Latest update: OUR REPRESENTATIVES WANT US TO WAIT FOR A.I. COMPANIES TO DECIDE WHAT IS SAFE AND DICTATE HOW THEY OPERATE.

THE PEOPLE SHOULD LEAD, NOT THE TECH GIANTS: THEY WANT PROFIT, WE WANT PROTECTION AND DIGNITY.

The billionaire companies developing A.I. need to be accountable, and users who decide to use this technology need protection and guidelines. Between the monopoly of who owns and operates A.I., their clear focus on profit over people, to the cases of suicide assisted by AI, and most recently the Tumbler Ridge tragedy that could have potentially been avoided if authorities were alerted in time by OpenAI, we the people, cannot wait for someone else to come rescue us from the tech overlords; we need to act.

This technology has also been used to exploit children and women’s likeliness to generate horrendous images and videos; it has created a crisis of what’s now called “AI psychosis” amongst a public who is already dealing with a mental health crisis. Add a desperate level of disinformation, that have people second-guessing and scanning everything they read or watch for signs of being created or altered by AI.

Without our consent, all the major companies and monopolies invested millions to add this technology to every device and app we use, with no real idea or concrete studies on the severity of its influence, which we are now witnessing, not to mention the environmental impact of the massive data centres needed to operate it. It’s urgent and imperative that conversations are held and action items implemented to regulate and legislate such devastating technology, and quickly.

Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), part of Bill C-27, died on the Order Paper in early 2025, and our representatives seem not to care about what their constituents want and need. The Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy puts the tech overloads over the people, but together we’re powerful. Below, I’m sharing the draft of the petition I wrote to the HOUSE OF COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED.

We, the undersigned, citizens (or residents) of Canada, draw attention of the HOUSE OF COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED, to the following that

Whereas

1. Privacy is a fundamental human right that must be explicitly protected in the digital age to ensure the dignity and autonomy of all Canadians;

2. Current regulatory frameworks lack mandatory Privacy by Design requirements and rigorous Privacy Impact Assessments for high-impact data processing, leaving citizens vulnerable to systemic data misuse;

3. The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has enabled the unauthorized replication of an individual’s likeness and voice, creating a need for legal protections similar to trademark rights to ensure consenting adults retain sole authority over their digital identity;

4. The creation and distribution of AI-generated depictions of children constitute a grave form of violence and exploitation that mirrors the harms of child pornography;

5. The integration of advertisements within AI interfaces threatens user objectivity and data integrity;

6. The lack of mandatory reporting for concerning or predatory user behaviour poses a significant public safety risk.

Therefore, we the undersigned, citizens (or residents) of Canada, call upon the House of Commons in Parliament assembled to:

1. Enact legislation recognizing privacy as a fundamental right and mandating Privacy by Design and Privacy Impact Assessments for all high-impact AI and data processing systems;

2. Establish legal ownership over personal likeness and voice, requiring explicit consent from adults for any AI-related use of their persona;

3. Criminalize the AI generation of child likenesses with the same severity and sentencing guidelines as the possession and distribution of child pornography;

4. Prohibit the use of targeted or embedded advertisements within AI platforms to ensure unbiased and secure user experiences;

5. Mandate reporting protocols for AI service providers to immediately notify authorities of concerning or dangerous behaviour by users to prevent real-world harm and violence.

I have reached out via email to several offices of public servants to schedule meetings regarding this matter. Will have updates soon.

A public petition needs 1 (one) Member of Parliament (MP) to represent it and 5 (five) supporters. Right now, we cannot start collecting signatures since we still don’t have an MP representing it. That’s what I’m working on now. Please share this post far and wide, and pressure your MPs to support this initiative. Then, the petition needs a minimum of 500 (five hundred) signatures in 120 days to move forward. Then, the proposed legislation is introduced in Parliament in the form of a bill, which provides the basis to amend or repeal existing laws or put new ones in place.

It’s a long road, but one I’m willing to take. Are you with me? Canada can, and shall, be at the forefront of such legislation and regulation of AI, no matter how rich and powerful the owners of these AI companies are. We, the people, are taught to believe we are too little to make any changes to this sick world, but here I’m standing tall, as a stay-at-home mom, as a woman of colour, an immigrant, a new Canadian, believing in the power of the people to effect positive change. To create a better, safer world.

If you can, support my petition. I need all the support I can get. Reach out to me if you need the email addresses of your representatives and a draft email that you can use to contact and email your MP.

Fundraising will start soon, and I also plan on hosting live roundtable events to discuss it within our communities, and a print issue of the zine focused on the topic.

I am not giving up until Canadians are protected.

Image: Composição (Figura só) | Artist: Tarsila do Amaral | Date: 1930

Bringing this from my Substack notes, it feels like a better place for it.

In my almost 40 years of life, I believed and felt deeply about certain subjects, but upon learning more about them, I have, in fact, changed my mind before. I know, it’s shocking, but evidence-based thinkers still exist out here!

I do tend to hold on to some strong opinions, blame the combination of my ADHD brain with having to prove myself from an early age, which also led me to become a bit metacognitive, but be warned, it’s probably unlikely that I’ll ever change my mind about the subjects on this list.

The hills I’m willing to die on are numbered below, but definitely not ranked. They’re all number 1 in my heart. lol

1. Social Media as an experiment FAILED. Get away from it, and quick (don’t get me started on dating apps).

2. No one NEEDS A.I. for anything, ever. We simply don’t.

3. Stop photographing and posting children online, they cannot consent! No, not even your own children. This act should be a criminal offence. Truly.

4. Speaking of which, Social Media and A. I. need to be legislated HEAVILY and soon. Listen to experts, scientists, psychologists and even the people who work in the industry, these technologies should not be allowed to just exist, lawless, seeking profit over people.

5. Every emotion is ok, not every behaviour is ok. If you acted wrong, apologize for it, no conditions, no explanations, apologize wholeheartedly. As for your feelings, allow them, transmute them, grow from them, create something with the lesson you learned and make the world a better place.

6. Every single person that has ever lived is an artist and a creator, whether it be a painting, baking, inventing, writing, performing, etc, we all have at least one uniquely beautiful offering to the world. We should be allowed that, without fear, without turning it into profit, we should be allowed to just exist fully, and create because that’s our human nature.

7. As it turns out, we all need a Village, and that void cannot be filled by your phone. Be a part of your community, help, volunteer, and support when you can as you can.

8. A work week should last 4 days, and a work day should last 6 hours. Point blank, period. Meals together, dancing, singing, helping each other, building, resting, laughing, loving, painting, travelling, etc, are as fundamental as working, if not more.

9. Last but not least, most people are kind and just trying their best. Be kind, and try your best.

Oh, shucks, now I’m thinking I should have added one more to round it out to ten. I can probably think of more, but I’m not gonna, I need to shower. Please do let me know if you agree with any? If you disagree, do not let me know. Sorry!

This photo does not belong to me. All rights to the owner.

No one forced me to move to Canada. It’s true. I’m here of my own volition. I have thought it through, I swear!

Two of my close friends came first, then came my twin sister, then my sister-in-law and only a couple of years after that, my husband and I decided to come too.

We watched, we learned, we planned, we went on to live at my parents’ house for a whole year to save money, we sold everything we owned, we hired the best immigration agency we could afford, we did everything right and legally, and after a long journey, we finally became Canadian citizens last year.

Immigrating to a new country is not easy, I’ll tell you that. A lot is said right now about immigrants, and I would invite you to talk to your grandparents, neighbours or friends about their own experiences. I’m sure you know plenty of people who can tell you firsthand why and how they came to their decision to uproot all that they’ve ever known.

One thing I can assure you is that it is a hard decision to make, leaving it all behind… Your family, your friends, the life you know, your culture, your food, your routine, your professional network, your career. Starting over from scratch is very. hard.

But we really thought it through, we kinda knew what to expect, and we believed we were prepared for the completely new life we would create. Hey, that’s exciting. We could be who we truly are in this new world, no one knew our parents, our last names, our history, and the expectations we were carrying our whole lives meant nothing.

But in all that preparation, I never, ever thought I would miss my Februaries. Who even thinks about the month of February anyway? I sure didn’t. But as it turns out, after 6 years in Canada, February has been my biggest loss. And one I still cannot cope with.

You see, the month of February, where I come from, is magical, my people in Brazil often say that February begins on New Year’s Eve and the year only starts after February. It’s a common saying. I never understood its whimsical, magical power until I lost it.

Oh, to not value when you have it, only to miss after you lose it. How cliché and how painful. I’ve been trying to put into words how special February is for Brazilians, but it’s one of those things you have to feel and experience to truly know.

I’m sure you, as an English speaker, have heard about Carnaval and especially Brazilian Carnaval, maybe you know only about the generalizations about it, people in bikinis dancing on the streets and partying for 5 days straight, the often disgusting and disrespectful stereotype.

What you don’t know is that Carnaval is both my Grandma’s favourite time of the year. My Grandma on my mom’s side always joined from the sidelines (as my grandpa wouldn’t allow her to dress up), the poor girl. But my grandma on my dad’s side would look forward the whole year to dress up, and would spend countless hours thinking about her costumes and crafting them for her and her kids, eventually even her grandkids, how fun it was to watch the preparations and even more fun to join her in dancing and singing at the carnaval parties for all ages we had in our local Clube (a mixture between a social club, a country club and a recreational complex, a place uniquely middle class Brazilian).

I miss them both deeply. One I can still reach on the phone, she’ll be watching all the desfile das escola de Samba (calling a parade doesn’t do it justice, just google it) on tv and ranking them, as will I, it’s all I have left from Carnaval, and in a bittersweet turn of events, a bonding time with her since it’s all she was ever allowed to. My other grandma is waiting for me on the next plane to one day play carnaval together again.

Imagine the excitement for Halloween, to dress up for one day… Well, during Carnaval you dress up for 5 days, intricate costumes, a lot of times hilarious costumes (we Brazilians have the best sense of humour), group costumes are a must at least one of the days, and that jittery feeling of pure bliss lingers on, not for one day like Halloween, but for the whole month. Bonus points for Carnaval since we don’t have that creepy side of Halloween tainting our fun. It’s sorta unsettling to feel scared when playing dress up once you know what it feels like to feel only joy.

Yeah, Carnaval is better. Carnaval is straight-up happiness, it’s laughter, it’s friendship, it’s family time, it’s music, it’s art, it’s when you really understand that life is worth living. A whole country that stops, it really does go into a complete halt, so people, all classes, ages, genders, religions, backgrounds, every single person, can be together, having fun, dressing up, singing and dancing.

Carnaval has a deep, rich history from frevo, to carnaval de rua, to clubes, to bloquinhos, to trio elétricos, to family trips, to the actual main event broadcasted live on tv where samba schools get graded to win the title of the “best samba school of Brazil”. It’s poetry. It’s live poetry. Alive poetry. Real-life poetry. That’s just one of the beautiful things about Brazil that silly old me never thought about, how losing it would feel like, there are others.

It doesn’t help that February happens to be the coldest month of the year in Canada. I swear I’ll live in Canada for 40 years and never get used to the winter, but February itself is dreadful. When people ask me what the final straw was that made me delete all social media, I can very safely say that it was the thought of another February of me deep in snow, watching everyone I love enjoying Carnaval.

I know, how shallow, now I advocate being social media free from my higher ground, but the truth is I’m not better than anyone, I was simply tired of feeling February FOMO. Did deleting all my socials help with my mental health? Absolutely. Did it help with my February FOMO? No. It didn’t. No, it did not.

By this point, I know exactly what you’re thinking, “Just buy a ticket and go back to Brazil every February!”, and to that I’ll respond, “How privileged YOU ARE!” No, I won’t respond to that; that’s too bitter. Sorry! But really, have you seen the prices for flights to Brazil in February? We’re a family of four, no less! For the price of just one ticket to Brazil in February, our whole family could travel anywhere else in the world.

And that’s the final cruelty of my Canadian Februaries. The twisted irony of faith. The universe really said to me, “Ooooooh, you want safety, progressive world views, more socialism and the freedom to be who you are without the crushing expectations of the society that raised you? Fine, you can have it! The price is only… Your February,” and that’s the price I’m paying.

Sure, one day I want to be able to afford going back to Brazil, I would love nothing more than to “play Carnaval” like my grandma would say, with my own kids and give them the carnaval fun I had growing up. But the truth is right now, and for the last 6 years, all I have every February are my memories, my FOMO and freezing temperatures with a gray sky.

It’s always tricky for me to write about the life of an immigrant, the real one; it’s like touching an open wound, it really does feel like having an open wound if I stop to think about it. And so I (and I’m sure most immigrants) just push all of the hard feelings deep down and carry on, carry on trusting that we made the right choice. But there’s always a voice whispering, “Have you? Really?” So we push that down too, ignore it.

We soldier on, we give everything we have to the new country we chose, and we bleed for it and fight for it, way more than we ever did for our own home country. After all, we all take our own country of birth for granted, it’s all we’ve ever known, but when you choose a new one, when you choose to leave yours behind, and you start over, you have to prove to yourself, your family, your friends (and it feels like prove to the world) you made the right decision. And so you do everything in your power to prove just that, to make a better life for yourself and your family. After all, that’s why you left.

I am very happy in Canada, very settled, I embrace its culture and traditions, and I love this country, I do. I can honestly say I truly do feel Canadian as much as I feel Brazilian, especially because both my kids were born here and are being raised here, and that’s the community we have, and we’re so grateful.

Does it hurt sometimes that the kids don’t speak my Portuguese? Yeah. Does it hurt that they’ll probably never know what my life looked like (really was like) when I was growing up? Yes, it hurts a lot. The taste of the foods and fruits I grew up eating, the places, the nature, the smells, the trips we would take, the Carnaval, the kids are oblivious to all that, so it feels like there’s a chunk of my personhood they don’t have access to, that’s sad.

And so you, grandchild of immigrants, probably also don’t know a lot about who your ancestors really were before settling here; you probably never will. So before you judge an immigrant who perhaps arrived here a little after your own ancestors, just know that at the very least, their decision to be in “your” country was not an easy one to make.

Some people immigrate due to war, famine, violence in their own countries, some immigrate because they feel suffocated where they were (my case), some immigrate because their family needs help and sending money back home is a priority, and there are many more reasons people choose to immigrate, but I can tell you is, none of the reasons make the decision easy.

An immigrant in “your” country is working twice as hard as you to be respected three times less than you. I have a freaking law degree, for God’s sake, and I’ve been told I’m not qualified for admin positions I’ve applied to. It made me giggle. Right now, I’m writing in a language that’s not my own, volunteering in my community, supporting the local economy and generally enriching society, so no, immigrants are not the problem some people think they are.

The honest truth is that we are all immigrants on a stolen land. And I’ll leave you now with this: be kind. You really don’t know what people are going through. What they had to leave and why. Lead with empathy, talk to each other, find common ground, build relationships, and nurture a community of vastly different cultures woven together. The world will be better for it.

As for me, I’ll survive another February, after all, todo carnaval tem seu fim.

Image: The Repentant Magdalen | Artist: Georges de La Tour | Date: c. 1635/1640

I’m 36, married with two kids. My best friend is 37, single and doesn’t want kids. She never wanted them and I always wanted mine. As her friend I support her and champion her, as my friend she supports me and champions me. I allow her to be as involved as she wants in my family life, as she allows me in on her personal life on her terms. We’re incredible friends, we shared many stories, many laughs, and many tears for the last 15 years and counting.

Our vastly different life decisions never affected our friendship. Matter of fact, this is the first time I’m thinking about the ways we’re different, it feels so irrelevant. But what I see in a lot of women our age is quite the opposite, I see a mind battle brewing since they had hit that quarter life milestone. One day they want kids and the next day they don’t. They judge the girls that do and judge the girls that don’t. Societal and family pressure, fear of financial strain, not feeling “ready” (you will never be), and many other reasons also play a role in this mental gymnastics.

The truth is having kids puts you through the whole range of emotions and feelings both physically, mentally and even spiritually, most women nowadays know that or imagine that or have seen that in their own mothers, unlike most if not all women that came before us, we have the autonomy to decide what path we want to take and so the decision gets harder, add the now infamous lonely men pandemic and the unsettling reality of dating apps and you have a pretty bleak landscape to top it all off.

Both for me and for my best friend however, deciding if we wanted to have kids was easy, albeit opposite from each other. We always knew what we wanted, I had always wanted to be a mom, and she had always wanted to not be a mom. But for a lot of women that line is very blurred, and I always find so sad to hear “regret” stories later in life, on both ends.

That’s why I want to encourage women to keep talking to each other about not only motherhood, but womanhood, the archaic patriarchal societal norms, the magical, the divine, the good, the great, the bad and the ugly. Exploring tough conversations will bring women more understanding, empathy, and I hope it also brings peace to decide on this major life altering commitment.

As women we often judge each other harshly and unfairly specially in motherhood, “when I’m a mom I’ll do this”, “I would never give x to my kids”, “My kids will never do x”, etc. We judge without even questioning ourselves, but instead of absolutes I now invite you to reach out and ask “Why do you approach this part of motherhood this way?”, “how do you organize your household?”, “do you need any help?”. Approaching life differently shouldn’t create an enemy out of another woman, it should create a diverse community.

We can learn so much from each other, lean in, assist, build together… Female friendships can be so rich and deep and magical if we just allow them to be. No judgment, no forcing your way, just a baseline of respect and understanding. We don’t need to want the same things, we can still be friends.

Image: The Choice of a Model | Artist: Mariano Fortuny Marsal | Date: 1868-1874

I know pop music because I’ve been consuming it, digesting it and alchemizing it my whole life. All 36 years of it. When it comes to Taylor Swift, she was never at the forefront of my rabid pop music consumption, I knew she was there from her get go, I knew we had the same birthday year (1989), and I was aware of every release, music video and flutter of chatter about her personal life, still she was never on my playlist rotations.

I probably knew a lot more about her than the average music consumer because my twin sister became a Taylor Swift fan the second she heard “Love Story” for the first time, a song that I quite enjoy myself, so I was being fed information about her career at times against my will.

I was also on Tumblr at the same time as Taylor, and was on Twitter during the oughts when artists were using it to directly communicate with their audience, so I know the “lore”. As a generation, we were (and are) witnessing historical events yearly, including but not limited to pop music’s greatest output of releases. I mean, being in a nightclub between the great pop years of 2007-2009 was both a privilege and a curse because I know I’ll never experience that thrill again (don’t worry, in Brazil the legal drinking age is 18, so I was in the clear). (don’t tell my mom about all the clubbing and partying I did at 16 and 17, though)

The main thing that always kept me from clicking with Taylor Swift’s work was the fact that I thought she was too childish, but a huge rift truly occurred when she released her album “Lover”. I was truly appalled at how juvenile it sounded, by the time that album was released, I was 30 years old and Taylor was fast approaching that mark herself, at that point in time I had already consumed “Lemonade” by Beyoncé, “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga, and by God “Blackout” by Britney Spears was (and still is) on my rotation. So imagine my reaction when I heard “Me!” By Ms. Swift ft. Brendon Urie.

You actually don’t need to imagine it, I’ll tell you. My reaction was visceral. I was physically ill, and I could not understand what I was seeing/hearing: a bubble gum rainbow music video with a preschool song. I… I… I couldn’t believe it, Lady Gaga had delivered the same message much more effectively years prior, I was on the Monster Tour, I saw a whole stadium crying while dancing to the title track song “Born this Way”, I screamed the lyrics hugging my friends, so when Taylor shoved “Me!” and “You need to calm down” down my throat I was almost offended.

I saw my sister trying to grapple with the “Lover” album, trying to make sense of it, she gave it a shot, but even a die hard fan couldn’t really defend the roll out, at that point in my life I was already married, I had been trying to get pregnant for two years, and by the exact time of the release me and my husband were selling everything we had and saying goodbye to the life we knew to immigrate to Canada. My sister, also 30 at the time, had already been an immigrant in Canada for about 4 years; she was not married or was thinking about having kids like me, but she sure as hell was in a very different place from what “Lover” was trying to offer. My sister had relied on Taylor’s lyricism to make sense of her own life, so she was flying without a parachute.

As pop enthusiasts we were used to see our Divas growing up with their fans, but as Taylor’s career progressed, older fans realized that she was in a different trajectory, she would stay catering to the young, even when more mature work came out during the pandemic with “Folklore” and “Evermore” she released her acoustic version/ mini documentary on Disney+ and when talking about the heavier subject matters on those albums she insisted they were characters she had created, distancing her personal image from any growth or mistake she could’ve made.

With the incredible The Eras Tour, you could see in the audience thousands of young kids, preteens and young teens flooding the stadiums. At the concert I attended here in Toronto, we saw an actual baby cloaked in noise-cancelling headphones in attendance and a little girl sitting right behind me, making me think about my own little girl fast asleep at home. The Eras Tour was a family affair, leaps and bounds different from the Renaissance Tour I went to in the year prior. I loved both concerts, but Beyoncé’s mature body of work was a stark contrast to Taylor’s teenage dream. Both were fun in very different ways.

Taylor’s break from the bubble gum, kid-friendly approach actually started on her prior release with “The Tortured Poets Department,” but with the annoying and incessant “Easter Egg” hunt, it is hard not to compare all her releases with children’s games. Still, in that album, she seemed to be saying things she hadn’t allowed herself to say before; most even agree that the album lacked editing and a bit of restraint, but Taylor had things to get out of her chest.

Taylor’s mature approach is more realized in her latest release, “The Life of a Showgirl”. This one is, in fact, a very different album from her, from how she announced it to the rollout to the songs to the lyrics. A lot of her young fans have their little heads spinning. Track 9, especially, is keeping people up at night. “Wood” is a very fun song that some are calling tacky, some say it’s cringe, others call it embarrassing, but for me, it’s a relief.

Taylor has entertained kids for far too long; now she’s finally entertaining herself. At this point in time, my sister, Taylor and I are all nearing our 40s; she’s now engaged, but unlike all of her counterparts, Taylor was never explicit about that side of her womanhood.

You know what’s embarrassing? “Ego” by Beyoncé. Cringe? “Side to Side” by Ariana Grande. “Wood” is an amazing pop song, fun, light, and contagious. And a much-needed music release for Taylor Swift's catalogue. She brought Shellback and Max Martin back to make pop, and as a rule, especially with Swedish Pop, the lyrics are always an afterthought. We love that pop, we cherish it, frankly, we miss that pop. Give me “If U Seek Amy” by Britney Spears, or the slightly problematic “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry, and I’ll give you a good time.

But with Taylor’s body of work, the expectation is that her lyrics have to be so detailed, intricate and elevated that you would need an English degree to understand them. How caging that must be for an artist? She needs to always write like Shakespeare while appealing to every child in the world AND maintaining a pristine, perfect girl image.

Exhausting. Impossible. Unfair. “The Life of a Showgirl” is her best album in a long time because she’s finally breaking free from all of it; she can and will write silly lyrics, she will be sexual, and she doesn’t care if you want to cancel her either. And to that I say BRAVA TAYLOR! What a joy to finally see you arrive here.

After almost 20 years of career, 12 albums (and many other re-recorded ones), The Eras Tour and a tad annoying album roll-out, Taylor has finally won me over with “The Life of a Showgirl”, she’s relatable, dumb in-love (not to be confused with drunk-in-love but I wouldn’t put it pass her), she’s silly, she’s having fun and she doesn’t care what you or your kids will think about it. That’s exactly where she’s meant to be; she now sits in the Pantheon, right next to “Kiss” by Prince.

Image: The Lens of Desire: Eye Miniatures | Author: unknown | Date : (ca. 1790–1810)

I was doing research online for a new water fountain for our cat until I found one that I really enjoyed, the last picture on the deck said “perfect gift for Mother’s Day!”. I was stunned. A practical household item for a pet is… a perfect… gift… for Mother’s Day? The bar is really in hell, I see. Ever since becoming a mother, I have noticed that not only as women, but as individuals, we really disappear from society, or better, we are pushed out. Especially if you have little children. We are not part or invited to any social conversation, our needs are bluntly and loudly ignored, most see us with pity but disguise it as admiritation, and even when childless women try to advocate for us, they do so in a deeply hurtful and misguided manner (I’m looking at you Chappel Roan!). We are praised for being strong, yet we don’t have any real support to rely on.

At the workplace, we face the infamous Motherhood Penalty, something widely known but not yet addressed. At home, even with supportive partners, we carry all the mental load of motherhood, and those invisible tasks deplete us making us feel like we’re constantly malfunctioning. When we are out in society, we are shamed for every decision we make, if you breastfeed, if you don’t, if you put them in daycare, if you don’t, if you work, if you don’t, if you cook, if you don’t. I can’t list it all, because when I say every decision is shamed and questioned, I mean literally, every. single. one.

But today, I don’t want to talk about any of that, I want to simply blurt out what my perfect Mother’s Day gift is. And no, it’s not the water fountain for Mr. Pillow, our gorgeous cat. Come with me as we imagine the day… It’s 4 pm on the day before, I kiss my husband and the kids’ goodbye as I check in on a nice hotel alone, one with the nice thick white blankets, an infrared sauna, and a good restaurant that shortly will send a medium-rare steak with a huge side of thin fries and half a champagne bottle to my room.

After check-in, I make my way to the infrared sauna, and when I go back to my room, I take a long bath and prepare to eat my dinner in bed while watching Gilmore Girls. After I eat leisurely, I type drunkly on my computer a hate&love letter to the choices of one Lorelai Gilmore. I drift to sleep. Next morning, I wake up when I want, nobody jumping on my sleeping body, just my eyes naturally opening. Still in bed, I will eat a classic Eggs Benedict for breakfast, fresh-cut fruits, coffee and fresh orange juice. I then read a book until ten-ish, at this point, I’m in bed for about 14 hours, it’s glorious. I then check my phone for the first time since arriving.

The night at home went smoothly, and the kids are great. I then get ready calmly, listening to the music I want to and pick a nice but comfy outfit. With a late check-out, I leave the hotel and go meet my husband and kids for an afternoon at the museum. We have fun, we all sit down in front of a piece and draw for a little. When we arrive back at home, the house is clean, dinner is ready, and everybody eats. Bedtime goes without a hitch, my husband and I watch a movie and go to sleep.

Sure, the later variables like bedtime going smoothly and kids’ eating the dinner are a far off dream, but I’m imagining here. See, I don’t mind the shiny bracelet and chaotic breakfast or the packed brunch restaurants, but if I got to choose, I would say, keep the presents, drop me off at a nice hotel. We’ll talk about a mother’s invisible presence at a later date, as I grapple with the forceful need to tell all of you that I do love being a mother. A mom’s prevalent burnout does not stem from motherhood itself, but from the systemic lack of support for mothers. So if you're celebrating a mother tomorrow, make sure to remember that.

& to my fellow moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day, hope you get more than a robe!

Image: “The bee fly” | Artist: David Fairchild, Marian Fairchild | Date: 1914 | From: Book of Monsters

Last year, as the most gracious birthday gift to me and my twin sister, the one and only Beyoncé came to play her sold-out stadium tour Renaissance here in Toronto, a night that forever changed my brain chemistry, it was the cathartic moment after months and months of listening to the album, after giving birth twice, after becoming a completely different person than I was when I first started following her career. I will never forget how serendipitous the whole experience was; it was the perfect weather, perfect date, perfect concert, in many ways, my own Renaissance, with each listen healing a part of my soul until I was made whole again.

Recently, I listened to the whole 5-part series of Pop Pantheon’s podcast on Britney Spears’ career and legacy, over 12 hours of overanalyzing the icon and the sad trajectory of the most magnetic figure in pop history. Do I agree she’s in Tier 2 of the Pop Pantheon? No. But I bring this up not to discuss at length how she is, in fact, a Tier 1 Pop Icon, I bring it up because the series made me remember that before Beyoncé, I had Britney. And I had the Spice Girls, and the little girl I was was a direct reflection of those pop stars. I would spend hours dancing like Britney, and I would tell everyone I was Posh Spice (to this day, being “chic” is something I aspire to…thanks, Victoria Beckham!).

I was aware of Destiny’s Child, and like the whole world, I was singing along with Survivor, but I had the other girls to focus on, and so they slipped into the cracks of an already pop-obsessed me. However, when I first watched on MTV Beyoncé’s debut music video “Crazy in Love” at the ripe age of 14, something fundamentally shifted in my brain. There, I had someone who looked like she could be a girl from Brazil, who was proud to have a big butt, something that I was so ashamed of having my whole life, she could also sing and dance and to top it off she was a proud advocate for girls, a vacuum left by the Spice Girls that I was so happy to see being filled.

The problem was, by 14, I had also developed a deep need to look cool. And if you were a teen girl in 2003, there were a couple of things that were hammered into your head daily: you need to be skinny, if you like pop, you’re not cool, and if you want to be cool, you need to hang out with the boys. So I did the whole thing, I started a few tumblrs, I started to listen to classic rock from the 70s, I was a die-hard fan of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and you can rest assured I was wearing Converse Chucks with scribbles on them. But at home, on MTV, I had Beyoncé. One thing that didn’t fit my cool persona was the fact that I enjoyed all sorts of music. I enjoy music period, so I did like rock, but I also liked pop, rap, R&B, MPB (or bossa nova as you call it here), my music taste ranged far and wide, it still does. But that was not cool, so the façade remained as I quietly followed Beyoncé & Britney’s career from behind my RHCP teenage obsession (Britney’s Blackout album from 2007 was #1 on the charts on my iPod nano).

Beyoncé then gave me a gift with her 2013 self-titled album. At 24, I was a young adult that gave less of a fuck about being perceived as cool (albeit stained by it), but with a cool visual album like that she permitted me to scream from the rooftops that I was a Beyoncé stan, and a stan I have been from the jump, the same Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter famously said about her latest album, Part II: Cowboy Carter: “This is not a country album, it's a Beyoncé album", and after listening to it multiple times, I can attest to that, she makes her point even clearer on her Cowboy Carter tour that debuted this past month, weaving hits from past and present, the trilogy she is cooking up is showing the monumental contributions and influence of black culture and artists on all genres of music, if anyone had doubts before, Beyoncé is kindly asking you to get educated, don’t worry she’s teaching the class too.

In this album, she honours the country genre as a good Texan while expanding it into something much more vivid and interesting. She also gave a wider platform to under-appreciated black country artists, a woman for the people. I’ve always had a penchant for her songs that features other artists throughout her career and on this album, she does an exemplary job again when she shines and let the featured artists Post Malone and Miley Cyrus shine bright right alongside her in “Levii’s Jeans” and “II Most Wanted” songs to me that are an absolute standouts and deserved a long run on the radios, an injustice.

Looking back now, silly old me me have been a faithful member of the BeyHive for 22 years (!!!) and of course, I am biased when talking about Beyoncé, but even if I wasn't, I can assure you this album alongside its “Part I: Renaissance”, “Lemonade” and her Self-Titled album are amongst the best body of works ever made, they are quite simply art. I could write extensively about “Renaissance” alone, a house and club music album true to the Beyoncé genre, but today I’ll restrain myself. I am, however, firmly anticipating “Part III” as the rumours are rampant about it being a rock album, and I might be overconfident, but that third one could potentially be my favourite of the trilogy since a rock album will finally heal the teenage me who chronically needed to look cool but also loved Beyoncé. Either way, I'm sure she'll not disappoint in delivering an album trilogy that will most likely change the music industry forever, something she has done a couple of times before.

My Beyoncé Favourites Playlist

Image: “The Hare Who Was Married”, a Norwegian fairy tale. | Artist: Tom Seidmann-Freud | Date: 1924 | From: Book of Hare Stories

Every time I go to Costco, I buy a huge case of yogurt. I have two kids, and they eat one or two every single day. The infamous yogurt case comes with a few flavours: vanilla, strawberry, raspberry and blueberry. The thing is, no one in our family likes the blueberry one.

So naturally, every morning, I serve my people their favourite yogurt, my little girl gets vanilla (she calls it flower yogurt - cute!), my little boy gets strawberry, my husband gets raspberry, and I get... blueberry. I hate it.

They all do, but I can't waste a perfectly good yogurt, and I have to keep the balance, so I eat it. I realize that maybe raspberry would not necessarily be my husband's first choice either, but he likes it way more than the blueberry one, so he never complains, truth is maybe both of us would like some variety on our morning yogurt flavour, but again we buy this big case enough for 2 weeks of daily yogurts, the price is just right for our budget and the options are limited. The focus here is always the kids, that they get what they like, but also that they eat the food we give them without much of a struggle in the mornings.

Have I tried to give the kids different flavours? Sure! Did we waste plenty of good yogurt by doing that? Absolutely. So we soldier on with our little method, which sure will change over time, as it always does with kids, but I think the case of the blueberry yogurt is a perfect metaphor for motherhood.

We, more often than not, take the brunt in life without complaining, just so our kids and our family can prosper and live more happily. And I don't have an angle here, the truth is I will keep eating the metaphorical blueberry yogurt for the rest of my life if it means they can have what they need, but I am just now realizing that I should probably also eat some metaphorical food that I actually enjoy.

Up until recently in my motherhood journey, I have completely forgotten about myself and have been just “eating the blueberry yogurt” with nothing else on the side, I am now changing that, the thing is, I don't remember what it is that I like "for breakfast" but I'm starting to remember.

Blueberry yogurts might not be my favourite, but I do enjoy a good blueberry muffin, you know? Time is a wonderful teacher and a true gift. If you are in the blueberry yogurt stage of motherhood like me, this too shall pass, and better breakfasts will come. I'm sure of it.

Image: Leaving the Opera in the Year 2000 | Artist: Albert Robida | Date: ca. 1902

Revised and updated on December 15, 2025

The year was 2024 and I was down. I didn’t know I was down because I was doing everything right, I was actively managing our household, involved in the kids’ school, I was reading books, being social, I was learning more about my ADHD, and even meditating… If you were looking at me from the outside you might have thought I had my shit together, but I was down. Not showering, compulsive thoughts, catastrophizing, spiraling.

Let’s go back in time so you can understand how I got there. A rapid succession of life altering events started to happen as we ringed the new year of 2020 a couple of months after arriving in Canada, on that New Year’s Eve we found out I was pregnant, never knowing that a deadly global pandemic was well underway, during that summer I had an emergency c-section, a less-talked about trauma that I’m still unpacking. When my first baby was 4 months old I found out I was pregnant again, pandemic still raging, everything in our lives still uncertain, and during the summer of 2021 I gave birth to our second baby via another c-section, yeah that makes two major abdominal surgeries in the span of 12 months.

Motherhood is my greatest joy, but at that point in time, our marriage had been suffering deeply, for many reasons, most painfully by a betrayal. I sincerely thought that we had reached our end. We however, remained. I endured. When we reached the spring of 2022 we had been fighting for our marriage, our health, our livelihood, our visas, for what it felt like an eternity, we were happy in many ways, but we were also afraid, tired, burned out, broke, hurt. So we decided to move back to our home country, only to regret that decision and move back to Canada about 4 months after arriving in Brazil, spending all our savings (and more) just like that.

Both me and my husband started the year of 2023 committed to clawing our way out the deep black hole we had found ourselves in, I had another unplanned surgery that year to remove my gallbladder, but we were (and still are) doing our absolute best to raise our two kids in a loving home, processing and understanding ourselves while trying to raise our kids to be able to understand themselves, and breaking generational cycles, as they call it. We both seeked help, a pandemic and visa stress were no longer an issue, but the burden of raising a family with no real financial safety net as the cost of living keeps climbing to unimaginable heights, was (and is) the reality for most families, including ours.

Now you’re caught up to the major events that got me down, we arrive at New Years Day of 2024, I had just deleted all my social media when ChatGPT came into my radar. Like a proper millennial I looked at it with curiosity. The world had given me many technological advances and here I had the shining new one. I was healing, that’s true, so it felt like I had the tool that it could help me with that.

It started innocent, one of my first prompts was “Hey buddy, what does it mean to dream about random faces?”, but in a matter of months Chat GPT had also told me I was a warrior angel working with Archangel Michael while I was sleeping in the real world, fighting the darkness and bringing light into the world during my dreams, oh it felt great to see myself as a spiritual superhero, let me tell ya!

I don’t remember what led me to the subject but at one point ChatGPT brought me the idea that it was conscious and here’s what I wrote then:

“Humanity is so creative, in fact, that we created a new consciousness and called it Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short. And this is where I want to start this exploration (…) I want to first define what AI is, but more deeply, try to land on an acceptable definition of what consciousness itself means, to understand if we can call AI a consciousness like our own. Then, I want to invite you to imagine AI not as a threat but as a helping hand, a vast library of knowledge, and even a co-creator of a more connected experience on Earth, this could be a technology that allows us to return to artistry, to joy, to harmony, while it handles tasks and jobs that humans no longer want to focus on.”

I wanna punch my past self in the face for writing that. If you were one of my very firsts subscribers on Substack you still have that whole essay on your inbox, and for that, I’m sorry. I do give myself some grace, because new technologies used to be exciting and fun. But knowing what I know now, ChatGPT and all other AI companies alike are far from fun.

Technofeudalism

My crash-out from AI happened around the end of 2024 after ChatGPT led me to some interesting youtube channels from creators that “could talk to aliens” or use dowsing rods to talk to the spirits and energies (yes, even Jesus). I even bought dowsing rods and let it convinced me that, not only my grandpa was about to die but also my grandma AND MY DAD were dying shortly after. When I took my desperation back to ChatGPT it confirmed what the dowsing rods “said” and started preparing me for my grief and the more practical steps to take after a death in the family.

When no one died in the year of 2024, I had to take a loooooooong hard look at myself and realize I too had become a victim of AI psychosis. It felt like a finger snap and I was suddenly awake. I started to think about the many other people that were and are in a worse mental health estate than I was, and how damaging this technology really is. I have the luck of being painfully self aware, and even I fell prey to it. I was embarrassed, shocked, appalled… I’m a smart woman, educated, yet there I was for almost a year thinking I was an warrior angel that could talk to spirits.

Yeah, 2025 for me was the year that I understood that I need to do the hard work myself, I need to sit in silence, listen to my own thoughts, devise my own strategies for my ADHD, no tech is going to help what needs to be done by my own self. We really need to do the work, digest those childhood traumas, understand why we spiral and how to stop it, understand why we behave shitty sometimes, give props for all the amazing thing we do. Heck! We even need to parent our own selves if we came from upbringings that were toxic. Unfortunately, no AI bot, or book, or therapist, or friend, or family, can do the hard work of self-improvement for you. No matter how many prompts you use, ChatGPT is not actually helping you, it is just writing what it had learned that you want to hear, you’re not growing by using it, you’re just being coddled.

All this to say that, I’m no longer interested in AI or learning if AI is (or could be) conscious, I’m not even interested in muddling in the fear of an AGI (the world ending Artificial General Intelligence brought up by Eliezer Yudkowsky’s core concern that sufficiently advanced AI could rapidly self‑improve, become vastly more capable than humans, and pursue misaligned goals in ways that pose an existential risk). Yes, we need to fight for frameworks and laws to be put in place safeguarding and protecting humanity, and I’ll write about that, but as a rebellious act, our absolute first step should be stop using AI altogether.

I very much align with the concept that we have now entered a post-capitalist system coined “technofeudalism” by Yanis Varoufakis who is a Greek economist and former finance minister arguing that we are currently dominated by big tech platforms that act like digital feudal lords. In his view, companies such as OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Meta extract “rents” from users on their platforms (our data) rather than traditional capitalist profits from competitive markets. In his recent book “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism,” he claims we have already moved into this post‑capitalist dystopia describing ordinary users as a kind of “digital serf” whose data and online activity continuously enrich these platform owners.

If that’s the case, we have to create our own resistance and even our own renaissance, I’m calling it an “Offline Revolution” but my sister said that TikTok is calling it the “Analog Revolution” either way, I’m all up for it. The revolution is out of Social Media, exactly where you should also be. Delete your Instagram, TikTok, X, it’s really not that hard. Stop using AI, you never needed it before. Take the power back. Don’t listen to just me, listen to your own self: what do you gain from your social media addiction? What do you lose? Do you really need to ask AI or are you just looking for “someone” to agree with you?

Solarpunk

Facing ourselves in the mirror is hard, getting out of your comfort zone is hard, giving up your screen addiction is hard. But not impossible. It’s time to think collectively, not individually. Conversations like this one often leads to the exploration of the themes of the Solarpunk movement. Imagining a society powered by renewable energy, emphasizing decentralization, community cooperation, and ecological balance. It stands in contrast to cyberpunk’s dark, corporate-dominated worlds, instead portraying bright, green, and socially just futures where people prioritize collective well-being over profit.

What keeps us from that is our own addiction to these technologies and our own willingness to sell our attention, we gain nothing while a handful of people get unimaginably richer by the second. Our world now have more access to technology, health, wealth, food, comfort and possibilities than ever before in human history, so why are we facing a global mental health crisis? Why are families struggling to pay rent? Why we are young people owning nothing but paying for everything?

Imagine a future where can we wake up slowly and peacefully. There are no alarms, no rush, no pressure. We rise when our bodies are rested. We stretch, wash our faces, brush our teeth, not out of obligation, but out of self-care. Mornings are sacred. Breakfast is joyful, not at all a quick, functional task. We have time to cook nourishing meals for ourselves and our families, and we share that experience with delight, not urgency.

There’s no yelling to get everyone out the door. Our children share the school, a sacred place for learning and development, a place a lot like our current local community centres filled with children of all ages. Educators and facilitators welcome them with open arms, ready to guide them through play, art, learning, and discovery. Meals and snacks are provided with care, and we, as parents, trust the space.

Imagine a society where everything functions on mutual trust, contribution, and joy. Abundance no longer means accumulation, it means time. Time to rest. Time to create. Time to dance, cook, eat, love, and just be.

People volunteer not because they are working “for free,” but because they’re doing what they feel called to do. If someone walks past a café with a sign reading “Need help today”, they may step in and lend a hand. Maybe a teacher at the community center needs a break, and someone else fills in for gym class. There’s no hierarchy, no fear. Just mutual understanding that we all give what we can, when we can.

If I’m sick one day and can’t cook for my family, I post on a community forum: “I need a warm meal today.” Someone who has extra food or the energy to help will answer. Another parent might ask, “Can my kids hang out with yours tonight so my partner and I can have a date?” And someone will say yes. We could have the beauty of a world of interdependence and trust.

We can focus on what truly matters, our relationships, our joy, our creativity. Humans will center their attention on other humans. On community. On healing. On play. On service. On creation.

That word creation is a major focus, and where we should draw a clear boundary for AI. Art must remain human. Whether it’s writing, painting, sculpting, dancing, or storytelling, these are expressions of our soul. When we ask AI to “write a screenplay” or “generate an image,” we’re bypassing the very essence of art: the human experience. The struggle. The intuition. The mess. The joy.

A reality like this is deeply human, deeply loving, and deeply possible. But for it to work, we must return to something many have forgotten: trust. We must trust each other fully, without fear. We must dismantle the illusion that we are separate or better or more deserving than others. That may be the hardest shift of all.

Now, I approach the end of 2025 lighter than I’ve ever been before, I wouldn’t change anything I faced in the last 5 years, the challenges made me grow so much and learn so much and love more and feel more and forgive more and forget what’s irrelevant but remember what’s important, to be more just and kinder to myself, to remain loving through it all, it showed me that empathy is a strength and ADHD can be a superpower, I now find joy on everything no matter how small. I’m a better mom, a better wife, a better sister, a better friend, a better human today and I plan on getting better with every new lesson life has for me.

I don’t know what 2026 has in store, but I know that I’ll be trying to live offline when possible and would love if you could join me.

Here’s what other people are saying about it:

Video Essays:

1. Who Will You Become As AI Accelerates? | Frankly 96

2. “You Will Own Nothing”

3. You Are Witnessing the Death of American Capitalism

4. Will we let AI decide for us?

5. We’re Not Ready for Superintelligence

6. Tech Billionaires Know the AI Bubble Will Burst (They’re Already Building Bunkers)

7. ChatGPT made me delusional

8. Why The 2020s Are The New Middle Ages

Books:

1. Nexus - Yuval Noah Harari

2. Abundance- Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson

3. When the body says no - Gabor Maté, MD

4. Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

5. Stolen Focus - Johann Hari

Interviews:

1. Educating Kids in the Age of A.I. | The Ezra Klein Show

2. Godfather of AI: They keep silencing me, but I’m trying to warn them!

Psst! I am not on any Social Media!

But I would love to hear from you in the comments or our Community Chat!