Fogbow

Suranis wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 3:01 pm https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66733230

Florida man arrested after trying to cross Atlantic in hamster wheel vessel

Maritime Law applied!

For details on his previous attempt in 2021 - which wound up with him washed ashore 30 miles south of this departure position - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57983648

Suranis wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 3:01 pm https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66733230

Florida man arrested after trying to cross Atlantic in hamster wheel vessel

Maritime Law applied!

"My goal is to not only raise money for homeless people, raise money for the Coast Guard, raise money for the police department, raise money for the fire department," he told WOFL-TV in Orlando in 2021.

Matt Devitt @MattDevittWX wrote: #Florida man spotted boating with a half semi-truck, half pontoon recently in Big Pine Key. Doesn't get more Florida than that. Credit: Michael Yatsuk @WINKNews

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 7:35 pm No Trump flag visible.

Suranis wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 8:18 am I know I'm probably weird, but I think it's pretty cool. Silly ya, but sod it, he's not hurting anyone and if it brings him a bit of happiness let him at it.

And He might not be a Trump Supporter.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 12:17 pm Reminds me of when I lived at Lake of the Ozarks. There was a two-story mobile home. Yes, you read that correctly.

And when I say mobile home, I don’t mean modular, I mean old, single wide trailers. they drug them in on their own wheels, built a sort of scaffolding style exoskeleton, and voilà, redneck mansion.

Now that I think back, I believe it was two single wides on the bottom and one single wide on the top.

Florida has had a population boom over the past several years, with more than 700,000 people moving there in 2022, and it was the second-fastest-growing state as of July 2023, according to Census Bureau data. While there are some indications that migration to the state has slowed from its pandemic highs, only Texas saw more one-way U-Haul moves into the state than Florida last year. Mortgage application data indicated there were nearly two homebuyers moving to Florida in 2023 for every one leaving, according to data analytics firm CoreLogic.

But while hundreds of thousands of new residents have flocked to the state on the promise of beautiful weather, no income tax and lower costs, nearly 500,000 left in 2022, according to the most recent census data. Contributing to their move was a perfect storm of soaring insurance costs, a hostile political environment, worsening traffic and extreme weather, according to interviews with more than a dozen recent transplants and longtime residents who left the state in the past two years.

“It wasn’t the utopia on any level that I thought it would be,” said Jodi Cummings, who moved to Florida from Connecticut in 2021. “I thought Florida would be an easier lifestyle, I thought the pace would be a little bit quieter, I thought it would be warmer. I didn’t expect it to be literally 100 degrees at night. It was incredibly difficult to make friends, and it was expensive, very expensive.”

Cummings expected she’d have extra money in her paycheck working as a private chef in the Palm Beach area since the state doesn’t have an income tax. But the high costs of car insurance, rent and food cut into that additional take-home pay. After six months of dealing with South Florida’s heat and traffic, she began planning a move back to the Northeast.

“I had been so disenchanted with Florida so quickly,” Cummings said. “There was this feeling of confusion and guilt about wanting to leave, of moving there then realizing this is not anything like I thought it would be.”

While costs have been rising across the country, some areas of Florida have been hit particularly hard. In the South Florida region, which includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, consumer prices in February were up nearly 5% over the prior year, compared to 3.2% nationally, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Homeowners insurance rates in Florida rose 42% last year to an average of $6,000 annually, driven by hurricanes and climate change, and car insurance in Florida is more than 50% higher than the national average, according to the Insurance Information Institute. While once seen as an affordable housing market, Florida is now among the more expensive states to buy a home in, with prices up 60% since 2020 to an average of $388,500, according to Zillow.

For Carter, who made the move in 2022 from Kansas to a suburb of Orlando for the weather, beaches and to be closer to her grandchildren, the costs began to quickly pile up. She purchased a manufactured home and initially expected the lot rent in her community to be $580 a month. But when she arrived she learned her monthly bill was actually $750, and by the time she left it had jumped to $875 a month. Along with the $9,000 in repairs from the armadillos, her car insurance doubled and Hurricane Ian destroyed her home’s roof on her 62nd birthday.

chris evans @notcapnamerica wrote: Hispanic restaurant owner Richard Gonzmart is a Republican who voted for DeSantis. Now he’s panicking because DeSantis’ new immigration law forced him to fire 19 members of his staff and pay a $500k fine because they are undocumented.
From miamiherald.com

It’s worth noting — he says he still supports Ron DeSantis and is “proud of everything he’s done.”
WTF Seriously

AccuWeather @accuweather wrote: Florida man vs. alligator

Mike Dragich, a licensed Florida alligator trapper, used his bare hands to remove an 8-foot alligator that was wandering a busy area of Jacksonville, Florida, over the weekend. And he did it barefoot! ⁣
⁣
Do not try this on your own.