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 [KW’s Outer Mole Pier] In a surprise development, City Manager Brian Barroso notified Commissioners yesterday afternoon that the United States Navy will terminate the City’s lease agreement for the Outer Mole on August 6. The City has leased the Outer Mole from the Navy since 2003. Until 2020, it was one of three terminals serving large cruise ships in the Port of Key West. Though 136 cruise ships moored there in 2019, it was a financial drain on the City and operated at a loss, largely owing to a $1 million annual transportation contract with Historic Tours of America. Since that time, it has continued to serve as a venue for Race World Offshore’s annual Powerboat Championship.The Navy’s termination notice comes six weeks after Barroso first notified Commissioners on March 24 of his intent to terminate the lease agreement, three years before its scheduled option to renew, and despite the fact that the City would pay no rent for the Mole through 2034. Barroso’s memo apparently came as a surprise to NASKW Commander Capt. Colin Thompson, who was not consulted beforehand. Our Committee shared its analysis of the lease agreement with Barroso in April, outlining significant financial costs the city could incur and encouraging the City to retain control of the Mole. ~Key West Committee for Safer, Cleaner Ships |
 [Chargers] I noticed that everyone’s tethered to their phone chargers. They are all over the house. An artifact of our times? |
| I almost died three times. Irrigation canal, on a boat in Boca Grande Channel waterspout, and drinking bleach. |
 $71 to hear some high school kids play other people’s music is far too much to pay for amateur musicians. It should be a lot cheaper so more kids can see the show and encourage the young musicians. Link |
| Free Computer Tech Support meets this Saturday, May 9 at10:30 a.m. at the Community Center, Winn Dixie Plaza, Big Pine Key. Bring your tech problems and your devices & we’ll put our heads together to try & solve them. (I have a doozie of my own to bring this week.) |
 NASA’s new supersonic X-59 aircraft shows off its dizzying acrobatics in new video. You may need a Dramamine for this one. Video |
| One of the saddest emotions is regret. |
 [Shorts] A Monroe County judge sentenced a Florida Keys commercial fisherman to a month in jail Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to 30 lobster violations. Raidel Alvarez Perez, 52, pleaded guilty to 16 counts of possessing wrung lobster tails while on the water and seven counts of possessing undersized spiny lobster. Perez was a mate aboard a 40-foot commercial lobster boat. When the officers turned on their boat’s blue flashing lights to signal the commercial vessel to stop, someone threw a red bucket overboard, according to the report. While one officer boarded the commercial boat, the other turned around to retrieve the bucket. That officer found between “15 and 20” wrung tails in the bucket, the report states. (Editor: We used to call shorts “cocktail size”) |
| [Actuary Info] With two candidates, one of them will always receive at least 30% of the votes. It doesn’t matter who the candidate is, it could even be Hitler and 30% of the people would vote for him. |
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| [Friday Joke] After a prolonged drought when the rain came, all the animals in the forest were happy except the kangaroo. When the others asked it what the reason was for such sadness, the kangaroo replied that the rain meant that all its kids would now be playing inside. |
 [Brain Times Out] Tasks are only maximized for about one hour. After that the brain starts to tell you to do something else. That’s why you do a lot of work and then you drift off (after about an hour) and start doing other things like checking email, news, shopping, or just getting up and walking around the room. |
| [Airplane Seats] Innovative, wacky airplane seat designs. Inspired by space ships, double decker buses, and old-fashioned trains, designers try to make flying feel less torturous. Link |
 [Fewer Tourists] My friend works in the Spa at a major Keys resort and complains about almost no clients. Last year during this week he was fully booked, this week there are about two clients a day. He thinks it is a combination of double fuel prices and air fairs, plus the cost of hotel rooms and eating out has increased unrealistically. There is not other reason than the President’s war. |
| [Friday Joke] I went down to the bar for a few drinks last night, which turned out to be a few too many. I woke up in the middle of the night next to some woman snoring, farting, and mumbling in her sleep and knew I’d made it home safely. |
 [Pinocchio Is Weirder Than You Remember] The original 1881 serial ended in chapter fifteen with the puppet hanging dead from an oak tree. Italian children wrote in begging the author to continue. He resumed reluctantly. What followed — donkey-skin drums, dead-girl fairies, a satire of every other moralizing children’s book in Italy — became one of the most translated books in human history, and quietly helped teach Italians their own language. Link |
| Gambling ads on social media reach more than twice as many men as women — the group most likely to exhibit problem gambling behavior. Link |
 [Slop Not Art] AI slop is killing online communities. Like a young child coming home from kindergarten with their latest crayon scrawls, the internet is currently awash with people sharing their AI-generated work. And just like the young child’s drawings, much of that work should be proudly put up on the refrigerator within the artist’s house—and no further. They suck and they are not art. Link |
 [Beating Children] Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school. Under new guidelines caning will only be used in schools for male students aged nine and above. Link |
| [Lazy Bureaucrats (redundant)] The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is the latest arm of government to have discovered the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in one of its policy papers. The department on Thursday announced the suspension of two officials associated with a key policy document that recently underwent a revision. One official suspended on Thursday is the Chief Director of the citizenship and immigration unit, with the suspension of the director involved in drafting the document. |
 [Hospital Waste] Management consulting firms have become a fixture in the American healthcare system, wielding outsized influence compared to most other economic sectors. Hospitals navigating challenging financial and regulatory landscapes may call on these specialists for advice on strategic planning, cost-cutting, reorganizations, or revenue-boosting initiatives. A new paper published in JAMA is the first large-scale, empirical attempt to determine the scale and impact of hospital investment in management consultant services.“This initial analysis suggests that consultants may deliver neither the dramatic efficiencies they promise nor the harms that critics sometimes fear.” Link |
 [Phone Won’t Charge] If your phone’s battery is drained and won’t charge, you can usually get it to charge by repeatedly plugging in the charger and removing it—over and over again. Usually during one of those attempts the battery will start to charge. It usually works if you do it enough. |
| [Friday Joke] After Sunday church, the priest would hand us each an orange and a big cookie. A little girl lied and took two oranges, but the priest told her she mustn’t lie because God is watching. Then, the girl took two cookies and lied about it. When asked why she had done that, she said that she thought that God was only watching oranges. |
| The current Coconut Telegraph was published on 5/8/26 at 9:08 am. |
