• You may have heard, last month was Pride Month. It was in the news, a little bit. Everybody recalling getting Stoned by a Wall 50 years ago or something. Anyway, this item caught my eye, and almost qualified as a standalone Civil War on the Left item, except that the Democratic presidential campaign is currently monopolizing that space:
Linked Protesters Block San Francisco Pride Parade Route
Multiple protesters dropped to the ground on San Francisco’s Market Street Sunday morning, halting the city’s world-famous Pride parade for about one hour as they spoke out against police and corporations being involved in Pride festivities. . .
Police said the protesters “broke down barricades and threw water bottles at officers.” At least one officer was hurt and two people were taken into custody, police said.
I hoped the protesters checked the pavement first, because, well. . . you know what you tend to find on the pavement in San Francisco these days.
• File this story under the heading, “University Administrators Are the Worst People in the World.” Rutgers University chancellor Nancy Cantor went off on campus police, pulling out her full majesty, forgetting that campus cops wear body cameras. Here’s the local news station story about it:
(Here’s a longer, unedited full five-minute version of the body cam footage.) She has now apologized, but only because she was caught.
Add Rutgers to your list of colleges to avoid. Though I’ll add that Cantor has all the necessary skills to be the next president of Oberlin, so there’s that.
• This story just might make it to the top of the charts in the “Renewable Energy Schadenfreude Sweepstakes”:
‘Avian incident’ knocks out 84% of massive California solar farm
An “avian incident” sparked a fire at one of California’s biggest solar farms, affecting 1,200 acres and knocking out 84% of the California Valley Solar Ranch’s generating capacity.
The June 5 incident didn’t damage solar panels at the 250-megawatt power plant, but distribution poles and cables need to be replaced, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday from owner Clearway Energy Inc. The company didn’t say exactly how the blaze was ignited. . .
About 40 megawatts of the San Luis Obispo County facility are in operation, and it’s expected to return to full service by July 1. Clearway expects the incident to cost $8 million to $9 million this year, after estimated insurance recovery.
The California Valley project was built by SunPower Corp. and was funded in part with a $1.24-billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department. It was completed in 2013 and sells power to PG&E Corp.
I’ve driven by this monstrosity in the remote California Valley many times on Hwy. 58 (it’s one of my favorite California backroads, very little traveled and off the beaten path), and the rest of the area is considered “sensitive habitat.” But not so sensitive that we can’t build over 1,000 acres of solar panels that produce about 1/100th the electricity of the 50 acre Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant that California is closing long before its lifespan is up because it isn’t “renewable.”
I suspect “avian incident” may mean a bird caught fire from the reflected heat of the solar panels, and ignited the brush beneath. People who work around solar power facilities call burning birds “streamers.” The brush is very big in California this year on account of our big (and late) rainy season.
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