Why Florida Drivers Don’t Know They’re Breaking the Law – When I see a Florida tag, I stay away. I know they are a bad driver. I don’t know what it is about that state, the one I grew up in and learned drive in. It was way different, before Disney.
If you know, you know: Florida is more than a glorious, sun-drenched vacation land. It’s a weird and chaotic, semi-lawless-feeling place dangling off of the edge of America. And for Maddy (@maddy.1414), who lives in Tampa Bay, that is exactly why she swears it’s not even a “real place.”
In a TikTok video that’s been watched over 689,000 times, Maddy spotlights one of the quirkiest, most counterintuitive things about life in Florida. And shockingly, it has nothing to do with alligators or the Brightline. It’s all about drive-thru drinks.
One For The Road, Literally
“Florida is not a real state,” says Maddy in the intro to her video. Sure, she’s going hard, but she promises to back up her claim with evidence. The video then cuts to her ordering at a drive-thru. “Can I just get one espresso martini?” she says.
A voice replies, “Yeah, sure thing.”
She pulls around to the window. But while waiting, she speaks directly into the camera again. “OK, if you know me, you know that I always say Florida isn’t a real state because you can do things here that you shouldn’t be able to legally do,” she says.
MY STORY FROM YEARS AGO
When a stupid youth in high school and college, I remember going through the brew-threw to get a six pack for the beach or wherever I was going. They were available in Orlando and along the beach. We had fake IDs and just cruised in and out. The best thing I ever did was move out of that state. That meant splitting a six-pack to the beach and another one on the way home. It was only a one hour drive away. I could have blown the limit by double, which was higher back then. That business made a killing. We’d have to wait in line for our turn, it was so busy, any time of day. I think they finally passed a law to stop it, but I haven’t been there in years.
How I’m alive is beyond me.
Now, when I see a Florida tag in my current state, I steer clear because I know it’s a bad driver. The minute you cross the border from Georgia, people pass in the right lane. The old people get into the fast lane and drive slowly. They also drive into pools in South Florida fairly regularly
Now, If I have to go out with my brother-in-law to dinner, he has a cocktail, a bottle of wine, and an after dinner drink. I gave it up 30 years ago, yet he drives because I don’t know where I’m going where they live, and he thinks he’s a big shot. How he doesn’t have a DUI or a broken neck is beyond me. It’s why I avoid my family when possible. I also won’t drive with him anymore.
The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) announced a stunning seizure of illicit narcotics seized from “transnational criminal organizations,” including 23 million potentially lethal doses of cocaine, offloading the massive haul in Port Everglades — the largest quantity in Coast Guard history.
The USCG seized 76,140 pounds of illicit narcotics, valued at $473 million, in 19 interdictions conducted in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, according to the USCG announcement Monday. The haul constituted 61,740 pounds of cocaine and around 14,400 pounds of marijuana, with patrols intercepting drug-laden vessels as far away as the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador and other remote parts of the Pacific.
“The U.S. Coast Guard in partnership with our federal, DoD, and international partners are offloading 61,740 pounds of cocaine, and this represents a significant victory in the fight against transnational criminal organizations, highlighting our unwavering commitment to safeguarding the nation from illicit trafficking and its devastating impacts,” Rear Adm. Adam Chamie, Coast Guard Southeast District commander, said in the announcement. “To put this into perspective, the potential 23 million lethal doses of cocaine seized by the U.S. Coast Guard and our partners, are enough to fatally overdose the entire population of the state of Florida, underscoring the immense threat posed by transnational drug trafficking to our nation.”
One of the things that makes the heat so dangerous here in Florida is the humidity. The dew point temperature is the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all of its water vapor, and some of the water vapor must condense into liquid water. At 100% relative humidity, the dew point temperature and the air temperature are the same, and clouds or fog can begin to form. While relative humidity is a relative measure of how humid it is, the dew point temperature is an absolute measure of how much water vapor is in the air (how humid it is). In very warm, humid conditions, the dew point temperature can reach 75 to 77 degrees F, but rarely exceeds 80 degrees.
The dewpoint for the afternoon that caused my heatstroke was between 71f and 74f. The temperature for that 4 hour period was between 91f and 94f. That results in a heat index of between 100f and 103f.
High dewpoints are dangerous because it is a limit on how well your sweat can evaporate and cool your body. Heat can build up to dangerous levels.
Combined with that, it was a bright, sunny day with almost no wind. The Navy actually has tables for permissible heat exposure. Under those conditions, Navy regulations say that acclimatized personnel shouldn’t perform heavy work for more than 15 minutes per hour. I far exceeded that for more than 4 continuous hours.
I hated going outside. they say to understand, take a shower and don’t dry off. Get dressed and now you know what it’s like to live there.
I got out of there after 39 years and never looked back. I talk to friends there and the heat is unbearable. It’s why a beach vacation or a theme park is over for me in life.
Combine that with the shitty drivers and it’s not that great of a place once you grasp the length and depth of the constant heat.
Even now, many states away I park in the shade. I spend as much time high in the mountains as I can where it is cool in the summer.
I swear, as soon as I cross the state line, the driving gets worse immediately. The minute I see a Florida plate in my state, it’s a bad driver about to do something stupid.
They are so afraid of someone else getting 1 inch ahead of them that they do everything they can to screw you from getting in the lane.
I’m still back and forth between states on the East Coast. I observe the driving habits and various machinery I encounter.
The quick one first. If you are going to drive a piece of crap, get it checked before a long drive. It’s always those cars on the side of the road. It’s like they are gambling to see if they can make it. Getting stuck on the side of the road with no town in sight makes for a terrible day and a very expensive fix. Please make your car road worthy. Show some sense of responsibility.
The thing I fear the most now is a car with a Florida license plate. As they escape the tourists and the heat, they bring their form of driving to torture those of us who know how to do it. It’s hot for the entire year except for 2 weeks in either December or January.
I first noticed it when I had to go there for family. The minute I crossed the Georgia / Florida border, traffic was a free for all.
Fortunately, I don’t go to that hell hole anymore (because of the heat and northerners who invaded and turned driving into a contact sport). The family that I visited are gone now. I have no desire to ever go back there.
They change lanes, the old people are what my friend Rick called them are nesters. They get into the fast lane and drive slow.
They are starting bad driving early now.
Orange County Florida Sheriff’s Deputy catches teen going 132 mph in a Supra and makes his parents come pick him up . You think the Deputy handled it appropriately? pic.twitter.com/NfmpbhMCmx
Whenever I see a Florida license plate now, I know to avoid it. I’m programmed to expect poor driving or road rage and am rarely disappointed.
It’s not limited to the highway where the behavior is exacerbated by speed. I’m in a mountain town that the reverse snow birds come to for getting out of the oven that is Florida weather.
At the only Publix in probably 75 miles, entire rows are cars with Florida plates. The locals dread this time of year and roll their eyes when someone says they live here part time. Almost to a person, they say are you from Florida.
Hell, people from Florida don’t like each other. When I lived on the coast, they called people from Orlando O-villes because they’d come to the coast and ruin the lives of sleepy beach towns.
I have to do the drive soon. I’m hoping to stay in my lane and hope for no Florida drivers.
I grew up in Florida. It’s pretty much the mosquito capital given all the water and year round climate. Other places can be more intense, but for being bit all year long, it’s hard to beat the Sunshine State.
I got bit as a kid as much as others. Heck, we vacationed in a place that has a section of the city called Mosquito Lagoon. It’s some of the best Red Fishing outside of Louisiana.
We didn’t have air conditioning at first when I was young so the window were open. Ever been kept away by the whine of a buzzing biter in your ear. Yes, just like the dentist drill we all know the noise.
I began to notice in my 20’s though that others were getting bit more than me. There were also biting gnats (no see’ums) that were almost worse. You couldn’t see them. You could at least kill some mosquitos if you saw them in time.
I thought that maybe I got anti-bite serum from being bit so much. Then I remembered that as kids, we used to follow the mosquito truck on our bikes in the smoke breathing in what has to be DDT or worse. I figured I had natural immunity.
My dad didn’t get bit much either. As a joke, he said it was the meanness in him that kept them away.
It turns out that some people just get bit more and I’m not one of them.
SOME PEOPLE ARE MOSQUITO MAGNETS
As you may have noticed, mosquitoes don’t attack everyone equally. Scientists have known that the pests are drawn to people at varying rates, but they have struggled to explain what makes certain people “mosquito magnets” while others get off bite-free.
In a new paper published on October 18 in the journal Cell, researchers suggest that certain body odors are the deciding factor. Every person has a unique scent profile made up of different chemical compounds, and the researchers found that mosquitoes were most drawn to people whose skin produces high levels of carboxylic acids. Additionally, the researchers found that peoples’ attractiveness to mosquitoes remained steady over time, regardless of changes in diet or grooming habits.
“The question of why some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others—that’s the question that everybody asks you,” says study co-author Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist and mosquito expert at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rockefeller University. “My mother, my sister, people in the street, my colleagues—everybody wants to know.” That public interest is what drove Vosshall and her colleagues to design this study, she says.
Scientists have put forth some theories to explain why mosquitoes swarm to some of us more than others, including one idea that differences in blood type must be to blame. Evidence is weak for this link, however, Vosshall says. Over time, researchers began to coalesce around the theory that body odor must be a primary culprit in mosquito attraction. But scientists have been unable to confirm which specific odors mosquitoes prefer.
To answer this question, Vosshall and her colleagues gathered 64 participants and had them wear nylon stockings on their arms. After six hours, the nylons were imbued with each person’s unique smell. “Those nylons would not have a smell to me or, I think, to anyone really,” says Maria Elena De Obaldia, a senior scientist at the biotech company Kingdom Supercultures and lead author of this new study, which she conducted while at Rockefeller. Still, the stockings were certainly odorous enough to entice mosquitoes.
The researchers cut the nylons into pieces and placed two (from different participants) into a closed container housing female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Did they migrate to subject number one’s sample en masse or prefer the scent of subject number two’s? Or were both equally appealing? The researchers continued these head-to-head battles over several months, Vosshall says, collecting new samples from the participants as needed. When the tournament was over, the team had clear proof that some people were more attractive than others. Subject 33 had the dubious honor of being the biggest mosquito magnet; they had an attractiveness score “over 100 times greater” than that of the least attractive subjects, 19 and 28, the study authors wrote.
The researchers analyzed the subjects’ scent profiles to see what might account for this vast difference. They found a pattern: the most attractive subjects tended to produce greater levels of carboxylic acids from their skin while the least attractive subjects produced much less.
Carboxylic acids are commonplace organic compounds. Humans produce them in our sebum, which is the oily layer that coats our skin; there, the acids help to keep our skin moisturized and protected, Vosshall says. Humans release carboxylic acids at much higher levels than most animals, De Obaldia adds, though the amount varies from person to person. The new study had too few participants to say what personal characteristics make someone more likely to produce high levels of carboxylic acids—and there’s no easy way to test your own skin’s carboxylic acid levels outside of the laboratory, Vosshall says. (She muses, however, that sending people skin swabs in the mail could make for an interesting citizen science project in the future.)
“This property of being a mosquito magnet sticks with you for your whole life—which is either good news or bad news, depending on who you are,” Vosshall says.
“This study confirms, in a very careful way, that it is true that some people are more attractive [to mosquitoes] than others,” says Omar Akbari, a cell and molecular biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved with the study but whose recent work focuses on mosquitoes. He adds that the study’s identification of specific carboxylic acids as a key determinant of mosquito attraction is a new contribution to biologists’ understanding of the insects’ behavior. Akbari suspects that the results of this study—which focused on A. aegypti mosquitoes—are probably generalizable to other species of mosquitoes that also primarily prey on humans.
I grew up in Orlando, before there was a Disney. There was Disneyland in California and Disney on TV, but the Tragic Magic Kingdom hadn’t struck the world with the force that would be Disney World.
I also remember Walt Disney talking on TV, espousing entertainment and fun. It was about family, fun and fantasy. We could all sit around the living room and not worry about any untoward messaging or images.
Orlando and Disney are very much different. Both have exploded in size and money. It paved the way for the purchase of both Marvel and Lucas Films. Behind all of it though it was changing. I stopped going or supporting anything they do, which is hard for a Marvel and Star Wars fan. Fortunately, the last few Marvel films and the last 3 Star Wars releases were all terrible.
I recall when they had the first Gay Pride Day or whatever they called it. The problem was that they didn’t tell the families and the church groups that a bunch of dudes would be dressed in girls clothes (or less) and would be doing disgusting things in front of little kids.
The dust ups inside the park were swept under the rug so that it got no media attention.
The hiring of Eisner and Kennedy have spread wokeness, diversity and perversion into the movies and parks ever since.
Disney has chosen a “hill to die on”: They want to overturn the new Florida law that stops the indoctrination of little children, from pre-kindergarten through third grade, with woke, sexual, gender-identity brainwashing and transgender equality education. Keep in mind that we’re only talking about 5- to 8-year-olds. What parent could possibly disagree? What parent visiting Disney could possibly disagree?
But Disney doesn’t care. They are intent on alienating the tens of millions of parents who believe that 5- to 8-year-olds shouldn’t be sexualized at school and that those same 5- to 8-year-olds shouldn’t be taught to change their sexual identity like they’re changing a pair of sneakers. Can you imagine? Disney has chosen this hill to die on.
The president of Disney recently bragged that she will make sure half of all characters in Disney movies, television shows and videos are either gay, lesbian, trans or other minorities. I have no problem with that. America is a free country. But I hope she and her Disney bosses have no problem if conservatives, Christians and patriots decide to never again visit any Disney theme park or spend a dime on any Disney product.
“Wokeness,” said Greg Gutfeld on Fox, “takes stuff that you love and can turn it to poison.” A recent example of this poisoning has been supplied by the Walt Disney Company, which used to be the purveyor of Mickey Mouse and other things American. Disney’s current management has been seduced by the powerful LGBTQ lobby. The company has announced that, from now on, 50 percent of its characters will be LGBTQ or minorities.
In a shameless case of overreach, Disney attacked a new parental rights law just passed in Florida that bans instruction concerning sex from kindergarten through the third grade. A strong majority of Floridians support the law. Disney doesn‘t give a damn. Following the lead of the left-wing media, Disney has attempted to mischaracterize the law as anti-gay.
The important thing to realize is that a majority of Disney employees are not in lockstep with their management. Jose Castillo, a current Disney employee who is running for Congress in Florida as a Republican, said that the “silent majority” of Disney employees supports the parental rights law despite the loud minority leading Disney to oppose it. “Disney and similar corporations listen to the loudest voices in the crowd,” said Castillo. “The Disney cast members who support the parental rights far outnumber those who are protesting against it.” English broadcaster Piers Morgan summed it up: “You’ve got this small group of very woke people that bully companies into following their very narrow worldview.”
What about the majority of Americans — do they accept wokeness? The answer is no. Wokeness is an example of what I call the tyranny of the minority. “The actual number of the woke remains small,” says Scott McConnell, “perhaps six percent of the population, according to Pew surveys of American political attitudes. It is educated, it is mostly white, it is heavily concentrated in the media and universities. But it isn’t powerful enough to control the country if majorities are mobilized to resist it.”
Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez, R., argued that Disney, the “most magical place on earth,” has now digressed into the “most hypocritical and woke” place. The Florida lieutenant governor made these comments after Disney faced backlash over its stance on the parental rights bill signed into law this week by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R.
LT. GOV. JEANETTE NUNEZ: We stand here in Florida…on behalf of the rights of parents, and it’s a sad state of affairs when the most magical place on Earth has now digressed into the most hypocritical and woke place on Earth… Governor DeSantis and I, we don’t take our marching orders from California corporate executives that want to push a radical agenda on our children.
They’ve tarnished their brand with their most recent political activism targeting Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act — a bill most Americans support.”
Yet she still wishes for the best. “My hope,” she said, “is that the company comes to its senses, remembers who their customers are and gets back to doing what they do best: Entertain ‘dreamers of all ages.’”
Get woke go broke usually. I don’t think Disney will go broke, but a lot of parents have to ask themselves, do I want to take my kids to a place where they are against traditional family values.
They are ruining the movies. They are woke there also. Anytime you can get rid of a white male, it’s Disney’s new rules.
SCOOP: Disney corporate president Karey Burke says, “as the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child,” she supports having “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and wants a minimum of 50 percent of characters to be LGBTQIA and racial minorities. pic.twitter.com/oFRUiuu9JG
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022
I love watching Star Wars and Marvel shows on Disney+ but I fear that soon I won’t be able to watch any of it. I know that Marvel has already started doing that with one of their new movies, The Eternals, and I stopped watching that one as soon as I saw two dudes kissing. It was easy though because the movie, up to that point, was pretty boring.
The fact is, you could pick most categories and NY would have the rudest people in the country.
One of the reasons Americans have a bad reputation in Europe for being rude, pushy, loud and arrogant is that the New Yorker’s went there first.
My home office was in New York for my last job. Because of the industry I worked in, I had to go there all the time. They were rude then and rude now. This survey is nothing new. The worst employees were from or near New York.
I left Florida because the city I lived in was the rudest in the country that year. It was also a city for the most transplanted New Yorker’s. Most of my neighbors constantly told me how much better it was in “the city”. Go the hell back and quit ruining other people’s lives.
One of my college roommates was from New York. You guessed it, another asshole.
The best thing about New York is that it is there and not where I live. Unfortunately, their government makes it so tax expensive and crime ridden, they keep leaving the compound.
I decided to watch a mini-series that takes place in NY. I looked at the buildings and recalled all of the times I hated being there. It is a dump, infested by rats, parasites, and other people. I guess it also has a lot of actual rats.
While I’m kvetching, the various NY accents grind on me. Nothing can make a pretty girl go ugly faster than her opening her mouth about coiffee, ya mutha and oi, La Gwadia eeport.
Hey, watch where you’re going and get a load of this app! It says New York City has the rudest Uber passengers in the nation.
A new survey from the ride-sharing giant has found that — surprise, surprise — Uber passengers in the Big Apple are the worst in the US when it comes to manners, while riders in the Midwest and Sun Belt are significantly nicer.
The regional ranking is based on average rider ratings doled out by Uber drivers — one to five stars based on whether passengers show up on time, leave trash in vehicles or talk to their drivers respectfully, among other factors.
New York is trailed by the fellow rude cities of Seattle, Washington, D.C. and Boston, according to Uber. Minneapolis-St. Paul takes the No. 5 spot, followed by San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Chicago. (note: they are all liberal cities whose governments have ruined with their polices)
News of New York City’s dubious distinction comes after several outright attacks on Big Apple drivers in recent years.
When I lived there, this was the story almost every week. It was usually an 80+ year old grandmother who didn’t know how it happened. It got to where we weren’t even surprised, rather we’d just say, “well, there goes another one”.
They are the same drivers who get into the fast lane and go 5 MPH below the speed limit and don’t move. My friend called them nesters because they’d nest in the fast lane.
According to the boring company, They are going to build a tunnel in Ft. Lauderdale from downtown to the Beach.
Musk is a smart guy with a good track record. I don’t know how well this one is thought out
I lived there for years. The traffic is horrendous in South Florida. I’ve documented it in my traffic post here. Almost anything that creates another artery to ease traffic is welcome, but will be overflowed quickly.
Here’s an excerpt:
Washington, DC (CNN)Fort Lauderdale, Florida plans to strike a deal withElon Musk‘s The Boring Company to build a tunnel between its downtown and the beach.The Boring Company would offer rides in Teslas to hundreds of people a day for $5-8 per person, the city’s leaders have said before. A similar ride in an Uber would cost about $10 per trip at current prices, according to Uber’s ride price estimator.”This could be a truly innovative way to reduce traffic congestion,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said Tuesday night, announcing the plan, though the costs to the city were initially undisclosed. He said other firms will have 45 days to submit competing proposals.
The project will be dubbed “The Las Olas Loop,” a reference to a local road that connects to the beach. The Boring Company offers a transit system called the Loop, in which people in standard Teslas are driven from station to station in tunnels. Its first project opened last month at the Las Vegas Convention Center. There are plans to extend the system through more of Las Vegas.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
Florida has about a 2 foot water table meaning no one builds basements there for a reason, they flood. To compound it, the water table is next to a centimeter at the beach. It’s a few feet above sea level in most places and is as much lakes inland as land in a lot of places, like South Florida.
As smart as Musk is, This isn’t drilling through rock. Florida is basically a big sand bar. Water flows easily through sand.
All I can say is good luck, and invest in industrial water pumps if this project gets off the ground. They will need to pump a lot of the Atlantic back into the sea.
Delusions of Adequacy 