I appreciate Kanye the artist, but Kanye the misogynistic asshole is indefensible. Cringe-worthy lyrics from his latest album include:

For all the girls that got dick from Kanye West
If you see ‘em in the streets give ‘em Kanye’s best

Worse:

Now if I fuck this model
And she just bleached her asshole

Worst:

I know it’s corny bitches you wish you could unfollow
I know it’s corny niggas you wish you could unswallow

Then again his beats are fucking blazing. I wish I could go back to the time when I listened to hip-hop without understand a word of English.

• “When Did Porn Become Sex Ed?” by Peggy Orenstein
• “Can we save the open web?” by Dries Buytaert
• “The Unbearable Homogeneity of Design” by Morgane Santos
• “In Defense of Homogeneous Design” by Yaron Schoen
• “Nina Simone’s Face” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nhạc phẩm mới được nhạc sĩ Võ Tá Hân phổ theo theo thơ Cao Nguyên. “Tuyết Rơi” được ca sĩ Diệu Hiền trình bài.

Amanda Petrusich:

Good art often takes time to make, and it often takes time to understand, too. It doesn’t feel unreasonable to suggest that perhaps the very first thing a person should do when faced with some nascent creation is not frantically and qualitatively assess its value.

She has a good point. In the contrary, I find that I don’t pay much attention to album like I used to do when I was writing reviews. Listening to music has become more passive for me.

Author Cao Nguyên:

I entrusted my poems to Donny because of his love and reverence for the Vietnamese language and poetry, and he did not disappoint. His mastery in web designing was very evident in thomua.com.

Thank you, anh.

• “The Single American Woman” by Rebecca Traister
• “Shut Up and Sit Down: Why the Leadership Industry Rules” by Joshua Rothman
• “The Scold: Mr. Money Mustache’s Retirement (sort of) Plan” by Nick Paumgarten
• “‘Books Smell Like Old People’: Do Teens Read Seriously Anymore?” by David Denby
• “Behind Ted Cruz’s Campaign Manager, Scorched Earth and Election Victories” by Matt Flegenheimer

• “Why Apple is Right to Challenge an Order to Help the F.B.I.” by The New York Times Editorial Board
• “The Golden Generation: Why China’s Super-rich Send Their Children Abroad” by Jiayang Fan
• “A Black Police Officer’s Fight Against the N.Y.P.D.” by Saki Knafo
• “How Hillary Clinton Won Harlem” by Rembert Browne
• “How to Listen to Music” by Hua Hsu

• Apple’s open letter on customer’s privacy
• “One Man’s Impossible Quest to Read—and Review—the World” by Karan Mahajan
• “Last Days: Preparing for the apocalypse in San Bernardino” by William Finnegan
• “How Staying Small Helps New Directions Publish Great Books” by Maria Bustillos
• “‘Please stop’ with Times New Roman: Graphic design rules for everyone, from an unlikely expert” by Anne Quito
• “The Digital Dirt: How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide” by Nicholas Schmidle

• “How People Learn to Become Resilient” by Maria Konnikova
• Thơ Mưa by Cao Nguyên
• “Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them” by Nicoloa Twilley
• “The Koch Brothers’ Dirty War on Solar Power” by Tim Dickenson
• “Stop Humiliating Teachers” by David Denby

Vừa nghe xong bài “Mưa” với giai điệu ngọt ngào của nhạc sĩ Võ Tá Hân, lời thơ lảng mạn của anh Cao Nguyên, và tiếng hát da diết của Diệu Hiền. Rất thấm thía hai câu thơ đầu trong bài: “Mưa lăn cửa sổ giọt dài / Người em sầu mộng lại hoài mong ai.” Phải chi bài này ghi âm theo dạng acoustic thì còn hay hơn nữa. Mời bạn nghe bài “Mưa” và đón đọc quyển sách thơ của anh Cao Nguyên trong vài ngày tới.