Andrew @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org

Since 1950, there have been six days where two people resigned, one day where three people did (5/1/77, all to go to the European Commission), and one day where fifteen did (17/12/85, Ulster Unionists protesting the Anglo-Irish Agreement) https://w.wiki/6pFQ #wikidataMPs

@fanf hmm - very roughly I make each side about 5mm, so say 0.2mm/character? honestly impressed I can even see the dots are there.

@fanf lens is packed away, but peering it looks like that'd be it - a long dash, a few marks, a long dash again?

Small footnote: this is only Chiltern-mechanism resignations, but in recent years they have dominated (130x). There were 8 direct appointments to the Lords (without resigning first) 1970 onwards, 48 in 1950-70. Another 12 "real" official appointments have vacated seats, only two since 1970.

Purely of academic interest: the percentage of MPs serving in each Parliament since 1950 who resigned (via Chilterns etc). We're closing in on the 2010 rate... https://w.wiki/6pEL #wikidataMPs

They're just visible to the naked eye - in the sense that if you hold it to catch the light you can see there is something etched there and that it's short-long-short-long - but might as well be dots. At least for me.

playing with the macro lens today: honestly don't think I'd realised these rim engravings were there before!

Today's useful #wikidata trick: report the items that match a group of Wikipedia pages, using only one SPARQL query. https://w.wiki/6p7y

not really news to anyone but: my goodness, rsync is *amazing*

NI keeps the register secret - possibly due to simple oversight - so a win there, but the one time it was done you also had to go to one of only three(!) specified locations to sign the petition.

Since presumably most of the population did not routinely visit the council leisure centre in Ballycastle, it became a bit apparent what they might be there for...

From the HoC Library paper on recall petitions, this one is I think a particular highlight: due to the way the legislation is drafted, it is (maybe) technically an offence to say you've signed a recall petition while the petition is open, *but* the register of signatories is public afterwards so there is functionally no secret ballot. 🤷

The Electoral Commission's report from 2019 - a lot of friction in the various processes https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/recall-petitions/process-challenge-a-sitting-mp-review-2019-recall-petitions

Not a surprising outcome - but will be another opportunity to find out just how hilariously awkward the rules around recall elections are https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/06/margaret-ferrier-given-30-day-commons-suspension-over-covid-breach

Interestingly there is only one non-English project linked there, Japanese - theirs is also tagged as a draft and seems to be a straight copy of the key points from English. Surprised no-one else has one yet?

Good news on LLMs: the slow grind to a draft policy on Wikipedia is producing something reasonably clear and actionable (and with a nice bold "do not" for both article content and talkpage comments) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Large_language_models

Not sure how I never came across this particular Fortean moment in @HistParl before: a Tudor MP who inherited the family estates after his father and siblings were blown up by (presumably) ball lightning?

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/walshe-nicholas-1534-68