WEEKEND READS for September 27, 2025: Submerged fears and possible futures
Hurricane Helene's mysterious aftermath, the end of literacy, imagining tomorrow
Happy Saturday, Ink readers!
As we do each weekend for our supporting subscribers, we’ve collected some of the most intriguing writing we’ve come across this week — writing that explores the depths of the American subconscious, the boundaries of what we know about ourselves, and what we hope (and fear) for the future. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition:
As Helene’s waters receded in Eastern Kentucky, goblins emerged — from flooded mines, or a shattered subconscious?
It may feel like everyone is always recording — but should we be doing even more of it?
The writer Octavia Butler foresaw our times with eerie clarity — what does it mean that she couldn’t finish her final novel?
With all knowledge at our fingertips, are we forgetting how to read — and even how to think?
A lone journalist warned us decades ago that tech rebels were arguing themselves into authoritarianism — why didn’t we listen?
And, as always, music
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In The Ink this week
And now, your Weekend Reads
Monsters from the depths
Were these hallucinations brought on by the trauma of a catastrophic event? A result of a change in geomagnetic activity? Were people spinning tall tales meant to entertain and distract us from our grief? Were goblins a way to talk safely about fears of dispossession? Or were there actually goblins washing out of caves and mines, as confused as we were about what was happening? [Oxford American]