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...

"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...

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/

Happy Hanukkah to our friends who celebrate. Rachel Posner, a rabbi’s wife in Kiel, Germany, took this photograph in 1931 -- a potent reminder that fascism must be fought in every generation, even if it's wrapped in an American flag and a red hat.

A digital atlas of ancient Rome’s highways and byways reveals a road network that was more extensive than thought, according to a study published last month.

Where the Original ‘America First’ Leader Went to Die @stephenrodrick.bsky.social visits Charles Lindbergh’s gravesite, recalling parallels with the man who picked up Lindbergh’s nativist scepter, Donald Trump. Dispatch: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

The sandwich newsletter is back!!! Prepare to learn more than you ever thought you would about pastrami! Origin myths! Disputes! An outstanding historical mystery! Yiddish ballads! Unlikely lyricism! The Armenian Church takes a stand! buttondown.com/theswordandt...

this week the sandwich newsletter is coming BACK hold on to your butts Prepare for an onslaught of pastrami facts by subscribing: buttondown.com/theswordandt...

evangelicals love jews like a hungry man loves a chicken wing

I asked grok who was the better role model for humanity, Jesus Christ or Elon Musk. GUESS WHAT.

[BBC Scotland] reaction to [4]-2 K. McLean 90+7

every british sandwich is just like "we put carbs between other carbs" it is impressive

Editors have a really hard job, and the good ones can make something unreadable readable, and the great ones can make something unreadable into something good. But they're basically invisible, until someone tries to write without one.

"If you had to pick a sandwich to throw at a fascist, what sandwich are you picking and why?" defector.com/big-words-ar...

I got to talk to @akilahhughes.com alongside amazing people like @profgabriele.com and Heather Weaver of the ACLU about Christian authoritarianism and the plot to force it on this country. Check it out: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

the fact that Sandwich Guy is facing this 'wich trial at all is evidence of subpar justice. he is a hero being put through the judicial grinder. i hope the jury wraps up a not guilty verdict without delay or loafing around

twelve hungry men

reposting this in honor of World Sandwich Day buttondown.com/theswordandt...

Celebrate World Sandwich Day by exploring the origin of this convenient meal 🥪 Legend says the Fourth Earl of Sandwich asked for meat between slices of bread so he could continue playing cards or working without greasy hands. 🧵⬇️ (1/2)

"The irony is that, even though I lived through two decades of religious dietary strictures of byzantine complexity, it never felt half as much like a story about sin as Casey Means’ book does." @swordsjew.bsky.social on orthorexia, keeping kosher, and Casey Means

in which @annaleen.bsky.social and I obsess about the Wicker Man (1973), with its nipple anointing, sinister man-woman, Christopher Lee, Bond girls, scary cakes & ACAB (a cop is burning) ending, for @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/issue-426/

Get ready for WICKER MAN WEEK at @flaminghydra.com

St. Clair McKelway’s 1949 New Yorker story about an elderly counterfeiter “illuminates the timeless oddities and wonders of the human psyche,” David Grann writes. #NewYorker100

I have friends everywhere. #NoKings

Head to a protest today. I can almost promise you will feel less hopeless. That's exactly what they don't want. There are more of us than there are of them.

thinking about peter freuchen danish explorer allegedly getting himself out of a frozen ice cave that would have been his tomb by using one of his own frozen turds as a chisel

“People talk about trying to change society,” a young Bob Dylan said, in 1964. “All I know is that so long as people stay so concerned about protecting their status and protecting what they have, ain’t nothing going to be done.”