Ashley Jester

Ashley Jester

@ajester.bsky.social

Probably more of a fox than a hedgehog ∯ Not that kind of doctor Coal miner's daughter ∯ Political scientist ∯ Data maven ∯ Librarian Information asymmetry ruins the world ∯ 🦔 = hugs

1.2K followers1K following2.5K posts

Ashley Jester reposted

Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to laziness. As someone who spent a decade in political communications and corporate PR, the straight answer is that either she or her reps reached out to the NYT and offered to provide quotes. And lazy reporters gratefully accepted the offer.

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social

Also, I'd love to know how two different stories -- each written by three reporters, with no overlap in the authors -- managed to find Jolene Riessen and make her the stand-in for apolitical Iowa farmers.

Ashley Jester reposted

Replying to @kevinmkruse.bsky.social

Brings me back to their publication on July 4, 2024 of an op-ed “Why I Don’t Vote,” which you’ll never believe was actually written by a Republican voter.

Ashley Jester reposted

It feels good to defeat fascism

Reuters@reuters.com

People in Belgrade celebrated following Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic speech conceding defeat to a student-led protest movement in a historic election that ends his long grip on power and heralds a new political era in the Balkan country. reut.rs/4zkXvww

Ashley Jester reposted

Think about all the awful things Republicans are constantly accusing people of, and then think about the fact that it is always, every time, without one =single= exception, projection.

Morgan J Freeman@mjfree.bsky.social

Well, well, well…. An analysis of voter registration records reveals Republican operative Scott Presler had 3 out-of-state voters use his Pennsylvania address to vote in the 2024 election. This is what voter fraud looks like.

Ashley Jester reposted

The Republican Party has all the values and tactics of a white supremacist prison gang and maybe it's time to stop normalizing them as if they were a modern functioning political party

Utah State Government: Once it's too late, we'll consider maybe acting

ProPublica@propublica.org

6/ Price said the state’s policy not to monitor workers is meant to allow farmers to decide whether to contact the health dept, rather than “forcing it on them.” “If we started seeing people actively dying from this, obviously that would change how we respond to this,” she said.

Ashley Jester reposted

Replying to @propublica.org

6/ Price said the state’s policy not to monitor workers is meant to allow farmers to decide whether to contact the health dept, rather than “forcing it on them.” “If we started seeing people actively dying from this, obviously that would change how we respond to this,” she said.

Ashley Jester reposted

Replying to @propublica.org

4/ While other countries have ordered farms to cull mink, officials never seriously considered it. Utah state veterinarian Amanda Price was focused on the impact on the farm’s owner: “This is his life’s work that he’s seeing be destroyed,” she told ProPublica.

Ashley Jester reposted

wait wait wait. the Republican ratfucking dad and son are named "Tommy and Timmy Teepell." are you fuggin kidding me with this shit

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social

Huge follow-up reporting to my scoop: The Guardian confirmed America Next—the conservative nonprofit founded by Bobby Jindal that was offering students $ to disrupt El-Sayed events—paid a firm registered to Tommy Teepell’s dad Timmy $250k for “canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed.

Ashley Jester reposted

Replying to @lemieuxlgm.bsky.social

I would, however, like to think that she would have always had the taste not to say any positive things about the guy who looks like a football left out in the elements since 1947 and sounds like Gilbert Gottfried getting tortured in Marathon Man

Ashley Jester reposted

Share who you think looked the hottest anyone has ever looked in a movie

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Ashley Jester reposted

Replying to @kalimurray.bsky.social

When people were like why is Kamala nattering on about joy, and being goofy: what were her choices, I ask? How could she disarm people?

Ashley Jester reposted

Getting flashbacks from serving during DADT, when every unit had a sailor or three that we all knew, protected, and shut the fuck up about

Gillian Branstetter@gbbranstetter.bsky.social

Woah - boards of service in the Marines and the Navy are ignoring Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth's order to purge transgender troops from the military. "Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

Ashley Jester reposted

way too much of US defense funding is currently going to people who basically have the mentality of cruel 14 year old boys who have just discovered the joys of smoking weed

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It’s a cult

YouGov America@today.yougov.com

NEW Economist/YouGov Oct 19-20: Ukraine % who think Donald Trump sympathizes more with Russia | Ukraine in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine All registered voters 45% | 16% Democrats 72% | 6% Independents 51% | 9% Republicans 14% | 31% yougov.com/en-us/articl...

Ashley Jester reposted

Habermas, among others, is quite clear on this: deliberative public reason is a normative ideal, realizable under very specific social conditions. The conditions of postmodernity are very different. And The Theory of Communicative Action has a lot to say about social media and chatbots in particular

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

it's understandable to think of constructive debate as an ideal and then to figure that *any* debate is therefore a step towards political values and virtues. but I think most debates, particularly in the social media age, make conversations and outlooks worse than where they started

YouGov, seriously? What the fuck is this bullshit?

Political Poll Bot@pollresults.org

National President Oct 2 - 4, 2026 Hunter Biden (D) 37% (+1.0%) Donald Trump Jr. (R) 36% Someone else 10% Would not vote 9% Don't know 8% University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Public Opinion/YouGov 1000 LV View Poll

Ashley Jester reposted

The thing is I worry that that this poll suffers from selection bias because it excluded the 95% of respondents who likely said, “you can fuck all the way off with this bullshit question.”

Political Poll Bot@pollresults.org

National President Oct 2 - 4, 2026 Hunter Biden (D) 37% (+1.0%) Donald Trump Jr. (R) 36% Someone else 10% Would not vote 9% Don't know 8% University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Public Opinion/YouGov 1000 LV View Poll

Ashley Jester reposted

Replying to @lolgop.bsky.social

Anyone who hurts a child or helps hurt a child for political gain is a monster. And why would they do that? Just to hide their failures, just so they can keep ripping you and your family off, making us less safe, sicker, and poorer.

Ashley Jester reposted

This is basically Trump taking another approach at attacking wind farms being built and finished wind farms that are operating. A wind turbine containing European parts that needs replacement components will be non operational. It's a way to shut down wind farms.

Ashley Jester reposted

people are acting like this is about AI bots hacking into people's bank accounts but it's actually about people who have given their AI agents access to their computer on purpose

The New Republic@newrepublic.com

Major American banks have reported unauthorized artificial intelligence bots inside consumer accounts, sources told Axios Thursday. trib.al/mmFWL8c

Ashley Jester reposted

Replying to @nickharkaway.com

Do you occasionally have that thing where you want to grab whoever is in charge by the face and shake them until they stop being a total idiot and fix things instead of breaking them more? Because I'm living with that all the time at the moment and it's making me tetchy.

Ashley Jester reposted

Trump didn't like Ramaswamy until he saw him sticking up for child rapists and their enablers. He hated the Ivy League until Cornell had a prominent fraternity gang-rape story in the news. He's not just a rapist, not just a serial rapist—he's a rape *enthusiast,* and it's why Republicans love him.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump: "What's happened is the press has ganged up on a woman making a horrible statement about her daughter, and I don't why she should be shielded. She said she was a dirty liar ... I say she's fair game."

Ashley Jester reposted

nobody stopped Musk before he broke the state monopoly on violence, so now either he goes or the nation-state does

Techmeme@techmeme.com

Ukraine says the abrupt throttling of US-funded Starshield grounded dozens of drones mid-flight, costing one unit $1M+, and halted some strikes for three days (New York Times) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink