Philippa von Z

"The catastrophic norms of the future are in the tail risks of today"
-- Mark Carney

[Philippa von Z @CheerphilZ]

@FluorideAction Oral health trends like Japan's are important reminders that water fluoridation is not the holy grail that fluoridationists want us to believe that it is.

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

Jewish-American orthopedic surgeon Mark Perlmutter, who worked in Gaza, said Israeli soldiers took two Palestinian children, tied their hands behind their backs, and buried them alive at Nasser Hospital — their cries muffled by the dirt poured over them.

[Mark R. Brown, AICP, CNU @CompletedStreet]

The Rochester, NY highway removal was able to reclaim 6.5 acres of land, leading to $229 million in development and millions in new tax revenue for the city.

We need more urban highway removals.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Farmers have figured out that the cheapest pesticide is a strip of flowers.

When you plant wildflowers through a crop field, not just around the edge but in strips running through the middle, you get ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps living in the field instead of visiting it.

They eat the aphids, the caterpillars, and the mites for free, all summer long.

In controlled trials, fields with tailored flower strips had leaf-beetle numbers 40 to 50% lower and crop damage cut by around 60%, enough to drop below the threshold where spraying was even considered worth it.

The flowers attract a standing army to our fields.

We spent decades engineering chemicals to kill the insects eating the crop, when the insects that eat those insects would have worked for the price of seed.

[Edward Row 𓃡 @edwardrow]

who could have predicted this

[Philippa von Z @CheerphilZ]

@edwardrow So the alternative traffic-calming initiatives weren't successful in slowing drivers down? What a surprise.

[Marit Stiles @MaritStiles]

BREAKING: Doug Ford’s luxury jet cost taxpayers nearly $200,000 in additional fees.

He told us there were no additional costs for returning it.

He lied.

While Ontarians can’t afford groceries or rent, Ford is living like a rockstar on your dime.

[Philippa von Z @CheerphilZ]

@Baystboy @FoodProfessor @NiagarathisWeek Better than half and half for making yoghurt because it doesn't have carrageenan & other additives.

[blue @bluewmist]

every school should have a "fix-it lab" where students learn to repair their clothes, bikes and electronics. we should grow up knowing that not everything is disposable, that care and repair are part of living well on this planet.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Paris pollution after they added bike lanes and restricted cars

[Andy Boenau @Boenau]

The humble bicycle is a wonder drug that doesn't even require a prescription.

Reduce heart disease, cancers, diabetes, stroke, and dementia.

Bike more, live better, and live longer.

🚲 ⚕️ 🥰

[Urban Cycling Institute 🚲  @fietsprofessor]

'Don't blame having a child for the need to buy a car. Blame your city leaders for making it impossible to cycle safely with children.'
—@LiorSteinberg

(🎞️ of Den Bosch🇳🇱 by @BicycleDutch)

[Dr. Adil Shamji 🇨🇦 @ShamjiAdil]

Doug Ford once said his government would be the most transparent in history.

Since then, he:

❌stopped releasing mandate letters
❌failed to publish Ministers' agendas
❌eviscerated freedom of information laws

Democracy dies in darkness - so let's keep shedding light ⬇️

[FireFighterDev @fire_starter457]

It's been over a month, and we still don't know the name of that "downed F-15 pilot" who fractured his leg, yet managed to scale a mountain, walk 110 miles, and evade a brigade of Iranian troops, until the CIA could use an elaborate device that can hear human heartbeats 40 miles away to locate him. We don't know what he looks like, or where he is now.

[Stephen Wickens 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 @StephenWickens1]

It's also a shame that nobody has been building the types of condos or apartments that seniors might want to downsize into since the 1980s. Big enough units in neighbourhoods where people don't have to drive. Close to shops and services.

[Philippa von Z @CheerphilZ]

@rencar130 @PlumProfessora @NightShiftMD Thanks. You answered my question. Do you know what numbers are involved in Canada among unvaccinated peds?

[Philippa von Z @CheerphilZ]

@rencar130 @PlumProfessora @NightShiftMD Fair enough, but for the 85% that are tested, and whose tests are negative, how much risk remains?

[Petrichor ❤🇨🇦❤ 💙💛 @Chasingharmony1]

This is the biggest scandal in Canada. After defying a court order to provide his phone records, Ford is retroactively changing law and access to freedom of information. This reeks of guilt and malfeasance. How is this even legal in a healthy democracy?!?!?!

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[alex huot @alexhuot]

The list is longer than the song.