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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith
@garysmith.bsky.social
370 followers 270 following 1.1K posts
Toronto, Ontario, Canada 🍁 Web development: garysmith.ca Writing: decompiling.ca Painting: citypainter.ca
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · Aug 29
I have officially migrated my free newsletter from the Nazified Substack to self-hosted Ghost. This is the morally correct thing to do, but it might prove disastrous for growing my meagre readership. Time will tell. Do free to subscribe if any of my ramblings interest you. www.decompiling.ca
Decompiling
A newsletter about history, travel, art, music, and the fuzzy lines that connect these topics.
www.decompiling.ca
2
Reposted by Gary Smith
seattlebikeblog.com
Seattle Bike Blog @seattlebikeblog.com · 1d
Dear Toronto: We will stop scoring runs this game if Doug Ford agrees to stop tearing out bike lanes. Until then, the runs will continue.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 2d
Americans are *still* publishing earnest bullshit like this. The only "innocent bystanders" are Canadians, betrayed by our ally. Egan pretends the friendship "broke down" when it was deliberately destroyed by one side. He writes off Canadian sovereignty as mere "bruised feelings". The arrogance.
Canada’s boycott America movement is hurting innocent bystanders | CNN Business
Virginia Distillery CEO Gareth Moore was bullish on his company’s American single malt whisky sales north of the border when 2025 kicked off.
www.cnn.com
garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 2d
Pitching was fine yesterday. They did their jobs. 3 ER over 9 should be a win. The sleeping offense was the problem.
garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 2d
This is rather scathing, isn't it.
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Reposted by Gary Smith
how-sen.com
How-Sen Chong @how-sen.com · 2d
Begun in 2009, Bixi was commissioned with the support of public money by the City of Montreal. Just this week it was named by Time Magazine as one of the top inventions since 2025. The bike system can be found in NYC, London, DC, Rio, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Barcelona, Dubai, Monaco, and more.
Bixi bike-sharing program among the top 25 inventions in 25 years, TIME Magazine declares
The list also includes the iPhone and the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator.
montrealgazette.com
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 2d
"It is the result of a very long epidemic of selfishness and cowardice in public life, a hollowness at the heart of our rhetoric about democracy that has, at last, ushered in a chaos agent that will make us pay for all of it at once."
Fragility Is Getting Scary
The opposite of risk management.
open.substack.com
garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 5d
Use the janky tools nobody asked for to speed up the building of a thing nobody wants, or you're fired.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 6d
"The Points of Interest of Beautiful Toronto are best seen from the Palatial Coaches of the Toronto Transportation Commission" (1926)
A scan of a paper map of Toronto from 1926 titled "Canada's most beautiful summer city -- Toronto"
Reposted by Gary Smith
karlbode.com
Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 6d
anyway I'm off to go dump all my deepest secrets into an AI therapist bot run by a sociopathic technofascist
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 6d
This is a great story. I wish they added few photos of the new Biidaasige Park, too.
Creatures buried in soil for over a century burst back to life in Toronto waterfront
A project to restore coastal wetland leads to astonishing discoveries of a host of life: seeds and plant scraps, as well as water fleas, worms, larvae and plankton
www.theguardian.com
Reposted by Gary Smith
jasonthorne.bsky.social
Jason Thorne @jasonthorne.bsky.social · 9d
The Venn diagram of urban density and average household GHG emissions is pretty much a circle. Interesting study on “Mapping household GHG emissions in the Greater Golden Horseshoe” from the University of Toronto School of Cities schoolofcities.utoronto.ca/mapping-hous...
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Reposted by Gary Smith
wilnerness.bsky.social
Mike Wilner @wilnerness.bsky.social · 6d
Start spreading the news, bitches!" - John Schneider.

#Bluejays
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Reposted by Gary Smith
buildtoronto.com
Build Toronto @buildtoronto.com · 7d
Toronto's digital services are stuck in the past – a patchwork of portals, paper forms, and outdated processes.

From paying taxes to renewing permits, residents face a maze of separate logins, different formats, or long wait times.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 9d
Everything you need to do, in one place! We call it America Online. Welcome to the World Wide Wow!
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 11d
Doctorow's 'Enshittification' theory may soon need an update. Enshittifimplosion? Or maybe we're just in plain old-fashioned deep shit. Being right is a small consolation when your retirement investments are wiped out.
Cory Doctorow Says the AI Industry Is About to Collapse
Famed sci-fi author and tech journalist Cory Doctorow has a spectacularly grim warning about the coming AI-fueled economic disaster.
futurism.com
garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 11d
Anyway, this is the ongoing state of the glorious new technology that is destroying education, bankrupting artists, inflating the stock markets, and soon taking your job. Have a great weekend.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 11d
The final time I Googled the same Neil Young Lyrics, AI Overview decided once again they were from Beyoncé, this time collaborating with Post Malone on a song called "My House". She does have a song by that name, but Post Malone didn't sing on it, and its lyrics are completely unrelated.
A screen shot of an Google AI Overview response that suggests some Neil Young Lyrics are from a Beyoncé and Post Malone collaboration song, along with a backstory.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 11d
The third time I Googled the same Neil Young Lyrics, AI Overview decided they were from a Miley Cyrus song, linking them thematically to Hurricane Harvey. She does apparently have a song containing the line "the sky is falling" though that's not the actual name of the song.
A screen shot of an Google AI Overview response that suggests some Neil Young Lyrics are from a Miley Cyrus song, along with a backstory.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 11d
In a new tab, I Googled the same lyrics again. AI Overview generated a new hallucination, this time decided the lyrics were from a song by My Chemical Romance. They do have a song sort of by that name, but it doesn't seem to contain those lyrics. They again come with some made-up lyrical analysis.
A screen shot of an Google AI Overview response that suggests some Neil Young Lyrics are from a My Chemical Romance song called "Black Parade", followed by some speculated meanings of the lyrics.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 11d
I Googled a snippet of lyrics from a 1985 Neil Young song called "Misfits" and AI Overview piped up and insisted the lyrics are from a Beyoncé song that does not seem to exist. Okay, weird. Then it hallucinated some nonsense about what she meant by the lyrics.
A screen shot of an Google AI Overview response that suggests some Neil Young Lyrics are from a Beyoncé song called "Houston", along with a backstory.
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Reposted by Gary Smith
pmeierprof.bsky.social
Petra Meier @pmeierprof.bsky.social · 12d
35 years ago today this happened. I’d grown up in the belief it could never happen, but then it did. It’s not been easy and even now reunification is an ongoing process. However, it makes me wonder what good things may be just around the corner that we currently think are impossible.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 13d
I had a friend who destroyed his finances after high school on Proline when that first appeared. The perfect victim, a 20-25ish male who thinks he knows everything. By the time they realize they don't, the damage is done. Reminds me of cigarette marketing. And it ruins the fun of sports, too.
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 13d
'In Morris Lum’s photographic archive of Chinatowns, change is the only constant.'
A photographer traveled across North America’s Chinatowns. Here’s what he saw | CNN
Capturing culture and commerce in over 20 Chinatowns, Morris Lum has compiled a living archive of migration patterns, diasporic trends and urban gentrification.
www.cnn.com
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garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 14d
General strike against 13-hour work day brings Greece to a halt
Transport systems, hospitals and schools hit, as workers say laws kill hopes of work-life balance
www.theguardian.com
garysmith.bsky.social
Gary Smith @garysmith.bsky.social · 14d
Investigadores de la Universidad de Cádiz sacan a la luz un dolmen de más de 5.000 años en Teba (Málaga)
Investigadores de la Universidad de Cádiz sacan a la luz un dolmen de más de 5.000 años en Teba (Málaga)
www.uca.es