Val Syverson 🕷️
@vjpsyverson.bsky.social
Paleontologist, teacher, parent, biophile, UU, intellectual omnivore. Topics: natural history, nerd stuff, surviving the culture war. Tenuous professor at UC Davis. Allergic to puns. (protogynous, he/they/Þei; Dr.)
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Val Syverson 🕷️
@vjpsyverson.bsky.social
· Mar 20
There's a magnificent passage in "The Dispossessed" about this.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Yes. This. Words matter. They’re the American Gestapo. Not a hyperbole. Not anymore. Call them what they are.
There's no daylight between the Gestapo and ICE. None. Murdering kidnapping, raping, child molestation, trafficking, beating innocent people. If you have a Rep who isn't calling to abolish immediately then they work for the Gestapo. Anyone who tells you that you're overreacting is one of them too
January 24, 2026 at 12:47 AM
Yes. This. Words matter. They’re the American Gestapo. Not a hyperbole. Not anymore. Call them what they are.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Moral injury is very real, especially if you have to make difficult choices about whether to work inside or outside a system. If you work for any of the agencies or contractors roped into this, you have choices to make. Find somebody you trust to confide in.
"I urge any who are involved in the administration of the current immigration enforcement regime at any level to seek the counsel of their clergy, given my urgent pastoral concern for the moral and spiritual injury that their participation is causing them." - Bp. Rob Price of Dallas, 1/1/2026
January 9, 2026 at 5:54 AM
Moral injury is very real, especially if you have to make difficult choices about whether to work inside or outside a system. If you work for any of the agencies or contractors roped into this, you have choices to make. Find somebody you trust to confide in.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Turns out there might be some downsides to having all your optics planned out by memelord racists who have so cooked their brains in twitter's Nazi algorithm that they think the normies will be psyched to see masked stormtroopers arresting singing clergy en masse.
January 23, 2026 at 5:24 PM
Turns out there might be some downsides to having all your optics planned out by memelord racists who have so cooked their brains in twitter's Nazi algorithm that they think the normies will be psyched to see masked stormtroopers arresting singing clergy en masse.
Most interesting teaching thread I've read in ages.
Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.
As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.
Here's what happened:
As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.
Here's what happened:
January 23, 2026 at 3:43 PM
Most interesting teaching thread I've read in ages.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Weird how he feels the opposite way when it comes to Confederate stuff. No way of knowing why, though!
January 23, 2026 at 3:27 PM
Weird how he feels the opposite way when it comes to Confederate stuff. No way of knowing why, though!
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Wave a magnet over iron shavings and they will move. Is the pattern they form permanent for all time? No.
Saving items on computers is closer to moving iron shavings than putting pen to paper. You're trusting magnetic forces. Whether wedding photos or DNA, you need a plan to keep the data around.
Saving items on computers is closer to moving iron shavings than putting pen to paper. You're trusting magnetic forces. Whether wedding photos or DNA, you need a plan to keep the data around.
When two years of academic work vanished with a single click
After turning off ChatGPT’s ‘data consent’ option, Marcel Bucher lost the work behind grant applications, teaching materials and publication drafts. Here’s what happened next.
www.nature.com
January 22, 2026 at 9:37 PM
Wave a magnet over iron shavings and they will move. Is the pattern they form permanent for all time? No.
Saving items on computers is closer to moving iron shavings than putting pen to paper. You're trusting magnetic forces. Whether wedding photos or DNA, you need a plan to keep the data around.
Saving items on computers is closer to moving iron shavings than putting pen to paper. You're trusting magnetic forces. Whether wedding photos or DNA, you need a plan to keep the data around.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
We're a few weeks from a year since the definitive text on the subject
AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism
It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.
newsocialist.org.uk
January 23, 2026 at 12:01 AM
We're a few weeks from a year since the definitive text on the subject
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Tomorrow’s front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 23, 2026
January 22, 2026 at 11:19 PM
Tomorrow’s front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 23, 2026
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
coverage of the student and faculty response from the university of arkansas student newspaper:
www.uatrav.com/news/article...
www.uatrav.com/news/article...
January 22, 2026 at 7:16 PM
coverage of the student and faculty response from the university of arkansas student newspaper:
www.uatrav.com/news/article...
www.uatrav.com/news/article...
Hey Davis people, make sure you vote YES on Village Farms in June! www.abridged.org/news/village...
Village Farms housing project sent to Davis voters
The Davis City Council sent the 1800-home Village Farms housing project to the June 2 ballot for voters to decide.
www.abridged.org
January 22, 2026 at 11:38 PM
Hey Davis people, make sure you vote YES on Village Farms in June! www.abridged.org/news/village...
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
i like how this person thinks this is an own instead of the fact that Japanese-Americans believed in America more than the fucking idiots that interned them
January 22, 2026 at 5:52 PM
i like how this person thinks this is an own instead of the fact that Japanese-Americans believed in America more than the fucking idiots that interned them
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
I am literally unable to articulate the depth of contempt I hold the global elite in. They should be pulled from their private jets and paraded through the streets in the clown attire they so richly deserve. We live in an absolute hell world.
January 22, 2026 at 4:13 PM
I am literally unable to articulate the depth of contempt I hold the global elite in. They should be pulled from their private jets and paraded through the streets in the clown attire they so richly deserve. We live in an absolute hell world.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
the reason the elite are so desperate to vilify hard-working people coming to this country to build a better life for their families, unleashing wave after wave of gutter racism in the process, is to distract from the fact that their incestuous degeneracy causes most of our actual problems
absolutely insane to see Musk feted at Davos as the icon of a boldly "optimistic" future in 2026, as if he hadn't just spent the last year buying elections for fascists, making Nazi salutes, condemning millions in Africa to death, and building "Mechahitler," and a nonconsensual porn/CSAM generator
January 22, 2026 at 4:44 PM
the reason the elite are so desperate to vilify hard-working people coming to this country to build a better life for their families, unleashing wave after wave of gutter racism in the process, is to distract from the fact that their incestuous degeneracy causes most of our actual problems
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
We even tried to add a ban on the deportation of American citizens, and the Republicans in Congress rejected all of it!
Every single piece.
Every single piece.
January 22, 2026 at 3:51 PM
We even tried to add a ban on the deportation of American citizens, and the Republicans in Congress rejected all of it!
Every single piece.
Every single piece.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
You will never win a war by saying the very thing you are fighting for is an irredeemable blemish on the face of the earth.
I really dislike this leftie tendency to use all of the horrible crimes this country has committed as proof that the country is irredeemable, when the people who fought against it often did so *as Americans* because it implies they were a bunch of stupid fucking rubes
January 22, 2026 at 3:44 PM
You will never win a war by saying the very thing you are fighting for is an irredeemable blemish on the face of the earth.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Telling civil rights marchers that they're un-American, but leftishly.
January 22, 2026 at 4:12 PM
Telling civil rights marchers that they're un-American, but leftishly.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
yes this country has a long and storied history of racism, no shit
but it has an equally long and storied history of people who dedicated their lives to fulfilling the too-often-broken American promise
and there is nothing more American than that
but it has an equally long and storied history of people who dedicated their lives to fulfilling the too-often-broken American promise
and there is nothing more American than that
January 22, 2026 at 3:51 PM
yes this country has a long and storied history of racism, no shit
but it has an equally long and storied history of people who dedicated their lives to fulfilling the too-often-broken American promise
and there is nothing more American than that
but it has an equally long and storied history of people who dedicated their lives to fulfilling the too-often-broken American promise
and there is nothing more American than that
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
$100 in this morning. It is SO fucking cold. Please scrounge up some change and match us if you can:
Our community is in peril. Our neighbors need our help in this time of ICE presence and subzero temperatures.
Mpls has a shortage of available shelter for residents, and our city govt has not developed adequate resources to humanely house people.
Please support MIWRC in this time of emergency.
Mpls has a shortage of available shelter for residents, and our city govt has not developed adequate resources to humanely house people.
Please support MIWRC in this time of emergency.
January 22, 2026 at 3:54 PM
$100 in this morning. It is SO fucking cold. Please scrounge up some change and match us if you can:
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
this is a sort of rhetorical prong collar. "ahp-ahp-ahp! you thought you were a good person for a second there. you thought you had inherent worth to share and multiply by communion with others. get back under my heel"
January 22, 2026 at 3:24 PM
this is a sort of rhetorical prong collar. "ahp-ahp-ahp! you thought you were a good person for a second there. you thought you had inherent worth to share and multiply by communion with others. get back under my heel"
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
the point of this genre of scolding pedantism is and always was the institution and reproduction of a flagellant class seeking indulgence from the moral superhunans who deign to enlighten them, and not any sort of material change in circumstance
January 22, 2026 at 3:16 PM
the point of this genre of scolding pedantism is and always was the institution and reproduction of a flagellant class seeking indulgence from the moral superhunans who deign to enlighten them, and not any sort of material change in circumstance
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
While it made it as far as dress rehearsal, Tommy Brennan's Weekend Update desk bit on Trump's ICE deployments in his home state of Minnesota did not make it to SNL broadcast.
But they've made it available anyway. And you should watch it.
But they've made it available anyway. And you should watch it.
Weekend Update: Tommy Brennan on Trump's ICE Deployments in Minnesota - SNL
YouTube video by Saturday Night Live
youtu.be
January 21, 2026 at 10:19 PM
While it made it as far as dress rehearsal, Tommy Brennan's Weekend Update desk bit on Trump's ICE deployments in his home state of Minnesota did not make it to SNL broadcast.
But they've made it available anyway. And you should watch it.
But they've made it available anyway. And you should watch it.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Cal State University’s deal with OpenAI — providing ChatGPT to all faculty, students, and staff — will expire in June 2026. Amid the prospect of layoffs in the CSU, we’re asking the chancellor not to renew this costly and demoralizing contract.
Link below and anyone can sign:
Link below and anyone can sign:
January 21, 2026 at 7:33 PM
Cal State University’s deal with OpenAI — providing ChatGPT to all faculty, students, and staff — will expire in June 2026. Amid the prospect of layoffs in the CSU, we’re asking the chancellor not to renew this costly and demoralizing contract.
Link below and anyone can sign:
Link below and anyone can sign: