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Flaming Hydra
@flaminghydra.com
47K followers 200 following 1.7K posts
A collaborative of 60 writers and artists publishing a newsletter for you each weekday. Culture, opinions, criticism, news, comics, mayhem.

$3/month

https://flaminghydra.com
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mariabustillos.com
Hit that subscribe button because WOW. Truly. An instant classic from @josie.zone, I will be reading it forever

To say nothing of what is coming next week to @flaminghydra.com

flaminghydra.com/subscribe
December 24, 2025 at 4:38 PM
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mariabustillos.com
I love @davidjroth.bsky.social's writing for a lot of reasons but one of the main ones is, he loves the world. There's nothing rarefied about his intellect, his humor, his humanity.

Just makes me want to keep on living basically.

Here he is on Hallmark movies

flaminghydra.com/issue-468/#h...
I know I have been watching these movies the wrong way, or more to the point watching them too much. Before second-screen entertainment was a genre unto itself, Hallmark movies filled that niche; at their best they are made with care and craft, and the good ones really are sweet and funny and creative around the edges despite the thick syrup of formula poured over all of it, but they are also intended to roll over into each other, to compound into an agreeable vibe, to be enjoyable even if you missed a third of the action to check on whatever you’re baking. They are made quickly and cheaply, and apparently in unusually pleasant circumstances, but they are not films that cry out for detailed note-taking. They are not films that cry out at all, really. They murmur and coo and twinkle.
December 24, 2025 at 4:55 PM
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davidjroth.bsky.social
I'm a part of this collective as well, so my biases are what they are, but the one bit I'd add is that at $36 a year it is one of the really good deals out there in Things To Read Online. You can check out some free ones and subscribe at flaminghydra.com
December 24, 2025 at 9:51 PM
flaminghydra.com
TODAY: a new comic about modernity itself from Trevor Alixopulos. flaminghydra.com/r/c6ce1511?m...
Mug shot
Trevor Alixopulos vs. modern life
flaminghydra.com
December 24, 2025 at 9:41 PM
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annaleen.bsky.social
Need a last-minute gift? How about a subscription to @flaminghydra.com, a daily newsletter created by a collective of writers and artists? Here's my latest article for them, on the movies authoritarians love -- and what we can learn from them. flaminghydra.com/issue-465/#m...
Monster flicks
Annalee Newitz on (real) bad guy movies, and a new Reader Poll
flaminghydra.com
December 24, 2025 at 8:57 PM
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josie.zone
My @flaminghydra.com essay on THE BELIEVER (2001) and Jewish skinheads:
‘The Believer’ and Me
“None of us is innocent,” I wrote in my diary at age 19 and a half. I had just left Israel’s Holocaust memorial/museum, Yad Vashem. “I want to cry, but that is pornography. Rich Jews. Rich fucking Jew...
flaminghydra.com
December 24, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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josie.zone
I just realized that @flaminghydra.com has removed the paywall for not one, not two, but THREE of my pieces for them

I'm gonna post them below as an enticement to subscribe

flaminghydra.com

🧵
December 24, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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josie.zone
My @flaminghydra.com essay on Harvard, Pink Floyd, and the immature allure of fascism:
Mother, Should I Build a Wall?
By my sophomore year at Harvard, I was studying the social sciences, editing for the school newspaper, participating in a Jewish fellowship, keeping up a busy social schedule, and feeling so dedicated...
flaminghydra.com
December 24, 2025 at 12:27 PM
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postmordor.bsky.social
Flaming Hydra has graciously given this out for free! For any Spider-Man fans and comic book historians, here’s a closer look at the story behind Mary Jane Watson’s iconic introduction, and who REALLY wrote it. Thanks to Josephine Riesman & Zach Rabiroff for this.

flaminghydra.com/a-swingin-su...
A Swingin’ Surprise or Two
The best-kept secret in the history of Marvel Comics was in high dudgeon by the time he sat down at his typewriter. It was a July afternoon in 1971, and Ron Whyte, a playwright and activist, was about...
flaminghydra.com
December 24, 2025 at 2:00 AM
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davidjroth.bsky.social
I wrote about my Hallmark habit, and trying to be normal at parties when you know more than is normal about Lacey Chabert's filmography. (The movie where Wallace Shawn plays an angel is called Christmas At Carwright's.) (A guy grandly says "Christmas Nog!" in it.) flaminghydra.com/issue-468/#h...
Vision blurred / Seeing good
The eyes of Zach Rabiroff; David Roth, cinéaste, shares rare holiday films
flaminghydra.com
December 23, 2025 at 10:53 PM
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mariabustillos.com
Watching holiday films with @davidjroth.bsky.social today at @flaminghydra.com wow! he is a good writer.

flaminghydra.com/issue-468/#h...
photo illustration by Joe MacLeod has a lot of Hallmark and Christmas things, Mr. Met, I only just noticed that the Hallmark crown is almost just like the Rolex one, also has OY TO THE WORLD! on there which is the name of a Hallmark movie
December 23, 2025 at 9:57 PM
flaminghydra.com
TODAY: @zachrabiroff.com has had quite a week. “So to recap: by midday Wednesday I was unemployed, with no source of income, and a left eye that, while eventually openable, had the unfortunate disadvantage of not being able to see.” flaminghydra.com/r/6a0fce4b?m...
Vision blurred / Seeing good
The eyes of Zach Rabiroff; David Roth, cinéaste, shares rare holiday films
flaminghydra.com
December 24, 2025 at 1:33 AM
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zachrabiroff.com
This Christmas, I lost my job, lost my sight, and had some thoughts about Napoleon. A new essay for @flaminghydra.com called "Blind Spots."

flaminghydra.com/issue-468/
Vision blurred / Seeing good
The eyes of Zach Rabiroff; David Roth, cinéaste, shares rare holiday films
flaminghydra.com
December 23, 2025 at 10:07 PM
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lukeoneil47.bsky.social
We're saying Merry "Christmas" again at @flaminghydra.com. And we're saying it, excuse me, with gusto.
davidjroth.bsky.social David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 3d
I wrote about my Hallmark habit, and trying to be normal at parties when you know more than is normal about Lacey Chabert's filmography. (The movie where Wallace Shawn plays an angel is called Christmas At Carwright's.) (A guy grandly says "Christmas Nog!" in it.) flaminghydra.com/issue-468/#h...
Vision blurred / Seeing good
The eyes of Zach Rabiroff; David Roth, cinéaste, shares rare holiday films
flaminghydra.com
December 23, 2025 at 11:18 PM
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samthielman.com
somebody said to me the other day that they felt fiction never addressed anything contemporary so I have ten tries here.
Rachel Prejudice, founder of the fashionable ironic-ironic art movement, habitué of the wrong side of the Styles section, and host of the popular livestream fashfashfashion, was kidnapped, extradited to Germany, and tried at Nuremberg's Palace of Justice before a black-tie jury of four devoted "rachists" chosen over three months of fashfashfashion audience contests. She was found guilty after 28 minutes of deliberation including ads, and hanged to thunderous applause during a special series finale. The funeral will be livestreamed on Twitch and available to all paid tiers of her Patreon.
December 23, 2025 at 2:34 AM
flaminghydra.com
TODAY: New short fiction from @samthielman.com. “The company’s first piece, which takes the form of an orphaned Yemeni child wholly owned by the bearer of a complex e-token, was sold to a Chelsea gallerist in a sealed bid auction by Sotheby’s” flaminghydra.com/r/bf9ba817?m...
Happening now
Cultural reckonings in a new short story by Sam Thielman
flaminghydra.com
December 23, 2025 at 2:27 AM
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lynnae.bsky.social
May I recommend: @marisakabas.bsky.social, @taniel.bsky.social and @boltsmag.org, @taliajane.bsky.social, @defector.com, @404media.co and @flaminghydra.com
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 4d
now seems like a good time to remind you all to support independent, worker run, billionaire free, and/or reader funded news how and where you can.
60minutes.bsky.social 60 Minutes @60minutes.bsky.social · 5d
An Editor’s Note from 60 Minutes
December 22, 2025 at 3:18 AM
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daemonsquire.bsky.social
The opening passage of a @flaminghydra.com piece, published a few days after our most recent presidential inauguration, eleven months ago, continues to feel relatable. So... I guess we're still hanging in there!

flaminghydra.com/the-end-and-...
The rules I was fighting fascism with the power of love and kindness and just really getting my ass handed to me. A total bloodbath. The referee would have stepped in by now but they had knocked him out with a steel chair. The only others watching were either fascists themselves or the people trying to fight fascism with the power of love and kindness and they weren’t having a great go of it either. I kept trying to explain in between haymakers that we were better than this and on top of that it wasn’t likely to be ruled on favorably as far as the courts. None of it helped. I was on my knees now bleeding profusely from the mouth and nose. It spilled out of me onto the snow in a pattern that if you sort of squinted at it just so from the right vantage looked like a heart. See that I pointed. Look how beautiful the world can be I tried to say through my broken teeth. Alright well now he was pulling out a gun. I didn’t think we were allowed do that.
December 22, 2025 at 7:21 AM
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mariabustillos.com
Are you a @flaminghydra.com subscriber, if so please remember to VOTE in Hydranym No. 29, the absurd acronym game with creative writing features!!!

some great ones this time.

flaminghydra.com/hydranym-no-...
HYDRANYM No. 29: Vote!
by The Editors Players of HYDRANYM, don your powdered wigs and robes and prepare to render your verdict on the best Hydranyms on the theme of SCRATCH HYDRANYM is the absurd word game created es...
flaminghydra.com
December 21, 2025 at 10:17 PM
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cam.bio
This essay about FAFSA somehow hoots so many notes about parenting, anxiety about debt and the future, computer systems that are defective by design, all wrapped up in one. And The Phantom Thread.

Love @flaminghydra.com

flaminghydra.com/fafsa-is-bre...
FAFSA Is Breaking Me
I think I have been holding it together in the face of everything we can’t stop talking about—the killing and the dying, the explosions and the terror, the eggs and the bird flu and the shameless ghou...
flaminghydra.com
December 21, 2025 at 10:49 PM
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mariabustillos.com
apologies; you can read for just $3/month, we have done our best to make it cheap as chips...

and you can cancel anytime. I promise @annamerlan.bsky.social's piece alone is worth the three bucks, plus you get access to our whole archive of many hundreds of reviews, essays, stories, comics and more
kwhitlock.bsky.social Kay Whitlock @kwhitlock.bsky.social · 5d
Alas. Paywalled. But I loved how it started. If I could afford to subscribe to all the individual newsletters and sites I want to, I would. So important to support good folks providing excellent material. But I can’t.
December 21, 2025 at 8:21 PM
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mariabustillos.com
Cheered up considerably by reading @annamerlan.bsky.social's wondrous account of a visit to the Titanic Museum Experience in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

at @flaminghydra.com

flaminghydra.com/discomfort-s...
Discomfort shopping
Anna Merlan aboard the Titanic (Museum Shop)
flaminghydra.com
December 21, 2025 at 8:12 PM
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mariabustillos.com
The magic of @annamerlan.bsky.social: you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll marvel at her ability to draw profound sociopolitical and aesthetic insights from a heart-shaped purple-sequinned souvenir pillow
flaminghydra.com Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com · 6d
TODAY: @annamerlan.bsky.social embarks on an extraordinary voyage (of shopping). "I envisioned a Halloween costume in which I would wear just that and a bedsheet, but ultimately and with great difficulty got ahold of myself." flaminghydra.com/discomfort-s...
Discomfort shopping
Anna Merlan aboard the Titanic (Museum Shop)
flaminghydra.com
December 20, 2025 at 4:10 PM
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mariabustillos.com
Hi, don't forget to buy everyone you know a @flaminghydra.com Gift Subscription! Just $36 for a whole fiery year of beautiful writing, criticism, reviews, interviews, fiction and art

flaminghydra.com/gift/
Give the Gift of Flaming Hydra
invite your friends to breathe fire
flaminghydra.com
December 20, 2025 at 2:53 PM
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billchilds.bsky.social
Every day Flaming Hydra is good, don’t get me wrong. But every month or so there’s a piece that by itself justifies the cost.
annamerlan.bsky.social Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 6d
For @flaminghydra.com, I wrote briefly about the most incredible (??) and certainly the most semiotically rich gift shop I've ever seen in my life: flaminghydra.com/discomfort-s...
Discomfort shopping
Anna Merlan aboard the Titanic (Museum Shop)
flaminghydra.com
December 20, 2025 at 12:53 AM