Every story about the Trump Administration sounds like a drunk bachelorette party filled out a government-themed Mad Libs.

Reminds me a bit of that statistic that went viral a while back that the average number of skeletons inside a human body is greater than one.

"There once was a man from Nantucket..."

Del Monte "Corn Pattycake," a pizza on which is dumped an entire can of corn.

Weirdly, the "dead teenager" song trope originated with the death of James Dean, which coincided with The Cheers' "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots," about a dead motorcyclist, adopted as a dirge for Dean. Soon, the songs transitioned from dead boys to dead girls and a trope was born.

Lasso Motel launches a $150 officially licensed James Dean whiskey rather presumptuously labeled "by James Dean," a man who died in 1955 and did not regularly drink whiskey. www.bevnet.com/pr/2026/05/2...

New in my Library: Al-Masudi's medieval account of the temples of the ancients, including a fascinating (if fictitious) account of a Himalayan temple containing a portal to the Archive of Books, wherein all knowledge past, present, and future resides. www.jasoncolavito.com/the-temples-...

New York Magazine reports that men are panicking over their penis size and going to great lengths (ha!) to appear larger. I noticed everyone in the piece is a wealthy urbanite, and I'm guessing this isn't as big an issue outside elite circles. archive.ph/OvPHQ

I really hate the concept of the "Final Girl." Older "mad slasher" movies could end with a surviving girl, boy, group, etc. But the combination of "Halloween" and "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" both ending with a final surviving girl led to copycats and thus the calcification of a trope.

"SPAM Fiesta Peach Cups": Canned peaches stuffed with SPAM, oats, and ketchup.

Summer is still the same length as always, running from the solstice in June to the equinox in September. The only thing that is "longer" this year is the amount of time you won't be able to get any customer service because the one employee who can help is on vacation.

No one would have asked a question like that 25 years go or earlier when suits were still normal attire for appearing in public. It is our increasingly informal times that make what had long been standard menswear seem elitist and unusual.

An incredible thread on royal portraiture and its ideological messaging--and thus why A.I. can't prove historical relationships based on art.

Here's another one: Last spring, my kid was invited to a dozen birthday parties, most at event locations. This spring, it was three, one of which was at the kid's grandparents' retirement village community center. www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/gen-x...

A very nice review today of my book "Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean" in Australia's "Magazine 6000." magazine6000.com/review/jimmy...

Professional tarot readers are turning to AI to avoid the hard work of interpreting the cards. This raises an important question about what purpose a professional tarot card reader even serves in that case, other than collecting money from the gullible. theconversation.com/how-tarot-re...

To be fair, he is expressing the Christian view that pre-Christian views of cyclical time are inferior to Christianity's predicted apocalyptic culmination in the Millennium. But it wasn't a "wheel to nowhere" so much as a periodic return to the Golden Age.

I reviewed the embarrassing debacle that was Piers Morgan's "debate" between Zahi Hawass and three fringe pseudo-archaeologists, in which Hawass proved his opponents lacked any serious knowledge of Egypt beyond old Graham Hancock books. www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/piers-m...

My doctor needs to work on his communication skills. I'm at the age when I need routine cancer screenings, and the doctor called this morning and started with, "I'm calling to talk to you about your test results." I nearly had a heart attack. He wanted to say they were normal.

I never looked into Kars4Kids because I had no plans of giving them a car, but it would never have occurred to me that the organization actually funded gap-year vacations to Israel for teenagers rather than providing support for children in need.

Of course, by "ideas they might find distressing," they don't mean non-Western concepts that might challenge America-centric assumptions, like Islamic philosophy or Native economic perspectives. They mean the dressed-up racism, sexism, and homophobia of contemporary conservatism.

This reminds me of the old joke about the Habsburg monarchy: "The King of Hungary declared war on the King of Croatia, and the Emperor of Austria, who was both, remained benevolently neutral."

Not a big surprise that the study questioning Monte Verde turns out to be seriously flawed.

Seems like it would be a really uncomfortable, especially when you sit down or ride a bicycle.

Interesting study in Nature finds that social media algorithms systematically bias users' feeds to display more right-wing content, even when users identify as liberal. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The problem, you see, is expecting references to mean anything without explaining the reference. The public has no attention span, and too much happens for any one thing to stick; an offhand comment from an anonymous source in a news story from last year has no holding power.

The economics of this are insane. THR says that it costs up to $1 million to build a video podcast production studio ("that meets current standards") and hire a staff, but it only takes 65,000 subscribers to generate $1 million or more in revenue. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

My new blog post explores a bizarre flap over the bodies of a lost tribe of ancient 8-foot-tall giants that thrilled newspaper readers in December 1930. “Traces of a Prehistoric Race of Supermen”: The Real Story of the Soyopa “Giants” jasoncolavito.substack.com/p/traces-of-...

Who wore it better?

I can't imagine anything that would crash the A.I. market faster than having "Approved by Donald Trump!" slapped across models.

Leave it to the History channel to craft a sentence that, while technically true, leaves out the entire story. From a piece on James Dean: "A chance encounter with radio director Rogers Brackett led to a short-lived Broadway run in See the Jaguar." www.history.co.uk/articles/lif...

"There's bright flavor to savor in Miracle Whip!" Raspberry gelatin rings filled with pineapple, walnuts, and marshmallows mixed with Miracle Whip and then topped with more Miracle Whip and served with lettuce.

If the NY Times's core audience weren't rich people who think they're better than you, they'd write this more honestly: "Rich people are turning themselves into clown-faced circus freaks to show everyone they have more money than you."

"Supernatural" ran for 15 seasons and 327 episodes. It is therefore possible for a horror show to work long-term.

Publishing's dirty secret: AI is quietly replacing editors and translators at a time when editing is already a dying art and marketing takes priority over quality. The Telegraph asks: Will readers of formula fiction care? www.telegraph.co.uk/books/news/a...

A new book suggests Alain Delon murdered his Yugoslav assistant in 1968, waiting until the French actor died to publish the accusation. www.dailymail.com/home/books/a...

"Is that Kraft Macaroni & Cheese in that quiche?" A Kraft ad from 1983.

New in my Library: A massive translation of ~12,000 words from al-Maqrizi's Al-Khitat on earlier writers' legends of Alexandria. A lot of interesting stuff in there, but also a lot of surprising repetition of tropes, themes, and stories across time. www.jasoncolavito.com/al-maqrizi-o...

In reading al-Maqrizi's Al-Khitat (2.11), on the legends of Alexandria, I discovered an overlooked passage reporting a medieval account of discovering what sounds like the bones of megafauna mistaken for those of an ‘Ādite, a race of giants in the Qur'an.

This is the heart of the matter: Social media content creators ape corporate media but dispense with the decades of policies, practices, and procedures that protect employees and audiences alike. They are amateurs in every sense and are replacing professional content with unsafe, half-assed slop.

David Wilcock, former star of "Ancient Aliens" and an early proponent of Pizzagate and QAnon, took his own life after a "mental health crisis," according to social media posts by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Corey Goode, and a Boulder County Sheriff's Dept. media statement. He was 53.

Seems weird for Architectural Digest to run a photo spread of James Dean's life, given that Dean is not a building, did not build one, and his L.A. house burned down with nothing to show. Doubly strange that the spread had no buildings in it. www.architecturaldigest.com/story/james-...

I have added to my page on al-Masudi's account of ancient Egypt his subsequent chapter on the founding and history of Alexandria, which contains stories from the Alexander Romance as well as legends about Shaddad bin 'Ad, supposed builder of the pyramids. www.jasoncolavito.com/al-masudi-on...

Today is my 45th birthday and the 25th anniversary of my writing about "alternative archaeology" and pseudohistory on the internet.

It's not that "humanity" has forgotten this--almost everyone understands this instinctively--but rather tech bro elites and corporate capitalism intentionally try to destroy tradition to sell us a commodified, degraded copy and purge potential counterweights to their own power and control.

It's a mistake to posit that progress and tradition are mutually incompatible, just as it is a mistake to define "progress" solely by conformity to 1960s-era utopian ideas. Most people want stability and continuity with steady improvements to their lives. Too much unnecessary change causes unrest.

I'm mentioned in this Skeptic (UK) article about the life and legacy of Erich Von Däniken. www.skeptic.org.uk/2026/04/the-...

The Atlantic is meeting the moment with hard-hitting reporting.

New in my Library: Zhao Rukuo's description of Egypt and its legends from 1225 CE, the oldest surviving account of Egypt in Chinese literature, and one including a unique legend about a Nile river god. www.jasoncolavito.com/zhao-rukuo-o...

Fun fact: Evil-Lyn was originally going to be named "Sultra" and was intended to be a sexy vamp modeled on Sophia Loren before cooler heads prevailed and realized you couldn't have a seductress in a toy line aimed at 6-year-olds. See the original concept drawing below.