Vox Sentences: Bill Cosby will finally stand trial

Bill Cosby faces charges, but don't expect him to face justice; the TSA gets rid of its security chief, but who will get rid of the TSA?

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

TSA to security chief: Go to the back of the line

Scott Olson/Getty Images

• The TSA has "reassigned" its head of security, as security lines at airports (and public anxiety about those lines) continue to grow in advance of the peak 2016 travel season.

  [The Hill / Melanie Zanona]

• Like most bureaucratic problems, the TSA's line issues go deeper than the dude at the top. Officials are making no promises that there will be any long-term fixes soon.

  [AP / Alicia Caldwell]

• But the agency is already staffing up at some of the most constricted airports, like O'Hare in Chicago, where lines are reportedly down to 15 minutes.

  [Chicago Tribune / Mary Wisniewski]

• And in Atlanta, a new "expedited" process is being tested that could eliminate some of the biggest holdups (like a line halting entirely while agents reexamine a bag).

  [CNN / Thom Patterson]

• For some members of Congress, the answer is making it easier for people to sign up for TSA PreCheck — a product designed to exempt affluent frequent fliers from the inconveniences of regular screening.

  [The Hill / Melanie Zanona]

• If the idea of funneling more people into the more cursory PreCheck screening process strikes you as counterproductive, consider the possibility that the purpose of the TSA isn't actually to catch guns and bombs (it usually doesn't) but simply to make you feel safe.

  [Bruce Schneier]

• And if that seems like a waste of money to you, you're right! It is. Abolish the TSA.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

Don't expect too much from Bill Cosby's trial

Matt Rourke-Pool/Getty Images

• A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that there's enough evidence to bring Bill Cosby to trial on sexual assault charges over the alleged rape of Temple University trainer Andrea Constand in 2004.

  [NYT / Graham Bowley]

• Constand settled a civil suit against Cosby in 2006; the settlement included a confidentiality agreement, which was then thrown out by prosecutors in 2015.

  [BuzzFeed News / Nicolas Medina Mora]

• At Tuesday's hearing, Cosby's lawyers argued that Constand's account is unreliable and that the sex was consensual. This plays into all sorts of victim-blaming narratives about women really being at fault for rape; it is also, often, the best available strategy for a legal team whose job is to defend its client in court.

  [The Daily Beast / Kenneth Lipp]

• It would be a bad idea to expect this trial to deliver satisfying justice to anyone. Only one of Cosby's 60 alleged victims is going to trial. Most of the rest have no way to seek redress in criminal court in 2016.

  [NYMag / Noreen Malone and Amanda Demme]

• And the broader conversation around how Bill Cosby could have been allowed to do what he's alleged to have done for so long, and whether and how we should reevaluate how we see his work in light of this, is much too complicated for a single verdict to resolve.

  [Washington Post / Alyssa Rosenberg]

Everybody in the canoe!

Bethany Clarke/Getty Images

• Twitter announced a series of changes to the platform today, which will make it easier for users to add things (like photos, videos, and usernames) without counting against the 140-character limit.

  [Twitter Blog / Todd Sherman]

• Twitter's unclear explanation of the rules caused some users (including Dara) to panic unnecessarily. Luckily, Vox's Tim Lee explained them clearly.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• While most changes to social media platforms provoke whining from users, these actually look pretty good. One of the most annoying, non-intuitive things about Twitter — the fact that if you start a tweet with a username, your followers might not see it — is getting changed.

  [Kotaku / Patrick Klepek]

• In general, David Pierce notes, the changes look like a reflection of how Twitter's devoted users actually use the service: to share other things, and get involved in ginormous snowballing conversations.

  [Wired / David Pierce]

• That last part isn't an unalloyed good, though. Twitter will now allow you to tag up to 50 users in a tweet at once, turning what's been known as a "Twitter canoe" (a phenomenon in which you're still tagged into a conversation that has moved far past your interest) into more of a Twitter catamaran (Twittermaran?).

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• In a world where harassment is Twitter's biggest problem (and one not addressed by the new changes), and where harassment is often coordinated or encouraged by swarms of like-minded trolls, that is probably not a good thing.

  [NYMag / Simon Owens]

MISCELLANEOUS

If DC wants to fix the Metro, there are worse places to look than Denver, whose massive rail expansion plan has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. [Politico / Colin Woodard]

• Lindsay Schrupp found some actual, real-life feminazis — that is, feminists who are also Nazis. They're quite odd!

  [Vice / Lindsay Schrupp]

• Old and busted: Marxist leftism. New hotness: Polanyian leftism.

  [Dissent / Patrick Iber and Mike Konczal]

• Inside the surprisingly serious and competitive world of Bachelor(ette) brackets.

  [Fusion / Kelsey McKinney]

• A 9/11 truther is attempting to raise enough money to buy a jet and a skyscraper and fly the former into the latter to prove that the official story of the attacks is false. It's very gross!

  [Washington Post / Lindsay Bever]

VERBATIM

"This is a very big predator, and now we’ve introduced it into Florida. This is not a good thing." [Kenneth Krysko to NYT / Nicholas Bakalar]

• "If that scene conveys the basic tenets of what you’re hoping to communicate to your daughter, by all means, show it to her, but don’t just play a few minutes from Glee at her before leaving the room."

  [Slate / Mallory Ortberg]

• "For as long as any of us can remember, Canadians have enjoyed defining themselves, at least in part, in opposition to the American identity. And so as the US becomes the land of fear, we become the land of hope."

  [The Walrus / Jonathan Kay]

• "Overnight, a city of two million people, a major international tech business hub and the Capital of Texas, has become virtually impossible to navigate without a privately owned car. If you’re from out of town, you’re in trouble."

  [The Drive / Neal Pollack]

• "An astounding 17 percent reduction in the size of the California prison population had no effect on aggregate rates of violent or property crime."

  [Jody Sundt, Emily Salisbury, and Mark Harmon via Washington Post / Tom Jackman]

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