Directed by Puddlepower.

VANITY FAIR: Sarah Palin’s connection with her audience is complete. People who admire her believe she is just like them, and this conviction seems to satisfy their curiosity about the objective facts of her life. Those whose curiosity has not been satisfied have their work cut out for them. Palin has been a national figure for barely two years—John McCain selected her as his running mate in August 2008. Her on-the-record statements about herself amount to a litany of untruths and half-truths. […] She manages to be at once a closed book and a constant noisemaker. Her press spokesperson, Pam […]

Ocean City, Thursday 6:41 PM by JEFF FUSCO

NEW YORK TIMES: An oil sheen one mile long was spotted on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico hours after an offshore oil platform exploded there on Thursday morning, the United States Coast Guard said. It was unclear how much oil was leaking, and whether it was spilling from the damaged platform or welling up from beneath the surface of the Gulf. But the prospect of a second oil leak was unnerving for a region still recovering from the environmental and financial toll of the months-long spill at a BP well earlier this year. Coast Guard officials said the […]

ROGER EBERT: I am but a naive outsider. I don’t fully understand the working of the “derivatives” and “credit swaps” that we have heard so much about in recent months. I’m not alone. But I’m learning. I gather that these are ingenious computer-driven trading schemes in which good money can be earned from bad debt, and Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe pocket untold millions at the same time they bankrupt their investors and their own companies. This process is explained in a shocking documentary named “Inside Job,” which was just named the best single film at Cannes 2010. It […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: It wasn’t the first time Lee, a homeless former Californian, had targeted Discovery’s headquarters. In February 2008, he was charged with disorderly conduct for staging a “Save the Planet Protest.” In court and online, he had demanded an end to Discovery Communications LLC’s shows such as TLC’s “Kate Plus 8” and “19 Kids and Counting.” Instead, he said, the network should air “programmes encouraging human sterilization and infertility.” “Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding cultures,” Lee wrote in a bitter manifesto […]

[Illustration by ALEX FINE] WILLIAM GIBSON: We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined (in spite of ample evidence) that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google. Cyberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical world. Now cyberspace has everted. […]

FRESH AIR Willie Nelson brought his guitar to the Fresh Air studios in 1996 for an interview and in-studio performance. During his visit, the country-music icon told host Terry Gross about the genesis of songs like “The Family Bible” and “Crazy” — the song Patsy Cline turned into a country classic — and took his timeworn Martin guitar out for intimate, idiosyncratic performances of several tunes, including a soulful rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Nelson first established himself as a songwriter in the 1960s, with songs like “Hello Walls,” “Crazy” and “Night Life.” In the 1970s, he broke through as a […]

BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD Count Bass D has been dope since 1995, and in the interim has only become more experimental and more intensely dedicated to his work. Perhaps that’s because his initial “hunger” never subsided— he isn’t ashamed to admit that he hasn’t made much money from his music, or that he’s forced to make music “every weekend” because he has to hold a job on the weekdays. The veteran Tennessee-based producer-rapper has been working alongside ATL-based producer-rapper DJ Pocket for years, but only released his first full-length collaboration with him last December, In The Loop. DJ Pocket brings a […]

FLAVORWIRE: Banksy recently installed a new work at Brighton Pier in England entitled Pier Pressure, which is best described as a “reconditioned dolphin ride with crude oil and a tuna net.” While it’s clearly a social commentary on the BP oil spill — the company’s logo clearly displayed — we see children gleefully riding the dolphin while their seemingly oblivious parents snap photos. Watch video of the ride in action, and check out more photos of Banksy’s latest outdoor work after the jump. MORE