To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Mostly clear, with a low around 62. Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 85.
- 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: Flagler Beach City Manager Dale Martin and Lance Blanchette, the new city police chief, and Palm Coast City Council member Theresa Pontieri. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
The Scenic A1A Pride Committee meets at 9 a.m. at the Hammock Community Center, 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast. The meetings are open to the public.
‘Line’ and ‘All In the Timing’ At City Rep Theatre, at City Repertory Theatre, 160 Cypress Point Parkway (City Marketplace, Suite B207), Palm Coast, 7:30 p.m. except Sunday, 3 p.m. Tickets: $25 for adults $15 for students. Book here. Get ready for an unforgettable night of sharp humor and surreal storytelling! Line, Israel Horovitz’s longest-running Off-Broadway play, explores human nature through a mysterious line where everyone wants to be first—no matter what it takes. Paired with David Ives’ All in the Timing, a fast-paced collection of one-act comedies, this double feature delivers clever dialogue, quirky scenarios, and laugh-out-loud moments. It’s a must-see showcase of theatrical brilliance and biting satire.
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.
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.
Dead Men Tell No Tales…. Or Do They? Murder Mystery Dinner Show, Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE, 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday, tickets $60 a person. The fundraiser is for foster children. Book here. Join the Seawolf Privateers for a night of swashbuckling fun you won’t want to miss! Step into a rowdy tavern in Tortuga where pirates, rum, music, and mischief fill the air. Dead Men Tell No Tales… Or Do They? is a laugh-out-loud pirate murder mystery dinner show packed with slapstick comedy, outrageous characters, and a twisty mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end. Feast on a hearty dinner while the tale unfolds around you, with surprises, laughs, and plenty of pirate mayhem along the way. Best of all, every ticket helps make a difference—all proceeds support local foster and displaced children in our community. Come for the laughs, stay for the adventure, and help us do some good along the way!
“The Sound of Music” at Athens Theatre, 7:30 p.m. except Sunday, 2:30 p.m., 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand, (386) 736-1500. Cost: Adult $37, Senior $33, Student/Child $17, groups of 8 or more $30 per ticket, all including processing charge. Book here. As the world begins to change, one woman brings something the von Trapp family hasn’t known in a long time—joy. When Maria steps into their lives, she brings laughter, music, and a renewed sense of connection—just as the world outside their home begins to shift in dangerous ways. In a time of rising fear and uncertainty, their bond becomes an anchor—and their courage, a quiet form of resistance. The Sound of Music is a timeless story of love, family, and standing up for what truly matters, brought to life with one of the most beloved scores in musical theatre history. Music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. Run time: 2 hours and 45 minutes with a 15-minute intermission
Notably: You may recall that in 1993 Disney proposed one of those periodic ghastly developments that desecrate history for a buck, what it called Disney’s America, a “history” theme park near the Manassas Battlefield in Virginia. It was stopped the following year as public outrage brought Disney to its senses. I was not aware, as I think most of us are not, that in 1957 bulldozers took to Walden Pond to make a public beach. The New York Times, July 21, 1957: “ulldozers, uprooting trees to create a new beach at Walden, have aroused members of the Thoreau Society of Concord against what they term a “dese-cration” of the spot. Moreover, even the contour of the pond is being changed, they have charged. The bulldozers were sent in by the Middlesex County commissioners as part of a $50,000 project to restore the reservation. The commissioners are an elected body of three men who function as a super-government for the several communities within the county. Under the terms of an agreement by which Walden became a public reservation in 1922, the commissioners were made the official overseers. The gift was made possible by the Emerson, Forbes and Heywood families of Concord. The Thoreau Society members hold that the commissioners have failed “to preserve the Walden of Emerson and Thoreau, its shores and woodlands,” as specified in the gift agreement.” It took four years and a legal battle, but the Society defeated the plan. I read about the Walden desecration by chance the very morning, last week, before I sat down to write about the Flagler County Commission’s decision to take a stand in defense of Old Brick Road–the remnants of the old Dixie Highway. The roles are reversed here: the commission is the defender of history. I hope it’s not just a posturing moment in an election year. I hope they see this through, because the plans for the so-called “western expansion” will clobber everything in their way, Old Brick Road included. (See: “Historic Old Brick Road Now a Battleground Between Flagler County Preservation and Palm Coast Expansion.”)
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 2026
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Democratic Women’s Club
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Touch-a-Truck in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Unity in the Community
Chess Meet-Up At the Flagler Beach Public Library
‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,’ an FPC Production
‘The Curious Savage” at Daytona Playhouse
‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,’ an FPC Production
‘The Curious Savage” at Daytona Playhouse
“Once on This Island,” At Limelight Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity’s Roundup of Standups from Around Central Florida
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
For the full calendar, go here.
“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. All of it inside endless and beginningless emptiness.”
–From Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957).
Ed P says
When truth is no longer an objective target but a manufactured consensus, it becomes a product of power rather than a discovery of fact.
Pogo says
FWIW
False people offer false choices; when you hear agitated visitors shouting from the top of the FlaglerLive building, or whispering to you from an alley near it: keep going, don’t look up, keep a hand on your money, and always — buyer beware.
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=false+choice
Ray W. says
And the path to salvation is as narrow as a razor’s edge.
Pogo says
Amen.
For you, amigo — with respect and good wishes:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=david+brooks
Ray W. says
According to a Euronews article, the long-discussed option of repairing and expanding the network of existing Syrian crude oil and natural gas pipelines extending from the Gulf states to Mediterranean outlets has been reopened by closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
One problem identified by the author is that after a decade of civil war, most, if not nearly all, of the native-born well-educated and experienced civil engineers long ago left Syria. Who knows how many of these critical workers are willing to return to a region still marred by strife and uncertainty?
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Is long-term financing for such projects feasible? Has the new Syrian government established its political reliability/legitimacy?
Sherry says
Perfect for this Maga “dumb them down” cartoon. To hell with science and mathematics! Just believe every single word out of lord and master trump’s demented mouth, right Maga?
This from “The AP”:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, who helped push the term “ fake news ” into the mainstream, now seems to have a new favorite subject: fake math.
During a Thursday event announcing a deal with drugmaker Regeneron to lower the cost of its pharmaceutical products, Trump defended his past claims that prices on prescription medications had been cut by well over 100% — something that is mathematically impossible without manufacturers dropping prices to zero and then presumably paying consumers to use their product.
Trump acknowledged having boasted that his efforts to lower drug prices had reduced what consumers pay by “500%, 600%.” But he added, “We also sometimes say 50%, 60%” and called it a “different kind of calculation” that could go up to “70, 80 and 90%.”
“People understand that better,” Trump said. “But they’re two ways of calculating” and “either way, it doesn’t make any difference.”
There could indeed be two ways of calculating such things — but the difference is very important. One is correct. The other is nonmathematical.
It was one of several times Trump used his own — but incorrect — math during the drug pricing event. He claimed the 7 1/2-week-and-still-going Iran war actually fell within the four- to six-week timeline he predicted early on. The president also brought up the crowd size for his 2017 inauguration — a subject that led onetime top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to unwittingly make the phrase “ alternative facts ” famous.
Trump’s incorrect take on percentages — something he has long repeated — came just after his health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., brought up the issue on his own during the same Oval Office event Thursday.
Kennedy noted that he was reminded of his exchange the previous day with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at a congressional hearing when she said that claiming price cuts exceeding 100% might suggest “companies should be paying you to take their drugs.”
Kennedy said during the hearing that Trump “has a different way of calculating.”
On Thursday, Kennedy argued that drug manufacturers had raised prices on popular medications by more than 100% and that Trump was then cutting the price down substantially — meaning he was wiping out percentages of costs worth more than 100%.
“If the drug was $100, and it raised the price to $600, that would be a 600% rise,” Kennedy said — even though that’s incorrect. Six hundred is indeed 600% of the original 100 value, but the increase from one to the other is actually only 500%.
Kennedy then continued, “And the president used that mathematical device.”
But no such device exists for the way Trump characterizes it — at least not when math is done correctly.
Something can increase in price by more than 100%. A product that increases from $1 to $2.10 has increased by 110%. But prices cannot be reduced by more than 100% without being pushed to a value of $0 — or reduced 100% of the full price — and then into negative territory, where consumers presumably would need to be paid for using a product.
In a subsequent question-and-answer session with reporters during the price announcement event, meanwhile, Trump offered another dash of fake math for how long the war in Iran, which began Feb. 28, had been going on.
Asked about the war having exceeding the four to six weeks he originally suggested it would last, Trump argued that he’d actually met his own timeline because Iran’s military was “decimated” by then.
The U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire this month, and Trump announced this week that he was extending it. But neither side says the war is over, and a conclusion that hasn’t been achieved certainly didn’t occur in the four to six weeks that have already elapsed.
Trump also brought up his 2017 inaugural crowd size issue on Thursday, when talking about renovations at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He noted that Martin Luther King Jr. had drawn hundreds of thousands of people to the National Mall for his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 and claimed: “I had the same exact crowd. Maybe a little bit more,” arguing that pictures of both events backed him up.
“I actually had more people,” Trump added. “But that’s OK.”
Ed P says
Math explains how something can be reduced by more than 100%.
Drug markups vary wildly and can reach 500-700% markups.
Manufacturers typically use markup to set prices above production costs. Retailers use margin to measure profitability as a percentage of cost.
A 50% markup equates to a 33.3% margin.
A 100% markup results in a 50% margin not 100%.
They are often confused but can’t be interchanged.
Most people don’t understand the differences.
Markup=profit/cost x 100
Profit margin= net sales/ cost of goods x 100
The ap does lean a bit left, not surprised.
Ray W. says
According to a Euronews story, in 2019, Spain started to move away from natural gas as a source of electricity. Over the next seven years, Spain doubled its solar and wind generating capacity. Over that time period, Spain’s electricity generating costs “halved”, compared to the European cost average.
According to the reporter, electricity prices are set by the dominating energy source. For example, in Italy, heavily dependent on natural gas for electricity, during 89% of the hours of operation in 2025, natural gas set the wholesale price for the nation’s energy. In Spain, in 2025, natural gas set the wholesale price for electricity only 15% of the time.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I am uncertain that I fully understand this explanation of wholesale pricing within a grid.
Texas lists over 1,460 power plants of many different types being connected to the ERCOT grid. Is wholesale pricing for electricity produced during the day set by individual solar farm or windmill owners competing to sell electricity at the lowest profitable price? Do individual natural gas plant owners compete to set the lowest possible wholesale price for electricity at night? Does this mean that individual natural gas plant owners will not agree to sell electricity to the grid unless the wholesale price is high enough to justify ramping up their plant for generation? If solar farms can profitably agree to sell electricity at wholesale rates that are below the rate of profitability for natural gas plants, does that explain why so much natural gas power generating capacity sits idle across the ERCOT grid during daylight hours?
Ed P says
Observation and percentages are provided by left leaners…
73% of articles in google news came from outlets rated left leaning, compared to just 1% from right leaning.
Bing news 72% left
Yahoo News 53% left
CNN 62.4 %
Most major AI models are biased left…ask them
All of mainstream news leans left
Roughly 70% of all social media is left leaning
Not many right leaners.
Fox
Ny post
WSJ opinion section
I’m wondering why most of the Flagler live community worries so much about Fox.
Without it, you might be even further to the left and knocking on the door of socialism sooner than later.
Skibum says
Well, if I have to say it out loud…
Fauxinfotainment nuze, in their defense of a multi-million dollar lawsuit for their talking heads putting out so much false information, claimed they were not a news outlet and therefore should not be held to the same standards of truthfulness. That was their statement, not mine!
Smart people learned to go elsewhere if they were looking for truth and factual information.
I still occasionally go to fauxinfotainment nuze, for shits and giggles, then I exit and get back to reality quickly because I’m not a flat earther.
Ed P says
Hello Skibum,
You missed smallest nuance again…I posted Fox…nothing about it being a News outlet.
See we can agree.
Sherry says
A HUGE THANK YOU, Skibum!
Ray W. says
Tech Xplore reports that American researchers, in collaboration with international researchers, used AI software and a university supercomputer to run multiple simulations so as to identify which battery cathode percentages of sodium, lithium and titanium might provide chemistries that should best resist charging and discharging stresses and materials degradations, while holding the most stored electrons.
Sodium, being widely available at a cost far less than the cost for lithium, was hypothesized as a good choice for developing a more energy dense and a longer lasting stationary battery storage system at a lower price.
Once the process centered on the most promising cathode chemistries, the San Diego research team constructed actual cathodes and tested their possibilities.
One of the researchers said:
“In lab tests, the improved cathodes held significantly more charge and kept most of its capacity after many cycles, even under demanding high-voltage conditions that usually cause sodium materials to break down more quickly.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, either liquid-state, semi-solid state, or solid state, all are ripe for study.
The goal will never change. Smaller, lighter, more energy dense, longer lasting, cheaper, more reliable, more recyclable energy storage.
Every government of every country in the world is asking the same question. How best can we free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels. Not for climate goals, but for national security interests. Of what value is energy independence? Japan, home to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, is debating reopening their several long-retired nuclear power plants.
Electricity generation. Cars and light trucks. Heavy trucking. Regional air transport. Changes are coming fast.
Sherry says
Another legal “smack down” of trump’s authoritarian policies:
WASHINGTON (AP) — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border of the U.S., a key pillar of the Republican president’s plan to crack down on migration.
A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can’t circumvent that.
The court opinion stems from action taken by Trump on Inauguration Day 2025, when he declared that the situation at the southern border constituted an invasion of America and that he was “suspending the physical entry” of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it is over.
The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making,” allow him to suspend plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.
Ray W. says
Oil Price US reports that, as documented by Baker Hughes’ weekly report, the number of active US oil drilling rigs as of today, fell by three from last week to 407. Last year at this time, 475 oil drilling rigs were active.
As for current crude oil output, the latest average crude oil extraction figure per day, as of the week ending April 17th, was 13,585,000 barrels, down 277,000 barrels per day from the all-time record set earlier this year. For context, during the fourth quarter of calendar year 2024, the U.S. produced an average of 13.53 million barrels per day.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
It seems pretty clear that American energy extractors are not drilling with abandon in response to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Yes, drilling techniques are becoming more efficient. But actual American crude oil output is slowing, not rising. It’s been slightly more than 15 months since the second Trump inauguration and the promise of Drill! Baby! Drill! hasn’t happened.
Is it possible that American energy producers are simply taking profits right now? That crude oil drilling activities will pick up some time in the future?