The people of Toronto—the voters—can legitimately ask a politician all kinds of things they have no legal right to know. For instance, what is his position on raising property taxes, or building subways? (He’s not under oath, he has no legal requirement to address these questions!) What sports team does he root for, and where did he go to school? (He is not obligated to discuss his personal life. His own time is his own business.) Is he fit to hold the job, especially since reports have arisen that seem to call that fitness into question? (Private property! Right to silence!)

Indeed, he has a legal right to remain as silent as he wants to be. And voters have the legal right to draw their own conclusions about what that silence says about him. Generally, the public wants to hear both sides of a story—freely offered, not compelled by subpoena—and then make up their mind. But when only one side of the story is offered, what are they to think?

Well, when that one side relies on HEARSAY evidence—I can hear the Law & Order fans who host talk-radio programs shouting—and there is no proof, then you can dismiss it, ’cause it’s hearsay. Jeff McArthur on AM640 loudly took a stab at this line of defence last Friday when the allegations first emerged.

Oy. A couple things. Certainly, in a court of law, second-hand information can be ruled out of order as hearsay.

But, first of all, in this case, what we are reading in the accounts on Gawker and in the Star are not second-hand accounts: It is eyewitness testimony from people who have seen the video. And they directly, in detail, describe what they saw in the video and the circumstances under which they viewed it. They talk about the conversations and negotiations they had with the people who showed them the video. That is not hearsay. That is direct evidence offered by eyewitnesses. And guess what? That is actually how a good deal of the reporting we rely on for most of our news is done!

Until last week the embarrassment that is Rob Ford was our little secret, but now the world has discovered our shame. Toronto is an ambitious city, eager to join the world’s top civic brand names alongside New York, Washington, Paris, and Beijing, instead of being forever relegated to the B-list with Helsinki and Lima, Peru. But it is a strangely contemporary kind of ambition. Torontonians love their city like a helicopter parent loves his kid: proudly but protectively and smothered with projected anxiety.

We want everyone to know Toronto is full of potential, home to stunning Libeskind architecture, gleaming condo towers, solvent banks, and Richard Florida. We did not want anyone to know about Rob Ford. We are embarrassed he was elected, we tell friends from afar who now inquire in droves. We’ve been saying it among ourselves for months, as though it was all someone else’s doing. But we did elect him—and not with entirely disastrous results.

In a city rife with cosmopolitan affectation, Rob Ford has proved to be a highly effective populist. During his 10 years as a suburban ward councilor, Ford built the base of his political support by answering all his calls personally, then showing up on voters’ doorsteps to solve their ensnarement with the civic bureaucracy. His speeches in the council chamber were remarkable only for their inanity. But on budget day, the anti-tax crusader would rail against waste and overspending to the delight of the press gallery.

[. . .]

Once Ford took up office in the Clamshell—local argot for Toronto’s spaceship-like Viljo Revell–designed 1960s city hall—he moved fast to act on his mandate. With the assistance of Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, a staunch fiscal conservative and a veteran of many council battles, Ford started by slashing councilors’ office budgets. He then dissolved the board of Toronto’s public housing corporation, the largest in North America, whose buildings were rampant with criminal activity and bedbug infestations. He later fired the head of the Toronto Transit Commission, which had sunk into ineptitude, and replaced him with an Australian dedicated to customer service.

Ford has also managed to flatline city expenditures while revoking a much-loathed $60 annual vehicle registration fee. Then he aced his first round of labor negotiations: The city’s largest unions agreed to his terms with barely a whimper, even as he outsourced half the city’s residential waste collection to the private sector. He’s no Michael Bloomberg, but his list of accomplishments is nothing to sneer at, especially when you realize, as the world surely does by now, that he’s a fairly dim bulb.

The TCDSB did not give a clear reason for its decision in a statement released on its website other than to say it is "pursuing a different direction" and thanked Ford for his commitment to the team.

A spokesman later told CBC News the decision is "in no way related to the current allegations. It is due to the review of his March 1 Sun News Network interview."

John Yan said Ford painted the Don Bosco community negatively when he referred to it as "crime ridden," and the youth as "gang bangers."

[. . .]

The mayor's commitment as volunteer head coach of the north Etobicoke high school football team has not been without controversy.

In November, a TTC bus was diverted off-route to go pick up Don Bosco players at a game after reports that a near brawl was about to break out on the field.

Ford had faced criticism for missing an important council vote to attend the semi-final game that would eventually land the Eagles in the GTA Metro Bowl championship.

"It's the playoffs, we're undefeated, we're No. 2 in the city. We're in the championship game," Ford said later, denying any involvement in requesting the bus.

Pavel Durov is Russia's Mark Zuckerberg. Just five months younger than the Facebook founder, the programmer formed VKontakte in 2006, giving the Russian-language social network two years to build a following before Facebook arrived. Today, VKontakte has 43 million users in its home country, dwarfing Facebook's Russian presence.

Durov's defiance defined him as much as Zuckerberg's geekiness. He's fought music labels claiming VKontakte breaches copyright laws, and when KGB-successor Federal Security Service pushed him to shut down pages by anti-Putin groups last year, he tweeted a hoodie-wearing German shepherd with its tongue sticking out.

When billionaire Alisher Usmanov's Mail.ru tried to take control, Durov took to Twitter again, flipping the bird and dubbing it "an official answer to trash holding Mail.ru."

But Durov's self-assurance may be slipping. He founded the site with money from two rich schoolmates, who got a combined 48 percent stake. They backed him when he wouldn't sell shares to Usmanov, but last week, money won out. They sold to United Capital Partners, a fund known for doing deals for state-run energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft.

Durov's 12 percent stake means Mail.ru (40 percent) and UCP (48 percent) need his backing to control VKontakte, though he doesn't seem to be feeling like the belle of the ball. After prosecutors suspected him of being involved in an April 5 incident in St. Petersburg, when a policeman was struck down by a Mercedes-Benz, TV Rain says he's fled the country.

Yahoo! Inc. is buying blogging network Tumblr Inc. for about $1.1 billion as Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer seeks to lure users and advertisers with her priciest acquisition to date.

Tumblr, headquartered in New York, will continue to host its more than 108 million blogs. Yahoo also says that “per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business” with David Karp staying on as CEO.

Mayer, CEO of the biggest U.S. Web portal since July, is betting that Tumblr will help transform Yahoo into a hip destination in the era of social networking as she challenges Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. in the US$17.7-billion display ad market. The price she’s paying — about a fifth of Yahoo’s US$5.4-billion in cash — underscores the deal’s importance to Mayer’s turnaround effort, according to Zachary Reiss-Davis, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

“It’s an aggressive move,” Reiss-Davis said in an interview. “They are saying, ‘where is our next group of people who are going to spend many hours per week on Yahoo properties?’ It’s big bet that the answer is going to be Tumblr users.”

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2013, Yahoo said in the statement.

Founded by Karp in 2007, Tumblr grew to log more than 13 billion global page views in the past month. The site offers a free service for publishing blogs on the Web and mobile devices, and tools for sharing photos and other content across social networks.

[T]he big news is the free space — "we want all of your images," said Cahan. He said it was 70 times bigger than what other sites offer, and said it could store 537,731 photos in "full quality." Yahoo directly mentioned the 15GB of storage space "other" companies offer, and it was a pretty direct shot at Google — a company that has made no secret recently about making photos a key part of its services.

Yahoo also announced a new Android Flickr app, which matches the capabilities of the recently-updated iOS app. "Upload once, send to any device, any screen, any friend, any follower, on any service, and make it absolutely beautiful," said Cahan. Along with this new service, Flickr is revamping its Flickr Pro service. Previously, free Flickr users could only display 200 photos at a time, while paid users had unlimited storage and display capabilities as well as analytical data about your photos. However, Yahoo introduced a few new paid options — for $49.99 a year, all ads on the site will be removed, and you'll get access to the standard set of Flickr analytics. For $499.99, you can double your storage space to 2TB. All in all, it looks like a long overdue and hugely-needed update — but now Flickr has an arsenal of new tools to take on sites like Facebook and Google.

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton photographs the Gibraltar Point lighthouse and wonders about the Toronto Islands.


• Bag News Notes visits Iraqi Kurdistan and the survivors of Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurdish city of Halabja.


• At Behind the Numbers, Mark Mather notes that the projected size of the American population in decades hence has decreased owing to the recession-related fall in the birth rate.


• Eastern Approaches notes the church-sponsored attack on a gay pride protestin Georgia, its implications for law and order in Georgia, and the impact on Georgia's reputation abroad.


• Geocurrents' Asya Perelstvaig goes over the fluctuating Russo-Finnish border regions.


• GNXP's Razib Khan argues that devoting ten thousand hours to practising a particular skill, as described by Gladwell, won't do anything if one doesn't have the requisite talent.


• Language Hat notes an article on the life of Alice Kober, one of the linguists who helped decrypy the Minoan script Linear B.


• Open the Future's Jamais Cascio wonders how astronomers would recognize artifacts of a supercivilization--Dyson spheres, FTL warp bubbles, et cetera--as artifacts.


• Window on Eurasia's Paul Goble notes that many Russian nationalists are opposed to integrating with post-Soviet countries, particularly in Central Asia, that are currently de-Russifying.

"It's a neat thing to look at," says Claire Bryden, referring to the air raid siren near the corner of Dundas St. W. and Shaw St., a remnant of Toronto's age of atomic anxiety. The sturdy, horn-shaped siren rests on a rusting column on the property of Bellwoods Centres for Community Living.

Few of these Cold War relics, which would alert the population to an imminent nuclear attack, remain in Toronto. One siren resides atop the York Quay Centre at Harbourfront. Others, like the one on Ward's Island, disappear when buildings get new roofs.

Today, no one claims ownership of the surviving sirens. Call the City of Toronto and they refer you to the province. Call the province and they refer you to the Department of National Defence. Call the Department of National Defence and they refer you to ... the city.

But Claire Bryden is happy to take possession of the one at Dundas and Shaw. Bryden is executive-director of the Bellwoods Centres, which provide homes for people with physical disabilities. The air raid siren, overlooked for decades, suddenly became of interest during construction of a new building. Because it was in the middle of the Bellwoods Park House property, which straddles old Garrison Creek (now flowing through an underground culvert), the siren had to be moved or removed altogether. A new public path, part of a Discovery Walk daytime urban trail from Fort York to Christie Pits, will go through the property right where the siren was.

What to do with the towering artifact? "Rather than throw it away, we decided it's a piece of historical memorabilia," says Bryden, who recalls air-raid-siren practice in her childhood. "It gives character, and we don't see too many around."

After the declaration of independence in 1991, various formations composed of former communists who were careful about words such as privatization and foreign investment took turns governing the country. Yugoslavia's socialist legacy had a lot to do with that, but so did the concerns of a small nation, which had, for the first time, its own country and feared that outsiders would again steamroll over its history, culture, and economy – this time not militarily, but economically. Sometime in 1998, for example, I first heard the story of how the Slovenians were preventing foreign speculation by requiring that money into and out of the country could legally be transferred through only one state-controlled account.

A right-wing government took power only in 2000, with its banner wielded mainly by former dissident Janez Jansa, who is known for seeing plots everywhere. He himself was accused of secret arms purchases during the dissolution of Yugoslavia. This year, his government fell not because of economic problems, although they played a role, but because of suspicions of corruption among ministers and the prime minister.

Slovenia's shining image shows up in rankings of countries’ living standards and development. When we dig deeper into these indices, however, we can see the residue of the state-directed approach to the economy and the socialist attitude to the state as the hand that distributes full handfuls. For example, the Prosperity Index, compiled by London's Legatum Institute, puts Slovenia at 24th of 142 countries. But the worst evaluated of the eight categories is the economy, while the best is the educational system.

It's similar with the Catch-up Index, compiled by the Open Society Institute in Sofia, which judges whether and how quickly the former Eastern bloc countries are catching up with Western Europe. Of the four categories assessed Slovenia fared a shade better in quality of life than in democracy, governance, or the economy. It looks as if the Slovenians live well but have relied too much on their economic model working forever and even being able to grumble about their government, which, however, still controls most of the economy through state-owned banks and companies.

Just as Slovenians have a problem with privatization and opening up their economy to foreign investors, so it is in other areas. For example, a history-related time bomb has been ticking in Slovenian society, considered taboo all the way up until Jansa's governments that ruled after 2000. During World War II, certainly not all Slovenes stood on the side of Tito's partisans. Slovenia was divided during the war among the three occupying powers, and only much later Jansa and others began to talk about the massacres of tens of thousands of people from the so-called Slovene Home Guard – namely the units on the side of the Italians, Germans, and Hungarians, whom the allies in 1945 handed over to Tito's units along with the remnants of the Croatian Ustasha and Serb forces loyal to the exiled Western governments.

The 78-year-old Venner, a prolific essayist for much of his life, was also a strict Catholic who frequently inveighed against gays and Islamists, who he believed were coming to wipe out French culture. In a blog post dated today—translated with the help of senilezombiegrouchomarx—Venner argued that more drastic measures were necessary to combat same-sex marriage since peaceful protests didn't work.

"It certainly will require new, spectacular and symbolic gesture to shake the sleepiness, shaking anesthetized consciousness and awaken the memory of our origins," he wrote. "We are entering a time when words must be authenticated by acts."

Witnesses say Venner entered the cathedral and placed a sealed envelope on the altar before shooting himself through the mouth with a handgun. His final blog post can be read in its entirety below.

The protestors on the 26th of May will have reason to vent their impatience and anger. An odious law, once passed, can always be repealed.

I have just finished listening to an Algerian blogger: “In any case”, he said, “in fifteen years Islamists will be in power and will strike down the law”. Not to satisfy us, lest we doubt, but because it is against Sharia.

It is the single common point, albeit superficial, between the European culture (which respects women) and Islam (which does not). The preemptive statement by this Algerian blogger sends chills down the spine. The consequences of such a development would be as great and catastrophic as those of the Taubira Law.

We must recognize the real possibility of France falling under Islamic rule. Over the past 40 years, politicians and successive governments from all parties (excepting the Front Nationale), as well as big business and the Church, have actively worked towards, and accelerated, Afro-Maghreb immigration by all means.

For a long time, great writers have sounded the alarm, starting with Jean Raspail in his prophetic Camp of Saints (Robert Laffont). The new edition has set printing records.

The protestors on the 26th of May cannot ignore this reality. Their fight cannot confine itself to the issue of gay marriage. The “Great Replacement” of the French and European populations, decried by writer Renaud Camus, is a peril just as significant for the future.

Organizing peaceful demonstrations will not suffice to stem the tide. We must first, as Renan would say, engineer a veritable “intellectual and moral” reform movement. Such a movement must allow us first to re-appropriate out forgotten French and European identity. The need for such a movement is still not widely acknowledged.

New actions, both spectacular and symbolic, are needed to shake us from our sleep-like stupor and reawaken our sense of tradition. We are entering into a time when talk must be supported by actions.

We must also remember what Heidegger formulated brilliantly in Being and Time: that the essence of man is not to be found in some “other world”, but in his very existence. It is here and now, in these last moments, that our destiny in is play. These final moments are as important as the rest of one’s life. That is why one must uphold their ideals to the very last second. Only in deciding for one’s self and seizing destiny can one vanquish nothingness. There is no way to escape this fact. In this life, we have two options: to uphold our ideals or to be nothing.

It was a moment that left me a bit taken aback. During a break from a journalism class I teach at Concordia University in Montreal, I was talking with one of my students. This young fellow is bright, handsome, ambitious, proudly queer and sexually active. “Do you live in the Village?” I queried, basically making small talk.

But this student stopped upon hearing the question and looked at me as if I had three heads. “Why would I want to live there?”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, given the growing chorus of existential soul-searching that is routinely heard when people discuss the idea of a gay village — that is, a neighbourhood that is specifically queer in a city. The stats have now become sadly familiar: with urban rents rising, gay-owned businesses and bookstores have been closing in Canada’s largest cities over the past decade, with chain stores and soulless condo skyscrapers taking their place. And since gays have gained far greater acceptance from the straight majority, queers have created new mini-hoods — Toronto’s Cabbagetown, Parkdale and Leslieville — or queer-friendly artsy areas, like Montreal’s Mile End. Add to that the emergence of the internet as the primary way to hook up sexually — the ascent of Generation Grindr — and some are declaring the very concept of the Village redundant and obsolete.

Which prompts the question: do we still need a Village?

Stan Persky, the prolific journalist, author and university instructor, who divides his time between Vancouver and Berlin, argues that yes, the relevance of gay districts has declined significantly over the past 20 years. And a big part of that, he suggests, is that being queer has become far more acceptable by the mainstream. “For some time, I’d say the years 1969 to 1994, from gay liberation years through to retrovirals, my identity as gay was constantly subject to some form of peril. It was supportive and nice to live in a neighbourhood where you felt reaffirmed daily by seeing other gays, being able to use gay institutions — bars, restaurants and bookstores — and generally living in an atmosphere of greater public safety. The need for that sort of support and mutual identification diminished enormously as the political struggle for the public acceptance of homosexuality succeeded.”

Persky points to a post-gay period, in which being “gay is now among one’s list of identifications without it requiring constant self-conceptualization or prioritizing, as discrimination against homosexuality has been legally overcome, for the most part, in Canadian politics. Public recognition of gay as simply one more part of the complicated human story has steadily increased.”

With tourism season fast approaching, operators from across the Island are getting a lesson in welcoming those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities.

Many Islanders in the tourism industry pride themselves on welcoming visitors but the organization Travel Gay Canada say there’s a lot more some could be doing.

Anne Marie Shrouder, of Travel Gay Canada, spent Friday morning educating operators on ways to make their businesses more LGBT-friendly.

Often, said Shrouder, it’s the more subtle reactions that are problematic for tourists in the gay community.

“I'm checking in with my partner and we're both female and we want one bed. And it's like, ‘Oh, right.’ Little things like that -- eyebrow [raising], whispering behind the counter, and it all undermines my sense of ‘I want to be here,’” she said.

Goldsbie: I’ve spent the last few days just assuming that the video would eventually get out, and probably sooner than later. But then I recalled that I took the same approach to the tape in which Rob Ford allegedly cursed out some 911 operators, and now I’m faced with considering the terrifying possibility that the footage may never be released. The thought that — in the absence of hard, publicly-viewable evidence — Ford might try to deny and move on from this allegation, as he has so many others, is upsetting to the point of being enraging. The thing is that, by now, it is difficult to imagine a scandal from which Rob Ford could not somehow escape: he is superhuman in his political abilities, with a hardcore fanbase that would find a way to rationalize a murder charge. Somewhere out there is a video recording that apparently depicts our mayor smoking crack and making disgusting homophobic and racist remarks, and yet nothing in his political experience would suggest to Rob Ford that the appropriate reaction is anything other than to carry on though there weren’t.

Gurney: I tend to agree that we’ll see the video. I’d have no doubt if we were dealing with rational actors. A deal would be reached and honoured. But both the Star and Gawker have said that the gentlemen in possession of the video are involved in the drug trade and their paranoia — making reporters meet them in backs of cars in random places — speaks to their mindset. I wouldn’t be surprised if the intensity of the coverage spooks them and sends them to ground. Again on the assumption that it never comes out, I agree with Chris that the voters would probably conclude that this indeed happened as related by the Star and Gawker. And they’d remember that in 2014. But Council, now? I don’t often give that group of human beings the benefit of the doubt. But here I will. Whatever they conclude about Ford’s alleged use of crack, if the video doesn’t come out, they’ll keep their private thoughts private and get on with the job. That’s good, I suppose. But it also leaves us where we were before the alleged video.

Selley: For now, sure. No point rubbing it in every chance they get. But suddenly it’s just that much more toxic to be seen supporting the Mayor himself, as opposed to happening to agree with him on any given issue. So many of his ideas depend on leaps of faith or logic — casino revenues build subways, for example — that this could become a significant hindrance, at least to the limited extent that the Ford administration operates according to standard rules of space, time and politics. Looking beyond that, it would certainly be an intriguing election dynamic. You’d think it would be easy to run a spirited campaign against an alleged crack-smoker, but it’s a fine line between pariah and victim. Ford’s best political play right now would be to step down, check into rehab — whether or not he really has a problem — and vow to return a better man in 2014. I don’t see that happening.

BC is perhaps the least homogeneous province in the country. The economic, social and demogaphic conditions in one community can be wildly different from those of a neighbouring community, to say nothing of the stark differences between a big city on the Island and a small town or rural area in the northern interior. In a province like Prince Edward Island, you can pick 50 random numbers out of the phone book and be pretty sure you’ve got a balanced sample; in British Columbia, you have to consider dozens of different factors and weightings (which means polling hundreds and thousands of different people!) just to get basic data.

And that’s a problem.

Because of that diversity, BC is expensive and difficult to poll. So are Ontario and Quebec, but Ontario and Quebec both have way, way, way more seats than BC, making their results more critical to the national picture.

This obviously bodes poorly. It means polling agencies have weak operations in a critical province, and—in situations like this—the lack of resources is plain and obvious.

But is that the wrong decision?

The bottom line is that Ontario and Quebec do matter more than BC when it comes to federal elections. Given the choice between throwing resources into a province with 107 seats or one with only 36, you’d need a very compelling reason to opt for the smaller province.

[T]he broad approach—ensuring the development process is guided by government and not casino operators—makes sense. Singapore spelled out a set of conditions to be placed on any gambling facility before considering specific proposals, and made licensing contingent on operators accepting any future regulation they might choose to impose.

Toronto has already set out a list of 47 conditions that a potential casino would have to meet (although they’re far less draconian in addressing social issues than those imposed in Singapore). However, unlike the Singaporean government, which isn’t beholden to any higher authority, Toronto is subject to the whims of Queen’s Park. This is why many councillors feel forced into a binary choice: that their only real decision is the yes/no question of whether to open up this question. If they do allow the process to go forward, they fear, they won’t have the capacity to direct the development process thereafter. Though the province has said it will listen to the municipalities, subsequent negotiations will largely be left to their creature, the OLG (“creature” in this case being not only the technically accurate term but also one that serendipitously conveys just the right tone).

Also, even if the province and OLG were to agree to include Toronto’s conditions in any negotiation, many of those conditions are sufficiently vague (“the casino will have an urban form that is designed to fit within its local context”) that there’s plenty of weasel room, particularly when the cash-strapped government is under pressure from a developer dangling bags of Yankee greenbacks and resistant to anything that might hinder efforts to hoover loonies from the pockets of hopeful punters.

Singapore seems to have found a trade-off that works, largely through its willingness to take a strong stance on regulating the casinos it has allowed. It’s an example that suggests Toronto could introduce casino gambling in a way that could be an economic and—don’t laugh—a cultural asset. But to get there, the province would have to let the City drive, or itself take on the task of regulating the facilities very strongly, and the prospective operators would have to sit in the back seat.

City council has voted in favour of rejecting any new gaming facilities for Toronto, effectively shutting the book on a multi-billion dollar casino and entertainment complex proposed for downtown.

During a special meeting Tuesday morning, council voted 40-4 against the creation of any new gaming facilities within the city. In a separate vote council also voted 24-20 against the expansion of gaming at Woodbine Racetrack.

A motion from Mayor Rob Ford that would have rejected a downtown casino outright, but left the door open to adding table games at Woodbine Racetrack was defeated 31-13.

“This was about the impact on the citizens of Toronto and the people of Ontario that didn’t want us to put forward a policy that encourages more people to get addicted to gambling and raises money in that fashion,” Coun. Mike Layton told reporters following the vote. “This was about how we treat people in the City of Toronto.”

"The casino vote was what thousands and thousands of Torontonians asked us to do," added Coun. Paula Fletcher. "This is probably the biggest vote that we will have in our entire term."

• Bag News Notes isn't impressed by the scandal aroused by Arne Svenson's photos of New York City condo dwellers taken through their windows--they are open, aren't they?


• Beyond the Beyond links to an interview with Chinese science fiction writer Fei Dao about that genre in China.


• Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell writes about the problems of rural America in keeping talent.


• The Dragon's Tales and Jonathan Crowe both link to the new cartographic map of Saturn's moon Titan.


• Far Outliers' quotes from Chinua Achebe's latest book, this quote a recounting of the geographic and social origins of nationalism in Nigeria.


• Geocurrents notes the patterns and causes of Stalin's deportation of ethnic minorities from frontier zones, from Finland through to Siberia.


• Terrible news from Normblog's Norman Geras, who is currently being hospitalized for prostate cancer.


• Torontoist reports on the multimedia efforts of a Torontonian looking for a cat lost at College and Dovercourt.


• The Way the Future Blogs' Frederik Pohl writes about Brooklyn's joys.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Kyrgyzstan is the latest former Soviet state to downgrade the status of the Russian language.

“Here we are just a group of guys sitting at a startup in Toronto and we woke up one morning realizing that we had this massive spike in Asia,” said Bryan Friedman, one of three of MavenSay’s founders. “We rose to become the No. 1 free iPhone app across all categories in Indonesia. And we sort of sat at the top of the charts for five days, beating out Angry Birds, the Iron Man app, Facebook, Twitter, everyone.”

Friedman, who started the company with his former University of Toronto classmates Mike Wagman and Jesse Dallal, said they were floored when they saw the 15,000 downloads that first day, which continued the following week as well.

MavenSay, built by a seven-person team, had initially focused garnering its users from cities like New York, L.A. and San Francisco. Celebrities, including Samantha and Charlotte Ronson, are sharing their likes. Maple Leaf Joffrey Lupul has recommended the Harbour Sixty Steakhouse, among other things.

Things were going well, said Friedman, but nothing could have prepared them for breakout success half way around the world. Looking back at the data, he chalks it up to some early adopters in Jakarta who had massive Instagram followings. Indonesia is home to an extremely tech savvy culture with high usage of social media platforms. At the end of 2012, Jakarta was the city with the most posted tweets in the world, and was the No. 5 country in the world for Twitter usage.

“We’ve tried to retrace the steps and find the exact person or group of people who started it,” he said. “The night this all started happening we noticed that a couple of these big Instagram users, who had about 16,000 followers each, and one of things you can do is publish your MavenSay profile on Instagram. So they cross-posted their profiles and it just went from there.”