MORE POWER TO THEM: Power-starved Africa develops appetite for coal, dismisses environmental concerns in West.

The concerns about coal expressed by environmentalists and climate researchers in the West are voiced here mostly by white expatriates and foreign nongovernmental organizations. Coal in Africa is an abundant resource for a continent still hustling to catch up with the developed world. South Africa, the economic engine of the region, gets 93 percent of its electricity from coal, one of the highest percentages in the world.

John Owusu, a retired engineer originally from Ghana, worked for 50 years across all regions of Africa and was an early disciple of clean energy. He understands Africa’s appetite for a fossil fuel that is in decline in the U.S. and other advanced economies, as well as the reluctance to embrace alternative fuel sources.

“People think of this continent as jungle and sunshine, but we have a long rainy season in the tropics, more like a monsoon, and there’s no sun for days,” Mr. Owusu said. “That makes it hard to rely on something like solar. Wind turbines make more sense, but you still need batteries to store the power.”

Why do American gentry liberals have so much disdain for striving Africans?

ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: Google Chromebook is still spying on grade school students.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Special Operations Command Prepares to Test Airborne Directed Energy Weapon.

The directed energy weapon is “rapidly moving” from the conceptual to the practical, he said in late March. Webb recently visited MIT Lincoln Labs to view its advancements, and saw Naval Sea Systems Command Dahlgren’s latest efforts to network all of the various components within the aircraft.

He was impressed by the improvements that had been made.

“We’re no longer talking about bulky chemical lasers, but streamlined electrical lasers,” Webb said. “These pioneering scientists have honed the ability to combine smaller lasers into a finely-tuned, exquisite single laser. Beam control seems to no longer be an issue. Nor is the cooling technology needed … to keep the system operating.

“Believe me, this technology is quickly leaving the pages of science fiction,” he added.

A proof of concept for a high-energy laser on a gunship will help pave the path for AFSOC to pursue directed energy weapons on other aircraft, he said.

There’s almost nothing which can’t be made better by the addition of high-energy laser weapons.

KNOWN WOLF: Paris Gunman Was Questioned by Police in February.. “The attacker, identified by officials as Karim Cheurfi, a French national, had been convicted of shooting at a police officer in 2001, the police said. He was recently flagged to authorities as a possible threat but was released after questioning in February due to a lack of evidence, they said.”

HERE WE GO AGAIN? What’s Trump Cooking Up With the Palestinians? “He seems willing to start yet another ‘peace process’ when Abbas visits in May.”

DAN MCLAUGHLIN: Repeal Obamacare now. Here’s why it would work.

Lengthy piece, but worth your time.

MATT TAIBBI: It still isn’t Hillary’s fault.

Shattered is sourced almost entirely to figures inside the Clinton campaign who were and are deeply loyal to Clinton. Yet those sources tell of a campaign that spent nearly two years paralyzed by simple existential questions: Why are we running? What do we stand for?

If you’re wondering what might be the point of rehashing this now, the responsibility for opposing Donald Trump going forward still rests with the (mostly anonymous) voices described in this book.

What Allen and Parnes captured in Shattered was a far more revealing portrait of the Democratic Party intelligentsia than, say, the WikiLeaks dumps. And while the book is profoundly unflattering to Hillary Clinton, the problem it describes really has nothing to do with Secretary Clinton.

The real protagonist of this book is a Washington political establishment that has lost the ability to explain itself or its motives to people outside the Beltway.

First it was Russians, then it was misogynists specifically, then it was men generally, and now Hillary’s loss is the fault of the “Washington political establishment.”

Of which Clinton was, I suppose, never, ever a member.

DISCOVERY: An Important Legal Ruling Against the IRS May Have Huge Implications.

PLEASE DON’T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD: Elon Musk Outlines His Mission to Link Human Brains With Computers in 4 Years.

Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion, etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.

“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.

“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.

“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”

What actual advantage is there to a real-time mind-meld, and what about all the disadvantages, such as having even random thoughts transmitted immediately to another person or persons?

I get the feeling that if it were beneficial for humans to have a hive mind, we’d have come with one.

T.G.I.F.: Start it off right with Liz Sheld’s Morning Brief.

THOMAS LIFSON: UC Berkeley surrenders to the fascists.

There are plenty of law enforcement resources available to the University of California if it wished to preserve the tradition of open inquiry upon which the many public (i.e., taxpayer) subsidies and privileges available to UC are premised. When Governor Ronald Reagan faced a campus insurrection at Berkeley, he called in the National Guard and tear gassed the protesters in Sproul Plaza – the very place the anti-Milo rioters used to destroy property and threaten lives.

For its part, the city of Berkeley Police Department has been only marginally better. At least it made some arrests over last weekend’s violence when pro-Trump demonstrators were attacked. But it has permitted armed, masked thugs, openly promising to shut down voices of which they disapprove, to march through the streets pf Berkeley and engage in mayhem. They should be arrested at the city line when they do so.

Except today the police are in on the fun, and any arrests would probably only be symbolic.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Many Poor Venezuelans Are Too Hungry to Join Antigovernment Protests.

Many of the impoverished residents of the vast slums that ring Caracas and other major cities are angry about a collapsing economy and food shortages. But Venezuela’s political unrest remains mostly confined to middle-class enclaves, underscoring the struggle the opposition here faces in trying to unseat an increasingly authoritarian government.

“All I have is hunger—I don’t care if the people protest or not,” said laborer Alfonzo Molero in a slum in Venezuela’s second-largest city, Maracaibo. “With what strength will I protest if my stomach is empty since yesterday?”

Until the slums rise up, Mr. Maduro will likely hang on, analysts say.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

CONSPIRACY THEORY: Connecting the dots on soon-to-be-former Congressman Jason Chaffetz.

SHOT: North Korea claims ‘Super-mighty pre-emptive strike’ will reduce US to ashes.

CHASER: Satellite images suggest North Koreans were playing volleyball at their nuclear test site last weekend.

Was that “strike” or “spike?”

TOURISM: Pence Visits Mosque, Declares Indonesia’s Moderate Islam ‘an Inspiration to the World’

This has been changing, but much of Indonesia still enjoys a more laid-back “beach” Islam, which is syncretic with the aboriginal religions nearly to the point of polytheism.

INTIMIDATION: Berkeley Cancels Ann Coulter Speech Over Safety Fears.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS: Starbucks barista loses it over unicorn frappuccino mania.

On Wednesday, a man who said he is Starbucks barista, posted a video on Twitter where he begged the masses to stop ordering the drink. Braden Burson said the drink, which “tastes like a Sweet Tart,” is ruining the lives of Starbucks baristas everywhere.

“I need to rant just a little bit,” Burson said in the video before launching into a full-on tirade against the pink and blue swirled treat.

They’re on sale through April 23, so your local Starbucks should return to normal shortly.

FORMER CIA DIRECTOR JOHN BRENNAN: Mastermind of Kremlingate?

MORE POWER TO THEM: Fracking Sweeps Into China.

China has been trying to use fracking to shifts away from traditional sources of energy such as coal power. Shale gas production has risen by 50.4 percent compared to last year, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics.

China produced 3.8 billion cubic feet of shale gas in March. To put this in some perspective, the U.S. currently produces 1,476 billion cubic feet annually.

U.S. experts expect China will continue to push fracking, but don’t see the communist country becoming energy independent any time soon.

“It makes perfect sense for Beijing to push as hard as it can to rely on new domestic sources of energy wherever possible,” Harry J. Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “And increased shale gas output very much fits into such a strategy.”

China aims to boost natural gas’s share of the energy supply from 6 to 10 percent by 2020. In March, Beijing became China’s first city to have all natural gas-fired power plants.

The Earth might prove more energy-rich than we’d ever imagined.

AWKWARD: Judge denigrated by Trump as ‘Mexican’ will hear key deportation case.

CHANGE: President Trump Takes First Step to Give Veterans More Choice in Health Care.

FASTER, PLEASE: President Trump Should Run, Not Walk, Away From The Paris Climate Treaty.

REVEALED: Richard Spencer’s Racist Little Secret.

Following the donnybrook that happened in Berkeley, Calif., last week, every media outlet prepared for another showdown between his supposed legion of neofascists and students opposed to his nonsense. I even went to bear witness to the expected tumult.

After his appearance, headlines everywhere documented the thousands of protesters, the brief skirmishes and the First Amendment legal battle that paved the way for his speech. There is one thing they all failed to mention about the brouhaha that ensued:

No one really cared.

That’s right. The whole “celebrity founder of a nationwide ‘alt-right’ movement” narrative is a scam. Richard Spencer is simply an overhyped, racist, Kardashian-like curiosity. He is a media-driven drama queen starring in a reality show that no one cares to watch. He has very few fans and almost no devotees. Richard Spencer is a hoax.

Indeed.

Read the whole thing.

(Hat tip, proud Auburn alum Will Collier.)

QUESTION ASKED: Do You Want Reagan’s Economy or Obama’s?

How is this even a question?

SHOCKER: Castro Addicted to Power More Than Communism, Recalls Ambassador Who Fled.

If it’s not too presumptuous, I’d remind the ambassador that Communism is nothing but a pretext for seizing power — and everything else.