Maëlys McArdle

Category: Life

Every other post.

  • If today’s tech was in an old movie, it would be a comedy

    If today’s tech was in an old movie, it would be a comedy

    The film’s protagonist arrives home to write a letter.

    He attempts to switch the lights; only they won’t turn on. Maybe the firmware on the smart lights crashed again, maybe one of the servers involved is down, maybe the company has sunset support to focus on new product lines, maybe the router needs a reboot.

    The protagonist, in the dark, goes to their computer. After passing through a bunch of ads in Windows to start the word processor, it too won’t work. They need to renew the Office 360 account.

    Fine, they load up Google Docs. After writing it all, they go to print. It won’t do it. They check the ink. Full. There’s a notification they missed: they need to pay for a subcription to HP.

    Exhausted, they start chores. The Roomba has a red LED; it won’t start. They lay down on the couch, defeated. The smart watch is low on juice and won’t tell the time. They turn on the television, and an outage means YouTube won’t let them log in.

    If someone pre-2006 watched this in theaters, they would laugh. It would just be so absurd.

    (more…)
  • A good winter

    A good winter

    This is the first winter in recent memory where I’ve consistently been in high spirits. Previously, I only experienced that during summers.

    I can think of a few reasons why that might be:

    • I live in an apartment that gets a lot of natural light
      • I moved from an apartment whose only source of natural light was a dark alley a few years ago
    • I am no longer deficient in Vitamin D
      • I increased the dosage of my supplements
    • I have kept pushing my comfort zone in order to acquire new experiences
      • I started skating for the first time since I was 18/19
      • I practiced not procrastinating and turning weekends into mini-adventures
      • I picked up new hobbies
    • I made my home into a cozy space that I want to be in
      • Blankets! Plants! Candles! Decor! Movies and video games!
    • My bff and I have been hanging out three times a week to write together – I feel creatively fulfilled
    • Evenings and weekends are mine
      • I quit a stressful job that had regular unpaid on-call
    (more…)
  • I don’t give a fuck what my gender is, but others do

    I don’t give a fuck what my gender is, but others do

    I don’t know what my gender is and I don’t care that I don’t know. I also don’t care that I have loved people of all genders.

    Others do. They care very much and they make that my problem. Passerby get agitated that they can’t tell what gender I am. To the point of shouting at me, groping me, picking a fight, pulling at my clothes, following me, ogling me, chasing me, mocking me, telling me that I should kill myself. They also get agitated when I hold hands or rest my head against a loved one they perceive to be the same-sex: more faggot this and faggot that, more ogling, more following, more uttering that we should be killed.

    These fuckers turn outings into minefields and even though it happens a lot less now, that it keeps happening at all makes it so I never feel safe except when with 3+ friends.

    And that’s just on account of the randos. Then there’s the opportunists who notice that queer and trans people are in the crosshairs and jump on the bandwagon to boost subscriptions or votes. I end up hearing their bigotry out of the mouths of people I cross and plastered on social media. These grifters are also the reason the US and UK have joined the ranks of Russia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia as jurisdictions I can no longer enter.

    (more…)
  • They came for you

    They came for you

    Tolerating human rights abuses set the stage for what we’re seeing today.

    Alex Pretti was a 37 year old nurse who cared for critically ill veterans. He was executed by federal agents in Minneapolis after he helped a woman they were assaulting.

    Alex Pretti moments before being executed by the secret police in Minneapolis.

    He was the second US citizen killed in as many weeks, the other being a young mother of three named Renee Good. She was observing abuses and vacating the area in her car. Agents shot her in the head in front of her wife.

    (more…)

  • The Canadian government is failing the AI future

    We live in a society where access to the essentials of life is predicated on having a job. I’m talking shelter, food, medication, children’s clothing, etc. Other means to access these are exceptions funded by the proceeds of jobs.

    So for the Canadian government to aggressively push to replace jobs with AI without equally aggressive efforts to rework this basic arrangement is a recipe for misery.

    Previous generations of automation already replaced well-paying jobs with bad ones. Gone were the pensions, the predictable hours, the weekends, the job security, the ability to feed and shelter a family on a typical wage.

    This new class of automation, dubbed AI, will introduce another change: an environment where there’s far more people than jobs. The money will still all be in the system of course, but it will have been transferred from the pockets of workers to corporate ledgers.

    We need to buck that trend. Not through the reintroduction of menial labour, but through government structures to return proceeds to the people so that we may still thrive. A tax, if you will.

    But if the repealed Digital Sales Tax is any indicator, this is not the government for audacious ideas.

    The genie is out of the bottle with AI; it will only continue to eat jobs. If MPs can only continue to harp on it as if they were board members at the expense of their constituents, then we are destined for a series successive crises – starting with young people not being able to find work.