Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is Sabotaging America first:
What’s coming up on Sunday Kos:
- The 1619 Project. The good, the bad, and the ugly racist responses, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Not all Republicans are neo-Nazis. But are they still evil for not fighting the neo-Nazis? by Frank Vyan Walton
- Planned Parenthood just said ‘No’, by Susan Grigsby
- 'The chosen one': Now more than ever, the press needs to address Trump's manic instability, by Eric Boehlert
- Trump is just plain bad at managing the economy, by Ian Reifowitz
- How to beat Trump in Wisconsin, by David Akadjian
- How many voters are Republicans willing to lose over guns? by Sher Watts Spooner
- After GOP sabotaged Obama, Trump looks to scapegoat Democrats for slowing economy, by Jon Perr
- The plutocracy is okay with governance by a mad man but the masses must not, by Egberto Willies
- How much more outrage can we take? by Mark E Andersen
• Scientists are figuring out rules of ancient board games: Cameron Browne, the principal investigator of the Digital Ludeme Project, which deploys computational techniques to recreate the rules of ancient board games. The field is called archaeoludology. The oldest known board game is an Egyptian one called Senet that was played at least 5,100 years ago. “We almost never have the rules for these early games,” Browne said. “The rules have never been recorded, so our knowledge is largely based on historian’s reconstructions.” You can check out the Digital Ludeme Project here,
• Remember all the hype about solar roadways? Well, France’s is going nowhere: Forbes notes that the dream appears to be literally shattered. The plan was to embed fragile solar cells beneath a thin transparent material to protect them from the impacts of heavy traffic while not blocking the sun. The first kilometer of a pilot solar roadway was built in Normandy in 2016 and cost $5 million. Reports came out last year saying the road was failing to deliver as much juice as had been promised and was far less efficient than standalone solar installations. The road was supposed to generate 800 kilowatt hours per day, but recent data said it was producing just 409 kWh/day. That makes the road’s capacity factor a pathetic 4%, compared with the 14% of the nearby Cestas standalone solar plant built for 1/10th the cost of the roadway and producing three times as much power. Part of the problem was a result of dirt and leaves on the surface, part due to the fact the solar cells in the roadway are not well oriented to the sun, part due to that transparent shield against traffic. The latest news from Le Monde is that the solar roadway manufacturer—Wattway—will be refocusing its efforts away from solar roads and to applications for closed-circuit television and the like. In the United States, data from Solar Roadway’s pilot operation installed at Sand Point, Idaho, shows a capacity factor of just 0.782%, 20 times less efficient than the Cestas plant.
• Nebraska Supreme Court rules in favor of Keystone XL pipeline’s alternative route in the state.
• Ignoring warnings, Russia has launched its first floating nuclear power plant in the Arctic: Authorities at the nuclear agency Rosatom say the two 35-megawatt reactors shipped to northeastern Siberia are merely an alternative to building a non-nuclear plant on ground that is frozen year-round. It hopes to market such reactors around the world. Since the idea of floating reactors was first broached, environmental advocates have warned that each such plant is potentially “Chernobyl on ice” and a “nuclear Titanic.”
• Two Green Berets killed in Afghanistan: The first Green Berets arrived in the country shortly after 9/11, nearly 18 years ago. The U.S. military ntervention has been going on there ever since, and some 14,000 U.S. military personnel are still there, though the numbers have fluctuated significantly over time, having risen to 100,000 in 2010. Master Sgt. Luis F. DeLeon-Figueroa, 31, and Master Sgt. Jose J. Gonzalez, 35, were killed in combat in Faryab province, which borders on Turkmenistan. Their deaths bring the tally of American military dead in Afghanistan for 2019 to 18, the greatest toll since 2015. Since U.S. action began in Afghanistan after the 2001 al qaeda attacks, 2,435 U.S. military personnel have lost their lives there, with more than 1,100 lives lost by U.S. allies. At least 111,000 Afghans have been killed since the war began.
• Three young men have been arrested in the past month for threatening to commit violence against Planned Parenthood clinics: The men were charged with threatening extreme violence on social media. One of them said in his threats against the organization that if federal agents contacted him he would kill them. Another tried to claim his threats were a “joke.” All three men used iFunny, an online platform known for white supremacist content. Violent attacks on abortion clinics soared to a new high last year, according to the National Abortion Federation. Providers reported 1,369 violent acts against their clinics in 2018, up from 1,081 in 2017, the federation said. Additionally, incidents of disruption—including hate mail, obstruction, and picketing —also hit a record-high in 2018, with more than 100,000 incidents reported across the United States.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: No one could have predicted a Florida school guard gun training fraud. Jared & Ivanka privately appalled at their own greed, friends say. Surprise! House Dem foot dragging may mean we never see Trump’s taxes. The strange case of The Epoch Times.