Vox Sentences: Wall Street vs. self-driving cars: the Google/Alphabet story

Why you should care that Google is becoming Alphabet; is sex work a human right?; and the baffling presidential campaign of Lawrence Lessig.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Brought to you by the letter G

Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

• Google (the company) is now called Alphabet. Google will be a subsidiary of Alphabet and maintain all the products you probably associate with Google, but some of the company's further-afield projects — like drones — are going to be spun off into new subsidiaries.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• The reorganization won't mean a lot to users. But it matters because of what it says about Google-now-Alphabet; about tech; and about the market.

  [TheNextWeb / Jackie Dove]

• For one thing, it's an illustration that Google's founders, like many tech executives, are serial entrepreneurs who aren't as interested in maintaining a project than in doing wacky new things.

  [Fast Company / Harry McCracken]

• But as Russell Brandom explains, Google's Wall Street shareholders disapproved of the company's farflung projects, as money going to self-driving cars is money that could've been paid back as dividends. This reorganization helps address those concerns by cleanly separating core Google from its "moonshot" projects.

  [The Verge / Russell Brandom]

• It used to be that big tech firms like AT&T and Xerox spent heavily on R&D, but there's been a big drop in companies investing in science research since the 1980s

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• So is Alphabet a throwback to the mid-20th century? Not really. This explainer from Vox's Timothy B. Lee explains how it fits into the 21st-century tech landscape.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

Is sex work a human right?

(Andreas Rentz/Getty Images News)

• Human-rights group Amnesty International passed a resolution today calling for all aspects of sex work — including selling sex, buying sex, and brothel ownership — to be decriminalized. Amnesty's resolution argues decriminalization is the best way to protect sex workers from exploitation and abuse.

  [Amnesty International]

• The resolution is the culmination of weeks of heated debate, and reflects a years-long struggle between feminists who believe sex work is inherently coercive, and feminists who think people have a right to choose a career in sex work without danger or shame.

  [The Nation / Melissa Gira Grant]

• In terms of policy, that debate is actually pretty narrow. Neither side wants to put sex workers themselves in prison. The debate is over whether buying sex, and pimping, should also be decriminalized.

  [Vantage / Pete Brook]

• (A further alternative would be legalizing and regulating sex work, but — as Molly Smith points out — that can often lead to sex workers getting in the same sort of legal trouble they'd face if sex work were illegal, simply for failing to fill out paperwork.)

  [The New Republic / Molly Smith]

• The international trend has been toward the "Nordic model," which theoretically decriminalizes selling sex but keeps the rest of the industry illegal. But that model has a lot of problems. For example, if you make it illegal to collect money from prostitutes, you make it hard for prostitutes to rent apartments.

  [Guardian / Michelle Goldberg]

• There's a much deeper disconnect over values. To pro-sex-work feminists, the fact that actual sex workers have been calling for more support for their profession is important, and they deserve a big voice in the debate.

  [Open Democracy / Alison Phipps]

• To anti-sex-work feminists, the presence of a few vocal sex workers doesn't obviate the majority of sex workers who, in their view, are being coerced on some level into prostitution, and who need to be protected.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• It's a cause and effect question. Are sex workers often abused because they work in an underground, unprotected industry? Or is sex work illegal because it's inherently abusive?

• Luckily, this can all be solved through technology, with an "Uber for escorts" being launched in Berlin. (No, seriously, it looks like a great idea.)

  [TechCrunch / Mike Butcher]

Lessig 2016: because Congress can pass a ginormous anti-establishment bill pretty quickly, right?

Lessig Equal Citizens Exploratory Committee

• Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law professor turned campaign-finance gadfly, is launching the most unusual presidential campaign of the 2016 cycle so far.

  [YouTube]

• Lessig is running for the Democratic nomination because he thinks none of the current candidates cares enough about rich people having too much political influence, which he distinguishes from Bernie Sanders' platform that rich people simply have too much money.

  [Bloomberg / Emily Greenhouse]

• Sanders also, of course, has started to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement in earnest. Which, let's be honest, makes the timing of Lessig's "no one is focused enough on money" look pretty bad.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Here is Lessig's plan. Step 1: Introduce a ginormous bill that would undo Citizens United, give citizens money to donate to campaigns, and radically expand voting rights. Step 2: Congress passes ginormous bill. (You can see where this plan might need work.) Step 3: Step down.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• Lessig's last attempt to transform American politics, through an anti-campaign-finance PAC, was an unmitigated disaster. This is a juicy postmortem from Politico, which makes a really strong case that Lawrence Lessig is not good at running campaigns.

  [Politico / Byron Tau and Kenneth P. Vogel]

• Lessig's campaign video compares him to Eugene McCarthy, whose focused antiwar campaign didn't win the Democratic nomination in 1968 but managed to get sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson not to run for reelection. But the 1968 primary was pretty ugly; check out the New Hampshire Union-Leader's revisiting of the contest in New Hampshire.

  [New Hampshire Union-Leader]

MISCELLANEOUS

Why are there always ice machines at hotels? Blame the Holiday Inn. [Slate / Heather Schwedel]

• Imagine there's no cars. It's easy if you have Photoshop.

  [Washington Post / Ana Swanson]

• Remember how two inmates escaped from an upstate New York prison earlier this summer? Turns out guards took it out on other prisoners with interrogation and beatings.

  [NYT / Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip]

• Not sure how to help the poor? Try asking them.

  [NYT / David Kirp]

• Who would pay five figures for a rare comic book? One answer: Someone trying to launder embezzled money.

  [The Verge / Russell Brandom]

• The Times of London would like to clarify that the Pope is, in fact, Catholic.

  [Guido Fawkes via Twitter]

VERBATIM

"Which digital versions of Lenny Kravitz's penis violate copyright law?" [Motherboard / Sarah Jeong]

• "Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro derides Thackeray for a 'really lame interpretation,' pointing out, 'The poem is about dressing up language in a certain way and you really have to be insensitive to the poem to force the reading [to be about marijuana use].'"

  [Gizmodo / Kaila Hale-Stern]

• "Dr. Trump, who is highly respected in his field, specializes in genitourinary cancers, like prostate cancer, and has dedicated much of his career to researching the ways Vitamin D can be used to treat and prevent the disease."

  [BuzzFeed / Andrew Kaczynski]

• "This was Gantry Kids, a cross-functional training gym where kids as young as three partake in CrossFit-type exercises."

  [New York Observer / Jordyn Taylor]

• "These internet breadcrumbs lead me nearer and nearer to a complete portrait of his humanity: messy and charismatic and talented and spiritual, full of postadolescent contradiction."

  [BuzzFeed / Stacia L. Brown]

WATCH THIS

YouTube / Estelle Caswell

• America’s biggest gun problem is the one we never talk about

  [YouTube / Estelle Caswell and Dylan Matthews]

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