John Saward

John Saward

@rbuas.bsky.social

flaming hydra // john.m.saward@gmail.com // ig: johnsaward

1,947 Followers 335 Following 341 Posts Joined Jul 2023
1 day ago
Rotating view from the top of the Shedd Aquarium where Chicago meets Lake Michigan. // Image captured at: 2026-03-11 07:36:03 UTC (about 1 min. prior to this post) // Image sourced from: fox32chicago.com // Current Temp in Chicago: 41 F | 5 C // Precip: mist // Wind: E at 7 mph | 11 kph // Humidity: 96%

Current* conditions near Chicago, IL:

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1 week ago

Was one of those nu-tech symposiums a while back where the diseased little fuck-ups at Kalshi insisted their whole project was not just a casino, a fees pit and a steaming buffet for thirsty insiders, but a virtuous "financial instrument" to hedge against disaster. Everything is always only this.

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2 weeks ago
Preview
ENTER the MAGAZINE WORLD of Flaming Hydra In Print. Online. All year. Enjoy the best journalism, writing and art from our cooperative of more than 65 fiery talents Love FLAMING HYDRA?? With our new top tier MAGAZINE WORLD annual subscrip...

SUBSCRIBE TO MAGAZINE WORLD! A new Flaming Hydra tier with a print issue coming soon, plus broadsides throughout the year, the first of which you can read right now! flaminghydra.com/magazine-wor...

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3 weeks ago

My favorite double feature was never made:

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3 weeks ago

Duvall told a story that during Lonesome Dove he drove way out in West Texas because he heard the old quarterback Sammy Baugh was living there on a ranch. Baugh had a great white beard when he came outside. Baugh kept doing this thing with his hands when he talked, so Duvall stole it for Gus McCrae.

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3 weeks ago
View of Navy Pier in Chicago from William E. Dever Crib in Lake Michigan east of North Avenue. // Image captured at: 2026-02-15 21:20:01 UTC (about 17 min. prior to this post) // Image sourced from: glerl.noaa.gov/metdata/chi/ // Current Temp in Chicago: 55.45 F | 13.03 C // Precip: clear sky // Wind: NNW at 5.525 mph | 8.89 kph // Humidity: 55%

Current* conditions near Chicago, IL:

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3 weeks ago

It’s frying my brain how Correct the Suwinski comp is, maybe more correct than anything has ever been.

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1 month ago

Perfect. And thanks so much dude

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1 month ago

Big thanks to the great @tcraggs22.bsky.social for his help on this. Going to be doing one of these a month; I'm really proud of the series.

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1 month ago
Preview
Like a Shadow Among Other Men Twelve years without Philip Seymour Hoffman

Wrote about Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Small Bow www.thesmallbow.com/p/like-a-sha...

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1 month ago
Preview
And now we are two Celebrating Flaming Hydra’s second birthday

Flaming Hydra officially turned 2 last Friday. It's one of the truly special and exciting places on the internet. I feel proud all the time of what a great thing it is. flaminghydra.com/issue-492/

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1 month ago

The always-a-little-realer-than-I-remember-it Dean Martin getting sober plot. Walter Brennan just constantly hooting shit. The two Ricky Nelson songs are a blast too.

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1 month ago

Was in a bar Saturday night for the Bears game, and there really is an amazing dumb-crazy voodoo in a crowded place rising all at once from the dead during a comeback. All that begging! All these dear friends. Who's that guy? Raining sweat, babbling to himself? Who cares. You'd bail him out of jail.

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2 months ago
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Wyo Hill North,
1/8/2026, 5:19:32 PM

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2 months ago
Ford f150 parked in front of some Christmas lights
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2 months ago
Wet blue kei truck parked in the streetlight, house decorated with strung lights behind it
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3 months ago

We're going to make it

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3 months ago

There's a scene in Gay Talese's book about building the Verrazzano Bridge where a half-foot long steel bolt falls from way up and hits an iron worker in the cheek with such insane force the tip of the bolt punctures all the way into his throat. Few weeks later he was back working on the bridge again

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3 months ago

Hell yes

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3 months ago

Thanks so much dude, really appreciate that

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3 months ago
Preview
Home for the Holiday Upper West Side; night before Thanksgiving; here’s a cousin I haven’t seen in many years, and there is some ache in having let things wither like that, letting it go on so long, all those plotlines of...

Wrote about going home for this month's Hydra flaminghydra.com/home-for-the...

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3 months ago
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3 months ago
Off the Rez food truck featuring mural of indigenous person smoking from a ceremonial pipe and blowing giant cloud of smoke above greater Seattle area parked on the street on a cloudy night. Brewery to one side of it, apartment building to the other.
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3 months ago
Preview
Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis

This is one of the best and most exciting things I read all year. It's a profile of these two terminators, but there is so much brilliant, wonderful stuff in here too about human genius, obsession, confidence, & the nature of sports narratives. It's dynamite. bookshop.org/p/books/chan...

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3 months ago
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3 months ago

Yes, true.

@flaminghydra.com is $3/month, it is a coop 100% owned by 60+ writers / artists who make it

Recent unpaywalled pieces:

@samthielman.com on Platner's tattoos:
flaminghydra.com/boys-lives/

@josie.zone and @zachrabiroff.com on Marvel's secret ghostwriter:
flaminghydra.com/a-swingin-su...

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4 months ago

The fiction Colin's written for Hydra the last few months has really knocked me on my ass

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4 months ago

Flaming Hydra is a coop. All you can do with your share is sell it back to the coop (for $1), and nobody can have more than one.

You have to be ready for growth to take a long time. Journalism is a public trust that should be accountable to readers alone, and that means readers alone pay for it.

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4 months ago
Old white pickup truck parked on a wet street covered in orange leaves at night. Behind it is a house and trees and bushes
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4 months ago

This rocks

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