John Saward
@rbuas.bsky.social
@flaminghydra.com // john.m.saward@gmail.com // ig: johnsaward
best website
Flaming Hydra@flaminghydra.com · 2w agoTODAY: @jdconnor.bsky.social on the history, science, and technology of waiting in line. “Queuing theory is a real thing, with real math and real consequences for our lives. There are mathematical models for lines, and there are agent-based simulations.” flaminghydra.com/retractatus/
Watched Night Moves tonight. Great, sad. All the disgusting and pathetic routines waiting after your glory days are over, and this twisted kinship you have with them, because without them you'd have nothing at all. You've got too much gut and too little hair for an ego; instead you have the job.
John Saward@rbuas.bsky.social · 2y agoWrote about Gene Hackman for this month’s Flaming Hydra flaminghydra.com/gene-hackman...
The school across the street used to do little kid summer camp outside but now they can't, because the sky's all fucked-up from doing Business; you used to be able to do lots of stuff but now you can't, they said your food was going to cost this much forever and you bought it anyway but now you cant
Challenge accepted ('really good' tbd) flaminghydra.com/issue-594/
Bein’ green / Big city
Really good writer Maria Bustillos accepts a reader challenge; photos by Tod Seelie bring a vanished New York City back to life
flaminghydra.com
Amanda Mull@amandamull.bsky.social · last mo.I’d love to read, say, 1200 words from a really good writer on why exactly the reflecting pool thing has turned into the durable embarrassment across media that a lot of other, equally public scandals or screwups could have been in the previous 18 months
This is great
Ian@brocktoon.bsky.social · 2mo agoBecause I also like a record of Engagement, me at Flaming Hydra: on the joys of watching people discover how weird we are in the USA and the necessary mirror it places up to us when they do. Also, weird is a good thing in this instance. flaminghydra.com/welcome-to-t...
Wrote about the little thrill of getting the job done flaminghydra.com/men-at-work/
Men at Work
The first weekend after we moved into our apartment I rented a U-Haul to pick up some furniture way out in the suburbs. This was about four years ago now. We’d been eating all our meals sitting on the...
flaminghydra.com
Flaming Hydra is one of the truly great, special things on the internet. Here's an entry I loved from a couple weeks ago flaminghydra.com/issue-570/
Served cold
A thriller from Nathan Munn
flaminghydra.com
I've seen Marc Andreessen with a beard; with no beard; chubby with a lordly pride; chubby and ashamed; slimmed down suddenly via medicine and drowning in his old clothes; at "innovation conferences" straining for gravitas, and no matter what he simply cannot stop having a head that looks like that.
Brown University cut a deal with the Trump administration in July, adopting a slate of anti-DEI policies—and agreeing to send student data to the government—in exchange for funding. I talked to students, faculty, and alumni who argue it was a capitulation and expressed fear. At @flaminghydra.com
Against Tyranny?
In its first months back in power in 2025, the Trump White House launched an unprecedented attack on U.S. universities. To eliminate what the Department of Education called “nebulous goals such as div...
flaminghydra.com
The app itself is junk (search bar often just disappears from the interface; movies crash halfway through) but there's something called "Movie Vault" on Roku and the Crime section on there is just loaded with free/no-ads 60s/70s classics, grimy noir stuff, long-ass cars and disgraced detectives.
Wrote about Harry Dean Stanton for The Small Bow www.thesmallbow.com/p/it-was-rig...
It Was Right There on His Face
Harry Dean Stanton didn't need to act like a character.
thesmallbow.com
Man this is great
Flaming Hydra@flaminghydra.com · 4mo agoTODAY: @joemacleod666.bsky.social remembers his temp taxman job. “The regular schedule of breaks helped stave off the mind-numbing aspect of the repetitive work of opening, reading, separating, stapling/unstapling and sorting, over and over, for hours.” flaminghydra.com/r/7b50a3b6?m...
