Tim Watson

Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 23:25 UTC

ask me how Miamians feel about peafowl

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:27 UTC

Despite how ubiquitous coconut palms are in images of Miami (imagine Crockett & Tubbs without palm trees!), stories about coconuts here are all about how they'll kill you when they fall down. Mangos weigh about the same, but Miami mango stories are all about where to find the biggest, tastiest ones.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 14:42 UTC

I spent a day as a reader here, before the BL moved to St Pancras, and cycled through a whole range of experiences over the course of that day: intimidation (how do you figure out how to order materials, where to sit?), awe (Too. Much. History.), satisfaction (me, reading, in the British Museum!).

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 20:21 UTC

let me know who's in the 95th percentile for quality of posts so i can follow them

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 20:15 UTC

according to these bluesky numbers I am in the 95th percentile for total posts and in the 99th percentile for number of followers and although I'm very happy to be connected to all four hundred and sixty-two of you to be honest that makes me wonder about the longterm viability of this platform

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 02:12 UTC

Ironically, the Labour party in Britain comes to power with less than 40% of the vote partly bc of a toothless and completely anti-democratic second chamber, a leftover from feudal times.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 02:04 UTC

The US Democratic Party already is or could be that popular front but the structural boost to the far right from the electoral college and the wildly non-representative Senate tend to mask that.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 02:01 UTC

I'm an English prof not a political analyst, but to me it looks like UK, US, France—despite their differences—all show that 15% of voters actively support far right, +20-25% more can be recruited to vote, but there's a solid-to-overwhelming antifascist majority to be mobilized democratically.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 22:12 UTC

forget "enshittification" (the 2023 word of the year), "la jeunesse emmerde le RN" (a 1980s antifascist punk lyric) points the way to a better future in 2024 (photo Jeff Pachoud/AFP from the Guardian live blog of French parliamentary results)

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 12:33 UTC

UK seats are much smaller; money not quite so determining a factor in campaigns; redistricting is national and independent, much less gerrymandering; no voter registration by party, no primaries. But rise of 4th, 5th parties (Greens, Reform) is fairly new, much more volatility now than 20 years ago.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 03:06 UTC

Labour gain Hertford and Stortford! My vote counted!! It feels good to be on the winning side of an election for a change! First Labour MP ever for Bishop's Stortford, which has been represented by the Conservatives since the 1860s. Wow. Goodbye Julie Marson, hello Josh Dean, the 24 year old new MP.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:35 UTC

Congrats from a fellow Hertfordshire voter a couple of constituencies over, Hertford and Stortford (voting overseas from Florida), hoping for a new MP too!

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:29 UTC

that's a telling moment, BBC breaking away from Corbyn's victory speech to go to Clacton to hear the result from Clacton where Farage has won, ugh

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:21 UTC

Labour gain Hexham, a mostly rural seat outside Newcastle, where my brother and family live, that's pretty amazing.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:12 UTC

Labour gain Welwyn and Thurrock and Stevenage (once Shirley Williams' seat) but Tories hold Broxbourne and N E Cambridgeshire. Just looking at my little swathe of the London commuter belt.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:09 UTC

Labour gain Harlow, wow. Next town over from where I grew up and where I spent a lot of time in my teens and early 20s (hi Jackie, although I know you don't live there any more). Nervously waiting for the result from Hertford and Stortford, my constituency, looks like it might be close.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 01:27 UTC

as I watch the BBC & read the Guardian on my laptop tonight it's wild to remember 1992, my first UK election after moving to NYC , a British friend & I watched C-SPAN in her Lower East Side apt waiting for UK election coverage that never came bc Congress stayed in session & they had to cover it.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 00:45 UTC

tomorrow's Guardian first edition front page: Labour landslide

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 23:20 UTC

Please don't let the GOP election truthers tune into the BBC feed with its rotating live shots of dozens of dedicated election workers in warehouses and council offices around the UK efficiently and speedily hand-counting paper ballots tonight.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:35 UTC

BBC video stream of election night results

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 18:44 UTC

I'm probably going to start here (not many jokes likely however). I imagine there'll be some snark here: www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics...

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 18:15 UTC

I generally hate fireworks but if Jacob Rees-Mogg loses his seat tonight (result expected from North East Somerset and Hanham some time between 11 pm and midnight US eastern time), I will imagine that the fireworks I'm hearing are in celebration of that British defeat.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 17:48 UTC

Guardian election results tracking page #GE2024

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 16:15 UTC

UK election Bluesky doesn't seem to have settled on a hashtag or a feed so far. Maybe #GE2024 is being used the most? Let me know how you're following the news today.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 16:13 UTC

or you could just follow the Guardian live blog (or any of a dozen other similar efforts -- I imagine even the NYT will do a live feed this time around) 3/

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 16:12 UTC

second spreadsheet (2.30am-3am) (presumably the overall picture will be pretty clear by that point!) ... 2/

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 16:10 UTC

Since the world is spreadsheets all the way down, after polls close at 10pm (5pm Eastern US), election nerds can follow the UK results constituency by constituency roughly in the order of result declaration here (11.30pm-2.30 am) ... 1/

(shared via @alastairmeeks.bsky.social from @pulpstar on X)

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 15:08 UTC

British-Americans of Bluesky, which feeds and hashtags and accounts are we following today? Apart from #DogsAtPollingStations, of course.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:29 UTC

Living in Florida, where removing voters from the register is the accepted tactic of Republican politics, I found the UK voter registration system to be especially heartening. Efficient, responsive central and municipal government bureaucracies that actually seem to serve the public good, my god.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:25 UTC

Britain's infrastructure is in a shambles—and yet I have to say I'm impressed by the smoothness of election infrastructure, where I was able to register to vote online in early June via gov.uk and East Hertfordshire district council, who quickly sent my mum the instructions for proxy voting.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:20 UTC

Fast forward to today: after 14 years of Tory austerity, I voted in the same constituency—my mum walked round to the local polling station, in a sports centre built behind my old primary school, & cast a proxy vote on my behalf for the 24-year-old (!) Labour candidate who might actually win tonight.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:16 UTC

My very first vote was the general election of 1983, soon after I turned 18, I toddled round to my polling station, in my old primary school, and voted for the Labour candidate, who was defeated by a massive margin in a constituency that has elected a Conservative MP since the 19th century.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:12 UTC

I was in the UK for the general election of May 1997 (although I wasn't registered to vote) and flew out of Heathrow the next day to return to New York, joking that I was the first to jump ship from Blair's Britain. In retrospect that was much too smug (although there was that little war in Iraq).

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:07 UTC

Maybe I can summon a bit of the post-on-through-to-the-other-side chaotic energy that @annakornbluh.bsky.social observed is missing on bluesky, on this weird transatlantic split-screen day, made weirder and more chaotic and more personal for those of us eligible to vote in both the US and UK.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:03 UTC

On the morning of 22 May I landed at Heathrow; later that day I sat on the sofa with my mum and watched a bedraggled Rishi Sunak announce an election for 4 July. Nobody expected an election so soon; in my jetlagged haze I joked it was triggered by my return to Britain. So today I'm obliged to post.

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