so what happened was, i read nine john le carré books, then i saw the pictures of the preposterous drapery SCIF at mar a lago where the iran war was being conducted, and then i thought about how many spies there must be at that place
and then i wrote a short story
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
Australia's man did the flowerbeds. New Zealand had sent a chappie to labor in the gardens too. Their American accents were vaguely southern, and they tended to avoid officials from below the Mason-Dixon line. Aussie Jack was a lady-killer, though, and was sleeping his way through every Republican wife who still had a beating heart under her twinset and pearls, and skimming quite a bit of information on the side. He called himself a "martyr to his duty." He and New Zealand Craig were drowning their sorrows by working steadily through all of Florida's craft beers, one microbrewery at a time. Their relationship was significantly more harmonious than that of the clandestine representatives of Argentina and the Mossad, who had inadvertently dated for several weeks before mutually discovering one another's identities, and now existed (as bartender and assistant golf green superintendent respectively) in mutually icy disdain, lending further stress to cocktail hour. She'd heard Brazil's guy in an unwisely loud Portuguese phone call describing the fiasco as "Eichmann, on the rocks." buttondown.com
in which i imagine the life of a spy at mar a lago, in a short story
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
today at the newsletter, free: an adapted excerpt from my book Wild Faith, about evangelical Christian prophecies about war in the Middle East and the end of the world & how they influence US foreign policy:
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
every mystery of the sloppy joe revealed! i debunk its connection to ernest hemingway! we discuss the loosemeat sandwiches of iowa! the fashion movement around "sloppy joe" sweaters ca. 1940! the french concept of "nostalgia for the mud"! buttondown.com/theswordandt...
"The beef dry and granular as mortar in the temple of a forgotten god; the sauce at once totally opaque and yet watery; the bread reverting to its medieval function as a trencher to sop up this collusion of juices...."
on the sloppy joe:
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
I read Casey Means' book last year and wrote about her "salvation through orthorexia" ideology so you don't have to. This woman being Surgeon General will entail enormous amounts of harm buttondown.com/theswordandt...
"MAHA is, above all things, the apotheosis of a puritanical American tendency to blame the ill for their illness, the poor for their poverty."
@swordsjew.bsky.social on Casey Means and MAHA
Richard Hell's novel Godlike has been re-released by NYRB Classics. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory, the inevitable Rimbaud and (Tom) Verlaine comparisons (and other noms de plume), the New York School poets, and his fearlessness of influence.
proteanmag.com/2026/02/13/a...
mea culpa
"It’s not necessarily intuitive to draw a line between centuries of ruthless exploitation and a very pleasant breakfast sandwich, but the two are integrally connected, as bread and labor often are."
— @swordsjew.bsky.social on the roti bakar
!!!! coconut jam on toast alert !!!!
in which i discuss roti bakar / roti bakar kaya through the lens of dutch colonization in perak, malaysia
& now i want an ipoh white coffee & a roti bakar kaya with softboiled eggs on the side please
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
[Enter Puck.]
bummed out by the news being awful? subscribe to my newsletter and get one email a week about sandwich history that will make you go "cool facts, nicely written." bonus points if you sign up as a paid subscriber, helps me get that bread (literal & metaphorical): buttondown.com/theswordandt...
John Brown inspects a curling stone.
From @theathletic.com: How are curling stones made, and why does only one company have the rights to make them? We explored the uninhabited Scottish island that makes one of the most interesting Olympic sports possible. nyti.ms/4kKA5uf
I know a lot of people still like to draw a bright line between movies and television, but you simply cannot fully measure Duvall's greatness without taking in all eight hours of his work as Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove. Treat yourselves if you can.
i wrote about the reuben sandwich (an all time classic), the food feud behind it, and the totally washed and failson life of its namesake, the biblical patriarch reuben: buttondown.com/theswordandt...
It's Friday! Sandwich day!
Today I answer your burning question: who are the poor boys po'boy sandwiches are named after?
The answer: Streetcar workers from the great New Orleans strike of 1929!
Two brothers stepped up to feed them:
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
Here it is!!!! The Sandwich Fact!!!! Near guaranteed to make you go "huh I didn't know that" unless you did!
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
i like my pb&j with a dense helping of historical facts about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
TODAY: the myth
the icon
the legend
the peanut butter and jelly sandwich
on the making of a myth, and how it became ubiquitous
(alas, george washington carver did not invent peanut butter)
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
I wrote this yesterday about the hero city of Minneapolis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKOW...
I wrote about the patty melt, about not fitting into molds, and about the pain & joy of a life that doesn't fit a predetermined menu: buttondown.com/theswordandt...
Thanks for the new sandwich column @swordsjew.bsky.social I needed that. Though, now I'm hungry. buttondown.com/theswordandt...
“The Grateful Dead, more than most, is a band of eras. Each year has a distinct sound to it,” Nick Paumgarten wrote in 2012. More on the lore of the rock band.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
me, thinking to myself: boy i had kind of a breakdown and read 400 romance novels instead of writing about the news for most of the last year
me, writing about this phenomenon: I built myself an inner Elba, and exiled myself to an isle of love
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
for new years you should become a paid subscriber to my newsletter so i can write about romance and gender and sandwiches and as much politics as i can handle at erratic intervals and you'll love it
buttondown.com/theswordandt...
YES and we have an amazing entry today feat. @swordsjew.bsky.social, Jack Pendarvis, and Misha Angrist
Anchors aweigh!!
flaminghydra.com/issue-471/
