Category: Florida

My love that dare not speak its name for the Chevrolet Tahoe’s isolation from Florida highway texture noise

by philg

Loyal readers know me as someone who rejected the SUV religion almost as early and often as I rejected Faucism (saliva-soaked cloth face rags, lockdowns except for liquor and marijuana stores, and school closure as a way of slowing down SARS-CoV-2). Today I have a shameful admission to make… I’m almost in love with the Chevrolet Tahoe.

Our affair began at the Kissimmee, Florida airport. I dropped off the 20-year-old Cirrus SR20 so that it could get a new parachute and rocket at the factory-owned service center there (see Parachute and rocket replacement option for Cirrus owners who love Disney and Harry Potter). I reserved a “car” from Enterprise for the trip back to Stuart, Florida and was dismayed when they gave me what looked like two huge bricks:

By the time I was done with the two-hour trip, though, I marveled at the isolation from road noise. It seemed even quieter than our beloved 2021 Honda Odyssey (not to be confused with the 2025 Honda Odyssey that, thanks to continuous reinvestment and diligent engineering work, is exactly the same as our car). On smooth pavement, the noise level might be similar, but Florida highways have a tremendous amount of texture in the concrete. This is presumably to prevent hydroplaning during the Biblical rains that are common here. The interior noise level of almost every car that I’ve been in goes up dramatically when entering an interstate highway or turnpike from an untextured ramp. Not the Tahoe’s.

The car also drove well and the software design seems slightly better overall than for the typical Japanese car and dramatically better than for the typical European car.

Readers: Who else loves this absurdly oversized/overweight GM vehicle?

(One answer: a neighbor here in Abacoa! Below is a photo of the monster Tahoe in front of an efficiently sized minivan (visitor to the neighborhood? We’re one of the few families that has resisted the SUV craze).)

In other news, “Tested: 2025 Honda Odyssey Still Carries the VTEC Torch” (Car and Driver, December 18, 2024):

The Odyssey is also extraordinarily quiet at speed, which is especially impressive with this much frontal area. We measured 66 decibels at a steady 70-mph cruise, which not only bests all the other minivans—including the ID. Buzz by a wide, four-decibel margin—but also beats some luxury juggernauts, such as the Mercedes-Benz E-class. While the Odyssey is the quietest minivan, put your foot down and it becomes the loudest, with 80 decibels of VTEC fury at wide-open throttle.

The Car and Driver numbers are consistent with what I was able to measure in Maskachusetts, but I’m pretty sure that they’re a lot lower than what we experience when we take the Odyssey out on the textured Florida highways. The Tahoe tested at the same 66 dBA back in 2021, but I think it does a better job of keeping that 66 dBA when the road surface isn’t smooth.

Maybe we could find the perfect tire for the Odyssey and that would help? Car and Driver tested purported noise-killing tires back in 2016 and the results were weak:

If the effect appears small by our sound-meter measurements, it seemed even smaller when measured with our eardrums. We struggled to discern any significant improvement, although it probably didn’t help that our back-to-back drives were sepa­rated by a half-hour tire swap.

Continental confusingly claims a 9 dBA reduction in noise, but only at certain frequencies. I thought that the whole point of A weighting was to give a summary that matches human perception. Their ContiSilent tires aren’t available in sizes to fit the Odyssey, unfortunately.

Is it time to get a new vehicle? Our Odyssey is getting a little shabby after 4 years, but it is tough to summon the energy to push through all of the dealer paperwork in order to trade it for a minivan that is identical in all significant respects. It probably wouldn’t be a huge financial hit to buy the new minivan because our existing minivan will start depreciating like a rock soon enough. I don’t feel sufficiently high and mighty to switch allegiance to the Tahoe. Readers: Have you noticed any other car that is especially quiet over textured concrete?

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Merry Christmas from Abacoa

by philg

Merry Christmas from Abacoa, our MacArthur Foundation-developed corner of Jupiter, Florida.

My soulmate:

What if HOA rules won’t let you fly an Israeli flag (American flags only, though an exception was granted for a sacred Rainbow Flag during Pride prior to the Prideful homeowner who ultimately chose to move to the San Francisco Bay Area)? Use Christmas lights to turn the house into an Israeli flag:

At the Dakota rental complex:

Abacoa is adjacent to Jupiter Heights, which lacks an HOA. Thus, there is no limit to Deplorability:

What the yard looks like this time of year without decoration:

But everything is better with lights!

So… I hope that everyone has a great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I plan to cook GE Monogram range convection oven turkey since the LG steam oven bit the dust after one use.

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Ron DeSantis can secure his legacy with a new University of Florida campus in Orlando

by philg

Ron DeSantis has set up all of the core functions of government so well here in Florida that it is unclear what he would need to do for the next two years (the hated Yale/Harvard graduate will be forced by term limits to leave office in January 2027). Here’s an idea for a Big Project worthy of a politician with Big Skills: develop a new campus for University of Florida that will enable the school to break out of its #30-ish rut among national universities (tied with University of Texas-Austin; #7 among state-run universities).

Why would this make sense? Florida’s population is growing and younger people have been moving into Florida, partially due to the state’s #1 ranking for education in U.S. News but mostly due to the efforts of lockdown governors in the Northeast, Illinois, and California. Florida has about half as many children as California, but only two world-class universities. The first is University of Florida in Gainesville. The second is Florida State University in Tallahassee (FSU is ranked #54 among national universities by U.S. News). California, on the other hand, has Stanford, CalTech, UC-Berkeley, UC-LA, UC-San Diego, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, and UC-Santa Barbara (8 total ranked #54 and above). There would definitely be demand for another excellent school and Florida has the tax base to make it happen.

Why not expand and improve the schools in Gainesville and Tallahassee? They’re already huge, for one thing (60,000 and 45,000 students). More importantly, if the goal is to build a university that can rank within the top 10, they’re not in the right places. The typical elite academic doesn’t want to live in a small Southern city. Gainesville is unsuccessful at getting UF graduates to stick around and start companies (see Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age children); how is Gainesville going to woo a top researcher away from a school in New York City, Boston, or Chicago?

What are some criteria for where to locate a new university?

  • Politics. Academics can’t tolerate anyone questioning their beliefs, so they need to live in a city that is dominated by Democrats and where they’re unlikely to ever have a conversation with a Republican. This rules out Miami now that the Latinx have defected to Trump.
  • Hurricane Risk. Being an elite academic goes hand-in-hand with being a Climate Doomer. This rules out Tampa, whose luck eventually must run out (the city hasn’t been hit by a hurricane since 1926)
  • Airline Connections. Although elite academics are Climate Doomers, each one has the carbon footprint of a 4 million ton/year cement plant. They need to be able to jump on a flight every few weeks to a conference on the other side of the country or the ocean. You might think that this would bring Miami back into the ring, but nonstops from MIA mostly go to Latin America. Following the lead of Barbra Streisand, the escape route for an American who claims to love Brown people is always to Canada and never Mexico or, God forbid, farther south. Orlando, on the other hand, enjoys nonstop connections to cities around North America and Europe. Everyone eventually needs to come to Walt Disney World and Universal.
  • High-speed Rail. Intercity rail is catnip for elite progressives. This favors cities spread out along Brightline, which means Orlando, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami.

Reviewing the above criteria, Orlando is the obvious choice. It’s one of the few parts of Florida that voted correctly during the Election Nakba of 2024. It’s far enough inland that hurricanes generally lose their strength by the time they arrive over Space Mountain. Orlando is 100′ above sea level, which will reassure even the most ardent Climate Doomer that a vengeful Mother Earth won’t soon reclaim the city as part of the ocean floor. Orlando has great airline connections that will only get better as the theme parks expand. Orlando is going to be ever more connected via high-speed rail as Brightline expands (Tampa is the next big goal).

For recruiting faculty, the state could do a bulk purchase of annual passes (weekday only should be fine since academics don’t need to work M-F 9-5) to Disney, Universal, and Sea World. Everyone who works at UF-Orlando gets passes to all three major parks.

Is this doable? In 2016, the USTA announced the near-completion of a campus with 100 tennis courts on 63 acres next to the big Orlando airport (the plan was conceived in 2014). Celebration, built in the 1990s, is about 5,000 acres and cost about $2.5 billion in pre-Biden dollars to create (home to about 11,000 people, which means enough square footage for a sizable university). The Harvard main campus, which includes a lot of athletic fields, is only about 200 acres. Current Florida state budget surpluses are about $2 billion/year (Ron DeSantis has been using these to pay off debt, but nobody remembers a politician for fiscal prudence; it is acts of fiscal extravagance for which politicians are remembered and celebrated).

One knock against Orlando is that the summer weather is pretty miserable, with an average high of 91-92 in June, July, and August (not hot enough to keep the crowds away from the theme parks!). But that’s actually cooler than Tallahassee and no different than Gainesville and, of course, the academic elite doesn’t have to be on campus during the summer.

Here’s a map showing the new USTA campus in relation to MCO, Walt Disney World (lower left), and Celebration (lower left):

(It looks like there is a lot of undeveloped land, but most is probably swamp that the Federales will no longer allow to be drained; see More about The Swamp (book) and Florida: Hydrology is Destiny (book review))

Related:

  • “Palm Beach unanimously approves land deal for Vanderbilt’s new business and tech campus” (vanderbilt.edu, October 28, 2024): In a unanimous vote on Oct. 22, the Palm Beach County Commission approved a deal to provide five acres of county-owned land to Vanderbilt for the development of a new campus in West Palm Beach. For several months, Vanderbilt has been in discussions with city and county officials and community and business leaders about establishing a presence in West Palm Beach to complement the region’s booming financial and tech sectors. The affirmative vote by the county, along with two acres already pledged by the City of West Palm Beach, paves the way for the university to establish a new campus in South Florida focused on graduate programs in business, computing and engineering, bringing high-impact graduate education to what has become known as “Wall Street South.” … Once operational, the West Palm Beach campus will welcome nearly 1,000 students in various business programs … Since 2020, more than $1 trillion in assets under management has relocated to Florida
  • University of Central Florida, a stepsister to FSU, has 70,000 students in and around Orlando and a dismal #121 ranking from U.S. News
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Florida hurricane relief idea: buy a reciprocal membership to the Ringling Museum

by philg

Happy GivingTuesday!

When practical, I think it is better to buy stuff from people who’ve suffered a natural disaster rather than donate money (see Japan Relief Idea: Buy a folding saw and Japan Relief: Idea #1 (buy a knife)). Sarasota was hit at full Category 3 strength by Hurricane Milton (albeit apparently not as badly damaged as whatever apparatus was supposed to count votes in California!). The Ringling Museum there is a great cultural institution and a $200/year membership there (mostly tax-deductible?) gives a family access, via a digital card downloadable to a DouchePhone Wallet, to about 1,000 museums nationwide via the following networks:

  • MARP (Museum Alliance Reciprocal Program)
  • NARM (North American Reciprocal Museum Association)
  • ROAM (Reciprocal Organization of Associated Museums)
  • SERM (Southeastern Reciprocal Membership Program- Also SEMC)

If you’re going to hit just two or three museums in a year and weren’t smart enough to get a SNAP/EBT card (see How to get free museum admissions for life: sign up for food stamps (SNAP/EBT)) you’ll recover the $200.

Ahead of their time?

Anyone else want to offer an idea for GivingTuesday?

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Trump tortures our local billionaire Democrats

by philg

In case you missed this story of semi-local interest to us (we’re a 25-minute drive from Donald Trump’s house without traffic)… “Palm Beach, a Democratic Pocket in Florida, Becomes MAGA Central” (WSJ):

This discreet enclave of about 10,000 full-time residents is part of an area that has long tilted blue. While Florida went heavily for Trump on Election Day, voters in Palm Beach County slightly backed the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. But with Trump spending so much time in the area, the town of Palm Beach is emerging as the biggest playground for the incoming administration and luminaries of the MAGA movement.

A popular hotel now houses foreign dignitaries, federal officials and various others vying for government jobs, all meeting with Trump during the frenetic transition period. Traffic is so bad on the island of Palm Beach that longtime residents said they have to drive off on one of three bridges and then drive back on another to avoid bumper-to-bumper tie-ups. And Secret Service agents at the area’s chicest restaurants can outnumber the waitstaff.

Trump spent much of his first term as president at Mar-a-Lago, his 17-acre oceanfront compound and private club that he referred to as his winter White House. He entertained heads of state and based much of his campaign and fundraising efforts there. He stayed nearly 150 days at the compound during his first term.

In some ways, residents said, it now feels like a replay of Season One of the Trump presidency. But this time around, he is likely to spend more time at Mar-a-Lago, said a number of his close associates. Some of the wealthiest members of his circle are thinking about buying homes there.

His transition operation now resides within the gilded walls of his estate, where he interviews candidates for cabinet and staff roles. Mar-a-Lago and nearby communities are poised to become the country’s new center of political gravity.

Many of Palm Beach’s old guard aren’t pleased. Because the road in front of Mar-a-Lago is now closed, traffic has never been worse on the island. What would usually take a couple of minutes to drive can now delay residents by half an hour.

Is it time to revive my idea for a rule that whoever is president has to stay in the White House for four years because the modern security state means that the president’s presence anywhere else is too disruptive for peasants?

Should we check back in a year to see what happens to house prices near Mar-a-Lago? Right now the median (or average?) price of a single-family house in Palm Beach is about $11.3 million (Zillow), a considerable bump compared to pre-coronapanic thanks to Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 and 2021 Andrew Cuomo.

The 17-acre National Historic Landmark Mar-a-Lago itself, of course, was valued at $18 million by the entirely apolitical New York justice system.

Back in 2017, the Boston Globe said that a rising sea would soon take back Mar-a-Lago and the rest of Palm Beach (a barrier island about 7′ above sea level, not to be confused with the city of West Palm Beach, which is protected by this barrier). Given a rational market, therefore, property values should be on a downward trend!

Circling back to Donald Trump… the guy is old and he is comfortable at Mar-a-Lago. Federal employees with desk jobs don’t need to show up to work. Why does Trump need to work from the White House at all? Why not let J.D. Vance handle any demanding in-person tasks in D.C. and around the world? If someone wants something from the U.S. president in 2025-2028, he/she/ze/they can Gulfstream it to PBI, pay whatever ramp fee is demanded, and hop an Uber Black to Mar-a-Lago. What about the summer when, you might argue, Palm Beach isn’t at its best. Neither is D.C.! I’m not aware of Trump owning anything north of metropolitan New York City, but maybe he could, jointly with Bernie Sanders, set up a Peace and Reconciliation summer estate in Burlington, Vermont. Or be boring and use his Bedford, NY mansion (Wikipedia).

Circling back to our MacArthur Foundation New Urbanism development here in Jupiter, Florida… I wonder whether the presence of the U.S. president nearby will be a positive or a negative. I’m guessing that it will be a short-term negative due to security-related disruptions on those rare occasions when we do want to go to West Palm Beach and rarer occasions when we interact with the elites on Palm Beach itself. But perhaps the long-term consequences will be positive. Every rich person who moves to Palm Beach is a potential donor to a local or county-wide cultural institution. Trump doesn’t seem like a pork barrel politician so I’m not expecting a major direct federal investment.

Speaking of Jupiter, here’s a place on the good side of the railroad tracks, recently sold for $34 million:

The house was built in 2007, which means the new owner will get to do a lot of work on various systems, e.g., the roof, over the next 10-15 years!

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California vote counting vs. Florida post-hurricane power restoration

by philg

It’s five full days (about 120 hours) after the Election 2024 Nakba. The folks in California who say that they know how governments should operate have counted 72 percent of their presidential ballots (New York Times):

Let’s compare this to the numbers in Power restoration after Hurricane Milton. Recall that Milton was a Category 3 storm that hit Sarasota, St. Pete, and Tampa, knocking out power to 4 million “customers” (a household of 3 people would be just one customer). I didn’t stay organized to capture a number for how many were still out exactly five days after the hurricane made landfall, but four days afterward roughly 500,000 customers were still out, which means that more than 87 percent had been restored. Six days following landfall, roughly 190,000 customers were out from the original 4 million affected.

So.. Ron DeSantis-led Florida restored power after a Category 3 hurricane at a much faster pace than California has been able to count votes. (Florida also did count votes, but there aren’t any interesting statistics from that process because it took just a few hours.)

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Florida Election Report

by philg

Before looking at Florida, let’s check to see what a correct vote would be:

Our ruling elite picked Kamala Harris more than 92 percent of the time.

How about down here in the Swamp? Thanks to the Lockdown Governors of the Northeast and California, who exported their conservative freedom-oriented residents to our peninsula, Florida is no longer a swing state. So it wasn’t surprising that Donald Trump prevailed over Kamala Harris by 56:43 (NYT):

Bigger government tends to favor city-dwellers and, therefore, it was surprising that Miami rejected the Democrat religion 55:44. Maybe it was a mistake for Kamala Harris to tell the residents “If you don’t vote for me then you ain’t Latinx”?

Who in Florida does love bigger government? The folks who work for the state government! The two counties up around Tallahassee voted Democrat 65:34 and 60:39. Orlando and Fort Lauderdale weren’t too far behind. Palm Beach County was evenly balanced with 49.9:49.2 in favor of the correct candidate.

Our fossilized senator Rick Scott, for whose retirement I pray daily (maybe somehow he can retire and Ron DeSantis can appoint himself to the job? Or DeSantis can quit his job and get Jeanette Nuñez to appoint him to fill the vacant Senate seat?), beat his Democrat opponent 56:43. Our Israel-loving Hamas-hating Congressman, Brian Mast, beat his teenage opponent, Thomas Witkop, 62:38. I’m not sure how political parties get these sacrificial lambs to agree to run in hopeless races.

The majority of Floridians (57-ish percent) wanted to turn Florida into a Massachusetts-style paradise in which abortion care and marijuana were available on every street corner. However, the state constitution amendments (3 and 4) that were on the ballot required a 60 percent vote to pass. (Abortion care in Florida would have been available through fetal “viability”, which is about 21 weeks from a medical point of view but somehow there is a legal fiction that viability occurs at 24 weeks. I don’t think that Florida would have permitted abortion care at 37 weeks if one doctor thought it would improve the pregnant person’s mental health, as is legal in Maskachusetts.) Being a redneck had 67 percent support so a “Right to Fish and Hunt” amendment passed. An amendment to change school board elections to partisan failed, garnering an insufficient majority of “yes” votes at 55 percent. (I’m pretty sure that all school board members in Palm Beach County are Democrats, but it is impossible to tell for sure due to the lack of this kind of amendment.)

I haven’t seen any race in Florida that was decided by one vote and, therefore, it is literally false for anyone to say “Your vote counts” or similar. Any given individual could have stayed home to enjoy Xbox games and the outcome would have been the same.

Unlike in our former suburb of Boston, the public school system here doesn’t seem to be offering grief counseling to students.

As I type this (Wednesday at 3:47 pm), California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, D.C., and Alaska, at least, still hadn’t counted even 90 percent of their presidential votes, something Florida (population 23 million) managed to do within two hours after the polls closed. There are 52 “not yet called” House races, none of them in Florida.

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Terror Swift Sceras Tour

by philg

No fewer than 3 out of 130 immediate neighbors have Taylor Swift themes for Halloween decor. Here’s the best one:

And on the other side of the sidewalk:

The nighttime view:

(I hate to brag, but the above photos were taken with my new iPhone 16 Pro Max. Nobody has a better phone than I do and nobody hates to brag more than I do.)

Speaking of night photos, a house with a headless horseperson of unknown gender ID and a dragon (also of unknown gender ID):

A generally scary look:

The grim reaper and three clowns don’t seem to hang together. Can anyone think of a unifying theme? The clowns are animatronic:

Women from an Islamic society?

A neighbor with preschoolers has put an extra stroller to good use:

Try not to schedule your birthday for any time near Halloween… the scene from last weekend:

Go Big or Go Home:

Folks in the adjacent non-HOA Jupiter Heights community are famous for their Christmas displays, but they had a few fun Halloween houses:

I would love to see Jabba the Hutt as the advertising mascot for an Ozempic-style medicine.

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Florida marijuana legalization on the ballot

by philg

Floridians will soon vote on whether there is a constitutional right to sell recreational marijuana (Amendment 3). Elite Democrats who control the Palm Beach Post urge peasants to vote “yes” on this amendment. The same newspaper also reports that elite Democrats in Palm Beach per se have voted to ban marijuana sales on their island (elite stoners would need to tell a servant to drive to a working class or welfare neighborhood to get weed, just as in Maskachusetts).

Ballotpedia:

The initiative would legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 years old and older. Individuals would be allowed to possess up to three ounces of marijuana (about 85 grams), with up to five grams in the form of concentrate. Existing Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers would be authorized under the initiative to sell marijuana to adults for personal use. The Florida State Legislature could provide by state law for the licensure of entities other than existing Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers to cultivate and sell marijuana products.

Smart and Safe Florida is sponsoring the initiative. The campaign reported $61.28 million in contributions. Trulieve, a marijuana dispensary company that owns medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida, is the main contributor.

One weed shop had tens of millions of dollars of loose change to kick in, hoping to make a 10X return if the amendment passes? If the measure succeeds, cronies of the state government (the current approved dispensaries) will make huge profits partly due to the fact that it will still be illegal for a stoner to grow his/her/zir/their own dope. My comment on X:

That is beautiful logic. Marijuana is wholesome enough to be sold by the Miami Vice-style bale on every street corner, but the person found with a single plant must be imprisoned. Queers for Palestine is actually easier to understand.

I thought that unlimited calling was great because I would save 50 cents here and there on phone calls to friends. It didn’t occur to me that I would be getting 50 spam calls every day once the cost of making a call was cut to $0. Similarly, I was in favor of marijuana legalization in Massachusetts because I wanted tax dollars preserved for government functions other than enforcing marijuana laws. It didn’t occur to me that weed shops and their advertising would be omnipresent, thus changing the day-to-day experience of living in Boston or Cambridge (or looking at billboards on the various highways).

I hope that this fails! Does that make me anti-Weed? No. I would be in favor of a law that

  • eliminated medical marijuana (so that kids aren’t exposed to the idea that marijuana is healthful, which would have been risible to 1970s stoners)
  • allowed people to grow their own marijuana if they so desire, so long as the plants are inaccessible to minors
  • prevented marijuana businesses from advertising; people would have to find them via Google Maps and similar
  • required communities to establish zoning rules for where marijuana stores could be located (preferably not in strip malls where kids would be likely to go)
  • made it easy enough to get into the marijuana business that nobody could make tens of millions in profit simply by being a government crony

Separately, let’s check in on the old-fashioned purveyors of drugs, i.e., those who don’t claim that their product is healthy. “TD Bank hit with record $3 billion fine over drug cartel money laundering” (CNN):

TD Bank will pay $3 billion to settle charges that it failed to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels, regulators announced Thursday.

The fine includes a $1.3 billion penalty that will be paid to the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a record fine for a bank. TD also intends to pay $1.8 billion to the US Justice Department and plead guilty to resolve the US government’s investigation that the bank violated of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering.

The US Department of Justice said in a statement that TD Bank had “long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies” in its procedures of monitoring transactions. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news late Wednesday.

In one instance, TD Bank employees collected more than $57,000 worth of gift cards to process more than $470 million in cash deposits from a money laundering network to “ensure employees would continue to process their transactions” and not declare them in required reports, the DoJ said.

Aside from handling drug cartel money, what’s been management’s focus at TD Bank?

On Instagram they want to make sure that “every woman wins”:

On their Diversity and Inclusion web page, veterans are highlighted as a victimhood group in the same cluster as sacred Black female, and LGBTQ2+ (not 2SLGBTQQIA+? The “2” in LGBTQ2+ stands for two-spirt, I think, but somehow the Native American Queers end up last rather than first. White women in the L category displace the Native American victims as with most quota-based programs).

On YouTube, their executives are on a diversity, equity, and inclusion panel:

(They also sponsor a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council in another YouTube video.)

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Florida’s recovery from Hurricane Milton

by philg

Our brushed-by-Milton neighborhood in Palm Beach County is almost completely cleaned up. There were some tornadoes nearby that significantly damaged houses and I can’t figure out why. “NWS: EF3 tornado with winds of 140 mph tore through Avenir community in Palm Beach Gardens” (WPTV):

“Considerable structural damage … was observed on brand new, well-built homes and included segments of concrete block walls missing and large sections of roof removed,” the NWS said in a report released Thursday afternoon.

A house in this part of Florida is supposed to be built to handle 170 mph, I think (map). A house is a “Risk Category II” building. If the headline is correct and the tornado was blowing at only 140 mph, why was a house engineered to handle 170 mph damaged? Could it be that a rotating wind is more damaging than a relatively steady wind from one direction? Were the houses not built properly? Human engineers aren’t as smart as they claim to be? Here’s a picture from the Palm Beach Post of the Nature v. Human contest:

Here’s Ron DeSantis on Friday leading a 38-minute press conference (without teleprompter) on the clean-up challenges related to Hurricane Milton:

It seems as though flgov.com is updated regularly with summaries of challenges and achievements. Example from Oct 11: “In a multi-agency response, FWC [Fish and Wildlife] officers and partner agencies rescued and evacuated approximately 426 people and 45 pets from flood waters in a Clearwater apartment complex. FWC officers used a high-water swamp buggy, UTV, and shallow-draft vessels during the rescue effort.”

Less attention is paid to those who have endured some of the worst Milton-related suffering. I’m talking, of course, about private aircraft owners. It’s very expensive to build a hurricane-proof hangar and, consequently, the typical hangar hasn’t been built hurricane-proof (the latest building code likely requires them to be able to withstand at least a Category 4 hurricane, a lower wind standard than for houses because the theory is that nobody will be inside a hangar during a hurricane). The general aviation hangars at KSRQ and KSPG are apparently badly damaged. Sarasota. which previously had a 4-year waiting list for a hangar:

The St. Pete downtown airport (walking distance to some museums), which previously had a 10-year waiting list:

Florida officialdom doesn’t seem to credit FEMA with savings lives or property. This is consistent with friends in Maskachusetts deploring the Deplorables’ lack of respect and awe for the Great Father in Washington. The righteous of MA, NY, and CA are particularly upset that Republicans have spread misinformation, e.g., that FEMA has handed out about $640 million on sheltering migrants while native-born hurricane victims aren’t getting lavish aid. Prior to Milton, one Democrat mentioned on Facebook that Congress had appropriated $20 billion for Hurricane Helene victims (Congress is currently in recess; the Democrat-run New Republic says “Lawmakers left town last week without passing additional natural disaster funding, and approving additional money may prove tricky when they return.”). Multiple Democrats responded by heaping scorn on Trump supporters for being so easily gulled into believing the Fake News about FEMA spending money on migrants.

Where could the Deplorables have gotten this misinformation? Let’s check fema.gov:

Related:

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