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Hey Lunch Club!
You may notice the daily digest looks a little different today. I am playing around with the design to find one that captures the feel of the lunch club. Let me know what you think!
This New York Times Magazine essay profiles Israeli Jewish dissidents grappling with complicity in their government's actions in Gaza—human rights lawyers calling for sanctions against their own country, refuseniks going to military prison, activists physically shielding Palestinians from settlers, and comedians whose bookings dried up for refusing to joke about starving children. The piece argues that true resistance requires doing scary things: withdrawing economic cooperation, risking being branded a traitor, using your body to protect the vulnerable. Written as a meditation on what Americans owe in response to their own government's abhorrent policies, it's a sobering examination of the difference between saying "not in my name" and actually bearing the costs of meaningful dissent.
This Orion Magazine essay explores how the Blackbyrds' 1975 funk track "Rock Creek Park" became an unlikely anthem for the real Washington DC—not the marble monuments tourists see, but the majority-Black city where people actually live. Born at Howard University during the fight for home rule, the song celebrates the 1,800-acre park that bisects the capital, a place denied to Black residents until the 1960s that became a site of joy, resistance, and "doing it after dark." The piece traces how hip-hop artists from N.W.A. to De La Soul sampled the groove, carrying DC's landscape and political lineage into new territories, while weaving in the park's ecology—salamanders and wood thrushes, sycamores and skunk cabbage. As a DC resident, this one speaks to me: it captures how the city's geography and culture get erased when people use "Washington" as shorthand for federal dysfunction, ignoring the 700,000 disenfranchised residents still fighting for representation.
This CBC investigation obtained the sealed probation records of Basil Borutski, who murdered three women—two ex-partners he was on probation for abusing and a third victim—in 2015. Two days after the killings made headlines as one of Canada's worst cases of intimate partner violence, Borutski's probation officer received a performance review score of "target met: 95%-100%," the highest possible rating. The records reveal a cascade of missed opportunities: Borutski was never charged for violating probation despite skipping mandated programs for domestic violence offenders, his alcohol-fueled violence was never addressed, and he was approved to move near his victims despite warnings from police that he was "playing games and getting away with it."
This Maclean's essay by a therapist and mother chronicles her seven-year devotion to gentle parenting, where endless empathy scripts and validating feelings left her four-year-old throwing locks at her and ignoring every request. Gentle parenting—the viral millennial philosophy promising emotionally secure kids through zero timeouts and constant negotiation—became an impossible standard that turned her into a pushover. The breaking point came when her mother-in-law said, "You're trying too hard. Try less." A third of gentle parents report burnout, there's no scientific evidence it works, yet exhausted mothers keep performing the script. A generational reckoning about what happens when a philosophy designed to break toxic cycles creates kids who've never heard "no" in a meaningful way.
That’s it for this today.
Really hope you enjoyed the selection of stories today. I am always interested in hearing from you. If you have thoughts on how I can make this email even better, do not hesitate to reach out.
Brett
P.S.
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