Jennifer Ouellette
I cover science and culture at Ars Technica. Former science editor, Gizmodo. Ex-vangelical. Rodeo fan. Married to @seanmcarroll, servant to two cats: Ariel and Caliban. Baltimore, MD. She/her.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteAlso: this announcement is pure gobbledegook. "positioning ourselves to become more essential" by getting rid of everything people turn to you for???
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteThe Supreme Court lets California use the congressional map Dems passed to response to Trump's unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering spree in GOP states. We need a national gerrymandering ban, but the GOP has repeatedly blocked one. Dems must respond in kind until then. A 🧵 on the 2026 maps
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellette*Benson and Stabler exchange concerned looks*
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteIt took Trump barely a year to destroy the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He fired its artistic board and staff, replaced them with stooges, drove away performers and audiences, decimated attendance, and pasted his name on the walls. Now, he's shutting it. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/u...
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouelletteto disrupt the world economy, destroy historic alliances, sell pardons to criminals, and conceivably start a nuclear war.” James Fallows, keeping track of the many “examples of Trump saying and ordering things that his own people know are insane.” open.substack.com/pub/fallows/...
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellette“Donald Trump has clearly lost control of his emotions, his contact with reality, and such fidelity to truth as he ever had. This is a problem for everyone on Earth: That a furious 79-year-old has asserted one-man authority
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteICE at the polls! Bannon is basically yelling “fire” in a crowded theater here. His objective is to cause chaos (and suppress votes on the left). And it’s already working. This threat works on multiple levels and doesn’t have to be “real” to serve its purpose. Let me explain & offer some advice.
- Steve Bannon says the federal government is planning to send ICE officers to patrol polling stations during the midterms. "We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November." "We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again." www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteI'm sure it will be a priority, in that WaPo will increase its output of dimwitted right-wing pundits spewing propaganda about "national security, in DC and abroad." They just won't bother to have any journalists doing actual reporting on it.
- Trump admin is "destroying medical research," Senate report finds arstechnica.com/health/2026/...
- Seth Rogen’s ‘Muppet Show’ Revival on ABC Sticks a Perfect Landing www.pajiba.com/tv_reviews/r...
- Amazon pulls theater's screening rights for "Melania" because of marquee jokes (eg “DOES MELANIA WEAR PRADA? FIND OUT FRIDAY!”). It's uncertain if this will impact the theater’s ability to show future Amazon films, such as “Project Hail Mary.” lakeoswegoreview.com/2026/02/02/l...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteA staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellette“This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.” www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteThe history of evolutionary ideas about chins took me to Darwin, Pliny the Elder, Stephen Jay Gould, and Theodore Roosevelt. It's an irresistable subject that has befuddled scientists all this time. www.johnhawks.net/p/what-the-h...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteVoter intimidation isn’t new, and the counters to it are well established. Black voters in the south, for example, faced some at various times. Ideally, use early voting to make intimidation harder. Otherwise, show up to vote on Election Day, braving whatever they try. Not sexy, but it works.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteLet’s think through how ICE/BP thugs doing voter intimidation could possibly swing the midterms. Have to pick close races, pick the right precincts, not inspire backlash, and do all that in enough places to overcome a likely national wave. They’ll try, it’s wrong, but I second the anti-doomerism.
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouelletteyou don't say? at some point we're going to acknowledge what every study ever on this subject has said, right? right? www.independent.co.uk/news/science...
- I love the delighted kids jumping up and down with excitement at the end. Science!
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- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellette@ericidle.bsky.social Is this the right room for an argument?
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteLook at what we're spending our public money on NOW and tell me this wouldn't be a better plan:
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteLatest in a series of posts on the Linda Hall Library's earliest editions of Sacrobosco's book on late medieval astronomy, combined with Georg Peurbach's planetary models and including an early use of printing with color woodblocks: www.lindahall.org/about/news/s... #HistSTM #MedievalSky
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteIt is fitting that the only story so far today on the Washpost site about its devastating layoffs comes from the Associated Press. And you have to dig into its search module to find it www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
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- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteI know it feels better to think we've all been screwed by an evil mastermind than by an arrogant weasel with Big Divorce Energy and a wildly inflated sense of his own abilities and skill sets, but...take a hard look at Jeff Bezos.
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- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteIt's hard not to feel like a crazy person when I've been shouting about this at the top of my lungs for 5 or 10 years (even back on the platform where I nominally had half a million followers) and ... nothing happens. (I know @chrislhayes.bsky.social knows, but I'm not sure why it never resonated.)
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteWhat's described here happened to my alma mater two decades before, and at this point I'm convinced that the fundamentalist takeover of Christian colleges was an intentional test run for what Republicans are doing to higher education now.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteI know I'm occasionally a frothing sadist, but I really cannot understand the lack of killer instinct among these people. With the Trump admin scrambling to get away from narratives even large swaths of their own base utterly despise, how do you not go in for the kill? Pathetic!!
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteThis is a good point, and only emphasizes that how those who resist Trump report RIGHT NOW on threats he and his supports make to election integrity matters. These threats work by being spread, creating a fear they cannot back up. DO NOT DO THEIR WORK FOR THEM.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteWe gotta come up with a better system than “everything rests on whether these twelve billionnaires are nice”
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteBut as we all wring our hands, let's also be clear: the task yesterday was to build media institutions independent of these greasy oligarchs. That task hasn't changed today, although maybe now we have more clarity and more urgency. Please support your chosen sources of independent media.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteNot the flex you think it is, JD.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteI think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteIn a little under two weeks, the federal government normalized the extrajudicial murder of citizens in the streets and pacified the population so much that they’re no longer even talking about it now talking about Epstein and a fake drawdown of troops. Pacification Is a hell of a thing to see.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteLast year it was the extrajudicial murder of Minnesota democrat politicians..
- Vote for the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year’s People’s Choice Award www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/02/peop...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteBezos isn't destroying the Washington Post because it isn't profitable. He's destroying the Washington Post because he's calculated that a robust free press threatens the ability of his class to warp society around their interests
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteMen are a problem right now.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteThe best reviewer, the best person
- After 20 years, I've been laid off at The Washington Post. substack.com/home/post/p-...
- Ancient ‘Dial-a-Poem’ Service Rises From the Grave, Lets You Use Your Phone as a Phone gizmodo.com/ancient-dial...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteThe U.S. Justice Department has removed a government lawyer from an assignment in Minnesota after she told a federal judge "this job sucks" and immigration authorities had failed to comply with court orders, according to a source familiar with the move.
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellettejust think about how incredibly out of bounds your sexual ethics must be to get the government of france sounding this prot-pilled
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteProbably not ideal that we’re left with only the NYT as a load-bearing institution to maintain the Fourth Estate. Independent journalists and local outlets are critical, but it takes infrastructure beyond their resources to report out certain national and international news stories.
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellette[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteBREAKING: Supreme Court denies California Republicans’ emergency request to block their state’s newly redrawn House map
- A 200-foot asteroid has a 4 percent chance of hitting the moon in 2032—and we could see it www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-20...
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellettethey don't have enough guys, and if the response in Minnesota shows anything it is that trying something like this is going to drive a much larger backlash than anything they hope to gain out of it "oh well I guess we'll just stay home" is not how this is going to go
- 🚨BREAKING: Steve Bannon said Tuesday that the federal government is planning to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to patrol polling stations during this year’s midterm elections. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteI’m sure chuds think the Boy Scouts let girls in because of woke, but the BSA actually let girls in because they’re capable of reading a chart and understood a precipitous drop in membership is an existential crisis
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteFormer Washington Post writer @geneweingarten.bsky.social starts his Substack today with vitriol the "leaders" of the WAPO most assuredly deserve.
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteInteresting 🧵 Did TikTok start censoring political speech? Maybe not. 🧪
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteAs always, the answer to "what should I do if I'm worried about Rs loudly announcing their aspirations to try & ratfuck elections?" is go volunteer to be a poll worker or an elections observer. That is, if you actually want to so something beyond just wallowing in despair & untreated anxiety online
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteEven with the largest zoom on a classic compound optical system, scientists struggle to make sense of finer details. Microbiologists are turning to an unexpected source to clear things up: a moisture-absorbing material found in diapers. www.quantamagazine.org/expansion-mi...
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteA retiree wrote this email to a DHS attorney. Within five hours, DHS demanded Google turn over records for his account. A Kafkaesque form of domestic surveillance, intimidating Americans for lawful speech. New from us at the Post: www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio... @johnwoodrowcox.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jennifer OuelletteWashington Post publisher Will Lewis, "who has already earned a reputation for showing up late to work when he showed up at all, did not join the Zoom" about the staggering cuts.
- Went curling once, it is actually hella fun....
- While the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics isn't until Friday, the first events take place today. Curling kicks off the competitive action — and you can follow it all with our live coverage ⤵️ 🔗 nyti.ms/4bUkzK3
- Reposted by Jennifer Ouellettei feel like we've had a good enough sample size for like two decades on whether or not body cameras on cops do anything whatsoever to stop them from killing people. the guy that murdered renee good was filming it on his phone for fun!
