by When I switched on Romanian TV this morning and saw that the Democrats had taken control of the House after all, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was awake at 3am for some reason, and I had a look at Fivethirtyeight’s live blog. For the midterms, the site has been expressing probabilities using fractions rather than percentages, to stop people from freaking out over small changes of a percentage point or less. But on election night itself that didn’t work: the Democrats’ House probability plummeted from 11-in-12 to 2-in-5 in just 20 minutes. Full freak-out mode, in other words. Shit, Trump is going to carry on unchecked, and with the Republicans’ majority in the Senate boosted, they’ll probably get that health care bill through now, which will hurt and kill people. At that point, a tweet from Nate Silver was posted on the live blog, saying that the election night model was too sensative to early results, which were probably from rural areas that generally skew red. When I switched off my laptop I still feared the worst. In the end it isn’t the blue wave that some were predicting, and the American electoral system is so awful that all outcomes are somewhat depressing, but at least it’s a start. The most pleasing aspect was the turnout: the highest in the midterms for half a century, even if it’s still terrible by British or New Zealand (but not Romanian) standards.
Plenty of work again, in what it is yet another week of beautiful weather. Yesterday I had five lessons, including a slightly strange one last night: my student who is in his early forties and was born and bred in Timișoara said he hated the city. My views are quite the opposite. All the beautiful buildings, all the parks and green spaces, all the markets brimming with produce and life, all the trams clattering by. None of it is perfect, but I think I like that. Timișoara is a bit mad, a bit random, full of seams and fuzzy edges, at least once you get outside the god-awful central-Auckland-like angularity of Iulius Mall and its environs. And my job allows me to really be part of Timișoara. Right now I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else. (Of course if I’d been here all my life, I might feel different.)
Bohemian Rhapsody. Yes, the film was awesome. God, what an amazing band Queen were. Such talent across the board. What a fertile mind Freddie Mercury must have had. But after the film I couldn’t help but think how mainstream music has become such unbearably crap. It’s almost all meaningless pap. Last night I used Queen’s Bicycle Race in one of my lesson; he’s a keen biker and I’d spent a good deal of my day on a bike, so it seemed a good choice.
