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Extra, Extra: Torstar Edits, Smitherman Circumlocution, and a Sexy Governor General
Every weekday’s end, Extra, Extra collects just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.
Some (doubtless unauthorized) mayoral election graffiti from May. Is this what we’d be reduced to if online comment walls didn’t exist? Photo by sniderscion, from the Torontoist Flickr pool.
- In the comments section on last week’s Torontoist post about a cease-and-desist letter sent by Rob Ford’s lawyers to a parody blogger, a commenter, who goes by “ES,” chimed in with an interesting story. “ES” said he’d personally called the joke blog to Ford’s campaign’s attention, and that he’d done so after discovering a link to the blog on Ford’s Wikipedia page, where it was masquerading as a link to Ford’s actual, personal blog. More sinister still, Wikipedia’s public edit logs indicated that the link had been added by someone using a computer on the Toronto Star’s network. If true, this would have reflected poorly on the Star, but conspiracy theorists take note: Global News super-sleuth Jackson Proskow spoke to the Star today and learned that the edit actually came from the paper’s parent company, rather than the paper itself. Suspects now include other Torstar properties, like Canadian Immigrant, Real Estate News, and oh yes, Eye Weekly.
- Today in actual election news, George Smitherman sat down with Spacing for a long chat about his plans for cycling infrastructure in Toronto. Smitherman, not one to make promises he may someday have to break, says, in essence, that he will one day perhaps consider the possibility of adding bike thoroughfares downtown, if it seems prudent. In the meantime, he’d like to focus on teaching cyclists to behave themselves on the streets as they currently are.
- And finally, Torontoist’s Stephen Michalowicz calls our attention to the fact that “our Governor General has captured the top spot on the extremely scientific Hottest Heads of State blog.”
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