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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
One big leap on, but the best is fed from worse.
I hope that's understood.
One big leap on!
One big leap on topic.
DJ Mount Zitzky.
One big leap on everything.
Gear zitzky.
One big leap.
One big leap.
One big leap.
One big leap in life.
One big leap.
One big leap.
One big leap.
One big leap.
One big leap.
Oh, wait.
And there are turning hair on 것이 Mad called Bergman.
Thank you.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel will stand here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Yeah.
Out in Skypeland, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
Good evening. Good to be back in New York.
Welcome back. And I'm glad you're not in one of the many troubled spots of the world right now.
And we're going to have a special guest in just a moment.
And tonight, we're going to be kind of continuing in the vein of what we were doing last week.
We were talking to our friend Greg, who had just gotten out of North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
And tonight, well, there's more. There's more upheaval on the way.
And there's also quite a bit of verbal upheaval that's going on right now that's affecting almost all of us.
And we have to take a good look at that.
And we have to figure out how to counter that.
But we'll get to that.
We had a lot of feedback to last week's show.
Here's from MaceGod60 on Mastodon.
Great show.
As to the question on the man who lost function because the company wouldn't update.
Maybe companies that go out of business should make their programs open source when and if they go out of business.
Also, there needs to be an open source library for computer programs, much like the Library of Congress.
Once something is created, it should not just die with the creator.
Now, this is referring to the guy who, what, he had a skeleton, something that, what's it called?
Nobody? Nobody knows?
Exoskeleton.
Thank you. Exoskeleton. That's the word.
And he needed a small part to repair.
And the company said, you have an outdated version.
Give us a lot more money or just we can't help you at all.
It's a very common thing that we see more and more these days of hardware, software, just getting outdated.
And you have to go along with their demands to add additional software or buy additional hardware.
And it's called the right to repair.
The right to make modifications to something that you have bought, whether it's a tractor, whether it's a computer, whether it's an exoskeleton.
So, yeah, that story worked out thanks to the outrage.
But there are many, many more like it.
There are many, many more to come.
And that's why right to repair legislation is so important to know about and to back up.
And we also need to know the arguments that will be used against it and how we can counter those.
Yeah, it's so infuriating when it isn't addressed with a sort of proper scheme for people that are repairing and trying to maintain something.
But that overall, I think, results in people just doing whatever they have to do to make things work.
And the downside, I guess, is that it isn't shared because the moment you start sharing it, you become a target from one of these firms that wants to force you to pay more or something.
So it keeps the information from benefiting more people because the procedures or the way people develop parts or workarounds becomes sort of secret knowledge.
And we are not about that here.
And this is something that is so obvious.
And with the advent of 3D printing, of course, and laser scanning and all the kinds of computer-aided design tools that are revolutionizing the ability for companies to just turn out different products constantly,
should be able to take advantage of something that is allowed broadly, not something that is criminalized.
Rob, it looks like you have something to say.
Nope.
Just, I agree.
Well, don't look so interested then.
Okay.
All right.
Well, we have more response.
And by the way, you can write to us here at Off The Hook, OTH at 2600.com with your feedback, critiques, suggestions, et cetera.
This comes from David.
In response to your October 2nd coverage of the hurricane, a friend of mine in the Ashworth, North Carolina area lost cell service like your guest did.
But his bank was not open and was not able to give out cash due to a lack of an internet connection.
I thought this was alarming.
And maybe you want to find a small single location bank or credit union to avoid that problem.
Yeah.
Internet access required in order just to give you your own money.
That's a problem.
Because failures happen.
Lines are cut.
Technology falls apart sometimes.
One thing we should be able to count upon is getting access to our own resources.
That's the whole trust thing.
You know, we trust the bank to get it right.
And clearly, a lot of us are not getting it right.
A lot of us are relying too much on technology that can fail.
And that is what we've seen quite a bit of.
Yes, Alex.
Yeah, I'd just like to point out one of my favorite points of Earth science that I learned from an episode of The Sopranos a couple of years back.
And it's when Tony is in the hospital, he's recovering, and his wife, Carmela, gets him this book.
It's a book of dinosaur stuff, dinosaur facts and things.
And he's reading it, and he's reading it.
It was a really cool episode.
I think it was The Fleshy Part of the Thigh was the episode, if I recall correctly.
But in any event, Tony was reading out to some of his compatriots the fact that if you were to make a timeline of the life of the Earth, and the timeline was as long as the Empire State Building, the period during which human beings were on the Earth would be a postage-sized stamp at the top of the Empire State Building.
And I thought it was just absolutely incredible to think about how insignificant we are relative to the age of the Earth, and yet we feel like we have some kind of dominion or right to be here, and all these things are just going to magically work all the time, that everything is so consistent that we're quite literally the blink of an eye as a species for this planet.
And I think when we have these massive hurricanes and these massive natural disasters, it's a bit of a reminder of that.
No, wait, you needed The Sopranos to have that analogy drawn?
Okay, whatever works.
The Sopranos, yes.
I mean, I learned most of my science from The Sopranos.
The important thing is that you become educated through the outlet of your choice, and if it's The Sopranos, then fine.
That's right.
Barney the Dinosaur.
Okay, one question, though.
So we're a postage-sized stamp on the Empire State Building.
How much for the dinosaurs?
That's a good question.
I don't know.
I don't know.
They didn't go into that.
They should have gone into that.
No, they didn't go into it, yeah.
But it would be interesting to figure out what book Tony was reading from, though, and I'm sure it would have that fact in there.
Well, he's a big fan of dinosaurs and the History Channel, but that's neither here nor there.
Another letter entitled, My Town Was Underwater, from Tom.
Yeah, I've been reading the magazines since 1992.
My town is Marshall, North Carolina.
We're a beautiful town north of Asheville.
French Broad River flows north.
Amazon filmed the Perihiro series.
I don't know how to pronounce that word.
I lost it spelled wrong.
Jimmy's Bar was featured in that show.
Okay, well, it sounds like a cool place.
Anyway, my friends watched this building split in half, float down the street, and flatten my mechanic, the mechanic building, not the mechanic, I hope, Ponder Auto.
The rest crash into our post office.
The old copper phone bunker survived, but the whole end of town has vanished.
And it sent us a bunch of pictures, videos.
Of course, this is radio, so it's not really going to be able to be expressed well.
But he mentions that his coffee shop was lost, lots of artwork, apartments, people.
The courthouse, banks, florists, restaurants, bookstores, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, dentists.
Water has now receded.
We have a few Starlinks going downtown.
Mud has been melting boots.
I'm not quite sure how that works.
Oh, we had a PVC plant upstream.
I guess that'll do it.
Hazmat suits are now needed to be down there.
I helped dig out my veterinarian in short pants and no mask.
We have all sorts of helicopters overhead trying to reach still cutoff neighborhoods.
My power is back.
My power company runs Fiber Internet, and it's operating emergency hotspots around.
My fiber is cut somewhere for now.
AT&T phone works well.
People are still cut off and missing, and it's horrible everywhere.
The city of Asheville won't have water for weeks or months.
That means no toilet flushing without jugs of water.
So much is missing, wiped off the earth.
Restaurants, cafes, everything just went downstream and ended up in Lake Douglas in Tennessee.
I just wanted to show you what's up, Tom.
Thank you for that.
And our hearts go out.
Horrible stories that we've heard.
But also really inspiring stories of people helping each other.
And just putting in so much effort to save or salvage their communities and total strangers.
We care so much about the people down there.
It makes no difference, belief systems or background or any of that.
I think we've all known that.
And it's inspirational to see so many people pouring everything into helping each other.
And I sure hope as these disasters continue to happen, we see more of that behavior and less, less of the garbage that's been happening on the Internet, on the media.
And can we put an end to this, you know, just for a little while, at least to to be spreading rumors that no rescue is coming, that people have been abandoned, even that the federal government is controlling the weather and sent the hurricane to red states.
These are things that are actually being said in all seriousness by some of the top people in the Republican Party.
And on places like Fox News and all kinds of other networks and Internet sites and publications and things like that.
It is so dangerous and harmful to be giving people the impression that an agency like FEMA is hunting for their property.
Yeah, they're actually saying this, that that that lunatic Laura Luma was was was saying this and getting a lot of response, a lot of positive response, saying that FEMA, you know, tasked with rescuing people and infrastructure.
And communities during natural disasters and communities during natural disasters and all kinds of disasters, actually, that they actually were the enemy and you should not cooperate with them and consider them trespassers.
And they're trying to steal your land. And what was it, Kyle? They're trying to take some kind of ingredient out of the ground.
Lithium. I'm sorry, you're Mexican. Lithium. Lithium.
Lithium. I don't know if they have conference meetings late at night and come up with these ideas as to what the conspiracy will be, but it is all nonsense.
And, you know, you can compare this to what happened with Katrina, because, you know, we were on the air then, too.
And it's like night and day. Then the people involved in FEMA didn't seem to know what a hurricane was.
They were absent. They didn't show up when they did show up. They were incompetent.
They handed out supplies in the wrong places, mishandled communities, put people in places where there were no resources.
It was an embarrassment. We all saw that unfold. Here we're seeing the opposite, pretty much the opposite.
Sure, there are mistakes and you can't be everywhere at once. It's a very difficult place, as Greg was telling us last week, you know, mountainous and and just hard to reach.
You know, that is how a lot of these communities are.
A lot of people live in remote areas and they were hit so hard in this case, though, when you actually tune into the coverage, you see people doesn't matter if they're Democrat or Republican.
They're all getting together and working and they know what they're doing and they're addressing issues.
And they say this. They say this out loud. Governors of red states are saying, yes, we're getting everything we need.
And, you know, if we need more, we simply ask for it.
You know, it's not about getting political points. It's about saving people.
And when you start spreading a narrative that that's not what's happening, that people have to fight each other, you know, for for food that's disappearing and that the situation is is really ominous.
When in actuality, there is all kinds of hope that people can can look to, you know, to to get to the next day when when when when you're saying.
All these negative things, it's the equivalent of, you know, phoning in a bomb threat, you know.
And it's disgusting. And to see that this is happening in political campaigns, I you know, I never thought we'd get to a stage like this.
I never thought this country, these people would fall into this.
But, you know, I guess this is where technology comes in.
This is where having sites like Twitter or X, whatever they want to call it, spreading lies.
And they are 100 percent provable lies that Elon Musk is now 100 percent behind.
And it's it's it's like he wants to destroy everything around and create a new environment where he has a lot more standing.
It's it's a serious threat.
It's a serious threat to our society at this point.
And I've got mixed feelings as to how to handle this.
And I'm sure everybody listening has has mixed feelings about that as well.
But right now we're in crisis, you know, not just politically, but physically because of these horrible storms that, you know, seem to be happening a lot more than once in a century.
How many times have you heard once in a century storm?
Boy, there's a whole lot of them.
And we had two.
We're about to have the second one within two weeks in the same basic region, too.
It's it boggles the mind.
That is that is where we are today.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, it's it's a symptom of the timeline that we're living in, that FEMA themselves have had to put up a page on their site addressing a bunch of the stupid rumors coming from Twitter and other social media.
If you if you go to the front page of FEMA dot gov, click the Hurricane Helene link, because this this was put up when Hurricane Helene was was going on.
And from there, scroll down to an area that says rumor response.
And on that link, you will just see a couple of pages long list of various rumors that they're directly addressing, directly debunking and, you know, showing receipts and everything.
And it is it is it is just mind boggling to me that they have to do this.
I'm glad that they can do this.
But, yeah.
Well, they can do this, but in certain scenarios, which I'd rather not think about, they won't be able to they won't be able to.
There are promises of disbanding certain federal agencies.
I believe NOAA is one of them.
Is that right, Kyle?
Well, yeah, there's aspects of the the Project 2025 plan, allegedly.
I don't know.
I haven't looked at it myself, but that's the kind of stuff that these scientific organizations specifically represent, you know, factual based professions.
And a lot of a lot of the leading members of those communities challenge some of the views that these politicians hold.
And that and that to them is a threat.
So they in the way I think we described is or has been described, they want to be punitive.
They want to punish organizations they feel challenge their views.
Same thing with their feelings about the media or whatever perceived enemy is a part of their grievance narrative.
So, yeah, the organization that handles a lot of the leading research and really data gathering and disseminating conclusions and getting that integrated with emergency emergency management and preparedness parts of the government.
And it's a pretty crucial role.
And on top of just being an authority on day to day forecasting, which affects everybody.
And it's important that it's a public service.
And, you know, just to be clear here, it's it's not so much the organizations challenging these people.
It's not so much the people going head to head with them.
And it's science.
It's science that they have a problem with.
They can't come to terms with things not going their preordained way.
And it's it's really it's really a disservice to to anyone who wants to get through this.
And some of the stuff they do is really cool.
Like, they're the same organization that's flying into the storm.
And this is Noah with their hurricane plane.
That's part of what they do.
They don't do that because they're daredevils.
They do that for science to get information.
The scientists involved are pretty, pretty close to daredevils.
But I don't know if they would.
You have to.
They would use that term.
Science is a daredevil sport.
It's it's harrowing, but it's important work.
And it benefits a lot of people that are in the crosshairs of this thing.
Anyway, so we were talking about Helene last week.
This week, it's Milton, which right now is.
By the way, does anybody know what happened to all the hurricanes in between H and M?
That's I, J, K and L.
That's four hurricanes in a week or two.
Well, there was one gathering, I think there was a category one to the east of this one that was in the Gulf.
Yeah, I didn't see a name for it.
So I don't know what the other storms were, though.
Anyway, Gila, it's the kind of thing you would know.
Oh, I didn't see.
Thank you.
I think I mean, just they're the named storm.
So there may have been a tropical storm, a tropical depression, something we didn't hear of that certainly didn't make it to the point.
I mean, I'm assuming that, you know, when a storm gets big enough and does enough damage, they retire it from the list.
Yeah, that happens rarely, but that does happen.
And but for me, for them in two weeks, is that is that possible?
It's very possible.
I mean, there are storms that create there.
And this is we're talking about like the whole Atlantic.
So there are probably a lot of storms that happen that we just don't wind up hearing about.
But yeah, to all right.
Well, I'd like to know more about them.
I'd like to know more about those missing storms.
But anyway, the tropical storm don't know about Isaac was a category one.
Joyce is a tropical storm finding out about Kirk and Leslie.
OK, Kirk and Leslie would like to hear where you are exactly so we can prepare.
But Milton is what we have to worry about right now.
And that is being seen as one of the most catastrophic storms ever to hit the U.S., maybe the most serious one to ever hit Florida.
Alex, we have your sister on the line, your sister, Rachel, who lives in Fort Myers.
Rachel, are you there?
Well, Rachel, if you are there, your microphone is muted because we can't hear you.
And we can't see you either because you're an audio connection only.
All right.
Well, you know, did we test this out before the show?
I asked people to test this out.
What's this, Alex?
We can barely hear you.
Now we can't hear you at all.
Every week, every week, Alex.
We cannot hear you.
You're either muted or something else has gone wrong.
OK, well, you guys figure this out and wave your hands when you do.
Yeah.
OK, so we do have a sister.
I know it's a hurricane.
I don't know what's going on with Alex.
He's in New York.
But we hopefully will be talking to somebody who is in Fort Myers, which is pretty much right in the crosshairs.
In all likelihood, they're dealing with some things, perhaps.
I mean, it could be anything, connections or just that they had to step away, obviously, with an ongoing event.
Well, that's true.
Yeah.
Maybe she's not near the mic because she is connected.
Yes.
Well, I can start reading another story.
If I do that, I guarantee we're going to have a connection.
Alex, is there any update?
Hello?
Ah, there we go.
OK.
Rachel, are you there?
I am here.
OK, and here would be Fort Myers, Florida.
Yes, just about as you can see.
I don't know if you can see my video.
Now we see you.
And we see the window behind you is actually made of wood or plywood.
It's plywood now, yes.
So you can't.
It's really weird.
You sent us a picture before.
It's really kind of ominous looking, just windows with wood and nothing else outside.
Yeah.
You don't know if it's daytime or nighttime.
It's like being in the casino, I guess.
Yes, I suppose it is a gamble.
Yeah, it's felt that way since like 1 p.m.
when my husband and his brother put the boards up.
But right now, the wind has been picking up.
The storm surge, I know, is picking up.
I cannot hear you guys.
Are you still there?
We are here.
Can you not hear us?
I just wanted to check in because, like I said, the wind is picking up quite a bit.
I am about 30 miles inland now.
And it seems that Milton is going north of us.
It doesn't mean we won't get the effects of like what whips around behind us.
But, yeah, for now, we're getting a lot, a lot, a lot of rain.
Right.
And you still have power.
Have there been any short outages or feckers?
The lights are on.
This is a lamp given to me by my mother on behind me.
So, for now, there is a light.
And, of course, our condolences for the loss of your mother, Alex's mother, as well.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah.
This is something that's unprecedented.
I think we've talked to you before when there were storms happening.
Does this one seem different to you?
It seems different in that it shouldn't be happening in such close succession to the last one.
When Hurricane Ian came and decimated this region, everyone said, oh, this is a once in a hundred year storm.
And here comes another one, even stronger, two years later.
So, that's the unusual thing.
I mean, I think people are a lot more prepared and a lot more fed up at this point.
So, they've evacuated.
Hopefully, should be less lives lost.
Hopefully.
I hope.
Fingers crossed.
But, yeah, that's what's unusual.
It shouldn't be happening.
Can I ask why you did not evacuate?
Well, because my home is actually 30 miles inland and we are way, way out of the flood zone.
Okay.
And until today, when the tornadoes started happening, there really wasn't too much of a risk.
Hang on.
Let's back up a second.
When the tornadoes started happening, that's kind of a big deal.
Yeah, there was a whole lot of tornadoes.
There was a hundred tornado warnings.
Like a gang of tornadoes just passed through town?
A whole bunch.
I've never heard that before.
Yes, yes.
Actually, no.
Fort Myers got torn up by a tornado.
Matt Lachey, the place basically on the road between where I used to live and the mainland, got torn up by a tornado.
There is already a lot of tornado damage in the region.
Fort Myers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
My husband is reminding me of things.
As if you don't have enough to worry about with the hurricane, a whole bunch of tornadoes as well.
I think there was something like 14 tornadoes.
Something around that.
Across Florida.
Florida is not wide.
It is long.
So it's moving up.
But the tornadoes moved all the way across.
There's going to be a lot of tornado damage.
Now, so do you know what your evacuation zone is?
Everyone gets letters in counties, I think.
I believe I'm in Zone F in Lee County.
Zone F is okay.
The Zone A, I know they had to evacuate.
Evacuation zone?
E.
Okay, well, I don't know if the letters really mean anything.
E and F are right next to each other.
Okay, well, I figured that much.
But A, I think, is the closest to the water, as it is in Collier County as well.
Yeah.
So you're not in the evacuation zone.
So I guess, you know, you did the right thing staying put.
Did many people in your area, not that you can see anything outside, but did many people stay not to evacuate?
Actually, a lot of people in my area evacuated.
And a lot of people, as I mentioned two years ago when I called in, I work on an island called Sanibel,
which is an island that comes down, like, it's a barrier island, and it most definitely, and probably maybe underwater right now.
It went almost entirely underwater during Ian, and might be, almost definitely will be this storm.
So, uh, my immediate area where I live, not as many people evacuated.
Sanibel people learned their lesson from last time because they had to be helicoptered out and whatnot.
So, they did leave, and they did get the message.
So, uh, but that's a scary, that's a scary thing.
They hadn't, I heard from a lot of people last time saying, well, we made it through last time, we'll do it again.
Now, how, you know, as far as the preparation, the buildup, are you seeing a difference between Ian and Milton?
Yes.
A big difference.
A big difference.
People, it's a lot more serious.
It's a lot more understanding of the capability of these storms.
It's, um, yeah, even people, even where I live, are freaking the fuck out, excuse me, as freaking out, uh, because they know, they know how it went.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Um, can you, uh, tell us what the mood on the ground is amongst the other people that have stayed around?
People cooperating?
Are they, uh, getting along?
Um, as far as I have heard, for the most part, people are cooperating.
I participate in some local, like, Facebook groups and whatnot, and people are helping each other.
They're there as best they can.
In my neighborhood, people are offering, you know, to refrigerate medications, if they have a generator, stuff like that.
Um, but, I, yeah, a lot of people evacuated, but the people staying directly here are good.
The people staying in my old neighborhood, which is one of the islands, um, people are getting antagonistic.
Because it is very dangerous to stay.
So, I'm seeing, in, in, online spaces, people being unkind to each other because they probably should have left.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, I saw an interview that, uh, has been posted around quite a bit with, uh, the mayor of Tampa, who was on television and literally said, and this is the quote, uh, this is literally catastrophic, and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.
Yeah, I saw several times in the coverage, if you're staying in the evacuation areas, write your name on your arm, so that way we know who you are, like, when we find you.
Very, very, very, very, very alarming.
Wow.
But, I mean, they're, they're not sugarcoating it.
And, uh, the other thing that is alarming in these local groups is, as you brought up before, the misinformation of how it's man-made and purposely being brought upon us and that kind of thing.
And FEMA will leave, will steal your house and all these very sad and not helpful things that are going around.
I don't even know what to do about this.
Is, is, is that kind of disinformation, is it landing amongst the folks that, that you see?
They're believing this?
They, they're believing it.
Yes.
Yes.
And where are they hearing it from?
I don't know.
I don't know, because everyone is in their own information bubble.
So, you don't know.
They, they get in their own information bubble, and then they spread it on Facebook.
Yeah.
Facebook, Fox News.
It's the same, the same basic problems that we have been focusing on over the years, where there's a lot of misinformation.
That's, that's, that's to be expected, but the disinformation is, that's, that's got the, you know, agenda behind it.
And it's, it can be so dangerous.
I just want to, I want to read a definition from the American Psychological Association.
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information, getting the facts wrong, but disinformation is false information, which is deliberately intended to mislead, intentionally misstating the facts.
And the spread of misinformation and disinformation obviously affect our ability to improve public health, address climate change, maintain a stable democracy, and more.
But remember, the disinformation, that's, that has an agenda.
They're doing it for a reason.
They're doing it to gain control.
They're doing it to intimidate people and to force change in the direction they want.
And, and using a natural disaster like a hurricane to do this, it's both disgusting and unfortunately effective, as, as Rachel is telling us, people are believing this crap.
Well, Rachel, if, if you could address people waiting for Hurricane Milton to arrive, or people who are cleaning up after the disaster of Hurricane Helene, if you could address them as far as what they're hearing, what they might be believing, and what you believe to be what's actually going on.
And then, please remember, we're on the radio.
I know this word.
Yes, yes, yes.
I will try and control my New York mouth.
What I would say to them and people who may be hearing one thing from one side and another thing from the other, what is true and what is actually happening, from what I've seen from going through Hurricane Ian, is that it's not an immediate process.
You have to wait, you have to wait, you have to wait until there's internet, you have to fill out forms, you have to go through the very annoying bureaucracy of applying for government aid.
That's what FEMA is.
And that's what FEMA does.
So it, they, there, there's a lot of disinformation about the $750.
They send that to just about anybody, but they can't send thousands of dollars without checking in to make sure that there isn't fraud.
That's what you would want.
That's what you want as a taxpayer, that they don't just give your money to anybody.
It's frustrating and it sucks.
And I have seen people just last month celebrate that they got their house back together from Hurricane Ian to have to deal with this.
And they're going to have to go through it, the whole rigmarole all over again.
And whether they will or not, I don't know, because for a lot of people going through this is too much.
But for Helene victims, that, you know, you guys did not expect that.
That was not supposed to come your way.
It was not supposed to do what it did to your towns and your homes and all of that.
But, um, there is hope, there is help, and there is, it'll take time, but you will rebuild.
You will.
But it's not, the news won't still be there.
They will have moved on.
It'll be years from now before you're back together.
And I know that for a fact, and that's not fun.
But people won't be paying attention in a week or two.
But you'll keep going, and you'll keep getting it together, and your community will thrive.
I'm sure that's comforting to hear from people who have lost so much and stand to lose so much again.
And, you know, um, I have to ask, have you thought of going somewhere else where maybe this doesn't happen as much, or is there anywhere else these days?
Um, I've been looking into it.
I, I periodically just search on, uh, Zillow, like, just for land.
I can get a whole lot of land in Wyoming for not a lot of money.
I haven't heard of many hurricanes hitting Wyoming, I guess.
I don't know.
And I work in hospitality, so it probably wouldn't work out too well for me.
I can't work from a bunker.
But, um, yeah, no, I, I love my house, and I've made it as lovely as I would like it to be.
And I really hope I don't lose my roof tonight.
Um, but, yeah, especially for the people in the barrier islands and the beach homes, Florida is definitely facing a reckoning.
And I know Donald Trump joked that global warming will make more beachfront property.
It obviously will not.
As water rises, the land gets smaller.
So, it'll be less beachfront property.
And I'm, I'm not excited for my property to be on the beach.
I, I don't want, actually want that.
Well, on that note, actually, and I, you know, I'm sure this addresses, um, a lot of, uh, concerns that many of our listeners have.
Uh, but according to the New York Post, Mar-a-Lago is sure to survive Hurricane Milton.
And for a very unique reason, you guys know what this reason is?
Former President Donald Trump's sprawling Florida mansion and club, Mar-a-Lago, will be just fine as Hurricane Milton sweeps over the area because it's tethered to a coral reef, experts say.
It's tethered to a coral reef.
Trump's official home in Palm Beach was designed to be storm-proof, made with reinforced concrete, uh, three-foot-thick walls and steel anchors holding the structure to the coral reef below it.
That's according to the Palm Beach Post.
Uh, it's also located on the Sunshine State's east coast, opposite from where the storm is expected to make landfall.
Uh, however, pretty much everybody in the state is going to be affected by this.
Um, and I'm sorry, but that story just disappeared because I have an ad now and I can't read that.
Uh, I'll try to get it back.
See if I can do that.
But, wow, there, there was more to the story.
But, yeah, people can calm down.
Uh, Mar-a-Lago's going to be fine.
Oh, oh, I'm so relieved.
Maybe those classified documents were safe there.
Who knows?
Yes, my fears have certainly been allayed.
I'm now, I'm no longer concerned about what Sherman's going to do, if Mar-a-Lago's going to be fine.
We're good.
We're good.
No.
But, Rachel, I want to ask you, but, you know, what's the plan there for tonight?
I mean, obviously, I'm personally interested in your safety here, but, I mean, are you able to go outside at all, or are you just bunkering down and hoping, you know, that things are okay?
And then, what about Waylon?
And for our listeners who don't know the famous Waylon, Waylon is Rachel and her husband, Jesse's dog, who's really lovely.
And I'm sure he needs to go outside at some point.
We just don't want him to be heard by Tornado Tree.
I'm surprised he didn't hear you say that.
He, we did just take him for a W-A-L-K down the street.
I think, I feel like I can hear his feet.
He's in the other room.
He is very smart.
Whenever, whenever the weather gets spooky, he goes under the desk in our office room.
But we just took a walk because we were in between vans of the hurricane, and we turned around.
But then the wind was just blowing right in our faces.
We were like, okay, that's the right time.
For us, our house is made of concrete, and we have very few windows, and the sliders that we have are bordered up.
We're going to be okay here.
What happens for me, and going back to work, it might be like last time, where it's six weeks.
I don't know if the roads, I'm, you know, it's a very uncertain thing.
It's too early to know.
Yeah, it's too early to know.
The storm hasn't quite hit just yet.
And I believe it's expected to hit around midnight.
Is that correct?
Midnight or, I don't know.
They've been updated.
They've been going back and forth with it.
Also, it's large.
So it could, I mean, my power and my Wi-Fi could go out at any moment.
So apologies in advance.
Well, that's the thing.
You know, with Greg last week, we had been wondering where he was for days because we couldn't reach him, and we didn't know he was in North Carolina, for one thing.
But it's just, it's the not being able to reach people to let them know you're okay, and that's super frustrating.
Now, I've actually been warning, you know, since our mother passed, our cousins are taking over the helm of being worried about me.
And so I'm getting all these text messages from cousins saying, are you okay?
Are you okay?
Are you okay?
And I'm like, yes, but please don't be worried if Thursday you can't hear from me because I might not be able to get a message out.
And that's what happened last time.
And I remember actually calling Effie, Alex's wife, and saying, can you go on the Internet and tell me what's happening?
I got a call out, made it to Effie, and she said, yeah, this bridge is down.
This is broken.
This is going on.
You know, she informed us.
We were here, but we still couldn't get the information.
Now, I imagine you, like most people these days, don't have a landline that rely on cell phones.
Yeah, of course.
And what we saw in North Carolina was that the cell phone towers went down, and that was why so many people could not communicate.
Landlines also can go down, especially if wires are cut or, you know, if it's overhead wires, but they tend not to nearly as much as the complete failure that you get when power is lost, both to Fios and to cell phones.
Do you know where the nearest landline is?
So maybe a way that you can get a message out in case a cell network does go down?
That's a good question, but right behind my house is a high school, a junior high, an elementary school, and a library.
And it's also a shelter.
So I'm actually super-duper close to where there probably will be a way to get a message out.
Okay, that's good.
And it's good to have people in the neighborhood that you can talk to, that you can have a support network going.
And that is extremely important to anybody listening who might be in the path of this, and there's a lot of people in the path of this, and, of course, future storms as well.
It's important to have all these means of communicating.
Rachel, we only have a couple minutes left, but is there anything that you would like to see done better as far as preparation or response to this kind of a storm?
I would, this time around, I would like it to be shut down faster and fact-checked and made known all the misinformation, all the disinformation.
So people, because it's going to harm people, that FEMA's not going to help you, FEMA's going to take your house, like all these, the hurricane is man-made, that stuff I would, if it's possible to stop that in some way, that would be great.
Because seeing people saying, this is man-made, as it's coming towards them, in their community, it's alarming.
But I also have something from The Sopranos.
Oh, no.
That stick with me in these times.
It was a post-it note on Tony's wall while he was in the hospital, and nobody actually knows who put it up there.
And it's an Ojibwe saying,
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind is bearing me across the sky.
Yeah, I remember that, and I think it might have even been the same episode.
Why are we quoting The Sopranos so many times tonight?
I had no idea, no idea it was so deep.
Well, I think it was the padrino clandestino who put it there, you know, the secret godfather.
But that was, I think that's a very apt phrase, perhaps, for us to end with.
Yes.
And a great sentiment.
We have to go, Overtime Returns, at 8 o'clock on YouTube, channel 2600.
Please join us there.
Rachel, you're welcome to join us as well, as long as your power holds up.
But best of luck to you.
Please stay safe.
Please look out for those around you, and we hope to hear from you in the future to see just how things turned out.
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com, and we will see you here on WBAI next week.
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Remember, you're fed disinformation, you spread misinformation, and we can do better.
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