The letter reads:

Mr. Shapiro--whoever you are--

I have had a Blackberry for many, many years. I have worked with it here and in EUrope and I have arrived at some very important work arrangements with it.

No one thinks I am behind times except those who want to sell me another device. Your intimation that I may be looked down on because I dno't have an iPhone is hugely irritating and pompous and dumb and plain silly.

May you be faced to work on a land line forever!

Way harsh, dude.

Book learnin' Good news for would-be inhabitants of Mars, who ought to know as much about their future God Emperor as possible: Bloomberg Businessweek writer Ashlee Vance has sold The Iron Man: Elon Musk's Quest to Forge a Fantastic Future to the publisher Ecco. "As we say in Texas, git er done," Mr. Vance concluded on Twitter. But he could perhaps have a bit of competition: AllThingsD's Peter Kafka promptly responded, "But I'm writing MUSKIE: HE WAS NO HUBERT HUMPRHEY."

Emperor’s New Clothes Former Apple exec Ron Johnson’s takeover of the dowdy JCPenney brand was an unmitigated disaster, but at least it helped him in the style department! His Apple regimented wardrobe consisted of a pair of dowdy jeans and a drab, lightweight sweater that looks like it was from the "old" Penney's. Then towards the end of his reign at Penney’s, it looks like he was sporting a cost conscious JF J Ferrar slim fit suit and a Van Huesen tie. Hope he stocked up before his employee discount expired.

S-WHAT? This week, New York introduced us to a notion spawned at (of course) Yale: "SWUG," which stands for Senior Washed-Up Girl. Think of it as an entire ethos that revolves around giving zero fucks. And so it's not surprising the concept would resonate outside its original home: "I might be an adult #SWUG," tweeted PR superstar Brooke Hammerling in response to the piece. Aren't we all, lady.

Meet the Elite "ZOMGGGG!" tweeted Noosphere founder Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry earlier this morning. What could have gotten @PEG so excited?

Our invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.

Bitbusted This week, we all had front-row seats to a bubble inflating and deflated at Internet speed. On Tuesday, things looked so sunny that Business Insider's Steve Kovach tweeted, "Henry just told me Bitcoin is going to $5,000 because 'why not?!?!'" That would be Henry Blodget, whose boosterism has gotten him into trouble before. Well, on Wednesday prices peaked at $266, then promptly crashed. The currency is now somewhere in the neighborhood of $93.00.

Souvenirs Anyone remember his high school Korean? Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, who rode along on Eric Schmidt's trip to North Korea but was overshadowed by Bill Richardson's cravat, needs a little translation. Seems he picked up a piece of art while north of the 38th Parallel, but he can't remember what the damn thing says. Hence, a tweet requesting the crowd drop a little wisdom on him:

Girl gets job Today is the last day of our esteemed editor, Nitasha Tiku, who is heading over to Gawker as a Senior Writer. Please wish her well and enjoy this Vine of our final meal together.

https://twitter.com/nitashatiku/status/322786545469898753

Ms. Schmidt, far right. (Photo: AP/Andy Wong)

Don't get us wrong, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt. Your trip to North Korea has been a blast--the highlight of our year, really. Remember that time those Kim Il-sung University students pretended they were allowed to google things just to impress you?! Or what about former Governor Bill Richardson's superfluous but omnipresent cravat?

But now that you're free from the Supreme Leader's distortion field, we have to say your tight-lipped travelogue pales in comparison to the candid, snark-laced account offered up by your daughter Sophie Schmidt.

Mr. Schmidt, who reportedly displayed "rock star"-like tendencies while promoting a free Internet in Pyongyang, posted an "edited" set of remarks on his Google+ account. Aside from suggesting that North Korea might want to turn on Internet capabilities for its only 3G network--so it can do more than SMS--it read like the prologue for his upcoming book, The New Digital Age, out April 23rd. Indeed, his fresh-faced co-author Jared Cohen also tagged along for the trip.

For some real talk on the excursion, please turn to Sophie Schmidt's version of events. Girl has a keen eye for the absurd:

On travel restrictions:

-"My favorite form. Do note #1 and #6: leave your "killing device" and "publishings of all kinds" at home. Got it."

-"My father's reaction to staying in a bugged luxury socialist guesthouse was to simply leave his door open."

On her handlers:

-"Our trip was a mixture of highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings and what seemed like genuine human moments. We had zero interactions with non-state-approved North Koreans and were never far from our two minders (2, so one can mind the other)."

On relevant pop culture references:

-"My understanding is that North Koreans are taught to believe they are lucky to be in North Korea, so why would they ever want to leave? They're hostages in their own country, without any real consciousness of it. And the opacity of the country's inner workings--down to the basics of its economy--further serves to reinforce the state's control.

The best description we could come up with: it's like The Truman Show, at country scale."

On the locals:

"We were treated very well throughout the visit, even though official relations between the US and DPRK are 'very tense.' Ours was the first American delegation in over a year, and the North Koreans we met were unfailingly polite and engaging, even excited to meet with us (particularly Eric). How that squares with official NK agitprop that Americans are super-evil imperialist bastards is beyond me."

On Kim Il Sung University's "e-Library":

-". . . or as I like to call it, the e-Potemkin Village . . . Of all the stops we made, the e-Potemkin Village was among the more unsettling. We knew nothing about what we were seeing, even as it was in front of us. Were they really students? Did our handlers honestly think we bought it? Did they even care? Photo op and tour completed, maybe they dismantled the whole set and went home."

On the North Korean traffic girls of Pyongyang:

-"Not that we were allowed to talk to them, but riddle me this: How do you explain to someone that she's a YouTube sensation if she's never heard of the Internet?"

We haven't seen this much dry wit since her dad joked in 2010 that every person will automatically be entitled to change their name in order to put their sordid, Google-able and Facebook-ed youth behind them. A proto "sorry not sorry," if we ever heard one.

The gloriously candid Mr. Schmidt has taken on more of a policy role since stepping down as CEO in 2011, focusing on the company's external relationships with business partners and governments. He's working on a book called The New Digital Age with Jared Cohen, the fratty-looking former State Department policy and planning adviser, who now heads Google Ideas, a New York-based think tank that "convenes unorthodox stakeholders."

It's unclear how the message of Mr. Schmidt's book--that the Internet and mobile tech can free people from poverty and political oppression--will go over in Pyongyang, or even who they'll visit, considering that North Korea has no diplomatic relations with the U.S. and hosts "almost no business with companies in the U.S."

But if the GOOG is searching for unorthodox stakeholders, they may want to look at the newest iteration of its supreme leader:

North Korea is in the midst of what leader Kim Jong Un called a modern-day “industrial revolution” in a New Year’s Day speech to the nation Monday. He is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory.

Milder rhetoric aside, the visit to North Korea follows the recent jailing of an American citizen of Korean descent on suspicion of committing “hostile” acts against the state. And Mr. Richardson has previously been on trips to North Korea to negotiate the release of American detainees. But it's worth noting that Google has also been willing to play ball with restrictive governments before, to a point:

After being accused of complying with China’s strict Internet regulations, known as “the Great Firewall of China,” Google pulled its search business from the world’s largest Internet market in 2010 by redirecting traffic from mainland China to Hong Kong. The company maintains other businesses in China, but a recent transparency report shows Google’s services there sporadically are blocked.

Mr. Schmidt was talking about implanting chips in your brain when he said, "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it," but it seems to work for policy as well.

(Photo: Instagram)

Google execs Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen wrote an op-ed about how witnesses in the drug war are like anonymous packets on a server? [Washington Post]

The Yahoo communications team got its new CEO Marissa Mayer a "fun Yahoo layette set" which is apparently parent-speak for "a onesie with 'Born to Yodel!' on it and a white blanket for baby to ruin with spit-up." [Instagram]

Speaking of Ms. Mayer, she wasn't on Yahoo's quarterly earnings call yesterday, but she will be greeted with weak profits in her first quarter as CEO. [Wall Street Journal]

The New Zealand judge in charge of Kim Dotcom's case has been dismissed after some eyebrow-raising comments about the U.S. being the "enemy." [New Zealand Herald]

Washington state residents can now register to vote via Facebook, which is a refreshing departure from Pennsylvania's voter registration methods, where you have to furnish the blood of your great-great-grandmother in a vial made of unicorn tears. [Ars Technica]

Seth Weintraub, who covers the Google beat at Fortune, has noticed two new job postings for Google's New York office.

The positions are at Google Ideas, an amorphous initiative at Google under which we assume seemingly random things like self-driving cars might be lumped.

"Google Ideas is a "think/do tank" focused on connecting across different sectors, disciplines and experiences to understand and act upon global challenges in new and innovative ways," the ad says. Nice work if you can get it.

"The establishment of this team is based on the fact that there are many complex global challenges—social, economic, political, security—that remain unresolved despite lots of experts thinking about them and vast resources being allocated to them."

Gomplex global challenges unsolved? Sounds like a job for Google.

Google hired Jared Cohen to start up the New York-based initiative in September.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries