Notices by May Likes Toronto (mayintoronto@beige.party)

I'm watching LinkedIn throttle this post. (I don't care, but I like seeing the numbers.)
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn🇱🇮activity:7432068646677516289/

I used to post a ton on there. Super thoughtful posts on product and organizational culture. What people need to do good work.

Then they started throttling posts. Anything with links, anything anti-AI or anti-LinkedIn posts usually gets murdered by the algorithm.

And now it's just people vs the algorithms trying to play the game. AI vs AI trying to get ahead.

I didn't want to see my content next to the slop, so I stopped making the content. Stopped having insightful conversations with the people who wanted to talk about our mutual interests.

The platform is exhausting.

Our words have always been the things that make us uniquely us. I feel such a deep sorrow.

I feel like I'm watching some of the most capable people I know lose their minds, letting chatbots take over their words.

@skinnylatte Can you elaborate on the Ramadan one? I looked it up and it said it began today, but I figure you'd know what you're talking about.

The duality of May

Me: *writes a treatise on how all humans should be treated with kindness*

Also me: *cackles at a video where someone gets sacked (hit in the balls) when their own prank backfires*

Ooooh! Up in time to see another sunrise.

Toronto has gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. All that air pollution scatters the light so beautifully.

Related thread: https://beige.party/@ZenHeathen/116077245972589149

But you need to keep in mind that this isn't just about consumer hardware. Everyone's going to get hit by this, from individuals to institutions to the biggest corporations. If you can't buy hardware, your operational risk requires you to rent it.

I'm surprised governments and megacorps aren't freaking out.

I wonder how much of the current AI bubble is really a front to build power infrastructure and data centres, so that we no longer have operational devices anymore and must resort to using their cloud services.

Classic rent seeking behaviours.

@dfloyd888 not if there's no RAM or graphics cards available to build your publicly owned data centres.

Or hard drives. https://mashable.com/article/ai-hard-drive-hdd-shortages-western-digital-sold-out

Apple Daily was a household name growing up in Hong Kong. They published on the side of the Umbrella Protest in Hong Kong, and now they're making an example out of him.

"A Hong Kong court sentences the 78-year-old British citizen Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison after he was found guilty of national security offences last December."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77ely7nv2do

My nonprofit ODLAN is doing some fundraising to help us to continue delivering our work against queerphobic and transphobic online hate, to build a more inclusive web.

There are some really great deals here for Toronto-area businesses and services! (and swag!)
https://www.32auctions.com/ODLAN2026

Help us celebrate our 5th birthday by giving us money! There's also a Donate button if you just want to give us money.

#Toronto #fundraising #lgbtq

Wow. I wrote! Current draft ~1500 words!

Context - https://beige.party/@mayintoronto/115992852457807640

It's been over a year since I last wrote professionally (as in, for my profession. Not as in I get paid).

Working title: Power in the Mundane.

My articles rarely come together so easily. This has been on my mind for a long, long time.

One of the hard parts about writing is that I want to be complete and thorough. So my drafts get looooong.

I'm forcing myself to limit the scope of this one.

I love writing. I missed this so much.

Fedi, I need you to hold me to publishing this in the next month, or it'll never get done again.

Maybe I'll ask my artist friend to illustrate it! No more stock photos!

#cdnpoli - Who needs food inspectors anyway?

"Our union represents roughly 4000 CFIA employees on a total workforce of nearly 6400. Employees were called into an all-staff town hall yesterday, where they learned that 1371 jobs would be affected by employment transition measures, and 587 would be cut altogether as part of the Carney government’s austerity measures.

"Food recalls increased by 150% over the last decade. You can do math, and it doesn’t look good. Food safety experts have been warning us that CFIA can’t take any more hits, but the government isn’t listening. They are putting short-term savings over the health of our country.”

https://www.agrunion.com/jobs-cuts-at-cfia-will-lead-to-a-food-safety-crisis-in-canada/

@skinnylatte I wonder how much of that culture stemmed from the great famine. Having fresh food could be a status thing too.

@evan I'm asking you to reconsider your position on the term "expatriate", and to perhaps refrain from using it in this context in the future.

I don't care about the poll itself, since I know that editing is not an option.

@fabio

@evan @fabio Fabio is right. Expatriate is a term that spun out of white colonizers living in the other parts of the world, where they have no intention of becoming a part of the society, including accepting citizenship.

Would most people call Jamaican temporary foreign workers on Canadian farms that are treated as slave labour "expats"?

When I went to China to work, was I a Canadian expat? Would I be considered one from the lens of a Chinese national vs a Canadian? The place where I was born is a part of China now. I don't even know what my rights are anymore with regards to my birth place. I'm a Canadian citizen.

Expatriate is a term that's drowning in class, racism, and white colonial history. Perhaps you should reconsider its use.