Niki Dykstra
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enephdee.bsky.social
Niki Dykstra
@enephdee.bsky.social
970 followers 1.3K following 1.1K posts
Biologist, veterans advocate & labor union enthusiast. Rutgers PhD. New Englander. Cleared CIF for the last time.
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enephdee.bsky.social
Niki Dykstra @enephdee.bsky.social · Nov 14
Don’t underestimate the power of gumming up the works.
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
benthere-2.bsky.social
Decency always loses to fascism
January 15, 2026 at 6:44 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
tgk.bsky.social
Today is a great reminder that we can never be too ready.
A chart outlining the RIP BOZO Readiness Condition (RIPCON), which is a riff off of DEFCON. There are 5 levels, with 5 being lowest and 1 being the highest. The chart details descriptions of these levels, examples and actions to take in the event something occurs.
January 13, 2026 at 5:06 PM
enephdee.bsky.social
I can’t stop laughing at this
leyawn.bsky.social leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 2d
in 2016 i made an edit of a dilbert comic and scott adams got so mad he blocked me and then blogged about it
screenshot of a tweet from 2016 of an edited dilbert comic by leyawn: panel 1 (wally and dilbert talking to the pointy haired boss): wally: the separation of art from the artist is fascinating to me. panel 2: boss: why is that? wally: i should clarify - not just the separation, but the reclamation of art for another use. the artist loses their work to the world. panel 3. boss: like pepe? it must feel so awful to see that happen. wally: exactly. your work is no longer personal but public. panel 4: wally: and aspect that comes with the territory. to share one's art is to risk parody and theft. it can both inspire and desecrate. we've seen pepe, a once beloved meme, turn into a mascot of trump supporters, as ridiculous as that sounds. panel 5: dilbert: even before that, pepe wasn't some meme. he was a character in matt furie's web comic. pepe the frog is a thousand steps removed from the source. his comic is great by the way. panel 6: boss: so it's hopeless? our work can be turned into terrible things and we can't do shit? panel 7: wally: well there's one thing you can do. take some asshole's art and make it good. it turns out scott adams is a huge dumbass. it's great. panel 8: wally: he thinks a paid cabal of trolls is out to get him. he praises trump. dilbert: i thought his characters in dilbert were satirical but it turns out he's just as stupid as they are. you are what you write ahaha scott adams' blog how to insult me on twitter 10/21/2016 i've noticed that a lot of people are struggling to come up with creative ways to insult me on twitter. as a public service, i will organize the common approaches in this post so people can insult me by number 1. act like you think i draw garfield 2. proclaim that i am the pointy-haired boss from dilbert (assume a million people havne't already told me the same thing) 3. label me irrelevant 4. note that dilbert used to be funny but now it is just sad, like its creator 5. make a fake dilbert comic and have the characters mock their misinterpretations of my opinions in a way that you mistake for satire
January 14, 2026 at 12:02 AM
enephdee.bsky.social
I owned all of the Calvin and Hobbes collections. I wonder where those went, actually
maxread.info Max Read @maxread.info · 2d
why did so many millennials read so many newspaper comics? easily 60 percent of my reading diet in elementary/middle school was collected editions of calvin and hobbes, farside, dilbert, peanuts, doonesbury (!), foxtrot (?!?) and i know im not alone. historically unique phenomenon
markpopham.bsky.social good hyuck, babe! @markpopham.bsky.social · 2d
rather than talk about Scott Adams I want to talk about something weirder (me). Who else was really into Dilbert when you were 12. Who else was like, boy, I can't wait to work a cubicle job
January 13, 2026 at 8:04 PM
enephdee.bsky.social
As someone who used to, not so long ago, assist people with the daunting process of applying for federal positions - I don’t even know what to say. Fixing this is going to take a generation.
laurajedeed.bsky.social Laura Jedeed @laurajedeed.bsky.social · 3d
A few months ago, ICE hired me

I didn't sign and submit any paperwork. I almost certainly failed the drug test. I'm real outspoken about my opposition to the Trump administration, and I am extremely googlable

And yet, there it was, in plain English. "Welcome to ICE!"

My latest for Slate
You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.
What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We're all finding out.
slate.com
January 13, 2026 at 5:44 PM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
marisakabas.bsky.social
i hope all the people resisting ICE on the ground know how fucking inspiring they are. minneapolis right now, and chicago and LA and charlotte and DC and portland before them, you’re setting the blueprint for the future battles sure to come. thank you.
January 13, 2026 at 1:54 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
chrispolansky.bsky.social
Missed this on Friday -- Connecticut Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz: "Renee Good's death was a murder."

ct-n.com/ctnplayer.as...
Connecticut Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz speaks at a press conference alongside Gov. Ned Lamont
January 13, 2026 at 2:35 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
amybrown.xyz
so what's everyone telling their boss. like hey sorry my work is shit right now but The Horrors
January 12, 2026 at 4:45 PM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
katmabu.bsky.social
You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today.

This could be you.
Distraught woman says ICE killed her wife in video after deadly Minneapolis shooting "They killed my wife," the distraught woman says, adding, "They shot her in the head." An ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman who was driving an SUV in Minneapolis on Wednesday. / Screenshot/@Breaking911 "They killed my wife. I don't know what to do," the woman says through sobs in the footage, with a damaged SUV visible in the distance behind her. "We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head," the woman cries. "We have a six-year-old at school," she says, almost unable to breathe, as a chaotic scene in which federal officers prevented at least one doctor who was on the scene from assisting the shot victim unfolds. "We're new here," the distraught woman says in despair.
January 8, 2026 at 12:15 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
polgreen.bsky.social
After the assassination of Melissa Hortman it’s not hard to understand why a woman in Minnesota would be afraid of a man in a mask who says he’s a cop.
January 8, 2026 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
markreel.bsky.social
The first two hours this morning
A old advert that has the words What the heck is Electronic Mail? With a man looking very scared by a sparkling trail flying around his desk
January 5, 2026 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
kattenbarge.bsky.social
The end goal of Grok sexual harassment is to make women afraid to be visible. It’s a punishment for daring to exist in a way the perpetrators can’t control. There’s no one solution to this, because the problem isn’t just technological. It’s cultural. It’s misogyny. This is just one expression of it.
January 5, 2026 at 1:10 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
tvsadam.bsky.social
the reason people sometimes act madder at democrats than republicans when republicans do impossibly evil shit is the same reason why, if you hired an exterminator to handle a roach infestation and he showed up to feed and play with them instead, your first instinct wouldn’t be to yell at the roaches
January 3, 2026 at 9:19 PM
enephdee.bsky.social
I’m so tired, you guys
January 3, 2026 at 1:03 PM
enephdee.bsky.social
Fuck yeah, Bridgeport! #NutmegSky
jeffasher.bsky.social Jeff Asher @jeffasher.bsky.social · 23d
I count 10 cities in 2025 that are on track to have the fewest murders since at least 1970. Newark is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1956 (though only have data through Oct this year) and San Francisco is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1942.
December 24, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
melissagiragrant.com
we, in the United States, through Trump’s mass deportation scheme, have engaged in abductions and torture for the past year, none of it in secret, much of it attested to in legal documents. there is nothing to expose, only to face.
December 22, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
adamserwer.bsky.social
Oceans of data on job, education and housing discrimination:
Try harder, losers, stop blaming everyone else

Anecdotal evidence and innumeracy:
There's no point in trying, the deck is stacked against us and it is a great injustice that must be rectified
December 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
dieworkwear.bsky.social
A story I found about Haiti:

In 1999, a group of Haitians were tired of political disorder and dreamed of a better life in the United States. So they built a small, 23-foot boat by hand using pine trees, scrap wood, and used nails. They called the boat "Believe in God."
Some photos of Haitians running in the streets. There's smoke in the background. It looks like political disorder. A Haitian man stands next to a wall with some barbed wire behind him. The original Magnum caption said the man felt Haiti was a prison and he dreamed of making it to the United States. He wanted to be a rapper. Some men take a break from building a boat. A boat sets sail far off into the distance.
December 18, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
emilynussbaum.bsky.social
Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true
THIS is what makes my head spin: The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I'm not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn't care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There's nothing he would die for - not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He's not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, "the common man"" veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn't care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he's not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn't - in a more secular key - even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel's hand. Doesn't even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn't live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he's very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?
December 16, 2025 at 4:21 AM
enephdee.bsky.social
"Cloud Dancer is the color of a MacBook charger in its waning days of service."

Goddamn.
December 15, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
brian-goldstone.bsky.social
A relevant tidbit about the housing status quo this Free Press writer is so determined to uphold: in Connecticut, four-fifths of residentially zoned land requires a minimum lot size of *one acre,* seventeen times the size of a standard New York City lot.
sharonk.bsky.social Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · Dec 10
the thing about the Free Press types is that when you push them on their actual ideology, it's NIMBYism
nimby posting by Kat Rosenfield
December 10, 2025 at 7:20 PM
enephdee.bsky.social
It’s 100% this.
karenho.bsky.social Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · Dec 6
I'm starting to wonder how much "the male loneliness epidemic" is just straight and bisexual women identifying low-effort, mean, and incompetent men and choosing not to date, marry, and tolerate them anymore
December 7, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
kattenbarge.bsky.social
The White House’s insistence on using Sabrina Carpenter’s work and image to promote their crimes against humanity is also them appealing to their base, which already uses technology to try and humiliate and puppeteer the likenesses of women who have autonomy, success, and visibility in public
December 6, 2025 at 4:37 AM
enephdee.bsky.social
Break Ya Neck in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We live in wild times man
November 27, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Niki Dykstra
itsdanicarr.bsky.social
Writing isn’t boring!!! If you’re using AI for the parts of your writing that you find boring, WHY ARE YOU WRITING?!?!?

Literally!!! Ask yourself!!! Why are you doing this!!!!
November 26, 2025 at 11:19 PM