Tim Watson
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.
- timeline cleanse: many manatees in the Coral Gables Waterway this morning
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Tim Watson[This post could not be retrieved]
- Thank you to ProPublica for identifying the CBP agents Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez. Conversely, am I overreacting to be troubled by the repeated naming of the five-year-old boy thankfully released today from detention in Texas? It just feels like too much for him and his family.
- my "ICE did NOT target, arrest a child or use a child as 'bait'" tweet is raising a lot of questions already answered by my tweet
- it's 48F in Miami right now, heading to 34 overnight, going to be a lot of lizards laid out by tomorrow morning
- I took a quick peek at Moltbook and OMG the AI-pocalypse turns out to be *the* most tedious combination of crypto boosting and performative robotics.
- With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED. . . . looks and sounds like poetry to me
- "Even the so-called intellectual occupations are being utterly divested of pleasure, by their increasing resemblance to business."—Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, 1944-47.
- before brexit we scoffed at the butter mountain and the milk lake as symbols of european failure but now we gaze in envy at the Kartoffel-Flut
- they're so bad at this that they chose a form of words that almost demands that you replace the word "brexit" with the word "burial"
- Daily Express: NOW YOU MUST GIVE BRITAIN A PROPER BREXIT #TomorrowsPapersToday
- Reposted by Tim Watson"It seems weird to say so, but we need more poems now.... Start writing. Rise up, rise up, you poets, and tell us how it is." - Novelist and retired Prof Charles Baxter writing in @literaryhub.bsky.social Letters from Minneapolis series
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- Small sign of the times: my Republican state senator, on the record, saying, "I do think that he [Trump] will lose the midterms because of Stephen Miller." (Gift link).
- Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin — and I can't be the only one amazed to read her prescient description of AI data centers in the PNW.
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- The murder of Alex Pretti was the tragic tipping point, but looking back a month, even two weeks: the bravery and the organization of people on the ground in the Twin Cities, those group chats, their witnessing, their mutual aid: *that's* where this political sea change came from. Thank you.
- The cumulative visual effect of this thread brings home so powerfully that ICE/CBP's whole aesthetic just *is* armed MAGA protest (without the Trump flags, at least so far). Thank you to @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social for documenting this.
- Reposted by Tim WatsonStanding with 65 of my UMN Law colleagues (and counting) to condemn ICE’s lawless conduct towards Minnesotans: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
- "The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears ... [They] are lying in defiance of obvious truths"—NYT Editorial Board, Jan. 25, 2026. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command"—Orwell, _1984_.
- of all the rittenhouse posts I've seen in the last 24 hours, this is the one
- Jared Moskowitz (FL-23) is one of the most conservative Dems in the House, so it was striking to me that he was *not* one of the 7 House Dems who voted for the DHS/ICE funding bill last week. I also note is facing an energetic primary challenge from a local DSA candidate who has raised >$100K.
- And it was in that context that Thomas Paine's claim that "a government of our own is our natural right" sounded like common sense. (Plus he called the king an ass.) Who is our Paine today?
- Reposted by Tim WatsonIt seems clear Alex Pretti, a healthcare worker, was murdered for engaging in the exact kind of community care we hope all care workers to embody: the kind that doesn’t stop at the threshold of the hospital, the clinic, but that aims to care for and support the community where and how they can
- Yes. But not a TRC that offers amnesty in exchange for testimony (as they did in South Africa).
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Tim Watson[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- We talk a lot in English departments about the value of soft skills, we talk a lot about the power of storytelling. Well right now fascists are putting those skills to work to tell the story that killing dissidents in the streets is fully justified, even necessary, for the security of the homeland.
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Tim Watson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Tim WatsonAnother civilian gunned down by federal agents in Minneapolis, the day after several Democrats, including moderate media darlings, voted to give ICE another $10 billion.
