Labour Day weekend pregnant with Drake

After the eight months of expecting

Stereogum @stereogum

Drake's 'Certified Lover Boy' cover art is ridiculous bit.ly/2WCM9XN

Certified Lover Boy has a September 3 due date, confirmed Drake about the album originally planned for January then delayed for what was explained as recovering from knee surgery if not also due to contracting COVID-19. But adding to the anticipation is the purported album cover amounting to 12 takes on Apple’s pregnant woman emoji.

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The election vortex weekend

Susan Delacourt @SusanDelacourt

Things getting a little more tense as they wait to shout down ⁦@JustinTrudeau⁩ here in Cambridge. #cdnpoli #elxn44

Justin Trudeau is lamenting the tone of protests greeting him at rallies: one in Bolton, Ontario, was called off due to security concerns. Scenes included a selfie-taker calling the PM a “communist fuck.” His main opponents denounced the aggression, which might be seen as nothing new for an election, but with added anti-masker vitriol.

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David Fisman can’t stop seeing 14 words in Conservative party messaging. The doctor who recently resigned from Ontario’s science table while alleging a withholding of projections for “a grim fall” has adopted a new cause on Twitter. Fisman believes that dog whistles aimed at white supremacists are embedded in slogans from Erin O’Toole.

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An ombudsman censures A1

The front page of the August 26 Toronto Star earned greater digital attention than usual due to highlighting harsh tweets about the unvaccinated to illustrate an article. But reaction to the approach led to a rebuke from public editor Bruce Campion-Smith, as editor-in-chief Anne Marie Owens agreed the context of condemnation was unclear:

Caryma Sa'd - Cartoon Creator @CarymaRules

Here’s the controversial front page, which @TorontoStar editor @AnneMarieOwens has since described as “clumsy, poorly executed and open to misinterpretation” because “it’s hard to distinguish the headline from the highly contentious comments.” google.ca/amp/s/deadline… @DEADLINE

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Douglas Coupland’s defence of Elon Musk. The rundown published in The Guardian was tweeted with this overture from the author: “Are you a dick? We’re all dicks, and so what?” Binge, the upcoming book from Coupland, is billed as “60 stories to make your head feel different,” to be published 30 years after Generation X.

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Finally, a case against spunk

Ed Asner, who died August 29 at age 91, picked up a Canadian paycheque as pitchman for Granada TV rentals in 1986. But it was while shooting The Family Man, a made-for-TV movie, that the title character of Lou Grant played Toronto Sun city editor for a day on March 23, 1979. The bit included getting grumpy at Peter Gross on Citytv: