Vox Sentences: American pride, American mourning

A tragedy and its aftermath.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Fragility and resilience

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• 49 people were killed Sunday in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. (If you need a primer on the shooting, here's Vox's "what we know.")

  [Vox / Tara Golshan and Libby Nelson]

• The victims were largely LGBTQ and largely Latino. The Orlando Sentinel has profiled each of them.

  [Orlando Sentinel / Andrew Gibson and Charles Minshew]

• The suspected shooter, Omar Mateen, was a 29-year-old with a history of aggression, homophobia, and interest in Islamic extremism.

  [Washington Post / Adam Goldman, Joby Warrick, and Max Bearak]

• (Note: Many experts, and the director of the FBI, recommend that media not mention the name of perpetrators of mass shootings, as there's some evidence it can increase the likelihood of future attacks. We're telling you so you aren't confused in the future, but it's a good idea to be cognizant.)

  [Mother Jones / Max J. Rosenthal]

• The hate crime was especially resonant for many LGBTQ Americans because gay clubs have historically been a gathering space, a safe space, and a substitute home. Many people wrote beautifully about their experiences with gay-club-as-sanctuary; Richard Kim's, for the Nation, is the best.

  [The Nation / Richard Kim]

• As Alex Abad-Santos writes, fragility was part of LGBTQ life before this weekend and will be after. But so is resilience.

  [Vox / Alex Abad-Santos]

What does a "policy response" to Orlando look like?

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

• The Orlando shooting is exactly the kind of attack the Obama administration hates: a "lone wolf" shooting that appears to demand a foreign policy response but doesn't actually have a connection to anything foreign.

  [Vox / Matthew Yglesias]

• Congressional Democrats are more than happy to call for a response: "Dangerous people" shouldn't have guns. They're already pushing for a bill that would deny gun purchases to anyone on the "terrorism watch list."

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• There are two problems with this. One is that Omar Mateen was no longer on the watch list the government would presumably use. The other is that said watch list (like the no-fly list from which it's drawn) is a terribly sloppy list.

  [Washington Post / Philip Bump]

• For his part, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump started Monday by implying that President Obama knew about the attacks in advance...

  [The Atlantic / James Fallows]

• ...and ended it with a speech that blamed not only Muslim immigrants but "their children and their children's children" for wishing harm on America.

  [Slate / Jim Newell]

• Trump wrapped his attacks on Muslims in the rainbow flag — praising LGBTQ Americans to demean Muslim ones. It's straight out of the European right-wing playbook — and it might work.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

The professional network

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for LinkedIn

• Microsoft is buying LinkedIn for $26.2 billion — the largest acquisition in its history.

  [Reuters / Sarah McBride]

• If you're not a person whose industry uses LinkedIn, these are probably two companies you think of as vaguely annoying. (People had jokes, and Matt Zeitlin collected them.)

  [BuzzFeed News / Matt Zeitlin]

• But as Vox's Timothy Lee points out, Microsoft is currently trying to reinvent itself as a business services company — and LinkedIn plays into that.

  [Vox / Timothy Lee]

• In particular, the data that Microsoft has been building — things like contacts — fits well into LinkedIn's detailed professional network data.

  [ZDNet / Mary Jo Foley]

• The acquisition didn't reflect happy times at LinkedIn. The company's stock was stalling, among other problems.

  [Recode / Kurt Wagner]

• But it does raise the hopes that someone will buy Twitter, which could also use a deep-pocketed corporate rescuer.

  [Recode / Kurt Wagner]

MISCELLANEOUS

"Targeted individuals" view themselves as a community oppressed by a sprawling conspiracy. Psychiatrists view them as seriously mentally ill people enabling one another's psychotic delusions. [NYT / Mike McPhate]

• The thing about "going out" is that it's terrible and staying in to watch Netflix is much better. Millennials are finally realizing this.

  [Vice / Harry Cheadle]

• Sleep With Me is a popular podcast designed to be as boring and sleep-conducive as possible.

  [New Yorker / Nora Caplan-Bricker]

• A scientist tries to explain how showers work to his 3-year-old. The Mulliken electronegativity scale is part of it.

  [Science Creative Quarterly / W. Stephen McNeil]

• When Malia Obama graduated from high school on Friday, attendees say the president was trying really hard not to draw attention to himself — "He was just a total dad. No fanfare. You didn’t know they were there."

  [Washington Post / Krissah Thompson]

VERBATIM

"Some dickhead tried to say that my voice isn't me on record. Dude, suck my dick." [Adele via NY Mag / Devon Ivie]

• "This is a book full of vaporous, French-intellectual prose that makes Teilhard de Chardin sound like Ernest Hemingway by comparison; but that is not a criticism, because the author likes that sort of prose and has taken lessons in how to write it, and she thinks that plain, homely speech is part of a conspiracy to oppress the poor."

  [Matt Cartmill via Boing Boing / Maggie Koerth-Baker]

• "It’s still possible that we could end up like Michael, or already have, disappearing into ourselves, so divorced from other people we can’t even tell them apart. But the ending tells us that the world isn’t like that, even if some of us are."

  [Slate / Sam Adams]

• "In 1994, after the Northridge earthquake jostled Angelenos awake at 4:31AM, the observatory received many calls asking about 'the strange sky they had seen after the earthquake.' 'We finally realized what we were dealing with,' Krupp said. 'The quake had knocked out most of the power, and people ran outside and they saw the stars. The stars were in fact so unfamiliar; they called us wondering what happened.'"

  [LA Times / Rong-Gong Lin]

• "Will John Lasseter and his cronies finally reveal the terrible truth: that Doc Hudson and his big-eyed friends rose up against their human creators, destroyed them, took their places, and now idyllic Radiator Springs is built on a mountain of crushed human skulls? We need to know, Lasseter. We demand to know what’s behind those creepy opaque windows. IS IT CAR SEATS, JOHN? IS IT CAR SEATS COVERED IN BLOOD?"

  [AV Club / William Hughes]

WATCH THIS

The world has never eradicated a parasite. But Jimmy Carter is about to. [YouTube / Sarah Kliff and Estelle Caswell]

The Carter Center

We have a request

Vox's journalism is free because we believe that everyone deserves to understand the world that they live in. That kind of knowledge helps create better citizens, neighbors, friends, parents, consumers and stewards of this planet. In short, understanding benefits everyone. You can join in on this mission by making a financial gift to Vox today. Reader support helps keep our work free, for everyone. Will you join us?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$95/year

$120/year

$250/year

$350/year

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $120/year

Yes, I'll give $120/year

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via