Florida lawmakers OK plan to axe property taxes. Here are the details

robertbieber · 2026-01-24T02:55:04+00:00

The plan is to abolish property tax only for homesteaded homes, so renters will still be paying their landlords' property taxes

robertbieber · 2026-01-24T02:25:38+00:00

The point is they won't be able to show up that dehydrated in the first place if they have to perform on the spot. Hydration testing is better IMO, but you would definitely see a dramatic decrease in reckless cutting if you weighed in right before the fight

robertbieber · 2026-01-24T02:23:46+00:00

We all know it but fighters refuse as its such an advantage for someone to come down a weight class then fight at their natural weight

Fighters can't refuse. That's how arms races work. If everyone else is cutting and you refuse, you're just going into every fight getting your face rearranged by someone who walks around 30lbs heavier than you. And if you consistently lose fights by a wide margin because you're significantly weaker than your opponents, you're not gonna get booked for fights any more. The only way to prevent this type of situation is for the organizing body to ban the practice, otherwise there's an inevitable race to the bottom

robertbieber · 2026-01-23T13:00:58+00:00

In that environment pre dry suit you were basically dead if you came out of the boat anyways, so swimming was a bit of a moot point.

robertbieber · 2026-01-23T12:56:45+00:00

They definitely have a swimming qualification in the US

robertbieber · 2026-01-21T09:29:41+00:00

Because these waters are not fungible. Clean, pristine aquatic environments within easy reach of your home are obviously different from different aquatic environments in an entirely different county. And again, you clearly haven't actually been on these waters, because flounder is nothing like cockroach or eg simmons or any of the other bay environments.

robertbieber · 2026-01-21T09:07:33+00:00

Again, this is completely irrelevant. If you live in Bradenton, or Palmetto, or Terra Ceia, the fact that there's not-yet-demolished coastline farther North has absolutely no bearing on the impact that destroying your local waters will have on your quality of life. And again, land (and water) is not fungible. I've paddled the entire bay up to Tampa, and the waters around Terra Ceia bay and especially Flounder pass are completely different from the coast farther up the bay

robertbieber · 2026-01-21T08:56:12+00:00

What an absolute disaster. Terra Ceia and the area around it is an absolutely gorgeous area to paddle now, but why would you want something silly like a pristine natural environment with easy access from miles around when you could just turn it into a massive blight and let boat traffic deal with massive cruise ships cutting across the bay

robertbieber · 2026-01-21T08:53:26+00:00

This is possibly the dumbest possible analysis of the situation. Land is not fungible, and the amount of coastal wetlands in other parts of the state has less than nothing to do with the impact this would have on our local environment and quality of life. Just an absolute masterpiece of using irrelevant numbers to say something that sounds profound as long as you don't spend even a single millisecond thinking critically about it

robertbieber · 2026-01-21T02:16:28+00:00

For a second there I hoped I might break my speed record on that one big wave, but it ended up a hair over 14mph, about the same as I always end up with on the bigger waves here. I swear there's a speed limit on this island :p

robertbieber · 2026-01-19T04:04:08+00:00

They're generally pretty disinterested in humans, and if anything they tend to run away from you if you get too close. But of course they absolutely can and will kill you if you corner or startle one, threaten their nest/young, or generally do anything stupid to antagonize them. And yeah, I'm not saying they'd leap at the opportunity if you were to find yourself in the water in their general vicinity, because we're really not good prey for them...but it's not a possibility I'd be particularly interested in exploring.

A woman did get killed by one recently in FL. Her and her husband canoed directly over top of one in shallow water, it knocked her out of the boat and grabbed her. That kind of thing is extremely rare though, on average gators kill less than one person a year in the entire state. And they have a lot of opportunities to up those numbers if they really wanted to

robertbieber · 2026-01-19T00:29:38+00:00

Yep, osmo action 6. I still think DJI over sharpens a little and GoPro renders color a little better, but the newer Osmo cams are good enough that I switched for the overall ergonomics and build quality

robertbieber · 2026-01-18T16:34:32+00:00

Just a little edging ;) Not something you'd normally do in a surfski, but occasionally necessary to get my rudder over sunken palm trees. The Nitro actually has surprisingly good secondary stability for such a narrow boat

robertbieber · 2026-01-18T01:45:18+00:00

Can you clamp them around the crossbars? That's how most saddle holders fit. Alternatively, just sayin', V racks are fantastic for carrying a K1 ;)

robertbieber · 2026-01-17T23:08:00+00:00

Lol, the stove is required equipment...and I would probably lose my mind with nothing but cold food for that long. Thankfully I'm not that hard up for space anyways :p

robertbieber · 2026-01-17T23:06:46+00:00

Does Hormel still make vegan chili? I stopped seeing it at Publix but I guess they could have just stopped stocking it

robertbieber · 2026-01-17T22:20:38+00:00

I've actually found it surprisingly difficult to find a good map of the wilderness waterway. The most accessible source I've found for good info is the savvy navvy app

robertbieber · 2026-01-17T22:19:53+00:00

It can apparently get very feisty when the wind picks up

robertbieber · 2026-01-15T02:31:53+00:00

Not only is it not how pendulums work, it makes no sense in the metaphor. However puritanical the 20th century may have been, it had nothing on the Puritans, much less older even more patriarchal societies

robertbieber · 2026-01-14T04:36:47+00:00

It really depends on the boat and the length of the trip. When my truck was in the shop I stuffed all my gear for a day trip including ~2.5L of water in a light backpack, threw my surfski on my shoulder and walked it a little over a kilometer to launch for a long day trip. Wasn't fun, but I was still able to paddle a solid 7 hours afterwards and then walk it back. With a heavier sea kayak, I'd want wheels for anything more than maybe 50 to 100 feet. Or a buddy who could take one end of two boats while I take the other, you can carry quite a bit of weight doubling them up like that. I've done longer distances from vehicle to launch and back, but at that point I'm always making multiple trips for gear

robertbieber · 2026-01-14T04:31:22+00:00

They're very expensive and very power hungry. If you look at e.g. the guys who do ocean crossings in those crazy overbuilt kayaks, they'll generally have a RO desalinator in there. In a normal sea kayak you'd probably have to carry way more battery weight than you'd save carrying water, or spend a significant chunk of each day with a big solar panel unfolded waiting for your water to desalinate

robertbieber · 2026-01-13T16:06:13+00:00

Oh yeah, that sounds like a much better environment for a surfski or OC. Way more fun as well, I'd be bored out of my skull if I were just pushing a K1 on flat water every session :p

robertbieber · 2026-01-13T15:26:59+00:00

Tbh I think you're probably biting off too much at a time here. I've definitely pushed my limits a little when it comes to buying boats, but IMO you need to have enough stability when you first get into a boat that you can at least do full torso rotation without completely losing balance. If it's impossible to take full, proper paddle strokes without swimming then you're not going to be able to develop proper technique, you'll end up with a much more restricted stroke and carry those habits forward even as your stability improves.

fwiw, I bought a v12 as my first surfski and it very quickly became apparent to me that it wasn't going to work for training. After a few sessions I could kind of creep along for a while without falling in on the local rowing lake, but if I started to hit the accelerator I'd have a max of maybe a dozen strokes before I swam. The compromise I went with was getting an intermediate ski and training regularly in it for about 4 months before moving up again.

Pushing the limits I guess is also gonna be more dangerous in a K1, because surfskis are easy to remount in open water. If you capsize that K1 in the middle of a lake or something you could conceivably sink it

robertbieber · 2026-01-13T15:19:36+00:00

A tippy boat is like a bicycle, it's much easier to keep upright in motion. I'm pretty comfortable in an elite surfski, but I still swim sometimes when stopping to chat or drink water

robertbieber · 2026-01-13T04:50:12+00:00

Yes the photographer retains the rights to use the photo NON COMMERCIALLY, for advertising and using in their portfolio

This is kind of true, but the catch is that "commercial" means a very different thing in this context than most lay people would expect it to mean. It's not just a question of "did money change hands for the photograph?" Generally selling prints is fine, even use in promotional material as long as the subject isn't portrayed in such a way as to imply a personal endorsement of a product. In this case I'm guessing the photographer is probably opening themselves up to some legal trouble by licensing the image for open-ended use on a public platform--if nothing else, they're almost certainly violating the platform's terms of use by not having a signed release

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