No kings, rage against the machines, care and dread

Weekend Reads for June 14, 2025

Happy Saturday, Ink readers! As we do each weekend for our supporting subscribers, we’ve collected below some of the most interesting, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging essays, interviews, and reflections we’ve read this week — writing that tells a deeper story. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:

• This Father’s Day, how do we balance parental love and existential worries?

• Do we still need the Great American Novel?

• How did private equity swallow everything?

• Why Barbara Kruger’s 1980s murals tell the story of today’s Los Angeles protests

• Are Waymo vandals just taking big tech at its word?

• Is the mass movement against Donald Trump already here?

• And in music, we say goodbye to Sly Stone and Brian Wilson

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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No Kings

Going out to make it clear to everyone that this country needs No Kings? There are so many reasons to reject authoritarianism, but one to keep in mind is that it’s Father’s Day this weekend, and ICE abductions mean family separations. And that has no place in a Free America, as this new video Anat Shenker-Osorio shares reminds us.

So find an event near you (there are more than 2,000 demonstrations planned across the country), bring some friends, and make your voice heard. Need some music to get ready? Check out our always-evolving playlist.

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And now, your Weekend Reads

A parent’s love and dread in these times

• Our scooter helmet is too tight and the clip ALMOST pinched the little silky flubber under our chin. It was scary when that happened, but we are okay. We need to wear our helmet every day to protect our head. If we need to take a break and take deep breaths we can do that. But we have to wear our helmet for safety. Even if it makes us sad.

• Members of the US National Guard are shooting rubber bullets at journalists. [The Grudge Report]