There is good in the world.

Summary: a woman bought a cabinet online from a family that was moving. 

She got it home and unlocked some compartments, and found fairly valuable China inside. 

She posted her finding to one of the socials, and realized that it might have been the previous owners dinnerware. 

So she contacted them and offered for them to have it back. They were very grateful and came and retrieved it. 

That kind of story just makes me happy. 

https://people.com/woman-buys-cabinet-on-facebook-market-place-upon-opening-it-finds-complete-set-of-hermes-china-exclusive-8774301

Blue Origin launches New Glenn

Jeff Bezos (another detestable billionaire) founded Blue Origin as his own vanity project to get into space.

Until recently, his launches were all space tourism; this was his way of literally getting off the ground and learning about space craft.

But, this week, he actually entered the commercial space race.  His New Glenn launched a payload from Kennedy Space Center, after several weather-related delays,

Mostly, it went according to plan with the payload deployed, though the first stage failed to land,  At least they think they know what happened and can learn from it.

This rocket is more powerful than SpaceX Falcon 9, though less powerful than the StarShip.  In theory, it should be another cost effective means to launch satellites into orbit.

And there is one intriguing difference with this rocket: it uses Hydrogen as a propellant.  And that gives it an interesting thrust to weight ratio - which means that it lifts off the pad fairly slowly and ascends at a slower rate.  And, it also gives the flame behind it a blue tint, rather than the orange we're used to with oxygen.

Disney Supporting the Sunshine State 💛

I subscribe to a mailer about the Walt Disney company, and in particular their work in the central Florida area.

While its self-promotional, it is encouraging to see a large company share some good in the world.  Thought I'd share.

Disney in Florida: Supporting the Sunshine State As the largest and most visited theme park destination in the world,* Walt Disney World plays an active role in finding solutions to important matters affecting people in Central Florida and communities around the globe. As we kick off the new year with our Florida neighbors, we want take a look back at some of the special moments we shared together in 2024: To learn more about what we're doing to give back across the Sunshine State, visit DisneyFlorida.com. *According to the Themed Entertainment Association The Walt Disney Company Commits $15 Million to Los Angeles Area Fire Relief & Rebuilding Efforts The history of The Walt Disney Company is inextricably linked to the greater Los Angeles region, and the destruction from the devastating fires affecting thousands in that area is truly heartbreaking. We are committing $15 million for initial and immediate response and rebuilding efforts – read more here. 👇 What Else is Happening 🇺🇸 World War II Veteran Celebrates 100th Birthday at Disney World Magic Kingdom cast gave a big hero's welcome to a special guest celebrating his 100th birthday at Disney World: World War II Veteran William "Bill" A. Connelly. Watch as we honor him with a flag retreat ceremony on Main Street. 🚀 Space Mountain Celebrates 50 Years at Walt Disney World This week marks 50 years since Space Mountain first launched us into space, becoming a place where families can enjoy the thrilling magic of Disney and make lifelong memories together. Join us in celebrating this galactic milestone. 🦦 Pint-Sized Otter Pups Born at Animal Kingdom Cute alert! An Asian small-clawed otter mom at Disney's Animal Kingdom has welcomed a litter of pups to the world. Mom and dad are taking great care of these babies and you can already see their unique charm in these new photos. 🎨 Foodie Guide: EPCOT International Festival of the Arts Get your palates ready! EPCOT International Festival of the Arts begins Jan. 17, and our culinary cast have created some amazing dishes that are as beautiful as they are delicious. This guide has all the tasty bites you won't want to miss. 👀 In Case You Missed It 👀 Inside Look at the New Voices of Liberty Costumes at EPCOT Behind the Scenes at Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend New in 2025! Disney Resort Guests Receive Free Water Park Admission 📍Where to Find Us Next📍 Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Meal Packing with U.S. Hunger Spark STEM Fest at Orlando Science Center Paws in the Park Benefitting Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando  Feedback | DisneyFlorida.com | Subscribe  MouseMail is a news brief for Florida businesses, community and government leaders by Disney.

More lunar missions!

Recently, SpaceX launched a ride share mission with two separate lunar landers on board. 

The launch was cool because the trajectory took it to a high orbit, then the second stage had three separate burns to move into low-earth orbit, higher earth orbit, and on a path toward the moon out of earths orbit. 

The missions were described thusly:

Blue Ghost is a commercial lunar lander developed by Firefly Aerospace for NASA's CLPS program. Blue Ghost is designed to bring up to 155kg of payload to the lunar surface. It will land at Mare Crisium in the Crisium Basin and is designed to last 14 days before freezing in the lunar night.

Resilience is the second mission of the Hakuto-R commercial lunar lander developed by private Japanese company ispace. The lander will carry a small rover developed by ispace to perform studies on the moon's surface. The rover is also expected to collect lunar regolith as part of a contract with NASA signed in 2020, in which companies will collect materials on the moon and then transfer ownership "in situ" to the agency.

Movie making in Florida

This story starts with an introduction to author Carl Hiassen.  Carl lives in Miami, and writes some short stories about the reality of things that happen here. And longer (at least partially fictional) stories loosely based on real events.  

The stories are weird and wonderful, taking place in the state of Florida. We didn't get the "Florida Man" name for nothing!

Anyway, one of the stories he wrote was "Bad Monkey" which Apple TV made into a mini series starring Vince Vaughn.  It takes place in the Keys and Miami and is fun.  But the cool part is that its not only set here, it was actually filmed here.

If you haven't seen it, I do recommend it.  It is bizarre and pretty funny. The series was based on the book, and ended in much the same way as its source. That's that.  

But... Apple found it to be such a success that they are ordering a season 2.  Except that its not based on a specific work, Hiassen will only "consult" on the general theme, and it will be filmed in Hollywood, but be set in the keys again.

It all raises many questions, but the biggest one has to do with why it won't be filmed here.  Its because the state doesn't have any sort of tax incentive to produce movies here, and very often shows are set here but filmed in California.  Its weird.

More bad reporting

Macy's recently announced a plan to close underperforming stores.  

They made the announcement and listed off the stores. That got picked up and media outlets ran with a headline "Macys closing!" and proceeded to list locations of stores that sure didn't seem to fit with "underperformance."

Since that didn't seem right, I looked at the addresses for stores in Florida.  And discovered that these were not Macy's stores, but rather Macy's Furniture stores, which are not your traditional storefronts.

I guess technically they are Macy's stores, but they were created as stand alone stores that only sell furniture.  They are large and expensive to run - and have been considered for closure for quite some time.

But the headline that Macys is closing is more salacious and requires no research.  That is just lazy and sad.  And again shows that no one can do an ounce of research.

Weirdness in booking a Disney trip

As most of you know, I host a Disney world history YouTube series. I've been going to the parks for most of my life and have enjoyed being a local. 

Pre-pandemic, I knew what was what. I knew the tricks. I understood the ins and outs of making a visit. And everything could be done as a spur of the moment type of thing…

Then came the pandemic and the rules started to change. Of course you had the evolution of fastpass which complicated everything. But it was more than that. 

Now I have to make a reservation - subject to availability - to go to the parks. And oddly, most of the knowledge about how to manage the parks became irrelevant. 

I had promised my son a trip to Disney world when he graduated high school….but he graduated during the pandemic, and then went off to college. So we had to wait. 

Finally, we had an opportunity to go. I had to get him a ticket … which was complicated and maybe a little stressful - because the ticket prices vary wildly depending on when you want to go. And it is way more expensive than it was 5 years ago. 

Of course, there was still the matter of proving he is a Florida resident, which didn't work online, meaning we had to go to a guest relations window just to activate his ticket.  

And nevermind that I had to book a reservation to visit a park using my annual pass.

You have to spend time and effort and work through it, and figure it out. I can only imagine for a newbie how hard this is...

And on that note, I happened to see a video from a guy who had never been.  He outlined his confusion and the challenges he faced.  He ended with his thought that its not really worth it.  That intrigued me.

And then when my son and I went, we encountered some interesting folks.  One guy had some pretty serious complaints about attractions and wait times (and lightning lane), dining availability, and assorted confusion.  I heard "if only I had known" and "this shouldn't be this hard."

And that sums up the current experience at Disney World.  

License plate cameras on the open internet?

Here's a story about a man who discovered that many of the license plate cameras in use are actually not behind any layer of security. 

Anyone can simply access them and track vehicles in real time. Which he proceeded to do in order o make a point. 

Privacy is not something that is generally given a second thought when there's money to be made with little effort. 

https://www.404media.co/researcher-turns-insecure-license-plate-cameras-into-open-source-surveillance-tool/

That's the world we live in. 

Vivek Murthy suggests we rethink how we’re living our lives

This is an uplifting letter from the outgoing surgeon general as he reflects on how we as humans live. One part reminds of us what fulfillment is:

I have come to see there are three essential elements that fuel our fulfillment and well-being: relationships, service, and purpose. 

Relationships keep us grounded and bonded to each other. Service, from formal volunteering to informal small acts of kindness, is about helping each other. And purpose gives our life a sense of direction and meaning. Together, these elements form the triad of fulfillment. 

https://people.com/surgeon-general-vivek-murthy-americans-closing-letter-rethink-how-we-are-living-our-lives-exclusive-8770191

This is worth a read. 

Watch ""Fight Back!" Classics: Sears Trash Can 1500-Foot Drop Test" on YouTube

I love this piece for so many reasons. 

It's educational and informative

It applies a bit of scientific rigor and healthy amount of curiosity. They even poll the audience, who seem interested. 

It's not sponsored, and is independent for the sake of understanding 

It's good journalism. 

It's consumer oriented, and what do you know the product they test was well made.

I know there is some of this still available on the internet, but not enough of it. It's drowned out by vapid themes.

ahhh,  simpler times …

https://youtu.be/f8KIG7P9Vjc?si=_m1lpWzeBRxTyMu_

Elon Musk, Tesla, and Las Vegas

There are very many privacy concerns these days.  Not the least of which is that cars collect data about you - from tracking where and how you drive to recording conversations on the integrated microphones.  And at present, there is no way to opt out.  And they can do with it as they please, from selling it to unknown 3rd parties, to sharing it with insurance companies, to releasing it to law enforcement if they see fit.

We had the incident with the cybertruck that exploded in Las Vegas, which the media was quick to pounce on - with incomplete or erroneous information. But, then Elon Musk proudly told everyone that he would retrieve all the info from this vehicle, in order to help law enforcement piece together what happened.

There are so many concerns with this.  He arbitrarily offered to pull up some personal type data and share it (generally, anyway) with the world.  How is that okay?  And in the position of power he has, how will he abuse that ability?

And as an aside: I take exception to Elon's recent comments that he wants to help the police, and believes in law enforcement.  That sure sounds nice, but isn't he sucking up to the convicted felon who was able to make an additional series of charges that may have led to additional convictions and jail time go away? What about enforcement of the laws that man broke?

So I suppose he supports law enforcement when it suits him?       

Disney settles with the orange menace

This story was a little hard to follow, due to bad reporting, no real fact checking, and some politically motivated story lines. 

But from what I gather, ABC (owned by Disney of course) made a settlement with the orange menace that paid him some money and admitted that they had misreported some information about the man. 

What's confusing is *what* that report was and *how* it was wrong. 

But what I took away from it was that Bob Iger is trying to play nice with T-rump so he won't continue to attack the company for spurious reasons (like he did during his other term in office).  It seems to have been a calculated move to kowtow to him, as seemingly every other company is doing. 

It's all very bizarre. 

But don't sleep on the fact that the person tabbed to run the FCC has already made known that he won't tolerate disparaging dear leader, and has an eye on this settlement as showing how "the media" needs to be further held accountable for actually reporting on anything. 

Freedom of the press and truth can suck it. 

Fort Wilderness Campground cabins for sale

The guy who purchased 100 of the cabins still has some for sale. 

Which is intriguing, ridiculous, and maybe a little dumb 

But hey, you too can own a piece of Disney history. I guess?

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/2025/01/03/cabins-disney-fort-wilderness-campground-for-sale-buy-brevard-florida/77379177007/

The tragedy in New Orleans

On New Year's Eve, there was an attack on revelers who were simply out and enjoying the evening on Bourbon Street. A car made its way into the crowd and killed a number of people.

But once again, we saw some terrible reporting.  Every outlet wanted to get the scoop, and report on it from any angle that might generate interest in content on that outlet.  There were few facts, and a lot of speculation.  Maybe it was a terrorist attack? Maybe it was a more coordinated effort?

It is an absolute tragedy - no doubt about that.  

But I wanted to call out two items that I saw in the reporting.  First, I saw a quote from a contemptible Senator from Louisiana talking about this as a wakeup call, as it being one of the worst things ever, and we need to be ready for attacks like this.  The subtext wasn't lost on me.  The person had a "foreign name" so it feeds into the hysteria.  But he was a US Citizen by birth and his motives (at the time of this writing) are unknown.  And anyway, this is the same Senator who thinks that gun related deaths are a fact of life.  The fact that this incident is different in his mind is really something. 

The other thing that caught my attention was that there were barricades in place to prevent cars from going into pedestrian areas.  But these barricades were undergoing some upgrades specifically to prepare for the superbowl in a few months.  That would mean that the goal was to protect a huge moneymaker in the future at the potential expense of the present.  That gave me pause.