Joelle Maslak
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jmaslak.bsky.social
Joelle Maslak
@jmaslak.bsky.social
290 followers 140 following 1.6K posts
Just another neurodivergent techie. Expect to see me talk about computer networks, feminism, human rights, and autism--and how they are connected. Delcared un-American by the US government.
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jmaslak.bsky.social
Are we really going to do the ableist bullshit around brain MRIs again?

FWIW, here's mine.

Disabled people are watching how we're talked about when you think you're just talking about Trump.
An MRI issue which looks sort of like an X-ray. It's a side view about halfway through the skull. Visible is a brain, the skull around it, the top of the spine, the mouth/nose and some sinus cavities.
December 1, 2025 at 3:01 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
Google Maps, I'm pretty sure this is NOT the silhouette of the White House. It's a Silhouette of the BIDEN White House, not the Trump one.
November 26, 2025 at 11:34 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
In my #KiwiPyCon talk, I mentioned how I asked ChatGPT to show me where NZ should appear on a map, telling it that NZ is often left off of world maps, asking it to draw a map and highlight where NZ should appear. Here's a few comparisons between models...(all are bad!) Alt text tells you which.
ChatGPT which shows a fake world map with NZ in a red box between Africa and Ausralia, at the correct latitude, but very wrong longitude. Gemini which shows a fake world map with NZ in solid red (other land masses are in a teal) covering much of the ocean between Africa and South America, and longer from tip to tip than South America is (thus it enlarges New Zealand significantly). It also covers some of the African continent. Gemini which shows a fake world map with NZ in solid yellow (other land masses are in a teal) hugging/overlapping the east coast of South America. It is much of the length of the South American continent. The style of the art is kind of a paper machine type of drawing, with some depth involved. There's a Kiwi (bird) to the right of New Zealand in the ocean, and some mountains in NZ drawn on the northern island (none on the southern island), along with lots of trees throughout mexico and in Southern Brazil (pine trees). Notably the only continent shown in full is South America, although New Zealand is pasted on top.
November 26, 2025 at 10:51 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
Example of the app - It isn't the pinnacle of UI, but it's good enough. I "print" into a directory and when I'm at home I'll batch print them (like I'm doing today). I have a ton to print (around 175 pieces) today, and the date lets me whether to rotate in the stack (staples have a thickness!).
A screenshot of a terminal app, that says PrintApp at the top, has a progress bar at 3%, has a next file text window that says "blue wave proves attacking trans students doesn't win, Dems say - NBC4 Washington.pdf". The bottom line has the four keyboard commands - "p = print file, s = skip file, D = delete file, q = quit).
November 25, 2025 at 8:29 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
There is a software engineering metaphor in this picture. Particularly the failure of design that required producing what I can only assume is version 1.01 with the "no rubbish" label above the convenient hole for the rope...
A pole that directs Air New Zealand passengers to the left or right based on wehther they have premium or economy. It has a hole through the center to allow a rope to pass through, to separate the lines. Above the hole, which is about the right height for a trash can opening, it says "no rubbish".
November 24, 2025 at 7:16 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
Ah yes, preparing a slide for a work presentation...
November 6, 2025 at 12:18 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT THE JEFFERSON COUNTY, COLORADO REPUBLICAN PARTY ENDORSED (in generally non-partisan races) APPEARS TO HAVE LOST!!!

EVERY ONE OF THEM. GOP IS BATTING .000
Jefferson County, Colorado GOP endorsements from the GOP's voting guide. They said to vote no on LL & MM, and had a long list of candidates they said they endorsed in the non-partisan local races. Some races they said "don't vote" because they didn't like any of the candidates.
November 5, 2025 at 5:17 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
The world has changed. In 2004, in the Autreat program book, I wrote about how hard it is to get a job. I suspect it's worse now.

Also I try really hard these days to *not* use "of course" in my writings because it can be condescending, so at least *I* have gotten better in that way!
A screenshot of the program book. It includes this couple of sentences: An interview is stressful and difficult for anyone. Many NTs struggle with interviews, going to 20, 30, or even 50 interviews to get a single position.
November 2, 2025 at 8:10 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
Here's something that can trip people up in Python! (script in alt text)

Guess the output.
#!/usr/bin/env python import re tests = ( "2", # Western Arabic digit 2 "T", # Latin letter "T" "\u0662", # Arabic digit two ("٢") "\u0968", # Devanagari digit two ("२") "\u2161", # Roman Numeral two ("Ⅱ") ) sum = 0 for test in tests: if re.match(r"\d", test): sum += int(test) print(f"{test} is a valid digit!") print(f"Sum: {sum}")
October 31, 2025 at 7:24 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
I wish the people designing ballot envelopes were better at design and disability. Here's the back of my voting envelope -- having the signature on a line above the witness's name, and putting the date blank next to the witness name. So is date required if no witness? Note signature says required.
A ballot envelope, with boilerplate text and some black squares hiding personal information. Visible is the voter signature line (with "required") under it) along with a second set of fields lower on the envelope that say "TODAY'S DATE" and "WITNESS LEGAL NAME". Date doesn't say required.
October 29, 2025 at 10:49 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
Okay, I'm dying.

www.grokipedia.com goes to a NameCheap for me. Without the www, it pulls up the Nazi encyclopedia. Probably a Cloudflare cache needing to expire or a bad origin.
A page that directs to Namecheap for a "recently registered" domain of grokipedia.com.
October 27, 2025 at 11:31 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
What's the best and worst looking datacenters you've seen (from the outside)?

My vote for best is 1950 N. Stemmons Fwy in Dallas. (it was modeled after the Crystal Palace)

Worst? So so so many choices.
A glass fronted building with an unusual plus sign shape if you looked down from the top (this is looking from the front of it). There are three arches over large atrium visible.
October 17, 2025 at 6:16 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
HATE MEASURED IN INCHES - An art project.

I've been printing out every long-form article that comes my direction about trans folk. I am not seeking these articles, but they are coming to me by people talking about them in my social media feed and the like.

I create two piles. Joy and sadness.
The pile of joy. It's a stack of papers about 3 inches tall. A measuring tape confirms this. The pile of joy. It's a stack of papers about 3 inches tall. A measuring tape confirms this.
October 4, 2025 at 12:22 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
PROOF!
Two switches. One is a normal light switch, the other is a timer, mounted on a wall about a countertop.
September 8, 2025 at 12:58 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
EXACTLY. From my recent thesis, I talk about how infantalizing stereotypes of autistic people are also deployed to infantalize all trans folk (including allistic trans folk):
I believe the narratives of trans+autistic people, including my own, challenge the notion that we are eternal children without our own agency. Transphobic “gender-critical feminists” (“Autism & Gender Identity – Autistic Minds,” 2022), legislators (Hospitals; The Treatment of Gender Dysphoria in Minors Performed in Hospitals and Other Licensed Healthcare Facilities; Prohibit Certain Surgical Procedures, 2023), and government bodies (Cass, 2024; Department of Health and Human Services, 2025) rely on an implicit infantilizing stereotype of autistic people, to further their transphobic advocacy and influence. They note the high prevalence of autistic people in the trans population, and, in turn, rhetorically remove agency from those people to promote the belief that trans people are manipulated into transgender identity. Even in trans-affirming resources, such as the WPATH Standards of care (Coleman et al., 2022), autism is associated primarily with children, with all but one mention of autism in chapters on children and adolescents.12 In the child and adolescent sections, however, it is telling how it is mentioned. Autism is mentioned as something that may be confused with a transgender identity as well as limiting the ability to consent.13 Footnotes: 12 The remaining mention of autism in the standards is in the section on hormone therapy, which is applicable to both adolescents and adults. Otherwise, autism appears to be primarily associated only with children and adolescents to WPATH. There are entire guidelines about autism in the adolescent and child sections of the standards, while the mention in the hormone therapy section is one sentence within a section entitled, “We recommend health care professionals maintain existing hormone therapy if the transgender and gender diverse individual’s mental health deteriorates and assess the reason for the deterioration, unless contraindicated” (p. S126). 13 WPATH SoC Statement 6.12 indicates “We recommend health care professionals…only recommend gender-affirming medical or surgical treatments…...when:” (p. S59), per the title of 6.12.d, “The adolescent’s mental health concerns (if any) that may interfere with diagnostic clarity, capacity to consent, and/or gender-affirming medical treatments have been addressed” (p. S62). Autism is specifically mentioned in 6.12.d’s explanatory text as one of these mental health concerns that may interfere with “diagnostic clarity” (i.e. be mistaken for gender dysphoria) and interfere with “ability to consent.” See the previous image, the text in this image was added to the alt text there, but had to be pasted as two images for sighted users.
September 5, 2025 at 3:53 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
As agency of trans and autistic folk is being questioned by the feds right now, I think of this part of my acknowledgements page in my thesis...
In addition to the people who acted positively in my life, I would also like to acknowledge the current administration of the United States of America, which violently oppresses those who are not wealthy, documented, neurotypical/able-bodied, white, cis, Christian, and male. The administration reminds me daily of the importance of opposing white-supremacist capitalist ableist patriarchy.1 I am proud to use ideas and words banned by the administration in this thesis.2 Footnotes: 1 I hope bell hooks would not mind my addition to her well-known concept. 2 In particular, this work joyfully opposes the racist, transphobic, sexist, and ableist “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government” (Exec. Order No. 14,168, 2025) and “Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing” (Exec. Order No. 14,151, 2025) executive orders.
September 5, 2025 at 12:18 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
"People get more conservative with age."

No, it's that white people are over-represented among the elderly. Multiple reasons, but a big one is that white people have lower death rates because of white privilege.

www.census.gov/newsroom/blo...
A chart listing various age ranges. The categories from birth to 99 years all progressively show less non-whites (100+ years old is a slight exception, but not by much). This jump is particularly marked at 65-84 years.
August 14, 2025 at 9:31 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
I am so glad the paramilitary takeover of Washington DC is keeping the paramilitary itself safe from thrown food.

Maybe there is a Junior High lunchroom they can patrol.
A portion of the arrest document, including Dunn told MTP Officer Gurkaranjot Thandi, "I did it. I threw a sandwich."
August 13, 2025 at 9:04 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
People in American Samoa don't have US citizenship. People living in Guam and Puerto Rico have long been seeking more power for their governments (not necessarily statehood, because of complicated reasons). Don't forget other people in the USA outside of US states.
The outside of the Guam Museum & Chamorro Educational Facility, in, you guessed it, Guam. The museum is a building with a tall, ornate roof, and inscriptions on the walls. The left inscription is "...we are here before you today to ask for simple justice in memory of our loved ones who died with undimmed faith and hope, and in behalf of our loyal people of Guam." The right inscription is, "The desire and aspiration of our people to have a legally constituted government and to become citizens of the only country to which we owe unswerving allegiance have long been manifested."
August 12, 2025 at 1:17 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
I started this on August 2, 2025. A week ago.

Guess which pile is which?

(Spoiler: the left is the stuff that is awful)

THIS IS JUST ONE SINGLE WEEK. It reflects what is happening to trans folk. No wonder we're doing bad.
Two stacks of papers, the left one is substantially higher than the right one.
August 9, 2025 at 1:18 AM
jmaslak.bsky.social
Still thinking about how the right is going after universities, and how my undergrad thesis included this footnote, one of the ones I was very happy to add.
In particular, this work joyfully opposes the racist, transphobic, sexist, and ableist “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government” (Exec. Order No. 14,168, 2025) and “Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing” (Exec. Order No. 14,151, 2025) executive orders.
August 6, 2025 at 11:20 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
There is also of course anti-science throughout their writing, with an appeal to conservative. Federici here in her anti-trans 2020 book talks of the risk of genes that put people at risk of breast cancer as if science made this up to control us. She would get along with RFK Jr.
Consider the still-ongoing terror campaign organized to warn us about faulty genes in our DNA,8ready to spring on us and send us to our graves. So terrifying this campaign has been that already women have been convinced to undergo preventive radical mastectomies, a traumatic procedure, of unknown con sequences, likely to endanger their health more than the evolution of the faulty genes they presumably carry.
June 30, 2025 at 6:56 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
But it's not just Raymond. And it's not just antisemitism and homophobia. TERFs are often anti-sex and are almost always SWERFs. This is Bindle in her 2021 "book". They hate queer identity, but also, why ISIS and not, say, conservative Christianity, which is more relevant to UK readers?
Whenever I or other feminists that are targeted by Queer ISIS are cancelled from an event publicly complain, we are asked why we ‘assume’ the right to a public platform. I don’t. What I reasonably assume is that once I have accepted an invitation to speak, and the event has been widely advertised, tickets sold, trains and accommodation booked and, on many occasions, my talk prepared, the organisers do not cave to pressure and denounce me in order to appease the bullies.
June 30, 2025 at 6:56 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
This is her in the late 70s, going after gay men, claiming that they are really closet heterosexuals looking for a "female substitute" to oppress. (in her 1979 book)
“21. What has also escaped notice is that transvestism and transsexualism both involve consistent role-playing. Homosexuality of the “butch-femme”’ variety is again most certainly role-playing. However, some homosexuals and many lesbians see role-playing as an essential aberration, one that betrays an essentially heterosexist consciousness. As many feminists have noted, this is one of the key differences between male homosexuals and lesbians who are feminists. Many male homosexuals treat their male partners as men treat women—as sexual objects. Thus the male partner becomes a female substitute and is put in a woman’s role. Male homosexuality has also not been located in a political context equivalent to lesbian-feminism. However, role-playing is intrinsic to transvestism and transsexualism. With homosexuals, it may occur.”
June 30, 2025 at 6:56 PM
jmaslak.bsky.social
I read a lot of "TERF thought". And pretty much all of it has antisemetic dogwhistles like this crap (this is Janice Raymond, in her most recent incoherent -- and antisemetic -- ramblings she calls a book). Our struggles are interconnected.
The medicalization of gender dissatisfaction I depicted back then has today expanded exponentially into the gender identity industrial complex built on big medicine, big pharma, big banks, big foundations, big research centers, some attached to big universities. Funders like George Soros and Jennifer Pritzker are gifting the trans movement with tremendous resources, helping to subsidize a vast operation that provides transgenderism with legal and policy clout. Although the trans population is small, it is not a fringe movement starved of funding but rather a well-financed global campaign that has helped underwrite laws that enable trans ideology and practices in many countries.
June 30, 2025 at 6:56 PM