Maëlys McArdle

Author: Maëlys McArdle

  • New Year

    New Year

    2023 included trips to New Orleans, Nashville, the Grand Canyon, Vegas, Montreal, Sudbury, Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Cannes, and most importantly the Midland Butter Tart Festival.

    It also included facing off transphobes multiple times, as they harassed young families and performers at the NAC, harassed three schools in the west end, harassed attendees at a small pride event in Vanier. I also went to the trans march in Montreal and pride in Ottawa.

    I went off-roading for the first time, and took to the water with my kayak. I saw a number of shows. I went spelunking. I lost 35lbs. I built up my little library of queer and trans history. This was also the year that I found out I would never have kids, and started grieving that. I also broke up with my partner and lost three friends.

    I have a small list for what I’ll get up to for 2024. I can’t see a future anymore, not like before. But I can see one year ahead, and I’ll take it.

  • French Riviera

    French Riviera

    A month ago, I spent two weeks in France with my dad. We spent time in Paris, Nice, Marseilles, with day trips to Monte Carlo, Cannes and Èze.

    Relaxing in Nice.
    The view from the Nietzsche path in Èze.
    View from the hotel in Marseilles.

    This was my third time in the country, but the first time outside of Paris. French as spoken by French-Canadians is difficult for people in France to understand, to the point that my last times there they switched to English. Annoyed by this habit, I decided to alter how I spoke to approximate Metropolitain French. Twice I heard people remark that I was Belgian and never once switched to English, a win.

    The intent of the trip was to live well and relax. We checked out Versailles, where we were evacuated due to a bomb threat. We went to the casino in Monte Carlo, and ate a great meal at the Salon Rose. I took a train to Èze, and climbed up the Nietzsche path, and visited the medieval village on its summit. I took another train to Cannes, where I had a glass of wine by the beach. I got to try socca, pissaladière, bouillabaisse and a salade niçoise for the first time. Delicious pastries and downtime abound. I heard the name Maëlys twice in the wild, and got a bracelet with my name on it.

    Getting around was really easy; the train system (SNCF) has an app where I could buy tickets minutes ahead of a departure, and public transit similarly had apps that made it trivial. I also used Uber a number of times.

    My only regret is not having checked out Antibes. If you come this way though, do visit Èze.

  • This blog is twenty years old

    My first website was around 2000-2001, when I had a presence on GeoCities. At the time, this was the most common way for someone to have their own place online, as this was before social media.

    My GeoCities website. The weather map no longer loads as it is from a long-gone source, and the transparency effect for all the blue boxes no longer works as it was made in a way before browsers took on standards, but it gives you a rough idea.

    What would become this incarnation was put online in November 2003. For context, MySpace launched only three months earlier.

    A lot has changed since this website has gone up for millennials:

    • Music used to be listened to on CDs
      • Spotify launched in 2008
    • Movies watched in theatres or on DVD
      • YouTube launched in 2005
      • Netflix streaming launched in 2007
      • Apple TV+ in 2019
    • Games played on discs
      • Steam launched in September 2003
    • Books were physical
      • Kindle first came out in 2007
    • Maps were on paper
      • Google Maps launched in 2005
    • Programs were listened to on radio
      • The term “podcast” was coined in 2004
    • There was no contactless payments
      • You needed to sign a receipt if you paid by credit card
      • A lot of smaller places were cash-only
    • There was no self-checkout
      • Cashiers handled every transaction
      • Other jobs – like handling payroll – had dedicated people
    • There was no billion-user social media
      • MySpace peaked at 300M users in 2007
      • Facebook launched in 2005
      • Tumblr in 2007
      • Instagram in 2010
      • Snapchat in 2011
      • TikTok in 2016
    • There were no apps or infinite scrolling or cellphone addiction
      • iPhone launched in 2007
    • You ordered cabs with a phone call
      • Uber launched in 2009
    • You stayed at hotels
      • Airbnb launched in 2008
    • Payphones were a common way to place phone calls on the go
      • Cellphones were only starting to pick up, and could only call and text
    • Banking was done via ATM or with a bank teller
      • Cashing a cheque couldn’t be done via app yet
      • Cheques were the most common way to transfer money
        • e-transfer launched in 2003
    • At work, conversations were in-person or via call
      • Slack launched in 2014
    • People still sent letters
      • E-Mail was a thing, but most companies would communicate to you via letters, and some acquaintances as well
      • Bills came in the mail
    • CRT televisions / monitors were the norm
    • Light bulbs were predominantly incandescent
      • LED light bulbs hit the market in 2009
    • Buses didn’t report their position with GPS
      • You consulted a schedule to know when it was expected to show up
      • You consulted a map to know which streets routes operated on

    I focused on millennials for the above because for the elderly, my parents’ generation now, they largely do things as it was done in 2003. I don’t think they’d attempt using a self-checkout, tap to pay, navigate by GPS, subscribe to a streaming service, etc.

    Other changes since 2003 include the cost of living:

    • Average home price in 2003 was $220,000
      • In 2023, it was $745,000
    • Median income in 2003 for 35-44 year olds was $45,200
    • Some private-sector jobs still offered pensions
      • Now at best the company might contribute a single year’s worth of income to your RRSPs over 30 years – if job security weren’t similarly a thing of the past

    And the matter of rights:

    • Same-sex marriage was not yet legal across Canada
      • First jurisdiction was Ontario in 2003; across Canada in 2005
    • Trans people had to have surgery, even if they didn’t want it, to update legal documents – and surgeries weren’t covered in Ontario
      • CAMH was practicing conversion therapy on trans youth until 2015
    • Employers were firing staff for being gay or trans in greater numbers

    There was a physicality, and inherent slowness, that existed in 2003. What we do now is broadly the same, but this is accomplished is completely different, bequeathed to software. I’m not only talking apps; but products invisibly eliminating careers altogether and substituting them, if at all, with lower paying precarious alternatives. Similarly, those careers that remain face downward pressures on job quality, that is, unless they are in the business of contributing to those downward pressures for others.

    My 2003 self was optimistic for the future.

    My 2023 self has a more complicated outlook.

  • Time traveling with film

    Time traveling with film

    I watched 1987’s No Man’s Land the other night. I loved it, not for the writing or the acting, but because it felt like I was visiting another time: a version of the eighties showcased through home interiors, streetscapes, restaurants, cars and tech. There’s something about being able to step into the eighties, nineties, and early aughts through movies that’s really pleasing to me.

    Even animated works satisfy that itch; Akira drips the eighties not only through its animation style but in how the technology of that decade defined its vision of the future.

    This visual satisfaction stretches into works from the early aughts like 2003’s Lost in Translation. Through my millennial perception of time, that doesn’t seem so long ago, until I remember that 2023 is to 2003 what 2003 was to 1983. How people accomplish tasks has completely changed since 2003: this was before apps, tap-to-pay, LED lighting, Google Maps, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, YouTube, WhatsApp, Spotify, Facebook, etc. You listened to CDs, watched DVDs, cashed cheques at a bank, phoned a cab company, used paper maps and phone books, etc. There was a physicality required, either through objects or presence, that the intervening years obsoleted.

    So that Lost in Translation lingers so much outside of the characters, words and stereotypes to highlight that world is a pleasure:

    Depictions of earlier decades don’t provide this same comfort. Perhaps that’s to do with my having been born in 1985; time passes slower as a kid, so the nineties and the totems of the eighties that lingered in that decade have an outsized presence in my mind.

    I would never want to relive those years, but to be a tourist in those decades by way of incidental footage is my guilty pleasure.

  • Anti-trans and anti-gay rallies across Canada, deconstructed

    Anti-trans and anti-gay rallies across Canada, deconstructed

    Following the failure to portray gay people as an existential threat, conservatives have shifted to trans people’s increasing acceptance as the latest wedge issue. Supported by an ecosystem of American conservative television, British tabloids, reactionary content creators, and a long-standing history of homophobia and transphobia domestically, these forces have resulted in the biggest rallies against gender and sexual minorities in Canadian history. These actions are enabled by legacy media and public institutions that overlook the unhinged bigotry of its organizers, the bomb threats and physical intimidation of its adherents, and sanitizes the genocidal views expressed while depicting them as mere opinion.

    Polling and political trends suggests that the virulent transphobia being observed will only get worse.

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