Vox Sentences: Mike Bloomberg refuses to be duped into running for president

A very deadly drone (etc.) attack in Somalia; remembering the Reagans; Mike Bloomberg makes a good decision.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

What's bad for al-Shabaab...

Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP/Getty Images

• The US killed 150 people today in a series of bombs and drone strikes on an al-Shabaab camp in Somalia.

  [BBC ]

• According to the US military, they'd been surveilling the camp for weeks and had intel that al-Shabaab was planning an "imminent" attack on US forces.

  [Reuters / Phil Stewart]

• The US has been using drone strikes in Somalia for some time — Foreign Policy reported on the US's drone program there last summer, and it had already been going on for months.

  [Foreign Policy / Ty McCormick]

• We're actually about to have more information about the death tolls of US drone strikes in a couple of weeks. The government plans to release those tallies for the first time since 2009.

  [WSJ / Byron Tau]

• But for the moment, the al-Shabaab death count (which also included bombs from manned planes) swamps previous deaths from drones in Somalia.

  [Bureau of Investigative Journalism]

• If the US strike hurts al-Shabaab, though, that might be good news for ISIS — which has been fighting the group for recruits in Somalia.

  [Foreign Affairs / Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens]

Buried with a "Just Say No" pin

ABC News/Getty

• Former first lady Nancy Reagan died Sunday at the age of 94.

  [NYT / Lou Cannon]

• Reagan was an influential figure in her husband's candidacy. But her death is also a reminder that the Reagans' era of conservatism has passed.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• Reagan's reputation took a hit when it was revealed last year that she turned down her old friend Rock Hudson's desperate request to get transferred to another hospital for AIDS treatment.

  [BuzzFeed News / Chris Geidner]

• If Reagan's time in the White House is remembered for anything, it's the "Just Say No" campaign, whose anti-drug ads look eye-rollingly '80s now.

  [Rolling Stone / Tessa Stuart]

• Anti-drug campaigns like "Just Say No" played a big role in creating a school-to-prison pipeline for black and Latino kids.

  [ThinkProgress / Aviva Shen]

• And, by the way, "Just Say No" doesn't actually keep kids off drugs.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Interestingly, there's no formal protocol for when a first lady dies. But Reagan will be buried beside her husband, along with, among other things, a "Just Say No" pin.

  [NBC News / Jon Schuppe and Polly DeFrank]

No Bloomberg news is good Bloomberg News

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for L'Oreal Paris

• Michael Bloomberg, in an op-ed published by his eponymous website, announced he will not run for president as a third-party candidate in 2016.

  [Bloomberg / Michael Bloomberg]

• In this, he is showing more wisdom than his advisers, who appear to have stuffed his head full of lies that he could win.

  [NYMag / Gabriel Sherman]

• Seriously. Look at this proto-campaign ad leaked to the New York Times, and then look at the electoral map Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen put together. It is laughably unrealistic.

  [NYT / Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns]

• The problem for Bloomberg, simply put, is that his version of centrism isn't the centrism of American voters.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• In fact, voters' centrism looks a lot like Donald Trump — which is why, political scientist David Broockman argues, attempts to stop party polarization have helped Trump succeed.

  [Washington Post / David Broockman]

• This is at least good news for reporters at Bloomberg News, who have been (some reports indicate) in a weird state of quasi-censorship for several months.

  [Huffington Post / Michael Calderone]

MISCELLANEOUS

Want to GPS-track your kid? There's a gadget for that. [The Observer / Jordyn Taylor]

• The science of why stepping on a Lego hurts so much.

  [Time / Melissa Locker]

• Social media is changing the way people experience chronic pain, often for the better.

  [Slate / Amanda Hess]

• A great, simple interactive telling you where you fall on the income distribution for people your age, gender, race, etc.

  [WSJ / Andrew Van Dam]

• Reconstruction didn't last long enough, and wasn't conducted with enough vigor, to prevent Jim Crow. But for a brief fleeting moment, it destroyed the Ku Klux Klan of York County, South Carolina.

  [Slate / Matthew Pearl]

VERBATIM

"There’s nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren — there is nothing and nobody that’s going to dissuade me from voting for Trump." [Lola Butler to NYT / Michael Barbaro, Ashley Parker, and Jonathan Martin]

• "Then on June 12, 1998, eight months and 17 days later, the National Guard stormed our elementary school and removed Nickelodeon from the premises."

  [Clickhole]

• "Abby Wambach — I’m trying to get her to come onboard because I think she will be an interesting brain study, decades from now, as the player who scored 75 goals with her head and probably put her head into places, like Michelle Akers, where they probably didn’t belong. How many times did she hit her head on the ground after being run over by somebody?"

  [Brandi Chastain to NYT / John Branch]

• "'At this point we have to start over and say, This is Year One,' says Inzlicht, referring not just to the sum total of ego depletion research, but to the entire field of social psychology."

  [Slate / Daniel Engber]

• "Sexual harassment in science generally starts like this: A woman (she is a student, a technician, a professor) gets an email and notices that the subject line is a bit off: 'I need to tell you,' or 'my feelings.' The opening lines refer to the altered physical and mental state of the author: 'It’s late and I can’t sleep' is a favorite, though 'Maybe it’s the three glasses of cognac' is popular as well."

  [NYT / A. Hope Jahren]

WATCH THIS

Bosses steal billions from workers. Here's how one woman fought back. [YouTube / Martyna Starosta]

Vox / Martyna Starosta

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