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Joelle Maslak

@jmaslak.bsky.social
482 followers 169 following 3.4K posts

Just another neurodivergent techie. I talk about computer networks, feminism, human rights, and autism--and how they are connected. Radically pro-transgender. I fight on the side of the algae. Fuck Nazis and the GOP.

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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Apparently AI is white.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Cops, again attempting to prove ACAB by example. www.denverpost.com/2026/10/09/j...
denverpost.com
Larimer, Weld DAs were not informed about Johnstown officer arriving to work drunk
The Larimer and Weld counties district attorneys were not informed by the Johnstown Police Department that an officer had been terminated for showing up drunk to the job.
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Thinking Person's Guide to Autism @thinkingautism.com · 10/10/2026
AASPIRE created a measure to better understand if autistic adults get to make their own daily choices. "Findings show the importance of giving autistic adults the support they need to make choices and making sure they have real opportunities to make choices." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Self‐ and Caregiver‐Reported Choice‐Making in Autistic Adults: Development and Validation of the <fc>AASPIRE</fc>–Choices and Decisions Scale
Self-determination has been assessed as an internal psychological construct. External factors may also affect self-determination, but opportunities to make choices and decisions remain understudied. ....
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Inbox 0? Amateurs! I'm doing Inbox 112,700.
An inbox icon, the word Inbox, and the number 112,700 next to it.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Anthropic banning “abusive or cruel behavior” toward Claude in its new usage policies is proof to me that tech companies are going to moderate violence against AI before they ever moderate violence against women and minorities
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Assigned Media @assignedmedia.org · 08/10/2026
@rikiwilchins.bsky.social 2026 Oct LGBTQnation Ninth Circuit rules against the AZ legislature’s attempt to force trans people to get surgery before they can correct gender markers on birth certificates, upholding a federal court ruling from last year. www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/10/cour...
lgbtqnation.com
Court rules state can't force trans people to get surgery before updating birth certificates - LGBTQ Nation
The judge called it "improper" to deny trans people the right to change their gender marker through a court order, rather than surgery.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
If you want to stop the rape of women in prison, you don't go after trans folks. You go after correctional officers. www.denverpost.com/2026/10/06/a...
denverpost.com
Deputy fired after alleged sexual misconduct involving inmate, Adams County officials say
An Adams County sheriff’s deputy was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of sexual misconduct involving a female inmate at the county’s detention facility, the sheriff’s office said.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I'm glad he's making good on his promise.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Spoiler: it's trans people. (that's dark humor, and The Onion below is a satire site)
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
A thing you can't do as a child: - Get appropriate transgender medical care (in most places) Things you can do as a child legally in the USA: - Get married - Go to war - Agree to pay off non-dischargable debt - Obtain non-medically-indicated cosmetic surgery
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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 06/10/2026
Oh my god
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I am in favor of transgender for everyone. I want a world where people are comfortable being themselves, and if that is being trans, that's fine.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Imagine if the Cornell rapists and their enablers said something really bad like “Hospitals should not be bombed.”
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Sandy Ernest Allen @sandyernestallen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
FIRSTLY as the piece alludes: Loren Rex Cameron’s also-trans and arguably more famous older sister, Cameron, was a I believe fully stealth working model and actress (a la plot of Pose) in the 80s and 90s mostly … I rewatched like I dunno, dozens of TNG episodes, where she appeared as Ensign Kellogg:
A stunning redhead woman in a Star Trek TNG uniform
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is absolutely amazing!
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
There should be a federal law that if your job can be done while seated, you are required to be given the option of sitting.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The Colorado Interfaith Alliance has put out their amendment/initiative voting guide -- one that centers social justice and freedom. If you, like me, belong to a faith that requires social justice, you might want to check it out. interfaithallianceco.org/2026/09/30/v...
interfaithallianceco.org
Vote Your Values - The Vote Is Sacred
Vote Your Values, Voter Guide, 2026 November Election, 2026 Midterm Election, Colorado
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
So guy calls the cops and says he's going to do something at the police HQ. They track him on Flock, they make sure to say. They send officers to the police HQ. Who noticed? The guys inside the HQ who heard him banging on the door. Outstanding police work there /sarc www.denver7.com/news/local-n...
denver7.com
Affidavit reveals new details after ex-Boulder County deputy allegedly opened fire on police cars
A former Boulder County deputy allegedly fired more than a dozen shots at the Broomfield police cars and also damaged the sheriff's office building, according to an affidavit obtained by Denver7.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Ah, America.gov.
About the "38,000 times" figure

A February 2026 letter from some House members states Trump is “referenced over 38,000 times.” That is not a DOJ-published tally, and I cannot confirm it from Justice Department releases. Source: Rep. Ted Lieu letter (PDF).
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Duncan Hothersall @dhothersall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
For all that it's been barely reported in the UK press, it's still hard to understate the importance of the stance @labourunionsuk.bsky.social has taken on trans and non-binary rights this week. Every single trade union affiliated to the party of government has stood up and said we will not comply.
Joint statement from National TULO

Solidarity with the trans and non-binary community

Labour's 11 affiliated trade unions stand in total solidarity with the trans and non-binary community.

Trans rights are human rights, and trans rights are workers' rights.

We in the trade union movement will do all we can to stand up for our trans members and all our trans siblings, to protect them from persecution, harassment and attack.

The government must act now to protect all trans people, to make sure their rights are protected, expanded and upheld in our workplaces and communities.

Labour Unions
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Gender is performance. In this case, voting GOP is a way of affirming & performing masculinity for a lot of people, voting Democrat would be feminizing (i.e. seen as bad).
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Okay, so I wasted much of the weekend building this, a TN3270 server for my tasks and agenda, to keep track of this (the red "busy" lines are indicating I'm supposed to be in a meeting). Ignore that the countdown doesn't match with the agenda, this is fake data - real data does the right thing.
A mainframe text interface, that says executive function dashboard / auto-refresh / Sun Sep 27 16:46:57 at the top.  Red lines saying busy are at top and bottom.  It says I have a next meeting in 10m [work] 1:1 with manager.  Under that it lists a 24 hour agenda, with 4 sample meetings, and countdown to when those meetings are.  Below that is "Tasks" with 2 open, one writing a quarterly report and one grocery shopping.  Below the bottom red busy line is a list of function keys that do various functions.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The modern neurodiversity movement is *directly* linked to the pre-existing self-advocate movement that was created and led by people with intellectual disabilities.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
They want to give more rights to AI than trans people, don't they?
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This will hit autistic and some other kinds of disabled people particularly hard. We have a hard time accessing care even with insurance, so often we don't get care until it is an emergency. Autistic people can go years between doctors' visits sometimes. Maybe focus on *THAT* problem.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I'm noticing changes (not great ones IMHO) with some of my autistic sensitivities, and wondering what is out there regarding aging and autism? I've never looked at that before, but now that I'm approaching 50 (still young!) I'm starting to wonder how autism changes over the lifetime.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I wrote one of the earliest free AAC systems designed for a tablet computer, well before the iPad existed. It also ran fine on Windows in general. I recently used an LLM to port it to OS X so I could show this history.
A window saying home, with a volume and rate slider, next to a voice pull down.  There are a row of buttons above and below a text box, saying speak, stop talking, break text, home, back, personal info, comm help, yes, no, thank you, hello, sketch pad, say selected, say to end, say line".  Under the text box are 9 buttons saying work stuff, telephone, needs, friends, services, guests, personal info, communication helps, and current stuff.  It says "logged out" in the lower right and the lower left says "no current users connected."
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I used to be in a fundamentalist religion. If you want to talk about social contagion and the like, I'll note that tons of trans people read stories of detransitioners to see if they are making the right choice. And a lot of fundamentalist would be terrified to read an ex-fundamentalist text.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
So many times in Star Trek, I ask myself, "Do they not have effective birth control options in the 24th century?" (I'm watching Star Trek Picard S3)
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
As a trans woman who works in tech, one of the least surprising things I could read is that some powerful people in the tech world are sex pests.
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Lee Cicuta @butchanarchy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What a surprise, the organizers of the covid cautious dyke bar hated the article, rejected its framing, and is defending their covid cautious patrons and performers. Anyone who joined in on the viral harassment campaign started by Jesse Singal wanna say oops or…? recorder.com/2026/09/24/g...
Current and former owners of Last Ditch could not be reached by phone, email or social media. However, Last Ditch did share on Instagram that the Globe story allegedly misconstrued statements from Noire, and urged community members to stop harassing Noire.
"It is neither productive, progressive, nor valiant to attack a Black patron. He has been a collaborator and performer of Last Ditch for a while, and he deserves to speak his mind about accountability and repair from the bar," the Last Ditch statement reads. "There are so many misconceptions due to the disorganization of the Globe article. He did not call for the bar to be firebombed. Further, he did not disparage the owner for being homeless.
"As a result of this abysmal journalism, he has been getting additional threats, slurs, harassment, and is being reported to the police over something he did not do," Last Ditch continued. "This is not supporting us at Last Ditch, and it is, at its core, anti-Blackness hysteria."
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
How tech companies release evil products: - Release product that will do evil thing. - But show it’s good for some disabled people. - Public has backlash towards the product over evil thing. - Disabled people now face backlash using the product We’re shields for evil and get hurt by the backlash.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
ADHD is a significant disability and people with it benefit greatly from treatment (not always medication, but, yes, including medication). ADHD is not laziness, is not moral failure, and is not “minor”.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I wish I could get my doctors to understand I'm a very unreliable reporter about my symptoms. "Do you have X?" Honestly, I'm not connected well enough with my body to know. Some of the ways I wish the medical world would work with autistic folk: (thread)
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's really clear that wide swaths of the social media left today would have been overtly hostile to the 1970s disability rights movement and painted demands for infrastructure spending for accessibility as absurd "wreckerism".
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It reminds me of a blind friend who gets letters periodically from USA social security that make her prove that Jesus didn't return and rub some spit and mud on her eyes to give her sight. You know, just in case. Apparently ADHD and autism work the same way.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck the federal government for making it easier to lock up people who did nothing wrong.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ever find yourself needing a text to speech device, but you don't have your apps nearby, but you do have a Mac? 1. Open a terminal window 2. Type say 3. Type and hit enter. 4. When done, hit ctrl-d twice or just close the terminal window. It is super easy text-to-speech. #ActuallyAutistic
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I don't know my address is the billionaire version of "Why do I have to learn algebra? I'll never use it." These dudes confuse cognitive skills for intuition. Skills require aptitude plus development. Intuition doesn't require development. Is it any surprise they love automated bullshit generators?
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Julia Serano @juliaserano.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
...omg it appears this story may have (in retrospect) unsurprising origins bsky.app/profile/rhin...
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
But her emails!
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
(identifier number modified) Thanks, Google, for this outage notice: Status: Ongoing Affected service: taxonomies/teamsproduct/nodes/11110222333 Summary: Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. Next update estimate: Thursday, Sep 24, 2026, 5:00:00 PM (UTC).
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pausa de hateration @thatguywasfly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The key question to ask is "why is a story about a lesbian bar in Massachusetts being treated as national news?" and the answer is "despite the fact that the most extreme Covid denialists/skeptics currently shape US public health policy, the media wants you angry at the most Covid cautious folk."
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Wtaf is this question my university just asked me about my project?
Does the project involve any work that could be interpreted as promoting DEIA, climate change research, or non-compliant to any Presidential Executive Orders?
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Mask are effective. Even part-time mask use has some use -- your chance of catching COVID is in part related to length of exposure, it's not "if even one virus particle is inhaled, the person is sick." It's "your chance of getting sick goes up with more intense and longer exposures."
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pebbles @pebbles.gay · 22/09/2026
idk if we needed another hit piece in the current climate that casts a group of disabled trans women as shrill & unhinged & unreasonable why is this news & who benefits from this framing
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
People are missing who benefits from this (beyond Kalshi). It's the insiders. They now have leverage to rip off even more betters.
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Joelle Maslak @jmaslak.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I asked someone today, "What was the last big corporate merger where the merger made the products of either company better?" Answer: It's rare as fuck.
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Princess Rebecca Frizzle (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️💕🦕👸🐱 @rebeccabluestone.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
all of this. a building is not more important than our lives, but ya'll act like it is.
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