Having nice things, a musical diaspora, peace in our time

Weekend reads for June 28, 2025

Welcome to the weekend, Ink readers, and to your Weekend Reads! As we do every Saturday for our supporting subscribers, we’ve collected the most intriguing and challenging writing we’ve come across during our research this week, so take a break with us and do some deeper thinking. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition:

• What is peace, anyway?

• How the diaspora brought African music home

• Is doing what you love the best advice after all?

• Can data be an inspiration in the fight against authoritarianism?

• Do political parties have members or customers?

• What does international cooperation look like without the United States?

• And in music, two giants of jazz guitar

You won’t want to miss any of it. Thank you so much to our supporting subscribers for making this newsletter possible. If you haven’t yet joined our community, why not become part of this and help us build the future of independent media today?

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In The Ink this week:

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And now, your Weekend Reads

Peace in an age of empire

Today, we encounter references to peace all the time. Many of us even greet one another with “Shalom”! The word is repeated so often in Jewish and Christian scriptures, for instance, that peace might strike us as a pithy positive—or at least, as a basic value in need of no explanation. Who doesn’t want peace? What could be more natural or more universal? What’s even to analyze or explain? [Harvard Divinity Bulletin]