To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Patchy fog in the morning. Sunny. Highs in the upper 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Monday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the lower 60s.
- 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 Bunnell City Commission meets at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 2400 Commerce Parkway, Bunnell. To access meeting agendas, materials and minutes, go here.
Nar-Anon Family Groups offers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetings here.
Flagler Cares is in the midst of its Second Annual “Keep the Holiday Lights On” campaign. The health and social care coordinating organization is inviting residents and businesses to support local families in need of a modest financial bridge to keep their power on this holiday season. This initiative encourages neighbors to help neighbors by sponsoring homes to ensure struggling families can keep their lights on through December. The goal is to sponsor 100 homes at $100 per home, covering one month’s electric bill for families who might otherwise face utility cut-offs during the holidays. Supporters are welcome to contribute any amount to help brighten the season for their fellow residents. Donations can be made now through the end of the year on the “Keep the Holiday Lights On” webpage at www.flaglercares.org/holiday. Check donations may also be mailed or dropped off at Flagler Cares, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B302, Palm Coast, FL 32164. As homes are sponsored, donors can watch the campaign’s progress online as homes on the page light up — a symbol of the community’s shared compassion and care.
Notably: Last week FlaglerLive was down for a few hours, as was the Observer, as were hundreds of thousands of websites across the country, millions across the world. Nothing we could do about it. It had nothing to do with our own site or our server. Nothing to do with Trump , Putin or Micromegas, either. It was Cloudflare’s fault. Cloudflare protects FlaglerLive and those millions of other sites from brutal attacks, but most of us have no idea how it works. We just pay its bills for protection, the way the corner store did to the toughs of Flatbuish Avenue who could do a better job than the police. The whole internet is 1970s Flatbush. Cloudflare’s name “may not be very well known, but it is one of the most important companies on the global internet,” Statista explains. “Cloudflare is a reverse proxy service, an intermediary between clients and servers that enhances security, performance and reliability for web applications. The outage, which has since been resolved, made major websites, including social network X, Amazon, Claude AI, Canva, and Spotify, inaccessible for several hours.” It will happen again, and all of us voluntary and involuntary webmasters (I’m in the latter category) will lose a few days to our lives. The alternative, though, is like asking for your website to be hacked.
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.
December 2025
East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board Meeting
In Court: Jermaine Williams Status Hearing
In Court: Kristopher Henriqson
Flagler County Commission Evening Meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast Charter Review Committee Meeting
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 10-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Food Truck Tuesday
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
I often realize with sorrow that I haven’t expressed, literally, even a twentieth of what I would have liked, and perhaps even been able to express. What saves me is the habitual hope that one day God will send me so much strength and inspiration that I will express myself more fully, in short, that I will be able to expose all that I keep hidden in my heart and in my imagination.
–Dostoevsky, age 59, in a letter of Feb. 26 (or March 10), 1870.
Pogo says
@P.T.
Word, brother.👍
Laurel says
Okay, first of all, I’m all for American jobs and American workers. Maybe some should find new careers.
Indulge me for a minute while I note the differencan between American construction workers and immigrant construction workers.
America workers are slower, and a lot noisier. They blast their radios loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, as if everyone wants to hear it. They cuss and swear “f**k” and “f**king” at the top of their lungs several times per sentence, with no regard for the children in the area. They leave construction debris all over for someone else to clean up.
We pay more for this.
Immigrant workers don’t. They are in and out fast, and keep their comments, and radios to themselves.
Simple facts, take it or leave it. Whatever makes you comfortable.
Laurel says
Does spell check think that “differencan” is a word? Oh, NOW it lights up!
As Pee Wee said, “I meant to do that!”
Unfortunately, now I have to get serious.
You know those terrible, terrible regulations that the Republicans hate so? Well, Trump is dialing them back. Now, big Farma (yes, I really did mean to do that) is allowed to spray PFAS on our vegetables! You know, the forever plastics.
“The EPA has proposed new regulations regarding the use of PFAS pesticides, including measures to mitigate risks associated with their application on food crops. However, there are concerns that these actions may not sufficiently protect human health and the environment from the long-term effects of these “forever chemicals.”
– AI Assist, Newsweek, Wikipedia
Ya think?
The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration.
I have one question: Do Republicans have grandchildren?
Ray W. says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam.
Pierre Tristam says
I’m not sure for what, but you’re always welcome Ray. Thank you for your continued engagement.
Ray W. says
The Pogo-approved The Cool Down recently focused on a concrete startup company named Iron Shell. It’s founder, more than a decade ago a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, if I am reading the story correctly, mixed steel dust, a waste product, and silica from pulverized glass, also a waste product, into a concrete mixture.
The result, now called Ferrock, after curing for 28 days, is “stronger than concrete by several metrics: 13.5% for compressive strength; 20% for split tensile strength; and 18% for flexural strength.”
The author of the story points out that, worldwide, over 4 billion tons of concrete are produced per year.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
A form of concrete that is stronger, less compressive, and more flexible that uses waste material in its blending? I have no idea of how much steel dust is discarded each year, nor do I know how much glass suitable for pulverization is discarded each year, but the idea seems excellent to me.
Many concrete applications may not need Ferrock, but with tens of thousands of fans jumping around, football stadium foundations may benefit from use of this product. The all-metal “Bounce House” seating sections at UCF are an example of the structural stresses that can be created by jubilant fans.
Sherry says
I would add to this cartoon: “Things That Don’t Function”. . . A DOJ Prosecutor With ZERO Experience Who Was Put in that Office ILLEGALLY! This just in from Politico:
A federal judge has thrown out the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that President Donald Trump’s handpicked prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed to the role when she single handedly secured the indictments.
U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie concluded that Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia violated laws that limit the ability of the Justice Department to install top prosecutors without Senate confirmation.
Laurel says
Yeah, but Lindsey Halligan was third runner up in a beauty competition! She passed Trump’s competency requirement. She’ll have to appeal, and wear a short skirt.
Sherry says
Yep. . . Hubby and I just call her “Barbie 14”. . . a reminder trump and epstein liked them “young”!
Skibum says
I bet drumph has always drooled after Halligan since he first laid eyes on her, thinking to himself “Jeez, if I’d only been able to get her into one of MY beauty pageants when she was 14. I woulda dated her then, I woulda been grabbing her like I always do, without even asking! Wow, I coulda done anything and she woulda let me cause I was a celebrity!”
Ugh… when a person shows you who they are the first time, believe them.
Ray W. says
More on the concrete front.
According to a news outlet named SlashGear, in September 2025, four MIT researchers published a paper on the possible utility of using concrete as energy storage, i.e., as a battery.
Ultra-fine carbon black, a by-product created by “petroleum combustion” during the tire manufacturing process, mixed with an electrolyte, can turn concrete into a battery.
After many experiments with electrolytic solutions and construction techniques, the MIT researchers report that concrete that goes into the construction of a basement wall, about 5 cubic meters in volume, can store 2 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power a refrigerator for a day.
Here is how the reporter described the process:
“The electrolyte-rich cement provides a structural and functional base, and its formula can be adjusted based on the application. The carbon black particles form a microscopic network along the concrete’s natural pores, acting as electrical wiring inside the carbon black. … The choice of electrolyte also has an effect on the material’s performance; organic electrolytes performed best with a particular combination of quaternary ammonium salts and acenotrile being particularly effective. The former is commonly found in sanitizer sprays and the latter is a solvent used to make everything from pharmaceuticals to batteries.”
When examining the carbon black-enhanced concrete with a “focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy”, a “high resolution scanning technique”, the researcher’s learned that the “web of carbon allowed current to move so freely and efficiently within [the carbon black electrolyte blend] it had essentially become a supercapacitor.”
For reference, the reporter explained that in 2021, European researchers made a 1.6 volt supercapacitor battery “smaller than a speck of dust.”
Right now, sections of heated sidewalk slabs comprised of the new formulation concrete are being tested in Japan in hopes of eliminating the need to salt the sidewalks in winter.
According to the author, researchers, “looking ahead”, envision off-grid homes powered by concrete foundation and patio batteries, and parking lot batteries that charge cars.
Since the researchers now know that when the enhanced concrete is exposed to stress, electricity storage capacity “flickers.” This suggests that, in the future, bridges made with this form of concrete could not only store energy but also forewarn structural failure.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I celebrate innovation. I make no secret of it.
Taking waste carbon black derived from the tire making process to turn concrete into a battery intrigues me. Keeping sidewalks snow-free without use of wiring intrigues me. Using rooftop solar panels to charge a concrete foundation enough to power the house 24 hours a day intrigues me.
For thirty years, on and off, I raced motorcycles and participated as a crew chief in AMA racing activities. I learned very early on of the potential of innovation.
My first race bike was a Suzuki TS 90-J, modified with a Suzuki race kit to 100 cc’s. My second elder brother, Dan, was an AMI-trained mechanic. He purchased a set of Society of Automotive Engineers publications on two-stroke racing applications.
At the time, two-stroke cylinders had two transfer ports, one on each side of the cylinder. Transfer ports permit the flow of a gas-air mixture from the crankcase chamber beneath the piston to the compression chamber above the piston.
My brother took my racing cylinder and, using a process described in the SAE papers, ground a groove into the rear of the iron cylinder liner. He then removed the lower of the two piston rings and drilled a hole in the rear of the piston that matched the newly-ground cylinder liner groove. He created a third transfer port at the rear of the combustion chamber, a port that both increased airflow into the combustion chamber and created greater turbulence in the chamber. Turbulence enhances the mixing of the fuel and air prior to combustion. The difference in power amazed.
My brother had his own 1969 Suzuki 100. Suzuki made a race kit for that engine, too. He had done to his bike’s cylinder and piston what he did with mine. He won over 20 straight amateur races in the 100 cc class until his engine cases began to micro-fracture under stress around the crankshaft bearings. After that, he tried what he could to keep his crankshaft main seals from leaking air into the crankcase. When crankshaft seals fail, air leaks into the crankcase; the now extra-lean fuel air mixture burns at too high a heat and piston crowns melt into holes.
Like most racers, Dan lacked the funds to purchase new engine cases. There is an old racing joke: Do you know how to make a small fortune? Start with a big fortune and go racing!
The last time he raced the bike, then six or seven years used, was at Daytona. His was the lone Suzuki in the 100 cc amateur class that year.
Daytona, arguably being the biggest motorcycle racing event in the world, attracted factory CEO’s. Yamaha USA brought a twin-cylinder 100 cc factory Grand Prix bike to the event, to be ridden by their up and coming star, Randy Mamola, who now is in the FIM Grand Prix Hall of Fame.
From the start of the race, my brother on his old Suzuki, bought for $25 from a beach concessionaire at the end of the summer season, motored away from Mamola and his exotic GP machine, until the crankshaft main seals failed once again, and the over-lean fuel air mixture melted a hole in the piston crown. His self-modified used production Suzuki was actually faster down the straights than Yamaha’s factory GP bike of the same displacement, even when ridden by a future hall of famer. I was perhaps 17 or 18 at the time.
Say what you will, but don’t tell me that innovation can’t create wonders and fortunes. In racing, one looks forwards to the next race and how best to win it.
Innovation is the key to the world’s energy future and American innovation is the key to our economic future.
Mercedes-Benz is already installing in prototype vehicles a newly-designed axial-flux electric motor that weighs under 27 pounds and produces a peak 1005 horsepower with instant throttle response. After the next time you have wait for a transmission downshift to accelerate onto I-95, tell me that a five-hundred pound 250-horsepower turbocharged engine-transaxle powerplant with throttle and transmission lag that pumps and radiates 60 percent of the energy stored in the gasoline it burns out the exhaust pipe and through the cooling system and requires relatively greater maintenance and repair is better! Make the argument!
Joe D says
Advancements in technology from design engineering is fascinating. My younger brother is a retired Mechanical Engineer who worked for the X-ray technology department of a US based international manufacturer, then later, for a US based international filtration and polymer fabrication corporation. The AMAZING things they were working on when he recently retired have not even reached the open market yet.
Engineering Research (as well as Medical and Scientific Research) are necessary (regardless of what our current government administration believes), for the advancement of LIFE ADVANCING breakthroughs for the WORLD.
Pogo says
@Better monuments
… bomb shelters, vaults, tombs, and ballrooms. He said with a wink — and a smile.
It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
Ray W. says
Oil Price US posted an article about “Iron-Air” batteries, arguing that such batteries could “dethrone” lithium in battery storage systems.
I have commented to the FlaglerLive community about these iron-air batteries and about one of the American companies pioneering the technology, Form Energy.
But Form Energy is not alone in the development race.
These iron-air batteries, known colloquially in the battery field as “100-hour batteries” are slow to charge and slow to discharge, but iron is cheap and air is free. Lithium-ion batteries, depending on design, discharge in as few as four hours and as many as 12 hours.
Netherland’s-based Ore Energy, a company started in 2023 by former students of Delft University, recently connected its prototype “rust” battery to the Delft University grid. The test battery, tiny in comparison to Form Energy’s current batteries, offers longer term storage capacity.
One difficulty with batteries backing up wind turbines is that a turbine can be becalmed for days. Hence, the need for longer-term battery discharge. Solar, also intermittent, has much shorter down times, i.e., overnight. Lithium-ion backup battery storage is better suited to solar than it is to wind.
Said Ore Energy’s CEO, Bas Kil, to the reporter:
“The generation profile of solar matches really well with the duration of lithium-ion batteries. … But with wind, it’s very common to have multiple days of very high or low generation. So you could easily have three days where all your wind farms are producing at close to maximum capacity, … and in your first two to four hours, all you lithium-ion batteries will be full.”
Ore Energy is focusing both on decommissioned coal- and gas-fired power plants to place the rust batteries on their grounds and on co-locating its batteries directly alongside solar and gas farms.
A different news source, Oil Price US, writes of a different type of iron-air battery. According to the author, “[i]ron-air batteries function by running air through a negatively charged cathode toward a positively charged iron anode to react with a water-based electrolyte. During this passage, ions attach to the iron anode to form rust. As the ions pass through this rust layer, they produce electricity. Et voila! A battery. Critically, after this process is complete, the rusting can be reversed and the battery can be ‘reset’ to do it all over again. … This gives iron-air batteries a major leg up on the dominant technology in the battery sector — lithium-ion batteries. Lithium is an incredibly useful material for battery-making, as it is extremely energy-dense and high-performing, even in cold temperatures. But lithium also has major downsides, including geopolitically tricky supply chains, negative environmental impacts associated with its extraction, and the relatively short length of time it can store energy.”
From a different perspective, according to a Tech Xplore story, it was this capacity to operate a lithium-based battery with iron that led to the development of lithium-ferrous-phosphate chemistries now known as LFP batteries. But LFP batteries discharge no more than two or three of an iron atom’s 26 electrons during operation in a normal oxidation state. That means a limited amount of energy per kilogram can be discharged from an LFP battery. LFP batteries operate at a relatively low voltage.
According to this story, in 2018, a Stanford University doctoral candidate, William Gent, attempted to develop an iron-based material that would permit “a higher energy state for iron” by discharging more than two or three of iron’s 26 electrons per atom. His doctoral clock ran out before he could complete his thesis, but three other Stanford University researchers continued his work to push iron-air batteries to a “high oxidation state and keep it there”, according to one of the three researchers. An iron battery that operates at a higher voltage would have a superior performance aspect.
In the years leading up to 2025, the three researchers led an interdisciplinary team of 23 scientists from three U.S. universities, plus one Japanese and one Korean university, that created the sought-after higher energy state for iron.
The goal, based on what the researchers believed, was to force an iron-based cathode to “give up more electrons” from the iron to provide more useful energy. Early efforts seemingly succeeded during the process of discharging five electrons from the iron cathode, but the process then collapsed the cathode material during recharging the anode. The problem, as the researchers saw it, was that the iron cathode weakened when lithium ions retreated from it during discharge and then the weakened cathode collapsed during charging. The answer was to create a new cathode chemistry that “bends” as lithium ions escape but remains intact during recharging.
According to the author, “redox reactions” are where iron releases and then reabsorbs electrons.
“[K]eeping iron atoms from getting next to each other in the crystal structure of the material is key”, wrote the reporter.
A solution was to make the iron particles 300 to 400 nanometers in diameter, some 40 times smaller than in the early efforts. The researchers did this by “growing” the iron crystal structure “out of a carefully concocted liquid.” The process seemingly worked. At this particle size, they thought that the iron atoms were giving up and then re-accepting the five electrons from the iron, “while the crystal structure remained stable.” But after examining X-ray spectral imaging, the team came to understand that the two extra electrons were coming from the oxygen and not from the iron.
More research is underway. One effort was to make a cathode from lithium, iron, antimony, and oxygen, or LFSO. Initial tests show the new cathode material stable.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
This nanoscale research poses conceptual problems for me. I wonder if I am not grasping every concept as the researchers understand them. But it seems to me that the more electrons pulled away from a cathode metal chemistry means the more power per kilogram that can be extracted from the battery. Current LFP batteries are comparatively low-power per kilogram. The researchers want to make iron-based battery chemistries more powerful. Five electrons per atom seems to be, theoretically, 40% more powerful per kilogram than three electrons per atom.
But even at low power, picture millions of tiny iron spheres immersed in water that acts as the electrolyte. During discharge, oxygen promotes rusting that detaches from the spheres, a chemical reaction that releases iron ions as electricity. During charging, incoming iron ions reattach the rust to the spheres. Simple, cheap and long lasting.
Battery technology is having its Model T moment. Who knows where it will end up?
Ray W. says
This from Dresden, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS, per an Interesting Engineering article titled: German team creates new solid-state EV battery with 600 Wh/kg energy density.
The battery chemistry is Lithium-Sulphur. From the Institute, “The project aims to develop a solid-state lithium-sulfur cell that provided comparable energy while weighing significantly less than current batteries.”
The battery’s cathode, which stores the energy, uses sulfur, in part because it is “an abundant, inexpensive material”, and, in part, because sulfur offers up to twice the energy density of traditional batteries, and carbon, paired with “a thin lithium-metal anode, and a hybrid electrolyte.”
Lithium-sulfur can use a traditional liquid electrolyte or a solid-state electrolyte. Traditional liquid-state lithium-sulfur batteries “tend to form byproducts called soluble polysulfides that can accelerate cycle stability degradation and cause material losses.
The researchers’ solid-state electrolyte makes the batteries safer, more stable and more energy-dense. More specifically, Fraunhofer’s method of assembly uses its own aviation battery-grade dry-coating and solvent-free electrode film that cuts 30% from production energy costs and lowers CO2 emissions.
The goal is a battery costing $86 per kWh and providing an energy density of up to 600 Wh/kg. “The combination of optimized materials, in-depth analysis, and process-driven development will pave the way for lithium-sulfur batteries in applications where conventional technologies reach their limits.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I will repeatedly comment about the fact that there exists some 1600 different battery chemistries in use today.
Cathodes might have four different metals in various percentages in their chemistries. Anodes, the same. Electrolytes differ, between liquid-state, semi-solid state gels, and solid-state ceramics.
Researchers all over the world are looking for the greatest energy densities and the fastest electron flows back and forth between the cathode and the anode through the electrolyte. Some chemistries use expensive and rare materials. Others use common and inexpensive materials. Some can be recharged barely a thousand times. Others more than 10,000 times.
And I have only barely mentioned supercapacitors.
Who knows what is next? But billions of dollars each year are at stake. I would rather America reaps the benefit of those trillions of dollars instead of sending money to China, but that is just me. I marvel at how the current administration can’t see this. Economists estimate that we subsidize the oil and natural gas industry by some $20 billion per year, not counting Texas’ new $9.2 billion slush fund for natural gas.
Ray W. says
Penn State University researchers developed “thick” electrodes in a high-density battery that could extend EV driving ranges, says an Interesting Engineering reporter.
“Developed by researchers at Penn State University, the dense electrodes offer substantially improved cell-level charge capacity while enhancing mechanical strength to withstand degradation during repeated battery charging cycles.”
The researchers defines “active materials” as the key to improving batteries. The more active materials in the electrodes, the greater the capacity to store energy. But thickening the electrodes requires high porosity in order to allow charges to move in and out. Compacting the electrode material impedes charge flow, so a balance between porosity and density must be struck.
The Penn State team approached this balance by designing “synthetic boundaries” into the electrode material, creating reservoirs for charges and quick travel across the battery. With these “synthetic boundaries”, electrodes can be five to 10 times thicker and twice as dense, “significantly increasing energy density within a limited volume.”
The team calls their technique “a geology-inspired, transient liquid-assisted densification process that produces dense, thick electrodes with multifunctional synthetic secondary boundaries.”
These synthetic boundaries form an internal network across the electrodes, a network that facilitates the fast travel of particles across the system and “mitigates mechanochemical degradation.”
Said a researcher:
“We were able to increase the toughness by a factor of 10 and improve the ultimate strength of the electrode by three times compared to hot-pressed electrodes made without a liquid additive.”
Make of this what you will.
Dennis C Rarthsam says
WOW !!!! So many people suffering with TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME
Ray W. says
A second American just died in 2025 from bird flu jumping from avian species to mammalian, writes the Washington Post. The first American died from H5N1 avian influenza. The second from H5N5 avian influenza.
The second person developed a high fever, confusion and respiratory distress, but he or she was already “a severely ill patient.” The patient lived in Washington state and had several backyard poultry on his property. Two of the birds died of illness a few weeks before.
The H5N5 virus has never before been detected in humans. The H5N1 virus is considered more virulent and has been spreading around the world for several years.
Make of this what you will.
True story says
the Republican domestic terrorist strike again! Will literally starve children for more money for Elon how very “Christian “of them . Republicans murder, protect pedos, and starve children and their cult followers walk around like it’s leadership lol. Haha literally wear the name of global pedophile on their heads 😂 hahaha!
Sherry says
WOW! So many people suffering from “TDS” Trump (delusional)DEVOTION Syndrome! How pathetic and sad!
Laurel says
For the cult’s syndromes:
Trump Delusional Syndrome.
Trump Desensitized Syndrome.
Trump Diabolical Syndrome.
Trump Disingenuous Syndrome.
Trump Duplicitous Syndrome.
Trump Disreputable Syndrome.
Trump Disdainful Syndrome.
Trump Deceitful Syndrome.
Trump Detrimental Syndrome.
Trump Dividing Syndrome.
Oh, there’s more! Gotta go.