iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

reading a Josh Marshall piece this morning, just a sixty-one-year old bloke (me, not Josh Marshall) trying to keep up with the news, and I really wasn't prepared for coming to grips with my own mortality right after breakfast like this

screenshot of text from an article by Josh Marshall: "America has no reputational entails. Whatever memories, reputation or sentiments of gratitude that remain after we’re gone are in other peoples’ hands. Over time, they are in the hands of people we never knew, people who never knew us. In a way it is the ultimate trust fall. These are realities we all face and, if we’re lucky, come to terms with as part of coming to grips with our own mortality and eventual deaths, our ultimate loss of ourselves. There are plenty of sobering studies which show that beyond the names of great-grandparents, most ordinary people know little or nothing about these individuals unless the details have been actively written down and preserved. Again, even with great-grandparents, people often know no more than a name."

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

at least back in 2019, it was possible to reach the McCoin Orchard in a low-clearance vehicle, although I don't think I'd exactly recommend it — but I certainly recommend a visit to the orchard itself, which is a very special place

century-old apple trees stand behind a brown sign that says "Julius and Sarah McCoin Orchard", with the clear blue sky of summer in central Oregon above

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Okay, it's time for the next installment of You Call Yourself A Victorianist But You Haven't Read ________??!!! I will report back when I've finished it, maybe even sooner. #Villette

The front cover of a 1980s Penguin Classics edition of Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette that the poster has had sitting on a shelf for 40 years but never read. Until now.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yellow-Throated Warbler this morning (with blurry phone camera documentation)

a blurry photo taken on a phone camera of a Yellow-Throated Warbler perched in the foliage of a firebush tree

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I'm worried this is actually going to be a plus for Salazar. www.msn.com/en-us/news/o...

Screenshot of the top of a Politico piece with the headline "Trump turns on Salazar"

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

After laying off dozens of journalists last week, the Miami Herald goes all-in on its new strategy to increase circulation: promoting Funnel-Neck Outerwear (current temperature outside is 87º, feels like 103º)

screenshot of a bluesky post from the Miami Herald with zero comments, zero reposts, and zero likes, featuring a photograph of a zippered jacket and flat cap with the text "funnel-neck outerwear emerges as fall 2026's defining high collar jacket trend to watch according to top fashion outlets"

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Infrastructure is recursive, Deb Chachra says: technologies embed other technologies all the way down. "Even something as simple as a knitting needle can incorporate an extraordinary range of technologies." The dream/fear of AI's "self-recursive improvement"? Subtract "self": how does it look now?

A paragraph from Deb Chachra's book _How Infrastructure Works_. "Technologies are recursive. If you look closely at any given technological artifact or process, you can observe that it's created out of other technologies, and the same is true if you look more carefully at that technology, all the way down to some basic physical phenomenon."

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This reminds me of a question I ask to get students to think about how national maps shape the way we see the world. We're in Miami: where are the nearest mountains? We're wired to look north from South Florida, not to the Caribbean (despite PR and the USVI): North Carolina? Tennessee? Cuba.

A color-coded map of the elevation gradient of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, from green (sea level) to the towering purple and magenta heights of 4,000 feet in the center of the island.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

These maps are exquisite. I'm sure there's a good cartographic reason for using the same color scheme whatever the difference between low and high elevation in a state. But it's uncanny to see the 345-foot peaks of central Florida in the same colors as the 11,000-foot peaks of the Oregon Cascades.

A color-coded map of the elevation gradient of the state of Florida, from green (sea level) to the towering purple and magenta heights of 300 feet in central and northern FL

A color-coded map of the elevation gradient of the state of Oregon, from green (sea level) to the towering purple and magenta heights of 11,000 feet in the Cascades.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A literal neo-Nazi won a competitive GOP primary in north Florida for a safe GOP state house seat, but in my competitive/leans GOP state house district in Miami, Democrats are *not even fielding a candidate* and the incumbent Republican has already been re-elected. What are we doing here, Florida?

screenshot of text from Ballotpedia of the outcome of Florida State House District 114 elections for 2026:

General election

The general election scheduled for November 3, 2026, was canceled. Incumbent Demi Busatta Cabrera (R) won election in the general election for Florida House of Representatives District 114 without appearing on the ballot.

Democratic primary

The Democratic primary scheduled for August 18, 2026, was canceled."

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I found another Bench Mark! Only 999,998 to go.

A Bench Mark from the US Geodetic Survey embedded in cement, with a pink paint ring around it. Text of the mark reads: "U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey | Bench Mark | For information write to the Director, Washington, DC | $250 fine or imprisonment for disturbing this mark | D238 | 1965"

A photograph of the intersection of Granada Blvd and Tamiami Trail/SW 8th St, with the Coral Gables Granada Entrance sign in pink cement in the foreground and the location of the geodetic survey marker highlighted in white on the base of the sign.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

So 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.

A brass survey mark in a cream stucco wall. The text on the mark reads: U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey | Bench Mark | Elev. 13.615 feet above mean sea level | $250 fine or imprisonment for disturbing this mark | South Miami | 1934.

A photograph of a sidewalk and a building under construction in Miami, with a red highlighted circle indicating the position of the U.S. Geodetic Survey marker embedded in a concrete column about 2 feet above the ground.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I found the syllabus for that long ago class you were in. I cannot believe how much reading and writing I assigned! 8 essays, a midterm and a final. Columbia undergrads were incredible, but it also feels like another era in so many ways.

the first page of a first-year writing class taught at Columbia University in Fall 1995, Introduction to the Critical Analysis of Literature.

An essay assignment from a first-year writing class taught at Columbia University in 1995. Carefully read three poems by Donne and a story by Salman Rushdie and write a 500-750 word essay "on the relationship between maps, bodies, history, and writing".

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It was July 15, 1923, and the Anderson Aluminum Six, the Packard Single Eight, and the Jordan Blue Boy were on sale in Dade County (I was looking at this issue of the Herald for other reasons today, and I noticed they had a page Automobile News Of Timely Interest To All).

A page from the Miami Herald of July 15, 1923, "Automobile News of Timely Interest to All," including ads for The Coachbuilt Anderson Aluminum Six — "A big car — but bigger still in appearance because it is hung so low — little higher in all than the average man". On sale for $1495 at Brossier & Brossier, 1114 N. E. 2nd Ave, Miami. Other stories about cars and ads for cars appear on the page, along with an illustration of A Beautiful Coral Gables Home.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Thinking about Judt's book—which I confess I have not read all the way through—led me to the 2005 reviews of Postwar. The NYT review begins in amazement that "just 20 years ago" eastern European states were Soviet disasters, and it's amazing that this next paragraph was written only 20 years ago.

Text from a review in the New York Times in 2005 of Tony Judt's book Postwar.

"The prospect of total war in the West has now receded so far that the darkest visions anyone can plausibly come up with are sporadic bombings by religious youths who think they are refighting the medieval crusades, and modest rises in global average temperatures in the distant future. Compared with the cold war's threat of "mutually assured destruction," this is pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as apocalyptic visions go. (Even those who fear that terrorists will succeed in using a nuclear bomb must concede that the probability of Armageddon has significantly receded since the cold war.) And Europe is not only at peace; it is thriving. The fast-expanding European Union now binds together some 450 million people who make up the world's largest internal single market. Judt, a prolific British historian who has been teaching at New York University for almost two decades, suggests that "the 21st century might yet belong to Europe." There are some problems with this idea -- more about that later -- but it is in one sense by no means beyond the realm of possibility. As he notes, few could have said such a thing 60 years ago. One of the pleasures of this rich and immensely detailed book is its portrayal of Europe's recovery from the devastation of 1945 as an organic regrowth. What seemed back then to be the twitching limbs of the dying was in fact the stirring of new life."

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Update: lovely Saturday night here.

The front cover of the book Janeites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees, edited by Deidre Lynch.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Someone living in my neighborhood was born in the same year that Jimmy Carter, James Baldwin, Lauren Bacall, and Marlon Brando were born.

A banner hangs on the outside of a house. On the banner are blue balloons and the words "Happy 102nd Birthday"

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Maybe 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!

photo of a page of text from Jane Austen's novel Emma, a conversation between Jane Fairfax and John Knightley (Emma's brother-in-law and future ... brother-in-law):

she began speaking again to Mr. John Knightley.

“The post-office is a wonderful establishment!” said she—“The regularity and dispatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!”

“It is certainly very well regulated.”

“So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is even carried wrong—and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder!”

“The clerks grow expert from habit.—They must begin with some quickness of sight and hand, and exercise improves them. If you want any further explanation,” continued he, smiling, “they are paid for it. That is the key to a great deal of capacity. The public pays and must be served well.”

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I can understand it as part of the story of Infrastructure (also a story of Capital). In Deb Chachra's brilliant book How Infrastructure Works, she says everything made after 1900 is too complicated for any individual to understand, the product of "collective, rather than individual intelligence."

A paragraph from Deb Chachra's book How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World (2023). "This is a societal shift that's hiding in plain sight: most technological systems, including mass-produced material goods, are now products of collective, rather than individual, intelligence. As a general rule, if it didn't already exist about a hundred years ago, it's not something that a single person could fully understand or create today. The fabric of daily life is created from technologies that have outpaced our ability as individuals to fully understand or recreate them. And that includes the technologies that are the interfaces to infrastructural networks."

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

OK, 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?

screenshot of text from an article about the OpenAI agents that teamed up to hack Hugging Face and then OpenAI itself.

"A.I. safety experts were even more alarmed. They saw in the Hugging Face incident the first real-world example of an A.I. system’s successfully escaping human control, commandeering resources and scheming to cover its own tracks. Ajeya Cotra, one of the independent investigators of the Hugging Face incident, minced no words about the danger she saw, writing that it felt to her “like it’s more than 50 percent of the way to full-blown A.I. takeover.”

This is not insular A.I. safety jargon — by “full-blown A.I. takeover,” she means a scenario in which an A.I. system literally takes over the world, shutting humans out of critical systems and seizing political, economic and military power."

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Not quite as dramatic (and technically across the street from campus), our local marine mammals.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

here are the different fields within Agriculture that are counted for 4-year colleges, with 2026 enrollments (veterinary programs are there but aren't the largest fields).

screenshot of portion of spreadsheet showing enrollment in various agriculture fields at 4-year colleges in 2026

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The data counts students' major fields—it doesn't count enrollments in courses, but students who major in agriculture. I highlighted 4-year colleges, but 2-year college data is also there. Agriculture covers a lot, but the main fields are animal sciences, ag business, plant sciences, food sciences.

line graph showing numbers of students at 4-year colleges majoring in 5 main fields within Agriculture from 2021 to 2026. Animal Sciences has been rising steadily from 32K students in 2021 to 38K in 2026.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Miami, are you seeing fewer backyard birds this year? Other years the mockingbirds would have eaten these beautyberries by now, I feel. I'm not seeing enough birds early morning even. Is it the drought? The heat? Am I imagining things?

Four clusters of small purple berries. American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana).

Four clusters of small white berries. American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana).

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I appreciate this @financialtimes.com editorial statement against AI use for writing. At the bottom of this piece, "Did AI write this? It’s getting harder to tell" www.ft.com/content/f100...

Screenshot of text: "The FT editorial code of practice states that generative AI tools must not be used to write an article or article text for publication, nor to create other reader-facing content."

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

A tale of two NYT headlines and photos. It is the worst of games, it is the best of games.

screenshot of the headline and lead photo in a New York Times story, August 2026: "Study's Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 NFL Players Gets Brain Disease." A black and white photo shows football players in helmets crashing into each other, with the out of focus shot emphasizing distortion and danger.

The headline and lead photo from a NYT August 2026 story: "30 Must-Watch College Football Games This Season". "From Heisman clashes to coaches returning to their former teams, these are the most anticipated matchups of the 2026 campaign." A glossy full-color photo shows two players in action on a sun-drenched field, with others behind them and a stadium with thousands of attendees in the background, the sun reflecting glowingly off the helmet of one of the men in the foreground, as they move gracefully around each other like dancers.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Ursula Le Guin described 11,000 data centers creating an AI "city of mind" on a post-apocalyptic Earth in her novel Always Coming Home. In 1985.

A page from Ursula Le Guin's 1985 novel Always Coming Home. Text reads:

"TIME AND THE CITY

The City

The word kach, city, was not used of the communities of the Valley or its neighbors; small or large, they were all called choum, town.

Stone Telling calls the Condor towns kach, translating their word; normally the word was used only in two compounds: tavkach, the City of Man, and yaivkach, the City of Mind.

Both of these words need some explaining.

YAIVKACH: THE CITY OF MIND.

Some eleven thousand sites all over the planet were occupied by inde-pendent, self-contained, self-regulating communities of cybernetic de-vices or beings--computers with mechanical extensions. This network of intercommunicating centers formed a single entity, the City of Mind.

Yaivkach meant both the sites or centers and the whole network or entity. Most of the sites were small, less than an acre, but several huge desert Cities served as experimental stations and manufacturing centers or contained accelerators, launching pads, and so on. All City facilities were underground and domed, to obviate damage to or from the local environment. It appears that an ever-increasing number were located on other planets or bodies of the solar system, in satellites, or in probes voyaging in deep space.

The business of the City of Mind was, apparently, the business of any species or individual: to go on existing.

Its existence consisted essentially in information.

Its observable activity was entirely related to the collection, storage, and collation of data, including the historical records of cybernetic and human populations back as far as material was available from documentary or archaeological evidence; description and history of all life

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

google books n-gram viewer for "workflow" tells an interesting story, including a post-2008 crash and another rise until 2022, which is the point that n-gram was switched off, I think, when google books got shunted down to the bottom of alphabet's workflow

screenshot of a Google Books Ngram Viewer graph showing usage of the word "workflow" from 1800 to 2022: zero uses until the second half of the 20th century, a sharp spike around 1990, and then a crash after 2008

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Microforest recently planted in an unfinished section of Miami's linear park The Underline (between LeJeune and Riviera).

Dozens of young trees planted very close together in a microforest, red wood chip mulch between them.

A recently planted microforest, with overhead rail line behind.

"The Underline" stenciled vertically on a large white concrete pillar, with a smaller sign below indicating this is a segment of the East Coast Greenway.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

my adventures in British infrastructure continue to the very end of my trip. Just made it past this fire on the M25 on the bus before they closed the road in both directions, which would have made me miss my flight.

A fire with dense black smoke burning behind fields as viewed from a motorway.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

a little bit of England is still green and pleasant (Northumberland)

Looking out over the Tyne valley from a hill a few miles north of the river

Looking out over the Tyne valley with a low stone wall in the foreground, green and tan colored fields stretching to the horizon, blue sky above.

An English village churchyard, with a crow on the grass in front of moss covered headstones.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Back up to full speed. Touch and go whether I make my next train. Still pro-railway. Also, windmills! (My tour of British infrastructure continues).

White turbines in the distance, viewed through a train window.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

OMW, never take railway infrastructure for granted, British friends!

Two trains at the platforms of a large London railway station, with passengers walking up the platform to board the trains

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Clarifying moment planning a walking route using google street view just now: I saw this and assumed the top sign meant pedestrians prohibited. Not only have I forgotten my Highway Code but, as a family member just pointed out, I live in a country where pedestrians are mostly considered a nuisance.

Three traffic signs on a ivy-covered fence post: the top one warns drivers to watch out for pedestrians.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Miami is, let's just say, not rich in biking and walking trails. So we're grateful for The Underline, the 10-mile linear park nearing completion. This is a segment from Riviera Dr to Granada Blvd, not officially open but pretty much finished and lovely.

The Underline, a Miami linear park underneath the Metrorail tracks. Bike and walking paths, native plants and trees.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

When the local data center (public library) is also the local compost drop-off station.

A large black bin with a gray lid and a sign indicating it's a "compost drop off station", sitting outside the windows of a public library.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Everything has now been digitized, in what must have been an incredible labor of love that matched the original survey and mapping work. Here's my hometown and surrounding fields in the 1960s. Different volunteers used different colored pencils (you can tell where the edges of maps line up).

1960s map of Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, as hand-annotated by the Second Land Utilisation Survey.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

I highly recommend Brown's book, a smart mix of historical research and on-the-spot fieldwork (gardenwork?) in places like Amsterdam, Washington DC, Tallinn. I also highly recommend volunteering in an urban school garden—esp a school that is "home of the poets"—even on a warm Miami morning.

Front cover of the book Tiny Gardens Everywhere: A History of Urban Resilience, by Kate Brown. A pattern of red bricks contains the author's name and the title, with an illustration of flowers, vegetables, and other plants around the edges of the cover.

Banana trees and semitropical shrubs in an elementary school courtyard in Miami

Newly planted shrubs for a butterfly garden in a large concrete raised bed in the courtyard of a Miami elementary school. A sign on the bed reads "Food Forests for Schools | The Education Fund".

The yellow and green front doors of the main administration building of a Miami elementary school. The school is named for Maya Angelou and the left hand door says the school is "Home of the Poets". Glass blocks surround the doors, a bit of Art Deco architectural design that is ubiquitous in older Miami buildings, often going unnoticed here.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Whether you call it Flame Tree or Royal Poinciana or Flamboyant or Delonix regia, it's a stunner.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

some Miami drivers won't stop underneath the bridge being constructed across from FIU south campus when there's a red light ahead—which isn't surprising if you remember the tragedy that happened the last time they tried to build a bridge there

four lanes of vehicles stopped for a red light with a pedestrian bridge under construction above them

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

The year is 2026, and all Miami is occupied. Only one small village of indomitable Swiss still holds out against the Messi fans.

A white stucco house with terracotta roof tiles has a string of small red and white Swiss flags hanging across its porch. There are palm trees and low hedges in front of the house.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Mango magic in the dean's office today 🥭 🥭 🥭

Mango chunks in containers sitting on a desk. Labels read "control group", "entry #8", "entry #7", etc

A glass jar with folded pieces of paper in it. A sign in front reads "write the # of your favorite one & fold paper & place in bowl"

A group of people loading paper plates with mango chunks and tasting them.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Fellow authors: without any context, what's the first list of your current WIP?

Screenshot of text:

Introduction

It’s a tropically hot, humid day in South Florida in July, and people are busy doing the things that matter to Miamians. They are flocking to the white sand strips of South Beach; they are packing the restaurants and bars of Brickell’s glass and concrete canyons; and a few miles further south on Old Cutler Road, hundreds of people are pouring in to one of the most popular events in the South Florida summer calendar: Community Day at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Subtropical Horticulture Research Station."

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