larger vehicles needing larger EV battery packs, in 2025, the average weight of a battery pack ranged between 900 and 1,200 pounds. Arbitrarily choosing 1050 pounds, than means an EV package right now could be about 425 pounds heavier than a gas-powered car, give or take.
Yes, I know there is more to that, but this is where things are heading. New batteries are getting lighter and lighter. Solid state batteries are soon to be released. EVs get lighter and lighter. Gas-powered cars remain roughly the same.
Despite it all, a young British engineer took a chance and opened a company to make a motor no one else could make. His theory now weighs 28 pounds and puts out a peak 1005 horsepower.
Is this what Ford’s CEO meant when he told a British podcaster last year that EVs are in their Model T moment?
There are some 1600 different working battery chemistries out there right now for many different applications, from cell phone batteries to huge battery storage systems.
No one knows which chemistry will be the easiest to manufacture, the least costly, the least pollutive to make or to recycle, the most energy dense, the quickest to discharge, the quickest to charge, the longest lasting, or the lightest in weight.
Who knows who will will this race? I am hoping that Ford, GM, and Chrysler each develop batteries superior to anything the Chinese have right now. Possibilities abound.
Laurel says
Oddly enough, the police seem to go after inflated, poor representations of the penis. Um, have our priorities gone askew? I think maybe so.