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 Lobster miniseason is July 29-30. Here are the rules to know before the hunt.~The daily bag limit is six per person, per day, in the Florida Keys and within Biscayne National Park. Anywhere else in the state, it’s 12 per person, per day. ~The carapace, the lobster part that is not the tail, must be greater than three inches long. The lobsters must be measured in the water and must be brought back to land whole. Also, anglers must be in possession of a measuring device at all times. ~Do not start hunting for lobsters any time before the miniseason begins at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. Law enforcement will be on the lookout, and violators face arrest. ~Night diving or snorkeling in the Florida Keys is prohibited during miniseason. Night-time anglers in the Keys use bullynets, which are poles with down-facing nets on the ends. Lights are typically shone from boats in shallow water so bullynetters can spot the lobsters on the bottom. Anglers can dive at night in the rest of the state and in the Keys during the regular season. ~All lobster anglers must possess a recreational state saltwater fishing license and a lobster permit. ~Lobstering is prohibited in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park during the two-day season and always in Everglades National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park and certain “no-take” zones in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and no-take areas of Biscayne Bay and the Card Sound Lobster Sanctuary. To find out more about these areas, call 305-852-7717 or go to FloridaKeys.noaa.gov. Link |
 How to pack a cooler (because you’re probably doing it wrong. But the biggest step in cooler prep is the one most people commonly overlook. Preparation is everything when it comes to maximum cooler effectiveness. For starters, you can freeze your water bottles the night before so they help keep the cooler cool while staying ice-cold for much longer. In fact, any snack items you can freeze beforehand will assist. Link |
| [Global Warming] It’s been 20 years since former Vice President Al Gore’s global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, captured the public’s attention with its message about the perils of man-made climate change. While there now does seem to be more acceptance that a warmer climate and extreme weather are linked, a depressing number of people have yet to connect the dots between pollution and why our atmosphere is heating up—that it is caused by man-made activity |
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| [Big Money] Google parent Alphabet reported 82% growth in its cloud business, a closely watched indicator for broader AI industry demand. Google’s earnings provide the first real look this earnings season at the state of play in AI. |
 Computer Club meets this Sat., July 25 at the Community Center, Winn Dixie Plaza, Big Pine Key. Bring your device and passwords so the volunteers can help with your problem. Full Menu > Computer Club |
| [Daylight Saving Time] Map shows how permanent daylight saving would impact each state. The renewed push comes just days after the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that would end the twice-yearly clock changes and keep much of the country on daylight saving time year-round. The legislation now faces a more uncertain path in the Senate. Link |
 [Word Of The Day] Cenosillicaphobia: The fear of an empty beer glass. |
| Monkeys are surprisingly good at geometry. They may understand shapes as well as your toddler. Link |
 [Great Pacific Garbage Patch] Sailing southwest, the first thousand miles of ocean is relatively clear. “Then, all of a sudden, after three and a half days of sailing, you see an increase of debris sightings,” says Sainte-Rose. This junk isn’t piled up on the sea’s surface. Instead, the ocean within the GPGP becomes like a “soup of microplastics,” says Sainte-Rose. Larger objects dot this broth, including tangles of “ghost nets”—thick masses of abandoned fishing gear. The Ocean Cleanup estimates that as much as 86 percent of the plastics in the GPGP come from fishing activity. The nonprofit organization reckons that the GPGP has grown to cover an area of ocean twice the size of Texas. How did this happen? Link |
| As a tropical storm bore down on Florida’s Panhandle, state records show that Gov. Ron DeSantis used funds designed to help Floridians recover from natural disasters—such as storms and hurricanes—for his pet immigration projects like Alligator Alcatraz and Deportation Depot. Link |
 [Toilet Paper] When we had a respiratory virus outbreak it caused a national toilet paper shortage. Now that we have a diarrhea outbreak there’s no shortage of toilet paper. What the hell? |
| [Lease an iPhone] Apple is planning to launch a new leasing program for iPhones and other gadgets. Apple Upgrade, planned for launch next week, will offer 24- to 36-month leases, potentially with lower payments than current options. The company is reportedly working with buy-now, pay-later platform Klarna on the service. The subscription-like service comes after price hikes on many Apple products amid tariffs and the AI-fueled computer-memory shortage. |
 [The Beam Engine] Power from steam in the Industrial Revolution. Video |
| American people should not foot the bill for the benefit of private AI companies. |
 [Cooking Robot] Artificial intelligence-based robots and systems are advancing to the point of being able to learn and replicate the skills of culinary professionals, even though it has been considered difficult to teach them as they rely heavily on experience and intuition. The advent of deep learning has made it possible to automate these skills. The Yomiuri Shimbun Juchheim Co.’s AI-equipped cooking robot Theo, which was trained on and is able to recreate the baking technique of skilled workers. Link |
| A searchable index of nonfiction book prizes. A free resource for browsing major nonfiction prizes and the books they recognize. Highest recognition scores. Weighted by wins and list placements, with established major prizes carrying more weight. |
 [Hand Writing and Brain] When you write things down by hand you’re recruiting more of your brain, which is a good thing. When writing by hand, one is continually solving a series of small problems having to do with the spacing of words, how letters are connected, the crossing of the letter t (sometimes more than one in the same word) and the dotting of the letters i and j, and how to accomplish all of those things through coordinated movements not just of the fingers but of the whole arm. All of that has to be integrated in real time with whatever is happening on a more abstract level in the brain’s processing of ideas and imagery. Link |
| [Hidden Debt] AI companies are pouring untold billions of dollars into enormous data centers in their efforts to sustain increasingly complex and resource-intensive AI models. It’s an extremely costly undertaking built on seemingly bottomless hype — and a mountain of debt. Just five US tech giants — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle — are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets. That’s even more than the $1.35 trillion in debt the five companies officially reported in their financial data for the most recent quarter. Meta alone has amassed around $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, highlighting how precarious the AI industry’s steep investment in AI has become, and inspiring comparisons to energy company Enron, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2001 because of similar debts hidden behind shell companies. |
 [Visualizing the Artemis II Mission] Orion’s real trajectory, hundreds of mission photos, and a custom photo-stepper extension. Video |
| [AI-controlled F-16] Historic VENOM milestone demonstrates scalable AI development capabilities for the operational fleet. Link |
 [Spying On You] Most drivers pass that digital speed sign every morning, tap the brakes at the flashing number, and forget it exists. But a video posted by the account OrwellDay on X shows someone opening the housing of one such radar box to reveal a Flock Safety ALPR camera tucked inside. Not a speed trap. A surveillance node, logging your plate, your car’s profile, and your exact location – dressed up as something you’ve been conditioned to ignore. The radar-box finding is documented for at least one location, though it has not been confirmed as a standard Flock deployment model. Flock cameras build a detailed profile of every vehicle that passes – and none of it involves your speed. Link |
| [Exploring Poland’s History] Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Link |
 Couple pay $800k for a gene-editing therapy for their daughter. She died. A cutting-edge gene-editing trial in China went disastrously wrong. A family wants accountability. Link |
| [Residential Proxies] The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG’s webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user’s TV. And that more than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung’s Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components. Link |
 Orcas filmed ramming sunfish so hard it explodes in cloud of scraps. Orcas in the Gulf of California have been filmed working together to blow a massive sunfish into smithereens. Researchers say the orcas may use the technique to make it easier for juvenile killer whales to feed or they do it as a fun group bonding exercise. Orcas off the coast of Australia have been seen “booping” and playing with sunfish. Video |
| The current Coconut Telegraph was published on 7/24/26 at 9:28 am. |
 [For Sale Pellet Gun] Gamo Swarm Maxxim 10X GEN 2 Multi-Shot Air Rifle. Two 10-round .177 clips. 3 x 9 variable scope. Box of pellets. $200 new. Half price used $100. b33043@outlook.com Video |
 [For Sale] Folding scaffold 30L x 12w x 20h. 4 scaffolds (not sold separately) New $200, Big Pine Key pick-up half-price: $100. Excellent condition.b33043@outlook.com Link |
| Snapshots taken from Big Pine Key looking North between Annette Key and Mayo Key every Friday evening since 2023. You may hover to view a photo, see the date of the photo, or use the left or right arrows on the images. |
