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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme

@michaelann.bsky.social

1.4K followers 450 following 2.2K posts

Online Communities, Social Tech, Folk Theories, Epistemic Justice, Queer/Trans HCI. Assistant Prof of Computer Science & Comm Studies @ Northeastern University. @nusealab.bsky.social director. Neurodivergent, trans woman, wife girl, femme lesbian, dork.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · May 13

Hi, I'm Michael Ann, and I'm a Computer Science professor and longtime shitposter! I work on improving social technology. The shitposting is below, the science I'm responsible for is on my site:

- Epistemic Justice: wp.me/P2O4Fr-hN
- Folk Theorization: wp.me/P2O4Fr-9m
- Queer HCI: wp.me/P2O4Fr-9s

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 20h

She's right. The actions of the Bsky team as of late are a showcase of exactly what I teach my students NOT to do in my "Understanding Users" class, which teaches them how to understand, work with, and communicate with the users of the systems they build.

Anna Phylaxis @quatoria.bsky.social · 22h

just want to again give congratulations to bsky’s staff and mods and ceo for how they created a cycle of negative press coverage and damaged the brand purely out of a fit of pique

great work, winning a lot of confidence from folks right now

flux.community @flux.community · 23h

The Link banning controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality.

Bluesky’s protocol is so complicated that not even the biggest alternative, Blacksky, has been able to become independent plus.flux.community/p/banning-co...

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 20h

If you hate other women I kinda think you don't *get* lesbianism. Like, you might *sleep* with other women, sure, but if you *hate* other women as a class while doing that, you're at best practicing the form without understanding the mysteries.

And the mysteries are kinda key!

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 20h

There are lots of terrible people, but I reserve a special type of ire for folks I share identity characteristics with who have gone so deeply far astray. Let me tell you this for sure: Weiss doesn't *get* lesbianism, even though she may practice it. It's for sure not about oppressing other women.

Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 20h

I think point #2 is very highly dependent on how hard a girl can believe in a thing, personally

Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 20h

You gotta understand that after today, nominating Newsom means losing a big part of the dem base. He is now officially unelectable by the numbers. So... maybe start fixating on Pritzker or something instead.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 21h

If this place goes, you can catch me on my secret geocities, I don't see myself going to mastodon tbh

Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 21h

I officially nominate Bari Weiss for most disappointing lesbian in the world, which, let me tell you, is a pretty crowded field. But I think she's truly earned this title! She's everything one could hope that a lesbian would know better than to do, say, and be, compressed into a singularity of hate.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

I continue to be my own kismesis

Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Current me is no better than past me, I've decided to just riff on this slide, and leave a note apologizing for current me AND past me to future me.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

I'm honestly torn. I don't want to lose connections with everyone, but also, the sheer amount of harassment that site brought me over the years means it might not be worth it.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

I will assume positive intent on the part of a corporation when......... mmm never, actually, never, they're not people, they don't deserve my grace, they never have, they don't deserve yours either.

Grace is for people, not corporations.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

IDK "assume positive intent" is maybe not a great position to work from when facing down a bunch of explicitly-transphobic and accelerationist messaging/actions, but hey, if you've got the patience for it....... it's still probably a bad idea honestly, we gotta stop falling for this trick.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Most cis and heterosexual people are actually pretty normal about queer and trans folks, and/or do not know or care to know in detail what's up. It's only a very, very loud and rich few that constitute the block of transphobes and homophobes driving all of this.

Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 1d

1. 4 months ago, The Supreme Court gave families a right to opt out of LGBTQ+ education in schools.

Now, in Montgomery County, Maryland, where the case originated, the results are in.

Only 43 families out of 160,000 students have exercised that new right.

Subscribe to support our journalism.

Only 0.03% Opt Out Of LGBTQ+ Education In Maryland After SCOTUS Gives Them A Right To

After SCOTUS gave families a right to opt out of LGBTQ+ education, Montgomery County, Maryland is reporting only 43 families took them up on it.

www.erininthemorning.com

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

She just hit me a "ciao, girlie! no notes here but you'll figure it out! muah!" for an entire slide of content.

Wow. Icon.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

She's SUCH a jerk sometimes. Funny, though.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Past me's habit of leaving snarky little comments to future me in the lecture notes is really a double-edged sword

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Reposted by Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme

samus aran enjoyer @riotlinguist.bsky.social · 1d

they want centralized power that you can't criticize or hold accountable because they can obfuscate its existence by appealing to an imaginary "decentralization" and telling you to learn to code

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Year over year, my assertion that "feminism probably has some useful principles for you unless you already have an obvious path to personally owning an island one day" gets a more and more positive response from the cis men I teach.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Hell, a good deal of the time, I nervously brought up a concern, and got treated to some wild stories about way more "weird" versions of the thing they'd experienced, accompanied by really actionable things to try in order to solve my own local issue.

Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Agreed! For me, like 90% of the time they had experienced the same or something parallel. And I think seeing the sheer amount of shared context and similar experience is actually a really important moment in socialization for trans women, one that I'm afraid girls are now cutting themselves off from

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

There are bad cis women, yes. There are also bad trans women (ask me how I know). I'm seeing this uptick in distrust for cis women specifically, and please hear me when I say that they're probably not who you should concentrate your overall worry on.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Sometimes I hear takes from other trans girls about how cis women will respond to X, or why you shouldn't bother talking to cis women about Y, and I can only think "I'm sorry, have you ever met any cis girls IRL?"

There's cis women out there who are chill and IMO being in community with them is key

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

I'd very much like to believe in them, but yeah... that's going to take a lot of transparency compared to the current state of things. For me, I'm more looking for transparency re: policy and enforcement, since that's lagged behind transparency re: the tech itself.

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah this.... worries me. What's happening at Bluesky, and the WAY it's happened, paints a pretty clear picture of a leadership team full of transphobia - this actually being a well-veiled pro-social op feels like wishful thinking at best, which IMO is dangerous for Northsky management to entertain

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Michael Ann, spooky, scary, spooky scary halloween femme @michaelann.bsky.social · 3d

The notion of transfem separatism continues to be stupid

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