English professor in Miami. British-American. London > Bishop's Stortford > Brighton > Brooklyn > Miami. Subtropical gardener. Florida Mangos: A Cultural History, forthcoming from U of Florida Press. Posts are my own and do not represent my employer.https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3mvbi2ow3d22dSo the image in this story about the US Geodetic Survey, and my memory of coming across one of these plates in Central Park years ago, led me to go and find one in Miami today. Of course, this being Miami, the building it's embedded in is under construction. The marker has been there since 1934. [contains quote post or other embedded content]11 Sep 2026 21:09 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvbi2ow3d22dhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3mv7hqddd4k2tI don't understand a lot of the technical details here but I'm certainly grateful for the work of the scientists and data wranglers involved in this mammoth project. I remember the first time I noticed one of these amazing geodetic markers, next to the lake in the southeast corner of Central Park. [contains quote post or other embedded content]11 Sep 2026 01:58 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mv7hqddd4k2thttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3mv7g4dahrk27The collapse of the Herald in the 20 years I've lived in Miami is just astounding. You can get a glimpse of it in the travesty that is their bluesky account. Some of the spirit of the Herald at its best lives on in the Knight Foundation, but McClatchy ruined this newspaper years ago. [contains quote post or other embedded content]11 Sep 2026 01:29 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mv7g4dahrk27https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3mv6dimfs5s22Is now the time to bring back or amplify Human Sciences as a term for research in the humanities (a word that many people outside the academy don't connect with) and in the humanistic social sciences? I'd be interested to hear thoughts on this. [contains quote post or other embedded content]10 Sep 2026 15:10 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mv6dimfs5s22https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muxwmgnum222People sometimes compare SoFl and SoCal—but this extreme SoCal forecast is Miami every day from early May through late September (it almost never reaches 100F but the dew point regularly hits 78-80F) [contains quote post or other embedded content]08 Sep 2026 02:03 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muxwmgnum222https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muxbzsm3qk22As @surliertexan.bsky.social points out, this article says the proposal is for language proficiency in English, Irish, or Irish Sign Language—it doesn't specify Irish proficiency. I regret posting before reading carefully, my apologies. [contains quote post or other embedded content]07 Sep 2026 19:55 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muxbzsm3qk22https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muwwym4ioc22Thank you @imanimosley.bsky.social for this thread and for centering the student musicians caught up in all this. [contains quote post or other embedded content]07 Sep 2026 16:37 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muwwym4ioc22https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muwnkeicoc22One day we'll need a historian to write Post-Cold War, the sequel to Tony Judt's Postwar. [contains quote post or other embedded content]07 Sep 2026 13:48 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muwnkeicoc22https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muutgqsekk2nNo details on casualties yet after the Miami plane crash, hopefully minimal, but my first thought is that it's fortunate the plane landed on the SE-NW diagonal runway and not on the W-E runway (a very common route), because W-E ends up feet away from NW 42nd Ave/Le Jeune, a busy 8-lane road.06 Sep 2026 20:28 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muutgqsekk2nhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muuocrytu22spretty wild if the future of the post-WW2 European social democratic experiment hinges on whether a few hundred people less or more voted for a party (BSW) that's only existed for 2 years and that most people outside Germany (like me) had barely heard of before today06 Sep 2026 18:57 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muuocrytu22shttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3musv4nrt4c26Someone living in my neighborhood was born in the same year that Jimmy Carter, James Baldwin, Lauren Bacall, and Marlon Brando were born.06 Sep 2026 01:53 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3musv4nrt4c26https://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muq577x2es2zMaybe bc I'm an infrastructure person (a variety of spreadsheet person), I adore this passage from Emma. Jane Fairfax is in awe of the infrastructure of the post office, thousands of letters traveling the land, hardly any going astray. She's right, we shouldn't take the post office for granted! [contains quote post or other embedded content]04 Sep 2026 23:40 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muq577x2es2zhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3mup6p7h2cc2joh look, as I was writing this series of posts, another AI agent swarm detected [contains quote post or other embedded content]04 Sep 2026 14:34 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mup6p7h2cc2jhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muozcx57r22jOK, so I read this paragraph just before my power and internet went out briefly (it was a thunderstorm, rather than a full-blown AI takeover ... this time), and I'm hoping some of my AI/big tech experts on here to tell us how to react to this and what we can do?04 Sep 2026 12:58 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muozcx57r22jhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3mukwmkdssk2jmy one conspiracy theory is that university IT sends spoof phishing emails that are so obviously fake because they've been told employee morale goes up when we get that notification "congratulations! this was a test phishing email and you recognized it with your unerring powers of observation!"02 Sep 2026 21:59 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mukwmkdssk2jhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muiytqt7lk2vI'm an English professor but it's Science that's sublime. Hundreds of researchers from dozens of countries looking for signals in "seven tons of liquid xenon". (Funded by a large grant from the US dept of Energy in 2020—would that happen now?). And they might have found a particle of dark matter?! [contains quote post or other embedded content]02 Sep 2026 03:33 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muiytqt7lk2vhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3muitou5eds2hThe sheer range of different answers to Johanna's fascinating question is remarkable. Like we have no Sage (but dozens of sages) and no equivalent of Concord. [contains quote post or other embedded content]02 Sep 2026 02:01 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3muitou5eds2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/timwatson.bsky.social/post/3mug7evoqx22uI love that today's bluesky discourse is The War on A Christmas Carol. I just spent a sad five minutes on Threads for the first time in months and I promise you they are not talking about Dickens over there. [contains quote post or other embedded content]01 Sep 2026 00:52 +0000at://did:plc:g5b7654wsshbq3ra6kins27s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mug7evoqx22u