Majd al-Shihabi 🏴 مجد الشهابي

Technologist turned urban planner turned academic. Interested in climate action and pan-Syrian futures.

#noAI

Location: Tkaronto (Toronto)
Homepage: https://majdal.cc
Pronounes: he/him/هو
Tired level: very

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npub1src3g2vaq7mhpxueuq2z7adnnmezc38y7kmg7ml0l2cwutmmlxus6ya5gx

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgpug59xws0dmsnwv7q9p0wkeeau3vgnj0td50dlhl4v8w9aalnwgprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntq9xltw

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

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npub1src3g2vaq7mhpxueuq2z7adnnmezc38y7kmg7ml0l2cwutmmlxus6ya5gx

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Last Notes

2026-09-08 18:41:00 GMT

The black flag 🏴 in my profile name actually has a meaning.
For many years now, I wanted to add my mom's last name as an official last name. In the Arabic-speaking world, women don't change their last name when they get married, so my mom keeps her last name, Ala Rashi.
The name is Kurdish, it means black flag, and it has a story:
The family had escaped the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians. They were targeted even though they are Kurds, because they sheltered fleeing Armenians. When they arrived in Damascus and settled in what became the Kurdish neighbourhood, they raised the black flag as a sign of mourning.
Over a century later, we have more reasons for mourning. The black flag reminds me that grief is a constant presence in our lives. It's inherited inter-generationally.
Maybe one day I'll add it officially to my ID. But for now, it'll stay there flying over my online presence.

2026-09-04 17:45:09 GMT

I ride my bicycle year round, even on the snowiest Toronto days. My building does not have indoor bike storage, so my bike always needs some repair of one form or another.
There's a DIY bicycle repair shop on campus that I go to regularly. It's cumbersome to do repairs, breaking my schedule, taking time off from my dissertation writing, etc... But I always go to the repair shop and learn how to do it myself.
Of course it's much cheaper than getting it professionally repaired, but also I get to learn about bike components, how the mechanics come together to make the bike move. The decades of accumulated design solutions to common problems that became standardized. Most importantly, I do something with my hands and physical materials, instead of my fingertips and screens and words and concepts.
DIY bike repair shops occupy a similar place of reverence I have for public libraries. They are prefigurative forms of love to the city.
#uToronto #cycling #bikelanes #TOpoli

2026-09-03 14:47:55 GMT

RE: https://mastodon.social/@pdimagearchive/117207596123506752
One of the surreal and funny things about Palestine is that there's a long tradition of marching bands that play bagpipes and percussion instruments in parades. From the smallest refugee camps in the West Bank to big cities like Jaffa, everyone has a band.
My fondest memory of my April 2023 trip to Palestine was going to the big parade in Ramallah for the Saturday of Light (the day before Orthodox Easter). A holy fire is taken from the tomb of Jesus at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the flame is taken, Olympic-style, to cities and villages all over the region. Ramallah is a 20 minute drive from Jerusalem, but our flame was delayed by a couple of hours because of the Israeli apartheid checkpoints.
Bands from all over historic Palestine come to play, and people line the main street to welcome the holy fire. Believers touch the holy flame to cleanse their faces with it, and use it to light a candle that they bring home after the parade.

2026-08-11 02:13:17 GMT

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@sybren/117069899347050032
This is super cool! Reminds me of the National Monument project that artist Marwan Rechmaoui worked on with @npub1npz…uuvp as fundraising for Visualizing Palestine.
They took data from pre-Nakba maps of Palestine via #PalOpenMaps, and turned them into 3D visualizations. I worked at a fab lab at the time, so I made the first prototypes for them using a desktop CNC machine. Ahmad wanted to use solid wood for the final product, but the only scrap wood I had at the lab was MDF. Turns out that MDF wood layers functioned as topographic lines, giving the maps a very nice aesthetic.
The results were gorgeous. I very much regret not buying one of the final products.
You can see photos of the final products on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationalmonument/
#note188r…mkap

2026-07-15 18:37:05 GMT

Everyone I know in Toronto is sending photos of the orange skies. The heavy feeling of dread is in the air.
Meanwhile I’m sitting in my office with air conditioning and an air filter, writing my dissertation about municipal climate action, not knowing if we’ll survive long enough for this knowledge to be useful.
What a nightmare.

2026-07-09 23:06:12 GMT

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wow – i hadn't heard about this... This is science fiction dystopia...

2026-05-29 15:17:59 GMT

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I did a bit more digging, and it seems like it's not just the No Mow May thing. It's a project funded by the European Commission, in partnership with a bunch of universities, municipalities, and private sector companies in 4 EU countries.
The University of Bologna press release about it: https://magazine.unibo.it/en/articles/researchers-work-to-bring-pollinators-back-to-cities
The funding details: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/projects-details/43252405/101215929

2026-05-29 08:46:19 GMT

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Another Milano observation:
I noticed that the grass in the city is growing completely wild. In public parks, roundabouts, etc... Any municipally-managed space has the grass growing unshorn. I assumed that it was the municipality doing austerity and saving money by not cutting the grass.
I asked my partner, turns out it's a program to address the collapse of bee and pollinator populations in Italy. They're letting the ecosystem grow back as an experiment to see if it has an impact on the pollinator population.
The two photos below are in the southern part of the city, around the Prada foundation.
https://magazine.unibo.it/en/articles/researchers-work-to-bring-pollinators-back-to-cities
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/656/978/964/588/498/original/ce3ea99c2e1969fa.jpg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/656/979/010/881/606/original/69a0448b641c05c9.jpg

2026-05-13 12:29:45 GMT

Nothing makes you feel at home in a city like randomly bumping into people you know on the streets.
I arrived in Milano yesterday. I took the train from the airport to the city centre to pick up the house keys from my partner, then took the metro to his place. On the metro, I bumped into a friend who I haven't seen in years.
What a small world

2026-04-29 17:03:03 GMT

The Dig podcast just launched their website for their Thawra series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century.
I learned SO MUCH about radical history in the region through this podcast, and I consider myself to be relatively well-informed.
Very highly recommended listen:
https://thawraproject.com/
#TheDig #Palestine #Syria #Lebanon #Thawra

2026-04-08 18:48:34 GMT

Beirut was my home for almost 4 years when I was studying urban planning at the American University of Beirut, and I have a lot of loved ones in the city.
Following today's Israeli terror strikes, I spent the morning checking on people... Of course, everyone is shaken, but they feel compelled to reassure us that they're ok.
Everyone I checked with was grateful for my messages, to know that they are not forgotten.
A friend sent me a video of a building that was struck by an Israeli missile. It was less than 100m away from my apartment on the waterfront, and maybe 200m from the AUB campus. Two friends lived in the building adjacent to that building that now is mostly rubble. I couldn't get to them, but I heard through other friends that they're ok.
The rubble from the terror strike is piled on the street, burying cars under it, blocking the street that I walked every day to get to campus.
Israel is a terrorist state.
#Beirut #Lebanon #Palestine #Iran

2026-03-30 18:44:25 GMT

I tried @npub1zq5…dlp2 search, and I loved it. I really want to use it. But when I went to subscribe, all the plans forced me to pay for AI features that I really REALLY don't want. They don't have a "no AI" plan.... sigh...

2026-03-30 15:19:26 GMT

This article by Adrien Zakar is a must-read. Talks about the history of the different Nakbas before the term became almost exclusively associated with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in order to establish the Israeli state.
The people of our region, whether they're Arab, Armenian, Kurdish, Syriac, Yazidi just have not had a break for more than a century.
Nakba: Catastrophic Ideation and the Meanings of Disaster (1895–1948)
https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhaf789
#Gaza #Palestine #Nakba

2026-02-04 17:10:35 GMT

Ran a fun Palestine Open Maps mapathon yesterday with Yara Sa'di-Ibraheem. She's researching communications infrastructure in Palestine during the British colonial era, so we extracted the telecom infrastructure in the historical maps using the Tasking Manager, based on Yara's paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103242
We got a lot of work done! The blue squares are the ones that have been worked on. There's a long way to go, but good progress.
#PalOpenMaps #uToronto #OSM #mapathon #OpenHistoricalMap
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/013/446/319/009/484/original/b5913b3ef3a73532.png

2026-02-03 16:11:16 GMT

RE: https://social.coop/@majdal/116002025724407799
A reflection on social media:
I shared this photo in three places: here on Mastodon, on r/toronto subreddit, and on Signal stories. Each one has a different set of viewers.
But the place my friends are likely to see it is on Instagram. I started posting it there, and immediately felt an instinctive revulsion to doing anything on that platform. I didn't finish posting it.
Existing on the internet is such a hazard these days.
#note1ml5…yag6

2026-02-02 16:40:41 GMT

Last night's full moon, shot on an iPhone with 8x zoom. It's shocking how quickly the moon moves in the sky. It was only there for a few moments, then it hid behind the tall building.
The tallest building to the right is at Yonge and Bloor, the shorter buildings closer to me are Honest Ed's at Bathurst and Bloor. The pigeons are the permanent residents of my street corner.
#Tkaronto #Toronto #photography #fullmoon #sunset #بدر #تصوير #غروب
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/002/006/815/439/013/original/7dfe226000fdd08d.jpeg

2026-01-29 21:01:26 GMT

RE: https://tech.lgbt/@ShadowJonathan/115979646528496303
I would fix the metadata on everyone's Zotero library if they let me do it. And help them come up with archival systems for whatever collections they're compiling.
I would also help them find all the stories hidden in their archives.
But having to "earn a living" stops me from doing so.
Fuck capitalism.
#note1g3e…0avr

2025-12-04 21:02:38 GMT

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Viewing #AI usage as indicator of resource constraints helps me be compassionate with the people who do use it, and focus on the real systemic problem that produce the resource constraints.

2025-12-04 21:00:14 GMT

Today was the first time I had to deal with #workslop from a colleague. His task was to write a narrative final report for a small production grant that I received and he managed. He produced something that I'd be embarrassed to present, so I spent the past 3 hours rewriting it.
I'm reminded of what I heard @npub15xv…0jms say: the only use of AI is to indicate resource constraints in your org. This person lost his father recently, so he used AI to produce the report because he was stressed.

2025-05-06 21:20:27 GMT

I grew up in Damascus, in Yarmouk Camp for Palestine refugees.
My brother is visiting now. He visited our home there, or what remains of it. I know that the building was destroyed back in 2012, but had never seen the aftermath. It was just rubble, barely recognizable. He sent a video to the family group of him digging through, and dug up a distinctive green porcelain tile that was in our bathroom.
There are no words that could contain the emotions of this moment.
#سوريا #مخيم_اليرموك #دمشق

2025-03-11 17:57:05 GMT

My department at #UofT is sending announcements to grad students and faculty members who are going to the #AAG in Detroit in a couple of weeks to ask us to register with the safety abroad office, because the USA is a dangerous hostile zone now.
If I end up going, this will likely be the very last time I go to the US in the foreseeable future.
@npub1vuz…esa4

2025-01-27 10:34:23 GMT

Do we know of any examples of #mastodon servers operated by regional digital rights organizations for the activists in their region?
#digitalSovereignty

2024-12-13 17:12:11 GMT

Finally published! My first solo academic publication.
It's a reflection on the difficult 2 months of the #Palestine solidarity student encampment at #uToronto, edited by Esmat elHalaby and Maya Wind.
Open access full text here: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-11623540
In the article, I try to place the failures of the student movement to reach a deal with the university admin in the wider context where the visions for #Palestine futures have all but disappeared since the Oslo Accords in the 90s.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/646/625/039/893/300/original/60f005404ba3d38b.png

2024-12-12 16:22:58 GMT

Hello #Mastodon! Moving to a new server, so here's my #introduction.
I'm a technologist, urban planner, and a #PhD student based in #Toronto, with #Luddite tendencies. I research municipal climate action plans and the role of computational modelling in shaping them. Particularly of the emancipatory potnetial of modelling.
I also think and write about #anticapitalist climate futures of #Palestine and the #Levant.
With @npub1npz…uuvp, I co-founded Palestine Open Maps https://PalOpenMaps.org