Vox Sentences: Screw it, let's just geek out about Star Wars

Justin Trudeau is basically Canada's Obama; a National Drone Registry; and ... okay, we know you're just reading this for the Star Wars section.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Trudeaumania

(Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

• Let's talk about Justin Trudeau, the next prime minister of Canada.

• Trudeau's father was Pierre Trudeau, who served as prime minister for 16 years (1968 to 1979, and then from 1980 to 1984). Canada loved Trudeau. Partly, this was because of his tough crackdown on Quebecois separatists in the early 1970s.

  [New York Times / Michael T. Kaufman]

• But partly, it's because he was a charming and good-looking man who occasionally pirouetted in public.

  [YouTube / Theo McLaughlin]

• When Pierre died in 2000, Justin delivered a killer eulogy (co-written by the man who is his chief political adviser today).

  [YouTube / Soheil Koushan]

• That raised his national political profile. But he was still a young playboy. (If you didn't read this 2002 profile when we included it yesterday, you really should.)

  [Maclean's / Jonathan Gatehouse via the Canadian Encyclopedia]

• Seriously: Trudeau once beat a sitting senator in a charity boxing match. That's widely considered part of the reason he won the Liberal Party's leadership in 2013.

  [Maclean's / John Geddes]

• But the boxing match also played into the perception that — especially compared with sitting PM Stephen Harper (and Tom Mulcair, head of the left-wing NDP party) — Trudeau is more celebrity than politician. Think of the critiques of Barack Obama, circa 2007.

  [National Post / Chris Selley]

• Only during the current campaign has Trudeau really started to develop gravitas — and as this campaign trail Atlantic profile shows, it may not come naturally.

  [The Atlantic / Stuart Reid]

• But it's widely agreed that Trudeau ran an extremely strong campaign, and successfully positioned himself as a serious alternative to Harper.

  [Toronto Star / Bob Hepburn]

• As a result, Trudeau's poised to take Canada leftward on a lot of fronts. Climate change is one. Marijuana legalization, as Vox's German Lopez explains, is another.

  [Voz / German Lopez]

What to know if you're one of the 700,000 people buying a drone for Christmas

(Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

• The federal government is planning to require all private drone owners to register their devices. It's hoping to develop the registry by December.

  [New York Times / Nick Wingfield]

• That's a very short timeline for a federal regulation. The reason for the rush: An estimated 700,000 drones will be bought as Christmas presents this year. So a registry has to be set up before drone ownership is so widespread that registering existing drones is unviable.

  [Los Angeles Times / Jim Puzzanghera]

• (If you are planning to buy one of these 700,000 drones for a loved one, this is the drone you should buy.)

  [The Verge / Ben Popper]

• While the government rolls out the registry, it's still in the process of developing broader regulations for private drones: how high they can fly, where they can't go, etc.

  [NBC News / Keith Wagstaff]

• The FAA was supposed to come up with these rules by September 30. It didn't. It now says they'll be out in spring 2016.

  [NBC News / Keith Wagstaff]

• In the meantime, the FAA is granting more individual exemptions to commercial drone operators who want to fly before the regs are finalized.

  [Forbes / John Goglia]

• Los Angeles, for its part, isn't waiting. It's already turned the temporary guideline regulations into city law — and made it a misdemeanor to violate them.

  [Los Angeles Times / Joseph Serna]

Star Wars: The Nerd Awakens

(Lucasfilm/Bad Robot)

• The final trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out last night. Polygon identifies the plot, characters, and places in the trailer in more detail than you probably want to know.

  [Polygon / Dave Tach]

• If that is STILL not enough detail for you, here's The Verge's shot-by-shot analysis.

  [The Verge / Rich McCormick and Ross Miller]

• One of the biggest questions many viewers had following the trailer: How has everyone already forgotten about the Jedi? Ben Kuchera has one explanation: Most people in the Star Wars universe never knew about them to begin with.

  [Ben Kuchera via Twitter]

• Dan Drezner has another explanation: In a must-read post for Star Wars nerds, he argues that the Rebel Alliance was (like the invasion of Iraq) a "catastrophic success" that didn't produce a functional government.

  [Washington Post / Daniel Drezner]

• If Drezner's right, it would (partly) vindicate the conservative writer Jonathan Last. In 2002 (before Episode III came out), Last wrote a defense of the Galactic Empire for the Weekly Standard.

  [Weekly Standard / Jonathan Last]

• Standard editor Bill Kristol is still carrying the flame of conservative Imperial revisionism, and successfully trolled thousands of geeks after the trailer came out by calling the Empire "neocon/reformicon." (He meant it as praise.)

  [The Daily Beast / Asawin Suebsaeng]

• Whatever your feelings about the Empire, it is obvious that it could have been prevented had the Galactic Senate had an effective minority party.

  [Mischiefs of Faction / Seth Masket]

• Oh yeah, and a couple of stupid racists started a stupid fight by threatening a stupid boycott of the movie because it has nonwhite people in it. It was stupid.

  [Vox / Genevieve Koski]

MISCELLANEOUS

Some couples separated by the Korean War are getting the chance to reunite. This article might make you cry. [New York Times / Choe Sang-hun]

• Donald Trump says he doesn't need anyone else's money. So why does he have a Super PAC?

  [Washington Post / Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger, and Jenna Johnson]

• Only 55 percent of students at Ruleville Central High School in the Mississippi Delta graduate on time. And even the ones who do have trouble finding work once they're out.

  [Washington Post / Chico Harlan]

• At this point, Jeb Bush looks doomed. But his Super PAC head has a surprisingly plausible explanation for how he can stay alive.

  [Bloomberg / Sasha Issenberg]

• Even as tech is booming, tech IPOs are at historic lows. What's going on?

  [WSJ / Rolfe Winkler, Douglas MacMillan, Telis Demos, and Monica Langley]

VERBATIM

"Legal and health experts said they could not think of another modern example of a court all but ordering offenders to give blood in lieu of payment, or face jail time." [NYT / Campbell Robertson]

• "Hansen had chosen Fairfield as the site of America’s first-ever Kickstarter-funded sex sting."

  [New Republic / Spencer Woodman]

• "The impression I get is that it’s almost unethical to be lecturing."

  [Eric Mazur to Science / Aleszu Bajak]

• "You really have to weigh how much pain is worth four more weeks."

  [Christy O'Donnell to Washington Post / Niraj Chokshi]

• "I don't think I'm as revolutionary as Galileo, but I don't think I'm not as revolutionary as Galileo."

  [Jaden Smith to GQ / Zach Baron]

WATCH THIS

Believe it or not, flying is safer than ever [YouTube / Joss Fong]

(Vox/Joss Fong)

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