Apparently, if Facebook wanted to repair its reputation, all it had to do was seem like it was helping to topple an authoritarian regime. Now that the U.S. media is loudly pushing the idea that social media can change Egypt—and next, the world!—it makes Mark Zuckerberg's tendency to monetize every aspect of our online lives seem less important.

But the same apparatus that causes commentators to overstate Facebook’s importance to the Egyptian protests makes the service a growing threat to our ability to control our own identities. Facebook makes other people’s previously-invisible mass of interpersonal interactions into something visible—something that can be quantized, aggregated, sold, tracked and controlled. And as useful as that can be to people trying to organize collective actions (and to people trying to tell a story about those actions), having the identity we’ve built through our actual social network placed under a hierarchical corporate system like Facebook makes it vulnerable to manipulation by private and government interests. As useful as social media can be to people trying to overthrow governments, it’s also becoming the kind of thing we need our own government to keep an eye on. READ MORE

"In the case of the Roma, the owner's wife didn't only want to have all furniture handles embellished with Swarovski stones. She also insisted the surfaces of the closets be covered in the exclusive skins of rays. Gehr, a master carpenter by trade, faced a challenge: Where could he get ray skins? What was the best time of year to buy them? How do you work with the stuff? What did it cost? And what should he estimate? When all the questions had been answered, and the furniture had been upholstered in ray skin, the owner and his wife came to Lunestadt in Lower Saxony to see the result. Unfortunately the owner didn't like the fish-covered surfaces at all, saying, 'Get that off, and replace it with beige leather!' The order was carried out. But he paid for both variations."
—If you'd like to puke over the conspicuous consumption of the super-rich (and, who wouldn't, right? This is America and we're all fucked up that way), you should read this Der Spiegel article about Germany's booming luxury yacht business. It includes details about things like multi-level helipads, personal mini submarines, $20,000 daily maintenance fees and special RainSky shower-heads that spray a variety of scented waters or, if you'd prefer, champagne. And this very enjoyable section hed: 'A Yacht Is a Status Symbol.'

Sad hip-hop news: Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell, whose block parties in the Bronx in the 1970s gave birth to hip-hop, is sick with an undisclosed illness and having trouble paying his medical bills. A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip suggests, "maybe island/defjam, warner, interscope, can pay dj kool herc's hospital bills?" That would be nice.

There are countless reasons that the makers of U.S. policy have been caught flatfooted by the uprising in Egypt. As is often the case in human affairs, the most compelling reason is also the basest: We spend $1.2 billion in Egypt to provide “security” and support for U.S. interests in the Middle East—and all that money buys both parties the privilege of looking the other way as the sclerotic Mubarak regime grew more unresponsive to a restive democratic oppostion.

In broader terms, however, American leaders are puzzled by the uprising because so far it has failed utterly to conform to the “Clash of Civilizations” playbook. That is to say, popular revolts in Islamic countries are supposed to be rearguard Islamic protests against Western modernity, unto its innermost parts. That’s why the confrontational rhetoric favored by the Samuel Huntingtons, Dinesh D’Souzas and Daniel Pipeses of the world typically resolves into dark and foreboding talk of the “existential threat" that the antimodern masses in the Arab world represent to the West. That’s also why U.S. political leaders keen to play on such fears harp on their own gift for descrying “moral clarity” amid all that dangerously muddled tolerance preached by the liberal appeasers who shun the brute fact of evil unloosed among a ghastly group of medieval-minded imam-brainwashed zombies, who hate us because of our freedom. READ MORE

Oh, what a joy it was for me to watch BYU beat San Diego State in Provo, Utah on CBS College Sports last Wednesday. It had next to nothing to do with the game itself—a mighty performance from white basketball pundit boner-inducer Jimmer Fredette. No, my whole week was made when, at the halftime break, I was treated—all of us were, really—to the sight of Alaa Abdelnaby in the CBSCS studio.

Former Final Four participant and awkwardly oblong center with Duke, Abdelnaby arrived straight from the “Holy shit! It’s that guy!” file. Smiling, wearing a sharp suit, Abdelnaby looked relaxed and polished as he kidded around with his studio mates and offered his uniquely Abdelnabyian insights into the first half of the game. READ MORE

Did you want to pick up something with "stopping power" in a 9mm Glock? Get an Arizona state ID and you're gold—no background check, no recording of the sale, nothing. This Mike Bloomberg-sponsored investigation into "casual gun sellers" at trade shows in Arizona is actually really amazing—particularly when the gun sellers nod and smile while being notified the undercover buyer couldn't pass a background check. (Mike Bloomberg! Every time you want to start a mayoral recall campaign, he does something awesome.)

Julian Assange appeared last night on 60 Minutes to defend himself and his organization, WikiLeaks. He was interviewed by Steve Kroft, who made some amazingly dopey remarks for a press honcho.

Kroft: Do you want me to give you my characterization of what I think people think?

[No! we yelled at the television.]

Assange: Sure.

Kroft: Mysterious. Little weird. A cult-like figure. Little paranoid.

Kroft's heavy-handed, old-white-guy shtick created something of an unsympathetic or "hard-hitting" impression, but it's clear from the resulting program that the show's producers were very sympathetic to Assange and his cause. READ MORE