Vox Sentences: Happy fourth!

Happy Fourth!

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• In recognition of the holiday, we're taking the day off tomorrow. I'm on vacation until Tuesday the 14th, but the excellent Dara Lind and Tez Clark will be filling in until then.

Video of the day

Vox / Christophe Haubursin, Johnny Harris, Joss Fong, Joe Posner, Javier Zarracina

• Be sure to check out my colleague Matt Yglesias's excellent video explainer of how the euro doomed Greece.

  [YouTube]

So what's up with Greece

Supporters of the Greek Communist party, which is urging voters to cast invalid ballots rather than support or oppose the referendum. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

• The International Monetary Fund, one of Greece's main lenders, has conceded that the country needs debt relief, a key demand of the Greek government.

  [NYT / Liz Alderman and Jack Ewing]

• But the report also savaged the left-wing Syriza government, saying it halted progress on the debt and endangered economic growth.

  [FT / Shawn Donnan and Claire Jones]

• Greece's capital controls, introduced at the start of the week, are starting to take a toll and reduce consumer spending, which is dangerous in a country with depression-level unemployment.

  [FT / Ferdinando Giugliano]

• The country votes on the lenders' old bailout proposal Sunday. But voters are confused, not least because "the proposal that Greeks are voting on is no longer on the table, having been built around the framework of a bailout package that expired at midnight on Tuesday."

  [NYT / Jim Hardley]

• Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has promised to resign if the expired bailout plan passes; he insists that voting it down will restart negotiations, not force a Greek exit from the euro.

  [The Guardian / Jennifer Rankin and Helena Smith]

• My preferred resolution: Europe becomes a super-state, Germany and France and other rich countries pay off Greece's debt, everyone lives happily ever after.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• Not up on the Greece story? Try "9 questions about the Greek crisis you were too embarrassed to ask."

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• Or "11 facts about the Greek crisis you need to know."

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Or "12 charts and maps that explain the Greek crisis."

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

Misc.

• Slaves and American Indians opposed the rebels in the American Revolution. I kind of think they had a point.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• Our bail system forces the poor to await trial in prison while the rich walk free. Now public interest lawyers are pushing to have it declared unconstitutional.

  [Slate / Leon Neyfakh]

• Scott Walker has a record of being tough on crime. In a Republican party that's warming to criminal justice reform, will that fly?

  [BuzzFeed / Evan McMorris-Santoro and Ilan Ben-Meir]

• Philosophers often treat race as a ancillary problem. They need to start taking it seriously.

  [NYT / George Yancy and John D. Caputo]

• Telepathy research — or more precisely, technologies that let people communicate brain-to-brain — is in its infancy. Could it ever get good enough to be useful?

  [Washington Post / Caitlin Dewey]

Verbatim

• "For now, my toddler is proud of her huge turds. Yet one day she, like all girls, will conform, and shut up about her marvellous self."

  [The Guardian / Sophie Heawood ]

• "While many politicians cite misleading statistics, Trump does away with numbers all together, and will say simply, 'I have statistics!' Consider it Googled. 'We’re like the stupid people,' Trump said, in the context of, I think, immigration and national debt."

  [New Republic / Elspeth Reeve]

• "If you ask the children what the guinea pig is thinking, a common answer would be, 'That he loves me.'"

  [Marguerite O'Haire to NYT / Jan Hoffman]

• "My biggest fear was always feeling sad. But feeling sad is healthy, normal, human. It took a Pixar movie to teach me this."

  [Business Insider / Caroline Moss]

• "Maybe take psychedelics and shoot guns with a Cancer. Watch some Italian movies while drinking whiskey with ur signif other. If ur single all this would make a great 1st date."

  [Paper Magazine / Victor Vazquez]

• "With memories of World War II, the glue that initially held the project together, now faded, the [European Union] is bound together by fiendishly complicated rules, informal codes of behavior and a passion among its bureaucrats for technical minutiae that baffles ordinary citizens."

  [NYT / Andrew Higgins]

Programming note

In an earlier life, I briefly wrote an advice column called "Dear Dylan." I had fun writing it, and people seemed to enjoy reading it, but it always suffered from the fact that I didn't have enough good questions to answer.

Luckily, I now write a newsletter that I can use to ask all you fine people for questions! So in the interest of getting back into the advice column game, I'm taking questions at deardylanquestions@gmail.com. Send 'em in!

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