Vox Sentences: The ridiculous New York City Ebola freakout

1. Ebola in Mali (and New York)

Mayor Bill de Blasio at a press conference about the Ebola outbreak. (Kena Betancur/Getty Image)

• The first Ebola patient in Mali died. She was a two year old girl.

  [Time / Naina Bajekal]

• 43 people were exposed to her, and are being monitored.

  [BBC]

• Dr. Craig Spencer — a New York doctor who had been working on the Ebola outbreak in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders — has tested positive for the disease upon his return home.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• The Mali situation is almost certainly more dangerous — Ebola is much more lethal in countries with poorly developed health systems.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• New York and New Jersey are increasing airport screenings in response (which probably won't do anything).

  [NYT / Marc Santora]

• Spencer went bowling after coming back to the US — and critics attacking him for it are being ridiculous.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• He also used the subway — the horror! He almost certainly didn't transmit the disease that way either.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• Trials of an Ebola vaccine are set to start in December.

  [NYT / Andrew Pollack]

• GiveWell is weighing how much good donations to Ebola relief can do, and should publish their take in a week or two. Here's how they're thinking about it.

  [GiveWell / Holden Karnofsky]

• President Obama met and hugged Nina Pham, the Texas nurse cured of Ebola — not important in and of itself, but a powerful symbol for people panicking about the illness.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

2. Shooting in Marysville

A student embraces a family member at Shoultes Christian Assembly after being evacuated from Marysville-Pilchuck High School in the aftermath of a shooting on the high school's campus on October 24, 2014 in Marysville, Washington. (David Ryder/Getty Images)

• At least two students are dead in a shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Washington, north of Seattle.

• Here's what we know: a 14-year-old freshman killed one female student as well as himself, injured three who are in critical condition with head injuries as of this writing, and injured another student less severely in the school cafeteria.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub and German Lopez]

• This is the 87th school shooting since the Newtown massacre of December 14, 2012, according to gun control advocacy group Everytown.

  [Everytown for Gun Safety]

• This map shows all of those shootings up to June 10th. There have been 13 since then.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Here's a good rundown of what research has been done on mass killing. The short version: we have very little sense of what shooters' motivations, outside of individual cases.

  [Journalist's Resource]

• "If we assume that most students exhibiting bizarre behavior are about to commit mass murder, we will be wrong nearly all the time. Almost all cases will be false alarms."

  [Salon / Richard McNally]

• Dave Cullen notes that the initial narratives to come out of past shootings have often been wildly incorrect, and that we should reserve judgment.

  [The Daily Beast / Dave Cullen]

• Cullen has done yeoman's work debunking those myths around Columbine. For example: the idea that it was revenge against bullies could not be more wrong.

  [Slate / Dave Cullen]

• The shooting was a tragedy and nothing should minimize that — but high profile shootings aren't the core of America's gun violence problem. Suicide is.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

3. Rand Paul v. the neocons

"Come at me, bro." (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)

• Rand Paul's foreign policy address Thursday night was a legitimately important break from the interventionism of the Bush administration, and much of the GOP establishment. Here it is, in full.

  [Rand Paul]

• The Democratic National Committee's response is oddly hawkish: "Paul’s been clear about his goal: he wants to see America retreat from our responsibilities around the world."

  [DNC]

• Grover Norquist reacts: "I think I just heard Ronald Reagan speaking."

  [Buzzfeed / McKay Coppins]

• Bill Kristol: "No, that was George McGovern"

  [Bill Kristol]

• Conor Friedersdorf argues the speech wasn't radically isolationist, but simply a less hawkish version of the foreign policy status quo.

  [The Atlantic / Conor Friedersdorf]

• "He's reframed arguments with neoconservatives as arguments with Obama, banking on the idea that he can get everyday Republicans to abandon hawkishness altogether if they see Obama as a hawk."

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Dan Drezner: "The problem is that it’s still radically incomplete. Paul doesn’t really outline what criteria would justify the use of force in a Paul administration."

  [Washington Post / Dan Drezner]

• If you're afraid of Paul's isolationism, don't be — isolationism hasn't been a significant part of American politics since World War I, including during the interwar period.

  [National Journal / Peter Beinart]

4. Misc.

• When under house arrest in 2011, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange got an unexpected visitor: Eric Schmidt. Here's Assange's account of the conversation.

  [Newsweek / Julian Assange]

• Napoleon brought copyright to Italy and inadvertently made the country's opera scene much, much better.

  [Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]

• Austria is memorializing deserters from the German Army in World War II.

  [Crooked Timber / Henry Farrell]

• Frank Serpico fought police corruption in the late '60s and early '70s; here's what he'd do to reform the police today.

  [Politico Magazine / Frank Serpico]

• Solar power is contagious — if your neighbor gets panels, it's likelier that you will too.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Our transplant laws are deeply unfair to prospective donors.

  [New Republic / Sigrid Fry-Revere and David Donadio]

• The American people overwhelmingly disapprove of Monica Lewinsky and adore Bill Clinton. That's ridiculously hypocritical.

  [Vox / Jenée Desmond-harris]

• Bikeshare workers in DC are trying to unionize.

  [Washington Post / Lydia DePillis]

5. Verbatim

• "Because the world where the doctor can’t welcome me literally with open arms, where a general opts to bow — this world is not normal."

  [Buzzfeed / Jina Moore]

• "I’m up here every goddamned night. I’ve gained 20 pounds drinking Champagne since summer."

  [Jim Ryan on his firm's awesome rooftop in DC via WSJ / Elizabeth Williamson]

• "Students from the wealthiest families outscored those from the poorest [on the SAT] by just shy of 400 points."

  [WSJ / Josh Zumbrun]

• "Critics … like to satirize Obama's cool by comparing him to Spock. But Spock, though often played for laughs, was a damn fine officer."

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• "Poor teeth, I knew, beget not just shame but more poorness: people with bad teeth have a harder time getting jobs and other opportunities."

  [Aeon / Sarah Smarsh]

• "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

  [Stephen Jay Gould via Nautilius / Darrin McMahon]

• "Mr. Eustace cut himself loose from the balloon with the aid of a small explosive device and plummeted toward the earth at a speeds that peaked at 822 miles per hour, setting off a small sonic boom heard by observers on the ground."

  [NYT / John Markoff]

• "This book’s ideas on stock distribution seem potentially okay but probably not worth nationalizing all industries over."

  [Slate Star Codex / Scott Alexander]

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