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davidswanson.bsky.social
New Yorker, Scotsman, editor, writer, map and archive nerd Politics, culture, and sandwiches at https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwich
300 posts 1,142 followers 430 following
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We are live!!! hellgatenyc.com/primary-live...

NANCY PELOSI: We must find the next generation of Democratic leadership. Young, charismatic and exciting candidates who can energize the party. People that voters love because they're not 80 years old and sold out to big capital. CHUCK SCHUMER (behind sniper rifle): Found one PELOSI: Take the shot

NYTimes Ed Board 1935 on Mayor La Guardia: "[He is] fond of toying with haphazard proposals that may be benevolent in intention but are dangerous or impossible in practice. He seems always to want to have in hand some socialistic plaything or other. Just now it is a municipal power plant."

today's column for premium susbcribers: @davidswanson.bsky.social and I talk about reading about the Arctic in a heat wave, Mount Everest, Scottish history, and reading a lot of gay romance novels buttondown.com/theswordandt...

Wow: ICE Has Deported at Least 70 U.S. Citizens

so.... i have some big awesome news that i am so excited to share!!!!! i am going to write a book about sandwiches!!!!!!!!

brilliant

It’s like that old Mitch Hedberg joke: “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.”

x.com/realdonaldtr...

everyone self sensors at work about something or other. it's part of why it's 'work' and not 'hanging with your pals'

A nymphomaniac empress confined to a castle. Her husband shot by firing squad. And.... the sandwich she allegedly invented. Today: The Princess and the Pambazo. buttondown.com/theswordandt...

This is the kind of tease that gets me to subscribe

today, a tale of doomed royalty and their sandwich preferences, aka The Princess and the Pambazo: buttondown.com/theswordandt...

For this week's column, we explore the story of Princess Charlotte and the sandwich she inspired

50 years ago today ‼️ Talking Heads supporting The Ramones make their stage debut at CBGB, New York City, June 20, 1975 #punk #punks #punkrock #talkingheads #cbgb #newyorkcity #history #punkrockhistory #otd

“There is a vast chasm between the concept of freedom inscribed on paper and the reality of freedom in our lives.” Revisit Jelani Cobb‘s piece, from 2020, on Juneteenth and the meaning of freedom.

“That was my country,” one of Alexievich’s interlocutors tells her. “The country I live in is not. I feel like I’m living on foreign soil.” @swordsjew.bsky.social on Svetlana Alexievich, Trump’s birthday parade, and the stories we tell ourselves

How the New York Times Bet Against Transgender Rights and Won

An MIT study of 54 participants found ChatGPT users had lower brain activity, weaker memory, and less creativity than Google or unaided writers. ChatGPT users brain activity declined over time, relied on copy-paste, and couldn’t recall what they wrote. The brain is a muscle, use it or lose it.

today's column: "A country needs an idea to be great; thus the notion of equality, however little we’ve ever lived up to it, is worth preserving as an aspiration...In a vacuum of higher ideals, the most venal and cruel notions will prosper." buttondown.com/theswordandt...

The FOX war machine is back. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Remembering a final visit with Brian Wilson, the music legend who became a close friend — and sharing 17 of his favorite songs

“That was my country,” one of Alexievich’s interlocutors tells her. “The country I live in is not. I feel like I’m living on foreign soil.” @swordsjew.bsky.social on Svetlana Alexievich, Trump’s birthday parade, and the stories we tell ourselves

everyone should read svetlana alexievich shes a master

I wrote about the military parade and the No Kings protests, about national identity and democracy vs autocracy as a battlefield of ideas, and about the uncertain future and our secondhand time: buttondown.com/theswordandt...

Want to push back against the bigoted attacks targeting trans and gender-nonconforming people? Here are specific ways you can help—with your time, money, and everyday actions.

yes they are. they are christians and you have to deal with that

NYC: if you can get to Federal Plaza near the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway stops, come support Brad Lander, the latest Dem politician to be manhandled/detained by ICE for no legal reason. Zohran Mamdani is there in support of his fellow mayoral candidate. NYT's darling Cuomo nowhere in sight.

more than 8,000 journalists have been laid off since 2022. That's 9% of the industry.

"For the second time in an hour, a cop points his stick toward me. 'Get the fuck out of here.'" @stephenrodrick.bsky.social was on the ground at the protests in California, as Trump's shameful military-style birthday party went on in D.C. Read his dispatch ⤵️

An absolute master and legend

I object on aesthetic and maybe quasi-moral grounds to language like “devout” and “deeply religious” in this context. If his fanaticism adhered to a different faith, he’d get “fanatic,” “extremist,” “zealot” etc. Perverting the Cross to commit murder exempts you from “devout”

“You can’t arrest him simply because he’s a bloody immigrant! …You filthy goddamn fascist asshole, take your hands off my lobby boy!”

Punk rock kid buskers (‘The Whops’, tiktok) near the Edgware Rd. They run into Paul Simonon, play Death or Glory for him. He asks if they know The Guns of Brixton. They do -

I did! for more about the doomsday religion running the country check out Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America, in stores everywhere, a very informative $20 and i read the audiobook: bookshop.org/p/books/wild...

“Suspect is white male, brown hair, wearing black body armor over blue shirt and blue pants and may misrepresent himself as law enforcement.”

I’ve never forgotten this picture from 2016 and how it completely reshaped my understanding of how the media covers protests.

Flag https://www.artic.edu/artworks/136994/

The disparity btwn what’s actually happening in Los Angeles and the way it’s being mischaracterized is one of the biggest stress tests of modern media in recent memory. Botted socials, AI, old clips, declining literacy—it’s like seeing a broken emergency response system hit by a storm.

The second I heard the news about Sly Stone I wanted to read what Wesley Morris would have to write about him, which is always the correct impulse to have. [giftie] www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/a...

“​​Trump took power in a nation that, despite its dark mood, was doing well on many fronts. But he has moved quickly to fix that.” By @pkrugman.bsky.social: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

“A 2010 study that analyzed 40 years of protest coverage in five major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, found that the papers depicted protests — even peaceful ones — as nuisances rather than as necessary functions of democracy.”