jenny (phire)
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phirephoenix.com
jenny (phire)
@phirephoenix.com
1.7K followers 560 following 890 posts
I write code for a living and words for my sins. occasional blog posts at https://phirephoenix.com, weekly newsletter for organizing/activism in Toronto at @showuptoronto.ca.
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phirephoenix.com
jenny (phire) @phirephoenix.com · Aug 1
It's been almost three months since I launched Show Up Toronto and in that time I've posted 426 events from over 200 groups, which is pretty dang cool. The fact that there are consistently 100+ events a month representing the labour of thousands validates my optimism about the city. showuptoronto.ca
Show Up TO
Show Up Toronto is a hub and weekly newsletter of community organizing, mutual aid, and advocacy events from around the city.
showuptoronto.ca
Reposted by jenny (phire)
canadiandimension.bsky.social
Mark Carney's new housing agency Build Canada Homes is designed to create the appearance of action on housing affordability while carefully ensuring its output is aligned with the landlords and developers its CEO, Ana Bailão, so ably represents.
Mark Carney’s new housing agency is built to protect the bubble
Rather than propose a vision for a Canadian economy built on something other than housing speculation, Mark Carney has opted to prop up real estate interests. Build Canada Homes is designed to create ...
canadiandimension.com
November 23, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
corruptario.bsky.social
Brexit was a huge win for #IDUPlaybook

The "architect of Brexit" is one of Harper's vice chairs at IDU.

The other vice chair, Mike Roman, has been indicted for fixing elections for Trump.
grumpyyetamusin.bsky.social Grumpy @grumpyyetamusin.bsky.social · 20h
Between Brexit and his Covid response, Boris Johnson truly fucked the UK
November 23, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
The thing about Trump saying it’s fine for Mamdani to call him a fascist is that he genuinely thinks all of this is kayfabe, just as he could insult Rubio or Cruz but still work with them. It’s not possible for him to imagine other people being sincere about anything.
November 23, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
peark.es
I only just saw this thanks to @ed3d.net and I don’t have time to do a full fisking before my daughter’s bedtime but a few hundred words in and it’s utter nonsense.

substack.com/inbox/post/1...
The Algorithm That Detected a $610 Billion Fraud: How Machine Intelligence Exposed the AI Industry’s Circular Financing Scheme
On November 20, 2025, trading algorithms identified what may become the largest accounting fraud in technology history—not in months or years, but in 18 hours.
substack.com
November 23, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
tabathasouthey.bsky.social
Massive shoutout out to whoever handles the Royal Canadian Air Force’s social media account. They responded to every single comment on their already very solid Trans Day of Remembrance post and they responded like this…
A screenshot of a Facebook post where a person named Andy ask the Well now “What the hell is transgender?” The Royal Canadian Air Force account response with “That’s a pretty big question asked in a pretty small way, Andy. ‘Transgender’ putting describes someone whose gender – who they know themselves to be – doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. It’s not new, and it’s certainly not a fad. People have lived this experience for as long as people have existed; we’re just finally talking about it openly. You don’t have to fully understand it right away, most learning takes time, but we can always start from a place of respect. That’s how decent folks handle things they’re still getting used to.”
November 22, 2025 at 1:03 AM
phirephoenix.com
these organizers have more guts than every single billionaire combined
November 23, 2025 at 5:02 AM
phirephoenix.com
well this makes me feel a little bit better
kevinmkruse.bsky.social Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 1d
I’d like to thank the designers of this season of Learned League for finally getting me to drop out.
November 23, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
justicar.xyz
Every parent whose career has to do with online safety also bans Roblox.
maxnichols.bsky.social Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 2d
Every game designer parent I know bans Roblox for their kids
November 22, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
prayingmantis.bsky.social
"If you don't nurture the soft parts of yourself that made you show up in the first place, you will become hard, you will stop feeling things." - @mskellymhayes.bsky.social on the importance of taking time for your grief amidst the work.
November 21, 2025 at 6:07 AM
phirephoenix.com
tbh having gone to business school is why I do not believe ethics classes in computer science programs will accomplish,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,anything
troutgirl.bsky.social Joyce Park @troutgirl.bsky.social · 1d
I once knew a Federal bank examiner, and one time someone asked him why we had to KEEP inspecting banks over and over. He basically said every new batch of business school grads invents bank fraud from first principles.
mattseybold.bsky.social Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 2d
AirBnB CEO calling it “vibe revenue” just 👨‍🍳 😘

The underlying cause of every bubble - debt masquerading as financial innovation - depends on not just short financial memory & speculative neophytism, but reinventing jargon of finance, like how each generation of kids has new ways to say same things.
November 23, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
dansinker.com
With ICE and border patrol goons spreading out across the country, I put together a resource guide for buying, printing, and distributing whistles, based on my own experience. Now is the time to whistle up, hope this helps. dansinker.com/posts/202…
November 21, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
jamaps.bsky.social
Charting number of rental units in apartment buildings in Toronto by year of construction

(This is a quick update to a similar chart I made ~2.5 years ago)

#toronto #housing #dataviz #NationalHousingDay
Stacked bar chart showing the number of apartment units in Toronto by year of construction with categories for private, TCHC, and other social housing. The vast majority were built in the 1960s and 1970s, with a minor up-tick in recent years.
November 22, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
minakimes.bsky.social
Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings. Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission. Early in my illness, when I
November 22, 2025 at 4:09 PM
phirephoenix.com
the fact that part 1 was free and part 2 is paid is so fucking funny, genuinely mad respect lmfao
sky.skymarchini.net Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 2d
why did i log back in. WHY DID I LOG BACK IN. www.telos.news/p/part-2-she...
Part 2: She Did It Again Ryan Lizza Nov 22, 2025 ∙ Paid If you are new to this series, start here. She did it again. It was four years later. Another presidential campaign. Another book project. Another candidate whom she had profiled. Another note—a poem, according to Olivia—though this time from the candidate to her. “Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, had written to my then-fiancé. “Drink from me Love.” He continued, “I mean to squeeze your cheeks to force open your mouth. I’ll hold your nose as you look up at me to encourage you to swallow. ‘Dont spill a drop’. I am a river You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you. I mean to subdue and tame you. My Love.” I can’t say there weren’t any signs. I did find it odd that Olivia was simultaneously reading Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction and Maureen Callahan’s Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed. But the poem—let’s call it “American Canyon”—and many others, too explicit to print, changed everything. (Thanks to Bobby, I am now aware of something called felching.)
November 22, 2025 at 7:03 PM
phirephoenix.com
I WISH ALL

instant messaging app notifications

A VERY

show me the number of conversations with unread messages instead of the aggregate total of unread messages in all conversations that’s too many
November 22, 2025 at 6:21 PM
phirephoenix.com
Toronto!!! Don't forget about tomorrow's National Housing Day rally marching from the landlord lobby's office to Queen's Park to show Ford that tenants won't be bullied!!!
Poster for National Housing Day tenant rally hosted by the York South-Weston Tenant Union. Illustration on the left is half of Ford's grinning/grimacing face rendered in an impressionistic black and white so it looks like an illustration. Poster slogan says "Stop Doug Ford's War on Tenants - Join the tenant Rally". Protest details: Saturday Nov 22. 11am, meet outside FRPO at 67 Yonge St. 11:30 am: March to Queen's Park. 12:30, Rally at Queen's Park. QR code links to https://www.tenantunion.ca/housingday2025
November 22, 2025 at 3:29 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
adriannap.bsky.social
I did 7 CBC Radio Canada interviews with hosts across the country talking about the death positive movement in Canada:

All in a Weekend (Montreal - Quebec)
HOST: Sonali Karnick

Weekend AM - St. John's (Newfoundland)
HOST: Jamie Fitzpatrick

Weekend Morning Show (Manitoba)
HOST: Nadia Kidwai
November 22, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
lorichtimes.bsky.social
Congratulations to Ontario's newest licensed truck driver
A dog (Buckley) in the cab of a truck A dog (Buckley) in the cab of a truck
November 21, 2025 at 9:11 PM
phirephoenix.com
we just moved and in re-setting up my book shelves I decided to split off my unread books so that it would be easier to pull from when I’m looking to start a new book, which laid bare the devastating fact my ratio of unread-to-read books is about 1:2, I am never going to make it
November 20, 2025 at 5:27 PM
phirephoenix.com
this is a deeply unsettling fact to have learned at 1am
nome.bsky.social Nome @nome.bsky.social · Mar 12
Additionally, hippos - despite being massive - have almost no fat on them. All of that impressive bulk is muscle.

2% body fat. Compare that to Elephants, which are around 8-10%, or rhinos, which are 10-20%.

The average human is around 20-40%, for reference.

They're *all* muscle.
A comparison, showing a hippo standing in shallow water, and a see-through model of a hippo with an extremely thin layer of subcutaneous fat and skin over a body that's thick with muscle.
November 20, 2025 at 5:55 AM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
luckytran.com
I really hate it when scientists keep saying that “we need to rebuild trust in science,” because it implies that scientists are to blame for the mistrust rather than the millions of dollars of dark money that have funded political attacks on science in order to advance a far right agenda.
November 19, 2025 at 9:48 PM
phirephoenix.com
movement memos is pretty much the only podcast about organizing I can regularly keep up with and not feel overwhelmed or filled with despair OR like I’m being told easy victories and this week’s episode was particularly nourishing truthout.org/audio/burnou...
Burnout Is Not Inevitable: Building Movements That Can Hold Us
“Care really should be at the center of our strategy, of our analysis, and of our practice,” says Aaron Goggans.
truthout.org
November 19, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
eliothiggins.bsky.social
LLMs give people with delusional belief systems a way to organise those beliefs. The model fills in gaps, supplies connective tissue, and wraps the madness in formal language.
It doesn't make the claims more credible to us, it just tidies them up.
November 19, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by jenny (phire)
katarinahunt.bsky.social
Whomst among us hasn't felt a little vacuum about snackie all done
November 18, 2025 at 7:02 AM