Colin Dickey
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colindickey.com
Colin Dickey
@colindickey.com
16K followers 1.6K following 5.8K posts
Writer of books, most recently Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy. Also Ghostland, The Unidentified, Afterlives of the Saints, Cranioklepty. Opinions mine, not my employer’s. He/him.
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colindickey.com
Happy Friday, here's a 1680 frontispiece for the book The School of Venus, in which some very nice looking ladies are picking out some dildos.
1680 frontispiece to The School of Venus. On the left is a merchant of dildos. She has a table filled with dildos, and then a rack with even more dildos hanging from it. All the dildos look like dicks and balls, so it appears as though maybe she's castrated a bunch of dudes, but that's not the case. Anyway, on the right are three ladies having a ball perusing the items; on the far right is a woman holding her braids in sheer delight at the options here.
December 5, 2025 at 6:34 PM
colindickey.com
Utterly incoherent, baffling nonsense. None of these people can write, all of them need to go take a basic undergrad composition class
Nobody warned him that he would spend his wife's birthday defending her to strangers in a DC bar gathered in celebration asking him pointed questions about an alleged affair. He answered honestly: at first he hadn't trusted her, but over the course of a year his doubts faded. "A long story," he concluded, in an earnest attempt to satisfy a swarm of DC curiosities wondering why Olivia Nuzzi was still in our lives.
December 3, 2025 at 9:21 PM
colindickey.com
I don’t even know who this person is but it’s remarkable to see yet another Substack grifter promising some salacious reveal behind a paywall.

Just grinding up the corpse of her career for whatever sausage they can make and resell
Substack heading: Olivia Nuzzi's Resurgence: It's Complicated JESSICA REED KRAUS DEC 03, 2025 • PAID
December 3, 2025 at 9:20 PM
colindickey.com
Why it matters
A quote from an Axios story about a raccoon that got trashed at a North Carolina store that reads: "Why it matters: The intoxicated suspect was a raccoon."
December 2, 2025 at 11:20 PM
colindickey.com
if dinosaurs aren't real then how did they explain this photograph
That painting of Jesus cradling a baby dinosaur
December 2, 2025 at 11:04 PM
colindickey.com
These numbers on pub day do not suggest the public is clamoring for it
December 2, 2025 at 3:13 PM
colindickey.com
Counterpoint:
Evil Kermit meme and Evil Kermit is saying “Hate read the Nuzzi book”
December 2, 2025 at 3:12 PM
colindickey.com
I have *never* seen a Toynbee Tile in LA before
A Toynbee Tile, well embedded in the asphalt near Alamo Drafthouse in DTLA, reading House of Hades / The Resurrection / Of Toynbee’s Ideas / In Society / To Punish [something or other, it’s pretty beat up]
December 1, 2025 at 11:47 PM
colindickey.com
ending that phone call with this meme
i ain't reading all that i'm happy for u tho or sorry that happened
December 1, 2025 at 9:28 PM
colindickey.com
Also, *now* we’re deciding to be coy?
Oh, honey
• Olivia believed Kennedy was a sex addict and that he was having multiple affairs, including with both his [REDACTED] and his [REDACTED].
December 1, 2025 at 8:46 PM
colindickey.com
[Me, in Stoker's writing group] Bram, maybe re-think this guy's name?
The Wikipedia entry for Bram Stoker's 1895 novel, The Shoulder of Shasta, featuring the character "Grizzly Dick"
November 30, 2025 at 7:08 PM
colindickey.com
tfw when your mate is pregnant but you’re an infertile alpha
See Elizabeth’s thread, quoted above, for alt text, because she did a much better job than I’ll ever be able to
November 30, 2025 at 12:03 AM
colindickey.com
On a flight from Portland to Los Angeles I took these three photos of Cascade mountains—I’m pretty sure the middle one is South Sister, but I’m having trouble IDing the other two. I’m guessing the first is North Sister and the last is Shasta. Can anyone confirm? The first two were close together.
A cascade stratovolcano covered in snow peaking through the clouds, looking gorgeous A cascade stratovolcano covered in snow peaking through the clouds, looking gorgeous A cascade stratovolcano covered in snow peaking through the clouds, looking gorgeous
November 29, 2025 at 7:18 PM
colindickey.com
Not looking this up but I assume Gobble and Waddle are crypto bros who committed massive securities fraud before donating heavily to the new White House ballroom
Headline: Trump pardons Gobble and Waddle in White House Turkey Ceremony
November 25, 2025 at 10:03 PM
colindickey.com
This sounds like the country’s worst minor league team
Sign outside an oil change shop in Brooklyn that reads BROOKLYN LUBRICANTS
November 22, 2025 at 3:05 AM
colindickey.com
Good morning everyone, thank you for all the amazing facts
My Bluesky app this morning when I woke up, with 572 notifications
November 21, 2025 at 2:43 PM
colindickey.com
So much for the “Nuzzi’s prose is bad because she used ChatGPT” hypothesis
Handwritten note by Olivia Nuzzi to a guy she was sleeping with in 2020, per Ryan Lizza’s newsletter: "If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house," Olivia had written, "I would still thirst for you." I’m sorry, I also wish I wasn’t like this. There are better things to care about. But sometimes a truck filled with garbage catches on fire and you just gotta gawk
November 18, 2025 at 1:52 AM
colindickey.com
The prose is incoherent & the only way to make it through a paragraph is to rely on the North Star or her self-pitying narcissism. The gist of this graf is “strangers obsess about me, must be because I work so hard,” but it is almost immediate lost in the morass of “typed on notes app while hiking”
People often, often people I do not know very well, reach out to tell me that I have appeared in their dreams. I wonder if this is because I sleep so little. If the version of me who lives on the plane of dreams tires of waiting for me to release her to action, if she goes out searching for places where she may exist without my permission, if she identifies the minds of those who have felt any kindness toward me, if she thinks that within their dreams she might get to live freely instead. I wonder, too, if this is a function of being a visible face but a veiled personality. If my impression contains empty space that renders me an adaptable idea and thus a useful device for subconscious minds. It is nice to think of this, that I might still be in some way, to someone, of use.
November 17, 2025 at 3:08 PM
colindickey.com
A quote from Megyn Kelly:
MEGYN KELLY (HOST): As for Epstein, I've said this before, but just as a reminder, I do know somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything. Not everything, but virtually everything. And this person has told me from the start years and years ago that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person's view, was not a pedophile. This is this person's view, who was there for a lot of this, but that he was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realized this is disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I'm just giving you facts, that he wasn't into, like, 8-year-olds. But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.
November 14, 2025 at 2:53 PM
colindickey.com
Here is a woodchipper
Search “Patton Oswalt”
November 14, 2025 at 2:51 PM
colindickey.com
When Portishead comes on
November 14, 2025 at 3:01 AM
colindickey.com
No Country for Young Women
In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups.
November 13, 2025 at 4:58 PM
colindickey.com
Maccius Plautus (250-184 BCE) bitching about the inventor of the sundial feels *extremely* relatable to me in this year 2025
"The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions. When I was a boy, My belly was my sun-dial; one more sure, Truer, and more exact than any of them. This Dial told me when 'twas proper time To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat. But now-a-days, why, even when I have, I can't fall-to, unless the sun give leave. The town's so full of these confounded dials, The greatest part of its inhabitants, Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets."
November 13, 2025 at 4:49 PM
colindickey.com
[nodding, waiting for my turn to speak again]
November 12, 2025 at 3:21 PM
colindickey.com
Me, to anyone who talks to me today
Neon 80s meme that says “Damn that’s crazy, where are the Epstein files?”
November 12, 2025 at 3:20 PM