Lucky, Conde Nast's magazine about, um, shopping, has laid off three editors. [Portfolio]

♦ It's a horrifying mystery that will weigh heavily on all of our minds until it's solved: Where on earth is Karolina Kurkova's belly button? [Telegraph, Daily Mail]
♦ Diane von Furstenberg confirmed last night that she has submitted sketches for Michelle Obama's inaugural ball gown: "Well, they asked me to. Of course, everybody has." [The Cut]
♦ Best outfit worn to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards last night: Agyness Deyn's tux-style black suit with Marc Jacobs hat and red platforms. Absolute worst: Blake Lively's hideous Vena Cava dress, which we can only imagine was chosen to fulfill a contractual obligation to expose her boobs at all times. [stylefile, Teen Vogue]

Why have social networks blossomed in as antisocial an environment as Silicon Valley? Because they allow computers to become a crutch for a task most engineers find imposing: dealing with other human beings. Turning relationships into a social graph that can be fed into a database and ruled by algorithms is a genius move for tech's clumsy savants. Alex French, a writer for GQ, interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for a profile, wonders if his cold stare and cagey responses are an incredibly calculating attempt to intimidate, or merely a sign that he's awkward. Either way, Zuckerberg shows a disdain for displays of emotion. Asked if he celebrated Microsoft's $240 million investment in Facebook, Zuckerberg seems puzzled by the question's premise. And yet emotion is at the core of Zuckerberg's plan for world domination.In a conversation — conducted on instant messenger, the computer-moderated communications mode of choice for the socially impaired — Zuckerberg reveals that he hopes Facebook will one day broadcast its users very emotions. French probes him on this issue in the following exchange:

Finally coming out to the world as a David Archuleta fan has made a huge difference in our day to day lives—we just feel lighter and happier, as if we can finally start being the real us, instead of keeping up some ridiculous charade of what society expects a grown man living in Silver Lake to have on his iPod. But never, in our wildest Archie-loving dreams, did it ever occur to us that he might actually...know we exist.Well, apparently he does, as an interview conducted by Kathy Griffin backstage at The Bonnie Hunt Show today revealed that Archuleta read our track-by-track review of his debut CD, or at least glanced at the video of girls reacting to his real-time defeat at the top of the page. (A reader tells us Kathy also name dropped us on the air, so we feel we owe her something in return: "Your rack is banging in that Hello Kitty shirt." There.) According to Arch, he was led to the post by his bestubbled vanquisher, David Cook—suggesting Cook reads Defamer as well. Enh, whatever. That's cool, we guess. [Kathy Griffin's MySpace]

A fresh batch of media layoffs were reported today, including cuts at Condé Nast's Lucky, Time Inc.'s Cottage Living, and Forbes. New York's Daily Intel has a rundown of the carnage. [NYM]

It's rare that a stage-managed pop star can break free of her chains, but all of America bore witness to a time in Britney Spears's life when a gum-smacking "Y'all!" became a Klonopin-chomping "Y'allllllll." Now, Spears appears to be back on the wagon and of sound mind, body, and hair, but she confesses in the new documentary Britney: For the Record that she almost prefers the bald ol' days:

Stan O'Neal, the disgraced former CEO of Merrill Lynch, having lunch earlier today at Alain Ducasse's Adour in the St. Regis hotel. [Dealbreaker]

Yesterday we noted that Prozac Nation author and now Yale Law School grad Elizabeth Wurtzel didn't pass the bar exam, which she took back in July. Some commenters were very mad! that we! would point this out! And others seemed a little more meh about it. Actually, maybe the most meh about it was Wurtzel herself who, when told about the post by the New York Observer, didn't really seem to give a shit:

· CBS's Monday night sitcom lineup won the night, with How I Met Your Mother earning a season high. NBC saw modest gains, too, except for Heroes, which matched last week's series low of 7.6 million. Bring back the slovenly puppeteer! His powers to enact drama-class exercises were kick ass! [THR] · The King of Kong and Four Christmases director Seth Gordon is attached to Universal's Suicide Squad, about a Kentucky Derby heist. [THR] · Cosby brought him here, now it's time for Obama to do some TV landscape changing of his own: NBC is developing a sitcom based on the book Making Friends With Black People. "It seemed like a good opportunity to strike while the iron is hot," said author Nick Adams. Sounds like a great idea. [Variety] After the jump: Whoa. Whooaa.· Warners is producing Control-Alt-Delete, a high-concept spec described as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure meets The Matrix. [THR] · Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is stepping down from his post. Farewell, Jerry Yang. We hardly knew ye. [Variety]

Good news for Ted Stevens: the convicted felon and United States Senator from the Great State of Alaska won't face an embarrassing expulsion from the world's greatest deliberative body. GOP Senator Jim DeMint totally promised this morning that he had enough votes to expel Stevens from the Senate, and then, in a close-door conference meeting, everyone decided to just wait until the votes in Stevens' reelection race are all counted. Stevens is currently down a thousand to his Democratic challenger, so hopefully Alaska voters will save Stevens' Senate colleagues the trouble of doing the mind-bogglingly obviously right thing. [Roll Call]

Forget the wives who can no longer afford to go wild at Barneys with their husbands' AmEx Platinum cards. The women who are really going to suffer in these turbulent economic times are the mistresses of cheating husbands. According to a new survey of men worth at least $20 million and who have had an extra-marital lover for at least a year, 80 percent said they planned to cut back on gifts, allowances, and certain perks like jet rides and vacations in light of the recession. [WSJ]

[Lily Allen filming a music video across the pond; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Remember that column in the Murfreesboro (Tennessee) Post last week, in which the columnist rewrote the Jeffersons theme song for the Obama election? If you're a true music fan, you may recall the killer lyric, "Well we’re movin’ on up, To Washington, D.C. To a deee-luxe pimp pad, Painted whiiiite." Yes. Well that columnist is also, fittingly, a principal at one of the town's fine schools. And he's very sorry:

In theory, pro journalists can climb to the top of their fields without sacrificing their built-in urge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In practice, even the loosest cannons find themselves battened to the hatch, or whatever the right sailing metaphor is. One of my role models, former Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons, seems to have been forced by his new employer to undo his own writing. Here's what happened.Dan Lyons is a cruelly funny man. He's been a journalist and fiction writer for decades, but Lyons is best known for the anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog he launched in 2006. Writing from home at night, Dan vented his frustrations as a Forbes writer by inventing a fictional Steve Jobs character. Fake Steve said everything about the tech industry's titans that Dan wasn't allowed to print in Forbes. (Check out "I love to fuck with car salesmen" and "Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer.") Today, it seems Dan has taken down a post, for the first time any of us can remember. From most reporters, I'd consider this typical pointy-haired management, what can ya do, etc. But seeing Dan Lyons self-censor his own honest work makes me wonder if I'll be able to stay true to my own after I leave Valleywag's free-fire zone next month. What's changed for Lyons? Simple: This past summer, Newsweek hired him away from Forbes. After a long series of talks with both old and new editors, Lyons shut down Fake Steve Jobs and started a new blog, Real Dan Lyons. Yesterday he blogged a potty-mouthed, Fake-Steve-style rant about Yahoo's PR people yanking his chain in his official Newsweek reporter role. Today that post is gone. Dan's not answering his cellphone or email today, so I have to presume it was his Newsweek editor who made him take it down. Certainly, I've never seen Lyons wake up in the morning and rush to undo his previous night's typing. Here's the timeline:

Itchiest Catch. FremantleMedia North America is looking to acquire Thom Beers' Original Prods., the makers of reality hits like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. Said Fremantle VP of casting and talent Billy Kemp, "We're thrilled at the prospect of absorbing Thom Beers and his roster of hard-working, blue-collar manly men into the Fremantle fold." [THR]

Focus on the Family, the official religious arm of all that is wrong and bad in America, is laying off 149 hateful scumbags. That's 21% of their workforce! They'll all be forced to roam the streets of Colorado Springs, hopefully resorting to cannibalism or possibly having the gay sex they've always secretly longed for in exchange for the drugs they're all addicted to. Also four of the group's eight magazines will now appear only on-line. Eight magazines! Jesus! Apparently donations to Dr. James Dobson's International House of Cartoonish Intolerance are way down, on account of the Christian right being demoralized by our Muslim Terrorist President-elect. So, hey, let's all celebrate! A round of abortions on us! [UPI]

Who knew that librarians in the Midwest competed in choreographed dance competitions using their book carts? It turns out they do, as you can see in this clip. If you have your calendar open, you might want to jot down the dates of the next national competition. It'll take place at the American Library Association's annual conference in Chicago from July 9-15, 2009. [New Yorker, Chicago Tribune]

Miley Cyrus hackers continue to represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the American tech sector, returning to haunt the Disney superstar once again over the weekend. This time around, however, the ambitious intruder bypassed Miley's generically scandalous shirt-chomping escapades in favor of spreading the much more dire gossip that she was dead. Spoiler alert: She's not! But that doesn't mean she won't seek vengeance anyway.E! saw through the stunt, blowing a golden opportunity to welcome Miley's ghost to last night's Daily 10. Instead, host Michael Yo gave the whole game away from the start, prompting a gaping incredulity that Miley's BFF Mandy soon mitigated with her urgent MySpace update: "MILEY IS OK!! Some1 hacked our youtube account." Miley is naturally shocked, and the search is on to track down the culprit, despite investigators' lengthening list of suspects with both opportunity and motive. We'd look closely at Disney ourselves; Bolt can't rocket to number one this weekend on John Travolta's goateed charm alone.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like to talk about their hopes of "changing the world." Yes, of course: Changing the world from one in which they are poor to one in which they are fabulously wealthy. The question in the air is whether the founders of companies do a better job at creating wealth, for themselves and their investors, than professional managers. With Yahoo announcing Jerry Yang's plans to step down as CEO, it would seem like a losing time for founders. But Yang is an exceptional case; he took his hands off the steering wheel when Yahoo had a mere five employees, and never really ran anything until he stepped in as CEO last June. Most founders of successful startups eagerly seize power, and have to be forcibly dislodged from the driver's seat. The best never let go. Just take a long-term look at the stock market, and you'll see why.

♦ Mirco del Vecchio, the executive chef of Ago, says he'll sue Robert De Niro for breach of contract if he's replaced at the restaurant by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. [Page Six]
♦ Why is Alain Ducasse's Benoit earning such bad reviews? Ducasse blames American journalists who "don't quite understand French bistro." [RG]
♦ Ruth Reichl paid an early visit to David Bouley's recently-relocated Bouley and describes it as New York's "loveliest restaurant." [Gourmet]
♦ The reservation line is officially open for John Dory, the Brit-themed restaurant by April Bloomfield, Ken Friedman, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich that is scheduled to open on November 24th. [Eater]