Vox Sentences: Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks

Ted Cruz and John Kasich will do anything (read: nothing) to stop Trump; Syria's truce is wobbly at best; a steady (reading) diet of Lemonade.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

This is not how a pact works

(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

• If current polling holds up, Donald Trump will win both Indiana and California — thus locking up an outright majority of delegates before the Republican National Convention.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• In an attempt to prevent this, his remaining rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, have announced a kind of pact: Kasich is pulling his campaign resources out of Indiana (thus, in theory, allowing Cruz to overtake Trump there), while Cruz will do the same in New Mexico and Oregon.

  [Washington Post / Sean Sullivan and David Weigel]

• Except … Kasich is still saying that people in Indiana should vote for him.

  [The Hill / Mark Hensch]

• And Cruz is making a big deal out of Kasich pulling out of Indiana … without even mentioning that he's doing the same in two other states.

  [Betsy Klein via Twitter]

• They have a week to sort it out. In the meantime, though, Trump's likely to sweep tomorrow's primaries in Northeastern states, which will give him momentum in Indiana.

  [Vox / Matthew Yglesias]

• Not to mention that — in the first endorsement of this cycle that might actually matter — he's going to be campaigning in Indiana with legendary Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight. So this campaign is essentially over.

  [USA Today / Donovan Slack]

This is also not how a pact works

(Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

• President Barack Obama announced that the US will be sending 250 more soldiers to fight on the ground in Syria, increasing the US force there by a factor of six.

  [Reuters / Roberta Rampton]

• Obama just promised last week that the US wasn't going to send troops in to topple Bashar al-Assad. And he's not. Here's what's up:

  [BBC ]

• The Syrian war is supposed to be under ceasefire while Assad's regime and rebel groups negotiate a peace agreement. But in practice, Syria and Russia have been stepping up their assault on the city of Aleppo.

  [NYT / Peter S. Goodman]

• Dozens have been killed in the bombardment; 26 civilians were killed this weekend alone.

  [AFP / Karam al-Masri]

• The UN has made it clear that it expects the US and Russia to step in to save the truce.

  [NYT / Nick Cumming-Bruce]

• Russia has agreed to give Syria 850 million euros to help it rebuild "infrastructure." On the US side, there are the additional troops.

  [Reuters / Jack Stubbs]

Is this how a marriage works?

(Beyoncé)

• Over the weekend, Beyoncé released her latest "visual album" (an album that also exists as a full-length music video), Lemonade. It is a very rich text and the internet has been going nuts over it; Vox's Libby Nelson has some places to start.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• In much of its visuals, Lemonade continues the aesthetic vein Beyoncé mined in the single "Formation" — unapologetic, distinctly black and Southern femininity and feminism.

  [The Fader / Naila Keleta-Mae and Anupa Mistry]

• Lyrically, the album is raw and rageful, inviting a pretty uniform interpretation: Beyoncé is reading the riot act to husband Jay Z over presumed infidelities.

  [LA Times / Mikael Wood]

• (You should expect to hear lots of references to "Becky with the good hair" over the next few weeks. It's a reference to the putative "side chick" in the album. Here is a very detailed timeline.)

  [Racked / Kenzie Bryant]

• But the album closes on a note of reconciliation — and, as Syreeta McFadden points out, a return to "Southern roots" that's deeply resonant for black Americans.

  [The Guardian / Syreeta McFadden]

• So did Beyoncé, a famously private figure, release an album that spills all the feelings the tabloids didn't pick up — offering her fans a direct link into her life?

  [Vox / Alex Abad-Santos]

• Or is she a shrewd businesswoman constructing her own persona to cash in on a commodified "feminism"?

  [The New Republic / Sarah Jaffe]

• And even if the latter is true, if she's supporting young black poets, ballerinas, and artists, does that at least count for something?

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

MISCELLANEOUS

Are you a reformed yakuza looking to make a fresh start? Then check out Yukako Fukushima's prosthetic pinky finger business. [The Guardian / Justin McCurry]

• Harris Wofford, one of the most fundamentally decent political figures of the 20th century, comes out of the closet at age 90 on the eve of his wedding.

  [NYT / Harris Wofford]

• When Michel Foucault debated Noam Chomsky on Dutch TV in 1971, he was paid in hashish, which he and his friends thereafter referred to as the "Chomsky hash."

  [James Miller]

• Dolphins appear to have a language they can use with each other to solve problems. They will control us one day.

  [New Scientist / Robin Wylie]

• On the failed fiscal policy of Queen Cersei.

  [1843 / Carolyne Larrington]

VERBATIM

"Robotic killers that detect feral cats, spray their fur with poison and rely on them to essentially lick themselves to death have been deployed in the Australian desert for the first time." [The Guardian / Michael Slezak]

• "Krzykowski mentioned that she had overheard security guards heckling prisoners. One officer had told an inmate, 'Go ahead and kill yourself—no one will miss you.' Again, Perez seemed unfazed. 'It’s just words,' she said. Then, as Krzykowski recalls it, Perez leaned forward and gave her some advice: 'You have to remember that we have to have a good working relationship with security.'"

  [New Yorker / Eyal Press]

• "When we call a food ethnic, we are signifying a difference but also a certain kind of inferiority."

  [Krishnendu Ray to Washington Post / Roberto Ferdman]

• "According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never."

  [Donald Hoffman to Quanta / Amanda Gefter]

• "'The name of what we’re going to be doing is 'Our Votes Matter,' said Tim Selaty, a Tea Party activist from Texas and the founder of Citizens for Trump, of the plans for Cleveland. 'It’s a little kick at Black Lives Matter and a little kick at the GOP.'"

  [Politico / Ben Schreckinger]

WATCH THIS

Yellowface is a bad look, Hollywood [YouTube / Joss Fong and Christophe Haubursin]

(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Columbia Pictures)

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