It happened here, railway diplomacy, who belongs?

Weekend Reads for July 12, 2025

Happy Saturday, Ink readers! As we do each weekend for our supporting subscribers, we’ve collected below some of the best writing we’ve come across as we’ve read and researched this week. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:

• It’s happened here — did you do what you thought you would?

• What do hairdos have to do with citizenship?

• Is the author really dead?

• What sort of art best tells the story of our times?

• Will the middle class rise up?

• Was Neanderthal society industrialized?

• And in music, Americana legends with words for the ages

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

What would did you do?

When we studied the Holocaust in school, kids of my generation were generally invited to consider the question: What Would You Do? Uniformed thugs in the employ of an out of control authoritarian government snatching your neighbors off the street and disappearing them: What Would You Do? The structures of your democratic system of government failing one by one, not the immovable stone tablets you imagined them to be but a string of dominoes, easily knocked over: What Would You Do? The news media and all the institutions of civil society rolling over and showing their bellies so fast it seems more like they were just waiting for an excuse: What Would You Do? Flagrant injustice, rubbed in your nose, day after day: What Would You Do? [Today in Tabs]