Vox Sentences: Brexit through the gift shop

The best arguments for and against the UK leaving the EU; a feel-good sit-in on gun control.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

O Brexiteers!

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

• On Thursday, citizens of the United Kingdom will vote on whether to leave the European Union, an option known by the unfortunate moniker "Brexit."

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• The odds on the eve of the referendum lean ever so slightly in favor of a vote to stay in. But the margin's tight, and polls (in the UK and elsewhere) have been such an omnishambles lately that no one can say for sure.

  [Bloomberg]

• Most experts, including the International Monetary Fund, think Brexit would be an Extremely Bad Idea (for the UK, the EU, and the world economy).

  [The Economist]

• But no one's listening to the experts.

  [Washington Post / Daniel W. Drezner]

• There are solid arguments from both left and right, meanwhile, in favor of leaving — the management of the euro, in particular, has been not so hot.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• The issue most people in the UK actually care about, though, is immigration. They don't want so much of it. And they want to leave the EU in part as a way of restricting it.

  [Migration Policy Institute / Will Somerville]

• That's shaped the tone of the Brexit debate — the culture war-iness of which has been at times ridiculous and at times downright horrifying.

  [The Economist / Bagehot]

• The murder of MP Jo Cox last week, by a man who claimed he was doing it on behalf of "liberty for Britain," has caused politicians to moderate their tone in the final days of the campaign.

  [NYT / Steven Erlanger]

• But even if the "remain" side wins, the EU has some deeper problems to reckon with – one of which is the popularity, across Europe, of anti-immigrant politics.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

Democrats sit around the House

Elizabeth Warren

• House Democrats have spent the past several hours conducting a "sit-in" on the House floor to demand votes on the gun control proposals rejected by the Senate earlier this week.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• The sit-in was led by Rep. John Lewis, who, you might say, knows a thing or two about sit-ins. (He was arrested several times for participating in them as a civil rights activist.)

  [The Nation / John Nichols]

• Lewis and company might not have gotten as much attention as they did had Speaker Paul Ryan not committed an impressive own goal by calling a hasty recess and turning off the House cameras. House Democrats, of course, had cameras in their phones, and continued the sit-in on Periscope and Facebook Live — where it spread much more quickly.

  [CNN / Brian Stelter]

• To be clear: This is an impressive amount of energy being mustered for a bill (restricting gun purchases by "suspected terrorists") that is at best unresponsive to the problem of gun violence in America, and at worst extremely bad for Muslim Americans.

  [The Guardian / Spencer Ackerman]

• But this is a feel-good gesture for the fans; the trade-offs of the bill don't matter. As Vox's Libby Nelson explains, thanks to social media, that's a calculus politicians are making more and more in 2016.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• At press time, the sit-in was still going. Luckily, members have been fortified by local snacks from members' offices, a currency that's quite valuable in intra-congressional relations.

  [Politico / Helena Bottemiller Evich]

Musk on Musk

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

• Car company Tesla (co-founder and CEO: Elon Musk) offered Tuesday to buy out solar panel company SolarCity (co-founder and chairman of the board: Elon Musk) for $2.8 billion.

  [TechCrunch / Josh Constine]

• Musk's line on the acquisition is that it's a simple matter of business synergy: People interested in buying Teslas are interested in buying SolarCity walls to power them.

  [The Verge / Andrew J. Hawkins]

• But the move is highly unusual. Wall Street usually loves Musk but is not at all convinced it's a good deal.

  [Bloomberg / Luke Hawa and Tim Hlavacek]

• SolarCity, after all, is a very weak player in the solar industry (as Goldman Sachs pointed out in an analysis literally minutes before Musk announced the offer).

  [Nicole Sherrod via Twitter]

• It's also the latest in a series of several moves Musk has made to shore up his business empire using his personal fortune — which is generally regarded as a risky move (for the same reason Biggie told you to "never get high on your own supply").

  [WSJ / Susan Pulliam, Mike Ramsey and Brody Mullins]

• At the end of the day, though, Musk has retained enough power at the head of Tesla that he can do what he wants. If this causes problems for Tesla down the road, it's on him.

  [Stratechery / Ben Thompson ]

MISCELLANEOUS

In 1945, Kodak started noticing mysterious contaminations in its film. Soon one of the company's physicists discovered the culprit: the Trinity atomic test in New Mexico, 1,900 miles away. [Popular Mechanics / Matt Blitz]

• The case for exercising has nothing to do with losing weight and everything to do with living longer, relieving depression, and preventing all manner of diseases.

  [NYT / Aaron Carroll]

• Extracting sperm from dead people isn't just a thing. The first person conceived of a dead father was born in 1999. She's 17 now.

  [Mosaic / Jenny Morber]

• In the US, non-parents are happier than parents. In Sweden and other countries with strong safety nets for parents, the opposite is true.

  [NYT / KJ Dell'Antonia]

• In praise of Fortean Times, a bizarre British magazine devoted to lizard men, yetis, and "tiny, mischievous Mexican sprite-­like beings called chaneques."

  [NYT Mag / Molly Fitzpatrick]

VERBATIM

"The US could end all mass shootings today and its rates of gun violence would still be many times higher than other rich countries." [The Guardian / Lois Beckett , Rich Harris, Nadja Popovich, Jan Diehm, and Mona Chalabi]

• "This is the story of a place at the edge of the world, where a black bear ventured into a Russian hamlet and attacked a human. One bear became two, two became dozens, and before long no one would leave their home, and no one had any idea what to do."

  [Outside / Sarah Topol]

• "Foster proposes that humans spend less time thinking about or even observing animals and more time emulating them. To appreciate what it’s like to be an otter, try catching fish in your mouth. To appreciate what it’s like to be a fox, try sleeping under a porch by day and foraging through garbage bins at night."

  [NY Review of Books / Elizabeth Kolbert]

• "Congress has done something that’s practically unheard of. It handed the Environmental Protection Agency broad new powers."

  [Grist / Rebecca Leber]

• "[Tom Perez's] ability to promulgate a clearinghouse of policy proposals that have been on union and labor advocate wish lists since as far back as the Carter administration has led some of his allies in the labor movement to call him the most important US labor secretary since Frances Perkins."

  [American Prospect / Justin Miller]

WATCH THIS

Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug [YouTube / Johnny Harris and German Lopez]

Vox / Johnny Harris

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