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Top Three Takeaways – June 28th, 2021
- Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs... The hit song by the Five Man Electrical Band was released ten years before Champlain Towers South was built. A 2018 engineering report on the Champlain Towers South building released by Surfside revealed signs that seemingly weren’t read or at least acted upon with a sense of urgency. While we watch and wait for the expert investigators to do their work, I can’t help but to feel a sense of ultimate frustration that this happened based on that 2018 report. I’m about as far removed from being a structural engineer as you’ll find but you don’t need to be an expert to understand the implications of this excerpt from the report: The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially. In the grand scheme of signs do they come any more obvious than “major structural damage”? And to all of the families affected I can’t imagine the pain and upset you must be feeling with the knowledge cited in that report. Horrific tragedies are heart breaking. Missed signs that lead to them, that’s harder to reconcile. It’s also potentially a constructive tell for all others who are worried in buildings throughout South Florida. If due diligence is performed on buildings, there likely would be signs before there’s a potential disaster in the making.
- Little Lion Man. I Will Wait is by far the top hit produced by Mumford and Sons – Little Lion Man is the most apropos for the sad cancel-culture tale of band member Winston Marshall. The song opens with these lyrics: Weep for yourself, my man. You'll never be what is in your heart. Weep, little lion man. You're not as brave as you were at the start. I won’t touch on the chorus which has a place in telling this story as well – because the language is far from PG...but Winston Marshall proved what is in his heart when he announced he was leaving the band he loved. And why? At the beginning of March I tweeted to American journalist Andy Ngo, author of the New York Times Bestseller, Unmasked. “Congratulations @MrAndyNgo. Finally had the time to read your important book. You’re a brave man”. Posting about books had been a theme of my social-media throughout the pandemic. I believed this tweet to be as innocuous as the others. How wrong I turned out to be. Over the course of 24 hours it was trending with tens of thousands of angry retweets and comments. I failed to foresee that my commenting on a book critical of the Far-Left could be interpreted as approval of the equally abhorrent Far-Right. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thirteen members of my family were murdered in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. My Grandma, unlike her cousins, aunts and uncles, survived. She and I were close. My family knows the evils of fascism painfully well. To say the least. To call me “fascist” was ludicrous beyond belief. But why leave the band? The only way forward for me is to leave the band. I hope in distancing myself from them I am able to speak my mind without them suffering the consequences. In today’s entertainment and pop culture the bigoted and closed minded far-left is celebrated for their abuse of conservatives. The moment someone in the industry dares take on their bigotry they’re to be cancelled. Just as Winston. But you can take a lead from him. You can and you should spit yourself and your family out of today’s entertainment and pop cancel-culture. And as for Winston – he is a little lion man with a brave heart and the courage of his convictions. A lesson for all.
- Holding Steady. Florida’s COVID-19 case count averaged about 1,500 daily cases, or around 100 more daily than the week before. No summer spikes so far. That’s good news.