Five Jokes: 1-21-2025

New White House Emails, Location Tracking, French Coffee Wars, Josh Gad's 'Avatar' Fail, and The New Rise Of Malls

Pssst! — if you find daily emails annoying, you can modify your subscription experience here!

Hey! It’s Tuesday in America, Jan 6 rioters have been pardoned, and -

Anyway, here are FIVE JOKES!

Donate to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, The Carter Center, and/or Alliance for Middle East Peace.

Y’all hear about this?..

• Elon Musk has a White House email address to lead the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency — bringing us one step closer to a federal porn site named X.gov.

  Talk about a tax extension…

• For months members of the public have been using GeoSpy, a tool trained on millions of images that can find the location a photo was taken based on soil, architecture, and more. So, Carmen Sandiego…

  

• Specialty coffee shops with a distinctly Anglophone flare are competing with traditional cafes in Paris — so, this is how World War III begins… not with a bang but with a coconut milk latte.

• Josh Gad says he was denied a role in ‘Avatar’ because he looked like a ‘Tall Overweight Smurf’ as a Na’vi — but, clearly, James Cameron is missing out on the economic potential of a spinoff series titled Avatar Plus.

  

Finally…

• Malls are making a comeback, thanks to Gen Z. Apparently, meeting your crush to make out at an actual Cinnabon beats attempting the same thing in the metaverse while actually sitting at the family dinner table.

Those were five jokes! Which was your favorite? Use this poll, or drop a comment!

If you enjoyed those, check out yesterday’s jokes! OR:

OR subscribe to my YOU ARE THE GENRE podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or right here in the matrix of my newsletter!

🎨: Madhuri Shukla

And you can always share screenshots or forward this to a friend!

(this post may be too long for your email — if so, read the web version!)

A JOKE FROM SOMEONE ELSE

A warning from Gianmarco Soresi…

And, Roy Wood Jr. on self-check out lines. His new special Lonely Flowers is incredible and streaming now on Hulu.

• SIDE NOTE: I interviewed him last year on You Are The Genre!

STRAY THOUGHT

IN OTHER NEWS…

[Interesting Headlines Minus Jokes]

• A list of 78 Biden-era executive actions revoked by the Trump administration…

• Trump’s inauguration pastor immediately launched a crypto token.

• And… Here’s what happened when India banned TikTok in 2020.

SOMETHIN’ MORE!

Check out last week’s You Are The Genre episode featuring my interview with comedian/TV writer Rae Sanni!

[Rae Sanni] Is The Genre

“Why are is this guy emailing five jokes a day?” — I explain it all here:

Why I Email Five Jokes A Day

Letters from African America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider sharing…

…or becoming a free or paid subscriber!

See you tomorrow with…

Like that cartoon face in the logo? It was illustrated by DeAngelo — the talented character/prop designer/YouTuber known as “Hats Off Media!” DeAngelo is working hard an awesome new cartoon called a ScreenTime (teaser). Consider supporting it here!