Vox Sentences: Blackfish 1, SeaWorld 0

Venezuela shuts down the country; is Norway treating Anders Breivik inhumanely?; the end of SeaWorld's orca program.

TOP NEWS

Daaaaaam, Venezuela

Independent Picture Service/UIG via Getty Images

• Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro announced the Easter holiday will last five days this year instead of two — so that the country can save on electricity.

  [Bloomberg / Andrew Rosati]

• The country's already been dealing with serious blackouts. Some residents have been without electricity for days at a time.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• The proximate cause: Most of Venezuela's power grid runs on hydroelectric power, and when there's a serious drought, as there is now, that becomes a problem. The dam from which Venezuela generates 65 percent of its electric power is just a few meters of water away from being unable to generate any power at all.

  [Latin American Herald Tribune / Carlos Camacho]

• But Venezuela isn't just a victim of weather. The country has badly mismanaged its power grid for many years, as Vox's Brad Plumer explains.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• This makes the electric shortage a microcosm of the country's broader economic crisis. Venezuela is in trouble because of a combination of factors outside its control (the falling price of oil) and very much within its control (policy mismanagement and reliance on short-term fixes).

  [CNN Money / Patrick Gillespie]

• The combination is literally lethal. Even before the power shortage got this bad, a stunning 70 percent of surgical wards in Venezuela had been rendered inactive by a medicine and supply shortage.

  [Foreign Policy / Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez]

Anders Breivik's surprisingly strong case

Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

• Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a right-wing terrorist attack in Norway in 2011, is currently suing the Norwegian government to improve his prison conditions.

  [BBC]

• Breivik is not what one might call a sympathetic plaintiff. Testifying this week, he compared himself to Nelson Mandela and said that being offered airline-caliber food, including the same meal two days in a row, was "worse than waterboarding."

  [CNN / Tim Hume and Olav Mellingsater]

• The core of Breivik's suit is that it's inhumane for Norway to keep him in solitary confinement. And, in fairness, that's a practice that many international bodies — including the UN — have described as torture.

  [NYT / Erica Goode]

• But Breivik's living conditions — like those of every prisoner in Norway and many other European countries — are extremely posh compared to those of his counterparts in the US.

  [Washington Post / Dylan Matthews]

• And he's likely to return to society after his 21-year sentence (the longest the country offers).

  [The Marshall Project / Dana Goldstein]

• The better conditions and shorter sentences work hand in hand. They're actually the core of the European prison system: Since most people will leave prison eventually, shouldn't prison ensure they're in the best position to reintegrate?

  [The Marshall Project / Maurice Chammah]

Everybody out of the pool

Gerardo Mora/Getty Images

• SeaWorld announced Thursday that it will end its captive orca breeding program, to the celebration of animal-rights activists.

  [NBC News / Alistair Jameson]

• The company had already announced last year that it's going to phase out its live orca shows.

  [NPR / Alexandra Starr]

• It's unlikely this would have happened without the 2013 documentary Blackfish, which brought public attention to SeaWorld's treatment of orcas and spawned a massive (one might even say killer) social media campaign.

  [National Geographic / Tim Zimmermann]

• Blackfish — and the multiple legal battles swirling around SeaWorld's orca treatment over the last few years — was terrible for SeaWorld. This chart of the company's stock price is one of those things you have to see to believe.

  [Washington Post / Roberto A. Ferdman]

• The legal battles played a role in ending the program as well. In fact, Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland was part of the panel that in 2014 upheld an OSHA ruling banning trainers from swimming with orcas during live performances.

  [Washington Post / Karin Brulliard]

• The courts could only do so much, though. As Jane C. Hu pointed out for Pacific Standard last year, the law still hasn't figured out a construct to protect animal rights. Treating them as legal "persons" doesn't really work — and there isn't yet any great alternative.

  [Pacific Standard / Jane C. Hu]

MISCELLANEOUS

Shazam, but for plant leaves. [Wired / Margaret Rhodes]

• Black people bore the brunt of marijuana prohibition for decades. And now that legalization's spreading from state to state, they're not enjoying the new industry's profits either.

  [BuzzFeed / Amanda Chicago Lewis]

• "I actually used to be embarrassed about admitting I was a hand model, like I should be contributing more to society than nice nail beds. But I figure we’re all doing our part."

  [NYT / Courtney Rubin]

• Good news: The UK is implementing a sugar tax! Bad news: For some silly reason it exempts juice, the most covertly evil of beverages.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• In defense of crying in the office.

  [The Atlantic / Olga Khazan]

VERBATIM

"Facebook isn’t actually uncool. You just can’t see how the cool kids are using it." [Fusion / Kristen Brown]

• "From 1887 up until 1950, American weather forecasters were forbidden from attempting to predict tornadoes. Mentioning them was, in the words of one historian, 'career suicide.'"

  [Slate / Cara Giaimo]

• "Jason Schwartzman is not named Jonathan, but he is a Jonathan; you know this to be true."

  [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

• "This is what Americans fail to understand: My taxes in Finland were used to pay for top-notch services for me."

  [The Atlantic / Anu Partanen]

• "Upon Kearney’s return, she said she told a supervisor about the incident. The supervisor, she alleged, joked that they 'used to not call it sexual harassment until the guy whipped out his penis and slapped you across the face with it.'"

  [HuffPo / Kathryn Joyce]

WATCH THIS

Donald Trump’s message is violent to its core [YouTube / Vox]

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