Michelle Watson's Avatar

Michelle Watson

@michwatsonoz

Archivist. Community historian. Genealogist. Stockton, NSW during WW1. MIM - family history researchers as an uni archives user group. Digital Humanities. LOD. (she/her) - https://www.michellewatson.org - Worimi Country

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Latest posts by Michelle Watson @michwatsonoz

Dubai was built with slave Labor and the blood of thousands of South Asians, Asians and Africans. They can’t escape. I’m sick of hearing about how fucking f “developed” it is. Skyscrapers and wealth are not markers of civilisation if they’re built on destitution and death

11.03.2026 04:53 👍 78 🔁 28 💬 2 📌 0

Increasingly of the opinion that the correct answer to the Trolley Problem is "fuck you, why are you so fixated on finding reasons to justify killing people?"

11.03.2026 04:46 👍 2508 🔁 525 💬 24 📌 60

They really are just weird.

11.03.2026 08:19 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Love it when a side quest helping a family historian leads me to look again at a file in the archives that I didn’t realise was relevant to my current writing project.

11.03.2026 07:05 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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US Attorney nominee has a disturbing history of demonizing and dehumanizing trans people Phillip Williams has said parents of trans children should be drowned. He also compared efforts to support gender-affirming care to slavery and the Holocaust.

NEW: US Attorney nominee Phil Williams has a long & disturbing history of attacking trans people and their parents.

He said parents of trans children should be drowned. He also compared efforts to support gender-affirming care to slavery & the Holocaust. nominationnotes.substack.com/p/us-attorne...

10.03.2026 14:54 👍 112 🔁 93 💬 5 📌 16

Sun Tzu (D-NY) - “When your enemy is making a mistake, fix it for him at great cost to yourself.”

11.03.2026 00:40 👍 10127 🔁 2530 💬 165 📌 50

Chat, is it good when a judge says this to you at your show cause hearing?

11.03.2026 01:02 👍 111 🔁 24 💬 2 📌 0
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Workers at the Dundee Post Office. There is no date on this but is probably from the 1880s or 1890s

Ref: GD/X275

#Dundee #Archives

09.03.2026 09:42 👍 13 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0

Access doesn’t mean copy and steal though.

10.03.2026 23:57 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
10.03.2026 23:15 👍 19 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0

Let’s be honest, they aren’t making the decision on any policy other than the racism.

10.03.2026 23:48 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Everyone should send them invoices since permission isn’t a thing anymore.

10.03.2026 23:46 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Just walked by a colleague's classroom after my class finished and he was talking about Elvis, getting blank stares and so he had to ask "Does anyone know who Elvis Presley is?"

It's rough out here on these teaching streets.

09.03.2026 20:25 👍 5138 🔁 341 💬 269 📌 207

Here's a thread featuring clips of key moments from the DC Metropolitan Police body camera footage of the March 17, 2025 DOGE raid on the US Institute of Peace that I obtained as a result of my FOIA lawsuit:

09.03.2026 23:03 👍 2144 🔁 728 💬 22 📌 32
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NEW: I got my hands on a Palantir-Department of Defence contract that outlines how the Trump-aligned tech company has embedded staff in Defence, leaves a carve-out for training on Australian data, and has a number of quite generous contract conditions.

www.crikey.com.au/20...

09.03.2026 03:17 👍 156 🔁 77 💬 5 📌 6

States could do us all a big favor and write product liability laws that make car companies liable for self-driving accidents no matter how many "waivers" they make customers sign.

If car companies don't like it, they can keep their products off the market until they are actually safe.

09.03.2026 20:34 👍 324 🔁 47 💬 5 📌 0

I’d rather the most basic, created in PowerPoint using a generic template image than something created with AI.

10.03.2026 01:59 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The danger to my job from AI isn't that AI can do my job, it's that my job is made even more precarious by the way AI is shaping ideas of the value of work. It can't do my job, but it can be part of convincing people (incorrectly) that my job isn't necessary.

09.03.2026 20:03 👍 512 🔁 160 💬 2 📌 6

The DOJ released evidence, which the FBI deemed credible, that the President of the United States sexually and physically assaulted a 13 year old girl AND she was afraid to talk about it because Trump would kill her—and it’s somehow not the biggest scandal in American history?

09.03.2026 00:46 👍 8461 🔁 3117 💬 141 📌 119
Picture of a panel in a conference center. There is a dias with a black curtain at the front, and a gray podium. Behind the dias sits Carmen Maria Machado, a fair-skinned femme wearing glasses with dark hair, Umair Kazi, a brown masc with dark hair, Alex Hanna, a brown butch trans woman with short brown hair, and Vauhini Vara, a brown woman with long black hair wearing a red blouse.

Picture of a panel in a conference center. There is a dias with a black curtain at the front, and a gray podium. Behind the dias sits Carmen Maria Machado, a fair-skinned femme wearing glasses with dark hair, Umair Kazi, a brown masc with dark hair, Alex Hanna, a brown butch trans woman with short brown hair, and Vauhini Vara, a brown woman with long black hair wearing a red blouse.

There were 250 people in the audience, at the biggest available room for our #awp26 panel, Resisting AI in Writing and Teaching.

It was invigorating; hearing about how writing instructors are pushing back against their institutions was inspiring. Thanks to my co-panelists Carmen and Umair.

06.03.2026 03:08 👍 326 🔁 65 💬 4 📌 2
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The Saint John’s Bible Original Manuscript to be Bound - Saint John’s Bible While the pages of The Saint John’s Bible were completed in 2011, they have since been left unbound. Donald Jackson, Artistic Director of The Saint John’s

It's time to bind the St. John's Bible: The team originally "planned to secure the father of modern conservation binding, Christopher Clarkson, to bind the seven volumes of the Bible...His passing and [that] of Fr. Michael Patella...served as a wake-up call." saintjohnsbible.org/posts/2026/0...

08.03.2026 21:52 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
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the whole purpose of the post-menopausal woman is to prevent the rise of generative AI

15.08.2024 19:23 👍 7501 🔁 2191 💬 49 📌 98

Hello Bluesky! I am looking for anyone who cares about/writes about/thinks about Rebecca West.

I've been on a 10 year mission to get her a blue plaque in London and am finally allowed to re-apply after it was last turned down.

I'd welcome help building a strong application.

Thank you 💙🙏

07.03.2026 11:43 👍 99 🔁 85 💬 32 📌 5

damn, if the Childcrusher 5000 GTX pickup truck owners can’t afford gas, how are they going to be able to tote their massive loads of a single loaf of bread and a canned Starbucks latte

06.03.2026 22:45 👍 1627 🔁 240 💬 37 📌 16
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More than 180 authors quit writers' week. Many returned for a DIY replacement Constellations emerged from the ashes of Adelaide Writers' Week, which was cancelled after authors withdrew over censorship. Organisers share how it came together and lessons for the future.

We stood together against anti-Palestinian racism and they cancelled our festival. So we organised our own.

Very tired now, but very proud of Constellations!

Great in depth coverage from Hannah Story here

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

07.03.2026 00:45 👍 284 🔁 101 💬 15 📌 3

I would love non-AI tools. When given the choice I will ALWAYS pick the non-AI tool. I think not having AI will become a plus for many products.

07.03.2026 02:15 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!

06.03.2026 04:31 👍 6415 🔁 1752 💬 67 📌 64

Learn to do your own work.

05.03.2026 23:57 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

It. It’s a machine not a person.

05.03.2026 23:56 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Limp binding for the win!!!!!

05.03.2026 23:45 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0