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 🕷️
The media will try its damnedest to make Graham Linehan's sockpuppets look like an actual demographic, a dozen college students look like a rampaging mob, two hundred domestic abusers wearing cosplay outfits look like a fully formed gestapo.
January 10, 2026 at 8:20 PM
The media will try its damnedest to make Graham Linehan's sockpuppets look like an actual demographic, a dozen college students look like a rampaging mob, two hundred domestic abusers wearing cosplay outfits look like a fully formed gestapo.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
I keep thinking “my god the people they’ve killed seem like exceptionally good folks” and I think the lesson there is that they’re not exceptional, but that wonderful people abound and that a baseline distrust in humanity is a shitty conservative trope that privileges power over collective strength
you don't become a martyr because you were a saint, you become a saint because you were martyred
I agree that we can’t make Alex Pretti a Benedictine monk because that’s a trap, but we can talk about the good things we did because people will see and hear them and think “I do those things too”
January 25, 2026 at 12:27 AM
I keep thinking “my god the people they’ve killed seem like exceptionally good folks” and I think the lesson there is that they’re not exceptional, but that wonderful people abound and that a baseline distrust in humanity is a shitty conservative trope that privileges power over collective strength
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Let’s be clear about what the Trump regime is saying to Minnesota: “We will continue murdering your citizens unless you help us rig your election.”
Pam Bondi's conditions for Minnesota: 1) give us all your state data on your food programs, including SNAP 2) repeal all your sanctuary policies in the state (since it has led to "so much crime and violence") and 3) hand over your state voting rolls. Letter here: www.fox9.com/news/minneap...
Minneapolis shooting: AG Pam Bondi gives Gov. Walz conditions for ICE to leave Minnesota
www.fox9.com
January 25, 2026 at 4:35 AM
Let’s be clear about what the Trump regime is saying to Minnesota: “We will continue murdering your citizens unless you help us rig your election.”
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Please note that NYT is leading with what the videos show, not the lies from the feds. This is what every news organization should be doing. This is how you cover a government that lies as it breathes. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/us/minneapolis-shooting-ice
Minneapolis Live Updates: Man Killed by Federal Agents Was Holding a Phone, Not a Gun
www.nytimes.com
January 25, 2026 at 2:27 AM
Please note that NYT is leading with what the videos show, not the lies from the feds. This is what every news organization should be doing. This is how you cover a government that lies as it breathes. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/us/minneapolis-shooting-ice
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
i don’t mean to alarm anyone but i think this switch has been thrown and the handle broken clean off
every great laker has a little switch in the back of their head and if you flip it they decide they only get to go to lutheran heaven if they kill a plantation owner and the more plantation owners they kill the more lutheran the heaven they get to go to becomes
January 25, 2026 at 4:34 AM
i don’t mean to alarm anyone but i think this switch has been thrown and the handle broken clean off
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
All the focus is on abolish ICE but CBP seems honestly the worse of the two. Bovino, today’s shooting, and Ross was former CBP.
January 25, 2026 at 4:28 AM
All the focus is on abolish ICE but CBP seems honestly the worse of the two. Bovino, today’s shooting, and Ross was former CBP.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
The People vs. ICE
Renee Good’s death galvanized a city eager to push back against Trump’s invasion.
nymag.com
January 23, 2026 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
I am as explicitly as possible laying down a date-stamped marker that a federal immigration agent is going to die violently within the next calendar year, and that this will retroactively be used to justify policy. I am saying it here so I can angrily quote this at media figures when it happens.
January 25, 2026 at 2:41 AM
I am as explicitly as possible laying down a date-stamped marker that a federal immigration agent is going to die violently within the next calendar year, and that this will retroactively be used to justify policy. I am saying it here so I can angrily quote this at media figures when it happens.
People have been working overtime, too, to convince us that Americans would break for the bad guys if it came down to it.
Americans were supposed to cower or cheer when they saw fascist violence. The Real Americans would shout with glee, and the rest would bow down because they’re woke and weak and stuff. Everyone knows that. X users know it. Podcasters know it. Stephen Miller knows it.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
January 25, 2026 at 3:13 AM
People have been working overtime, too, to convince us that Americans would break for the bad guys if it came down to it.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
yeah we’re heading in a direction this weekend and it’s not just towards one side changing bsky.app/profile/reic...
January 25, 2026 at 2:55 AM
yeah we’re heading in a direction this weekend and it’s not just towards one side changing bsky.app/profile/reic...
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
That's not even going into the part of my family history that's written up in the 17th century book 'Martyrs Mirror', and how a whole lot of the evangelicals defending Trump are the theological heirs of the ones doing the beheading back then, while constantly imagining themselves as martyrs.
January 25, 2026 at 1:58 AM
That's not even going into the part of my family history that's written up in the 17th century book 'Martyrs Mirror', and how a whole lot of the evangelicals defending Trump are the theological heirs of the ones doing the beheading back then, while constantly imagining themselves as martyrs.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Feds violently arrested a comrade today at the John Moss Federal Building in Sacramento, after hitting them with their vehicle. They’re still locked up.
January 23, 2026 at 6:51 AM
Feds violently arrested a comrade today at the John Moss Federal Building in Sacramento, after hitting them with their vehicle. They’re still locked up.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump.
Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.
Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.
January 25, 2026 at 12:35 AM
Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump.
Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.
Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
They know they cant feed one officer to the machine cause then half the rest of those cowards will bolt. The chuds want to play real life call of duty, if there are possible consequences they will bail.
The one thing that I don't think this administration understands is that holding this guy accountable is probably the best thing that lets them keep doing what they want.
This is such a powder keg, and the reason even authoritarian admins are leery about this is because it's hard to know whats next
This is such a powder keg, and the reason even authoritarian admins are leery about this is because it's hard to know whats next
January 24, 2026 at 7:38 PM
They know they cant feed one officer to the machine cause then half the rest of those cowards will bolt. The chuds want to play real life call of duty, if there are possible consequences they will bail.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
The fact that the people getting murdered are kind people who care about those around them is, to me, simply evidence that more people are kind and caring than is commonly assumed
Alex Pretti "used to tell people off when they made sexist comments to female physicians. He bought me coffee when I had a really bad day as an intern...I laughed alongside him daily. He made a point to teach medical residents without judgement, but with a smile on his face and a joke."
January 25, 2026 at 1:10 AM
The fact that the people getting murdered are kind people who care about those around them is, to me, simply evidence that more people are kind and caring than is commonly assumed
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
it's really convenient that ICE is supplying smoke to make this look like an 18th century battleground
January 25, 2026 at 1:32 AM
it's really convenient that ICE is supplying smoke to make this look like an 18th century battleground
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
“this moment requires you not to worship your own life anymore” audience is stone cold “this moment requires you to put your life between them and their targets” audience erupts
i know there’s a selection bias here but. there is a Hunger in this room i’ve never seen before
i know there’s a selection bias here but. there is a Hunger in this room i’ve never seen before
January 25, 2026 at 2:00 AM
“this moment requires you not to worship your own life anymore” audience is stone cold “this moment requires you to put your life between them and their targets” audience erupts
i know there’s a selection bias here but. there is a Hunger in this room i’ve never seen before
i know there’s a selection bias here but. there is a Hunger in this room i’ve never seen before
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
i am at a unitarian universalist meeting. the attendance is fifty fifty retirees and college students. everyone here knows who alex pretti is and everyone here is pissed beyond belief
and none of us are afraid
and none of us are afraid
January 25, 2026 at 12:17 AM
i am at a unitarian universalist meeting. the attendance is fifty fifty retirees and college students. everyone here knows who alex pretti is and everyone here is pissed beyond belief
and none of us are afraid
and none of us are afraid
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
"I insisted that the agents let me assess him. Normally, I would not have been so persistent, but as a physician, I felt a professional and moral obligation to help this man, especially since none of the agents were helping him."
BREAKING: A young doctor who lives near where Alex Pretti, a nurse, was killed by ICE says in a declaration he saw the shooting, went out to help, was not let through at first then patted down before being let by, and was apparently the first to try and provide any medical assistance to Pretti.
January 25, 2026 at 2:01 AM
"I insisted that the agents let me assess him. Normally, I would not have been so persistent, but as a physician, I felt a professional and moral obligation to help this man, especially since none of the agents were helping him."
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
The Pink Jacket lady who filmed the killing tells a court that she is terrified to go home because she’s heard the federal agents who murdered a man in front of her are looking for her! Oh my god.
January 25, 2026 at 2:02 AM
The Pink Jacket lady who filmed the killing tells a court that she is terrified to go home because she’s heard the federal agents who murdered a man in front of her are looking for her! Oh my god.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
4 days into year 2 and we're at the 'truth and reconciliation commission' stage
January 25, 2026 at 1:27 AM
4 days into year 2 and we're at the 'truth and reconciliation commission' stage
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
We will need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission when these cruel, lawless people are out of office. They must be held accountable in order for our nation to heal.
January 25, 2026 at 1:10 AM
We will need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission when these cruel, lawless people are out of office. They must be held accountable in order for our nation to heal.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
We started Reconstruction but it fairly quickly led to a civil war with the KKK that the government largely lost, and we gave up the rest of Reconstruction to sweep that under the rug.
The past 50-60 years of politics has been the bill coming due for that.
The past 50-60 years of politics has been the bill coming due for that.
January 25, 2026 at 12:22 AM
We started Reconstruction but it fairly quickly led to a civil war with the KKK that the government largely lost, and we gave up the rest of Reconstruction to sweep that under the rug.
The past 50-60 years of politics has been the bill coming due for that.
The past 50-60 years of politics has been the bill coming due for that.
Reposted by Val Syverson 🕷️
they're executing moms and nurses in the street. they're using preschoolers as bait. they're stealing people's dads and grandmas and children. they're tear gassing babies. they're staking out schools. there is no remedy but abolition. any proposal that doesn't start there is an act of violence.
January 24, 2026 at 7:48 PM
they're executing moms and nurses in the street. they're using preschoolers as bait. they're stealing people's dads and grandmas and children. they're tear gassing babies. they're staking out schools. there is no remedy but abolition. any proposal that doesn't start there is an act of violence.