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Weather: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly sunny, with a high near 91. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Monday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Partly cloudy, with a low around 77. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Flagler County Library Board of Trustees meets at 4:30 p.m. at the Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast. The meeting of the seven-member board is open to the public, but is unlikely to include a discussion of the progeny of Kant and Madonna.
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.
The Bunnell City Commission meets at 7 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell, where the City Commission is holding its meetings until it is able to occupy its own City Hall on Commerce Parkway in 2025. To access meeting agendas, materials and minutes, go here.
Notably: I asked ChatGPT: What sort of child would Madonna and Immanuel Kant produce? Here was the answer, which I found wittier than anything non-Cuff and non-Voltairean since I last ran into George Hanns a couple of weeks ago:
That’s quite the philosophical-pop culture mashup! If Madonna (the provocative, boundary-pushing pop icon) and Immanuel Kant (the meticulous, duty-bound philosopher of the Enlightenment) had somehow produced a child—metaphorically or hypothetically—the result would be… complex. Let’s break it down:
Personality-wise:
- Wild discipline: A child torn between instinctive rebellion (from Madonna) and a strict internal moral code (from Kant). Imagine someone who throws radical art parties but makes sure everyone recycles and abides by the categorical imperative.
- Deep introspection meets performative flair: They’d likely be reflective and brooding, analyzing the moral implications of everything they do—but also completely comfortable performing a 10-minute interpretive dance about it on stage.
- Sexual ethics essays at 13: They’d probably write treatises like “The Metaphysics of Desire: A Categorical Imperative for the Dance Floor.”
Interests:
- Pop philosophy: A scholar of aesthetics with a talent for turning complex moral theory into catchy lyrics.
- Fashion with a reason: Clothes would be bold but always symbolically justified. “Why the cone bra?” “Because it challenges social norms while affirming human autonomy.”
Likely career:
- A performance artist-professor, or maybe a theoretical ethicist with a Grammy.
- Possibly the first person to DJ and deliver a TED Talk on transcendental idealism at the same event.
Ultimate paradox:
They’d constantly battle the tension between “express yourself” and “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
In short: a moral pop revolutionary with a killer sense of rhythm—and guilt.
—P.T.
Now this: including these fabulous lines from Kant to Ayn Rand in the second video: “I will admit you write a decent three-hour monologue but please stick to writing novels. Your philosophy’s crappy and much like Epstein you make 14-year-olds happy.” (Not that he did.)
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.
August 2025
Monday, Aug 11
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Flagler County Public Library
Monday, Aug 11
Nar-Anon Family Group
St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church
Monday, Aug 11
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
Tuesday, Aug 12
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Tuesday, Aug 12
Community Traffic Safety Team Meeting
Third Floor Conference Room, Government Services Building
Tuesday, Aug 12
St. Johns River Water Management District Meeting
St. Johns River Water Management District
Tuesday, Aug 12
Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Government Services Building
Tuesday, Aug 12
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
315 South 7th Street, Flagler Beach
Tuesday, Aug 12
Flagler County Planning Board Meeting
Tuesday, Aug 12
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Cinematique of Daytona Beach
No event found!
For the full calendar, go here.
“I am no longer a slave, for I control myself; I am the author of my own conduct, and that is freedom. Kant’s profound notion is that what matters, the only thing which is a supreme value for us (and by value one means an end pursued for its own sake, not as a means to something else), the goal which itself justifies everything else and needs no justification in its turn, that for the sake of which we do what we do, and abstain as we abstain, that for the sake of which we act as we act, and, if need be, die such a sacred, ultimate principle, which governs our conduct, is ordained to us by ourselves. That is why we are free. Therefore, Kant says, the most sacred object in the universe, the only thing which is entirely good, is the good will, that is to say the free, moral, spiritual self within the body.
–From Isaiah Berlin’s Freedom and Its Betrayals: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (2002).
The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.
