Love in a time of...all this

Weekend reads for May 10, 2025

Hello from back home in New York. I am here to report that having your plane struck by lightning is totally fine. It happened on my flight back from London — flash, pop, fuselage shimmy. If this is going to happen to you, may it be on a British Airways flight, where the captain very promptly made an announcement about how everything was completely fine. He seemed to be fighting the urge to say “Keep calm and carry on.” The flight attendant informed me that lightning strikes are really no big deal. She said it’s the bird strikes you have to watch out for, luv. She keeps her eyes peeled. But for her it’s mostly a smell thing. She told me it smells like roast chicken. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m telling you this except to say that I am grateful for the gift of life!

And for you all on this Saturday morning. Welcome to the weekend. As we do for our supporting subscribers each weekend, we’ve gathered the most interesting, challenging, entertaining, and thought-provoking writing we’ve come across this week for you below. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:

• A love story that broke the categories

• How Iceland was built on herring

• Why cooking opens a window to the past

• Is artificial intelligence the latest in very human stupidity?

• The law that lets billionaires upend nations

• What is freedom, anyway?

• And more…

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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ICYMI in The Ink this week:

WATCH: Love vs. fascism, with Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Michael Cohen

And now…your Weekend Reads

Barry and Diane

I had so much early career success you might have thought I’d conquered what I saw as the biggest danger in my developing life. I’d conquered other phobias, but fear of exposure still had a tyrannical hold on me, so much so that it stunted any chance of my having a fulfilling personal life. Instead, I had discovered I could separate myself from anything painful or terrifying by just locking it away, putting it into a distant box, and having to deal with it hopefully never. Compartmentalizing these unwanted feelings became so successful that it has both ruled and riled my life ever since. I developed the ability to say the right thing in order to make a situation better, whether or not it was anchored to any moral belief. I had no core at all, other than to please those who needed pleasing. I’d learned to seduce people, especially those much older than I was, and I could accomplish it on demand in any setting. I could subordinate myself effortlessly. I could keep secrets. [New York Magazine]

In the spooklight