Tessera

Sam Anderson

@shamblanderson.bsky.social

Staff Writer, NY Times Magazine writing: www.shamblanderson.com drawing: www.instagram.com/shamblanderson podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/animal/id1749201553

42 Posts763 Follower 335 Folgt

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 10mo ago

For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

a man wearing a thunder jersey with the number 3

ALT: a man wearing a thunder jersey with the number 3

media.tenor.com

Brian Phillips@brianphillips.lol · last yr.

I already posted this once but oh my god @shamblanderson.bsky.social’s piece on the Thunder makes me want to run through a fucking wall

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

a basketball player with oklahoma city 17 on his shirt

ALT: a basketball player with oklahoma city 17 on his shirt

media.tenor.com

Dan Devine@yourmandevine.bsky.social · last yr.

Sam Anderson returning to the Thunder beat, years after "Boom Town," is a good, good time. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/m...

Dan Devine @yourmandevine.bsky.social · last yr.

Sam Anderson returning to the Thunder beat, years after "Boom Town," is a good, good time. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/m...

The Mind-Blowing Second Coming of the Oklahoma City Thunder

nytimes.com

Brian Phillips @brianphillips.lol · last yr.

can we get @shamblanderson.bsky.social and me as the Timothée and Ben Stiller

Scott Tobias@scotttobias.bsky.social · last yr.

Prepare to be dazzled by “celebrity row” in OKC: Wayne Coyne, Thabo Sefolosha, the CEO of Love’s Travel Stop…

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

"Now the prisoner has an advantage over his keeper in this respect, that he is always thinking of escape and watching for opportunities, while the keeper does not constantly think of keeping him." — Charles Portis, True Grit

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

I think of this video constantly re: current events (esp the sudden shift 90 seconds in) — they should show it in civics classes youtu.be/c8-LcuqBwW8?...

concrete halloween skateboarding

YouTube video by therealbarenziah

youtu.be

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

Enjoying the notebooks of Sonny Rollins

Excerpt from the notebooks of Sonny Rollins:

It is crucial to resist resignation, indifference, the hardening of the heart, and the laziness of the spirit; otherwise one turns into a parasite who is entirely absorbed in the problem of his own metabolism and essentially nothing beyond that interests him.

This government doesn't give a damn about freedom for the people. It has nothing to do with freedom. It's about power, it's about money, it's about racism and elitism and greed. It's about pride and stupidity and ugly insidious forms of paranoia, projection, and delusion but it had nothing to do with a commitment to freedom for the people and even less to do with their well-being. To make matters worse it appears the majority of the citizens that make up this nation buy into this nationalistic bubble like so many freshly caught carp. Which all serves to remind me of the words of Thomas Jefferson, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

Yellow handwritten thank you note with brown old leatherman stamp: “THANK YOU LONGREADS YOU ARE THE BEST (smiley face) SAM” with a note “I AM NOW POSTING HANDWRITTEN THANK YOU NOTES ON SOCIAL MEDIA BECAUSE I HAVE MANNERS”

Longreads@longreads.com · last yr.

2. "What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero," @shamblanderson.bsky.social @nytimes.com "The more he walks, and the more he tells you about the Old Leatherman, the more you start to feel [your soul] unclenching." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/m...

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

Handwritten thank you card on yellow paper with 3 stamps of the Old Leatherman fading left to right: “AAAHHH TOMMY THANK YOU SO MUCH! I’m so glad you think that. I love the Old Leatherman so much it actually kind of hurts. Sam”

Tommy Tomlinson@tommytomlinson.bsky.social · last yr.

This @shamblanderson.bsky.social story on the Old Leatherman zoomed to the top of my Favorite Stories of 2025 list. It's about escaping in troubled times, how to treat those who are different ... and a lot more. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/m...

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

Handwritten thank you note on a bright yellow card (with a brown stamp of the Old Leatherman): “OMG thank you so much for this very kind social media post @drmilks I actually think grocery lists are a very interesting genre maybe I will try… Thank You! Sam”

Kirstin Milks@drmilks.bsky.social · last yr.

This is a fabulous piece, full of the mystery and heart of American lore, the promise of country and community and story itself, and a tour de force dive into belonging — and also I would read a grocery list if @shamblanderson.bsky.social wrote it

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · last yr.

I wrote about my favorite guy, the Old Leatherman: a mysterious 19th-century folk hero who walked a 365-mile loop, obsessively, through NY / CT. He wore a homemade leather suit and slept in caves. Newspapers published endless gossip & fan fiction about him. I walked his route & sat in his caves.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · last yr.

Following in the footsteps of the Old Leatherman, a sort of real-life Northeastern Sasquatch, gave one writer an excuse to step outside of his own life.

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

I like Orwell’s description of racism as a “vast system of mental cheating.” Lotta mental cheating going on out there these days. (Quoted in Anna Funder’s great book WIFEDOM: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life)

A passage from Anna Funder’s book WIFEDOM quoting Orwell calling racism a “vast system of mental cheating”

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

new life motto

Scoot Henderson quote: "The thing I'm most proud about is me not thinking. I feel like I was thinking I wasn't thinking, but I was thinking so much to where I was thinking. You can't hide the fact that you were thinking."

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

“Living with depression is like trying to keep your balance while you dance with a goat” — Andrew Solomon, THE NOONDAY DEMON: An Atlas of Depression

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024) appreciation thread "When I die"

when I die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries
and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that I probably tried
to love

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

Not to brag but I had a dream where i made up this joke — i actually woke up in the middle of the night & wrote it down on my phone

Screenshot of my immortal dream joke:

Q: Why was the cannon sad when it looked in the mirror?
A: Because it saw it had MOOBs

NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER @nancycomics.bsky.social · 2y ago

Nancy By Ernie Bushmiller December 6,1946

NANCY BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER
LABEL-
REDUCING CREAM

I WONDER IF THIS STUFF CAN REALLY
REDUCE ---

OOPS!

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

Eka Kurniawan, BEAUTY IS A WOUND

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

A.J. Liebling's book about Chicago (CHICAGO: The Second City, 1952) is VERY MEAN and entertaining.

A.J. Liebling on Chicago: "Chicago is neither dead nor dying; it is, as the sideshow men say, 'Alive, Alive — did you ever see a two-headed baby?'"

Sam Anderson @shamblanderson.bsky.social · 2y ago

In the caveman days of eons past (2010) I started a Twitter account where I posted the best sentence I read every day. (I was book critic for @nymag.com so was reading constantly.) Reading is still my favorite thing, so now I'm gonna try some version of that here. www.vulture.com/2010/02/ande...

Screenshot from 2010 NY Mag article about joining Twitter. Text: "I'm late to the Twitter party, but a few weeks ago I decided to start an experiment: tweet the best sentence I read every day. (NB: Someone else had already claimed my actual name, so I had to go with my alter ego: ShamBlanderson.) "Best," in this context, can mean almost anything: funny, beautiful, enlightening, stylistically amazing. My first tweet was a factoid from a New Yorker story about Whole Foods: "The key variable in deciding where to put the new stores is the number of college graduates within a 16-minute drive." (I love the specificity of sixteen minutes.)
A couple of times, I've had to resist the urge to just comb through my favorite punchy books (Emerson, Amis, William James) and compile a twenty-first century micro-Bartlett's. The object is to use Twitter as a daily note-taking system: to document, organically, the various text-streams I actually pay attention to - novels, magazines, blogs, whatever. When Salinger died I went back to read Nine Stories and tweeted this sentence from "A Perfect Day for Bananafish": "She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty." One day, doing some background reading for a review, I discovered a sentence from Adorno that seemed like a direct comment on Twitter itself (or the Kindle, or blogs, or Sarah Palin's memoir): "In a world where books have long lost all likeness to books, the real book can no longer be one."

NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER @nancycomics.bsky.social · 2y ago

DOOF TRAM