Not Stolen. Permanently Borrowed.

After I heard about this abomination, once the shock had worn off, I was reminded of Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Wave” speech. Could Watermelon Oreos be

the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

of our food culture?

Kanye West, in an interview with Jon Caramanica for the New York Times:

There are people who have figured out the exact, you know, Kanye West formula, the mix between “Graduation” and “808s,” and were able to become more successful at it. “Stronger” was the first, like, dance-rap song that resonated to that level, and then “808s” was the first album of that kind, you know? It was the first, like, black new wave album. I didn’t realize I was new wave until this project. Thus my connection with [the graphic designer] Peter Saville, with Raf Simons, with high-end fashion, with minor chords. I hadn’t heard new wave! But I am a black new wave artist.

Everyone has been talking about and reporting on the easy stuff in this article (which, if you’re a Kanye hater, was exactly what he knew you’d do, FYI), but this piece is all over the place and hits on some real truths. Love him or hate him, Kanye West has been responsible for several trends in popular music over the past decade. Did he create those trends? Not always. But he refined them and put them forward and popularized them like no one else had before him.

Sounds a little more like Steve Jobs than some would like to think, I’d say.

David Simon:

I know it’s big and scary that the government wants a data base of all phone calls. And it’s scary that they’re paying attention to the internet. And it’s scary that your cell phones have GPS installed. And it’s scary, too, that the little box that lets you go through the short toll lane on I-95 lets someone, somewhere know that you are on the move. Privacy is in decline around the world, largely because technology and big data have matured to the point where it is easy to create a net that monitors many daily interactions. Sometimes the data is valuable for commerce — witness those facebook ads for Italian shoes that my wife must endure — and sometimes for law enforcement and national security. But be honest, most of us are grudging participants in this dynamic. We want the cell phones. We like the internet. We don’t want to sit in the slow lane at the Harbor Tunnel toll plaza.

I haven’t read anything on this mess that better illustrated my conflicted opinions. And if you think it’s as simple as Privacy vs. Police State, Hero vs. Traitor, Transparency vs. Secrecy, then you’re just part of the problem.

Donald Hall, writing for the New Yorker:

In my life I have grown three beards, covering many of my adult faces. My present hairiness is monumental, and I intend to carry it into the grave.

Poetry in essay form, from one of the great poetry minds of our time.

Stephen Coles, writing for Fonts In Use:

The most visible typographic change is a lighter and more tightly spaced Neue Helvetica, a move that I’ll cover in more detail later. But first, one bit that noticeably departs from Helvination: the Newsstand icon. The new look for Apple’s magazine and newspaper app emulates a group of publications, each with nameplates, making this icon stand out from the simple pictograms of the other system apps.

Details.

Jon Russell, writing for The Next Web:

The Post previously claimed that Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple ”participate knowingly”. The phrase that stood out in the report (it has been repurposed by numerous tech blogs and news sites across the Web) since it suggested that US firms willingly agreed to a process that — at best — could violate the rights of millions in the US if their data is accidentally monitored by the NSA.

Hours after the news broke, and every company bar PalTalk and AOL denied any knowledge of the program and allegations of their involvement, the Post has changed its stance. The phrase  ”participate knowingly” has been removed from the article, a new passage suggests the firms were unaware of PRISM.

Well, that’s a relief.

Or is it?