Cleaning out the newsletter computer
China has logged into the conversation around cancelling Canada Day by calling for a UN investigation into crimes against Indigenous people. B.C. senator Yuen Pau Woo echoed the sentiment by calling it hypocritical to criticize Chinese abuses against Uyghur Muslims, given the Canadian history surrounding residential schools.
Malcolmy in the middle of email
Bulletin, the new Facebook product centred on newsletters, launched with a Canadian face as a featured writer: Malcolm Gladwell’s dispatches have the banner Oh, MG. It’s the biggest venture yet among those trying to tether social media to inboxes. Twitter has opted for talking about the weather, which launched in Vancouver with a humid debut.
“What won’t the Nelk Boys do?” The question is asked by the New York Times to explain how a demonetized YouTube channel from pranksters who met at an MTV Canada event in 2014 got 6.6 million subscribers. “Full Send” is the term on Nelk merchandise aiming for $70 million in sales this year.
A glossy retread of an era
The summer print edition of Vanity Fair features more than 8,500 words on Gavin McInnes, rooted in the recollections of Adam Leith Gollner, who worked with the future Proud Boys founder at Vice when it was a Montreal magazine, before moving to New York five years later. It also sparked a memory of what other culture media outlets used to publish without much reprisal:
Russell Smith has written a novel about an incel who falls in love with a gender studies grad who writes clickbait about self-care. All that and more is discussed in an interview with Lydia Perovic, catching up with what Smith has done since his Globe and Mail column quietly ended, which has included working as an acquisitions editor.
Finally, an after times anthem
Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida claims that getting tired of rock music spurred the sound of “Stop Making Stupid People Famous.” It’s a collaboration with Pussy Riot, the Russian collective that had four members recently jailed, to keep them away from Euro 2020. But the 1990s Canrock revolution needed more feminists: