About this site
This Week in Florida is an independent publication launched in April 2023 by Philip Cardella. It was started as a way to communicate with my friends and family outside of Florida what South Florida is really like. That is, its more Florida Man than most people think, but also far more diverse, interesting, beautiful and, you're not going to believe this, normal, than most people think.
I try to keep it real, keep it reasonably positive and if possible, funny.
If Bad Boys and Miami Vice taught you what Miami is all about--well, they didn't.
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I use the Fediverse for social media, at this point, exclusively. Unlike Threads and Instagram, which are owned by Meta (Facebook), X(itter) owned by Elon Musk and a number of investors from around the world like the Saudi royal family, and BlueSky, started by Twitter, broken away from Twitter and now owned by a number of cryptocurrency companies and run by a CEO whose only main experience is doing technology work for cryptocurrencies (read, not running anything), the Fediverse is truly a global town square--for better or worse.
Think of it as social media with all the usual assholes but none of the fascist owners. Though I'm no longer using an equivalent to Twitter (RIP)--you should use something in the Mastodon world if you want that--I am using Pixelfed for an Instagram substitute.
The cool thing about the fediverse is, you can create one account on whatever instance you want, say the popular mastodon.social and follow both of the accounts above from that one instance. That probably doesn't make sense unless you experience it and it is why reporters love to whine that the fediverse is confusing. But would you go into Miami's Westchester neighborhood (where I live) if you were looking for Manhattan's hottest club in New York City? Of course not. But you can find all both Westchester, Miami and Manhattan, New York City on a single map or call someone on the phone in both places from your cell phone, right? If you can figure that out, you can figure out the fediverse.
If I decide to promote this website I'll probably have to go back to xitter and Meta crap because too many people cling to the utterly unfounded hope that those companies won't stab them in the back.
On my perspective
I am not shy about my love for my church, Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ (Coral Gables UCC), or the non-profit interfaith group I volunteer with, People Acting for Community Together (PACT). I have worked for the Democratic National Congressional Committee in the past, though neither they nor I would like to repeat that.
I stand with Coral Gables UCC and PACT because of our shared values.
To be clear, on this website, I do not represent Coral Gables UCC, PACT or any former employer in any capacity. I am employed by neither Coral Gables UCC nor PACT and if I say something stupid that's on me, not them.
You can extrapolate my preferences from those things.
Oh, yes, I'm also an avid Sacramento Kings fan.
Beyond that, it is not my intention to endorse anyone or anything--aside from human rights for all people--on this site through my "coverage" of them. I've got protesters from the very far right and the very far left on here, and by taking a picture of them or acknowledging they exist and have a right to speak, I'm in no way implying I agree with them.
I believe that killing innocent civilians is wrong. Period. A civilian is never responsible for the crimes of the country that they reside in. I think the world should be ashamed that it is not considering all of the atrocities going on today, particularly in Sudan (this piece is from six hours before writing this) and China, with the same vigor that it does atrocities in other places. If you read this as me supporting a country or its actions in this, you're reading it wrong. Killing civilians is wrong--I don't care who does the killing or what they're mad about.
Rachel Savage
Do I have opinions? Oh yes. Is this the place I'll express them? Sometimes, yes. But I try to be very careful about that and usually, it's about things like ad software or John Stamos supposedly being canceled from--what--Full House re-runs?
I created this site to tell what I see in South Florida. There are amazing things here that defy almost every depiction in the media. And there's absurd Florida man shit that supports some of the most embarrassing depictions in media. It's an amazing place. I want you to see that on this page.
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