On belonging, the power of images, the value of data

Weekend Reads for August 16, 2025

Welcome to the weekend, readers! The Ink is celebrating its fifth birthday, and we thank you for supporting us through this first half-decade as we’ve explored the future of independent media together. Your readership means everything to us.

And if you haven’t joined our community yet, it’s a great time to do it: we’ve got a special deal that we hope will encourage you to read along with us for the next five years (more on that just down the page).

As we do each weekend for our supporting subscribers, we’ve collected below some of the most challenging, interesting writing we’ve come across in our reading and research this week. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:

• What promise does becoming American hold today?

• Is simple kindness is a challenge to genocidal politics?

• What does Drake have in common with Proust?

• Does photography still have the power to change the world?

• How valuable is your data?

• What happened to the future?

• And music, from the lady with the million-dollar ears

You won’t want to miss any of it. And because The Ink is celebrating our fifth anniversary, and to entice you to celebrate along with us by making it official with us, through this weekend, we’re offering a choose-your-own adventure deal, with three different options. Pick your favorite: A free month, 50 percent off for one year, or 20 percent off forever.

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In The Ink this week

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And now, your Weekend Reads

On belonging

For me this part in particular was enormously, irresistibly moving. It perfectly expressed the principle, the claim, the myth—as you please—that America is an idea. That it does not matter where you are from. That, in fact, America will in this moment explicitly and proudly acknowledge the sheer variety of places you are all from. That built in to the heart of the United States is the republican ideal not just that anyone can become an American, but that this possibility is what makes the country what it is. [Kieran Healy]