LITTLE ROCK — A federal judge in Arkansas has ruled that the state’s newspaper may keep publishing a fact, and the fact is that Google will pay Entergy Arkansas more than half a billion dollars to build a solar project to power a data center in West Memphis, which is the way a court describes the moment a document stops being, in the specific, a secret.

The documents, per the reporting, came through an open-records request, and they showed the number, and the number is $526 million, and the number is the price of the solar field that is, in the specific, going to feed the grid that is, in the specific, going to power the machines that are, in the specific, going to answer your searches.

The energy company asked the court to stop the newspaper, and the company’s argument, per the filing, was that the documents contained “trade secrets,” and that their disclosure would do “irreparable harm,” which is the phrase a company uses when the harm is that a reader is going to, in the specific, read the number, and the judge, per the ruling, said no.

"A federal judge denied a request by an energy company to temporarily block the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from publishing" — CNBC

The part of the story that belongs in the first paragraph is the word “trade secret,” because a trade secret, by the definition the company wants you to use, is a thing that is not, in the specific, supposed to be known, and a solar farm is, in the specific, a thing that is, in the specific, in the ground, and the ground is, in the specific, a place where people go, and the number that describes how much it costs to put the solar in the ground is, in the specific, the part of the story that a half-billion-dollar check is, in the specific, attached to.

The court did not, in the specific, rule on whether the documents were secret, or whether the company had a right to keep them secret. The court ruled on a narrower thing, which is that a newspaper cannot be, in the specific, stopped from printing a thing it already has, and the thing it already has is, in the specific, a number, and the number is, in the specific, five hundred and twenty-six million.

THE SOLAR DEAL, AT A GLANCE

  • Buyer of power: Google, West Memphis data center
  • Seller of solar: Entergy Arkansas
  • Price: $526 million
  • Project: the Cypress Solar field
  • Documents: released via open-records request
  • Entergy's ask: block the newspaper — "trade secrets"
  • The court: no

The practical effect of the ruling is that the number is now, in the specific, a number that is, in the specific, public, and a public number is, in the specific, a number that a legislator can, in the specific, ask about, and a legislator who asks about a half-billion-dollar check is, in the specific, a legislator who is, in the specific, going to get an answer, and the answer is, in the specific, the number.

At press time, Entergy, in the specific, had not, in the specific, said whether it would appeal, which is the way a company says it is, in the specific, still deciding, and the solar field is, in the specific, still in the ground, and the number is, in the specific, still five hundred and twenty-six million.