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Brendan

@ninthhostage

I think of creative ways to end the world for a living, and how to protect shareholder value to the bitter end | πŸ“Philadelphia

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10.04.2023
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Latest posts by Brendan @ninthhostage

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New from me: In 1818 free Black Philadelphians attempted to form their own volunteer fire company, this is the story of what happened next

open.substack.com/pub/pigeondr...

28.02.2026 17:00 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Read @ninthhostage.bsky.social on last Friday’s Philadelphia Historical Commission meeting, where the Commission decided a designation case for a 1920’s movie theater in Frankford, among other things open.substack.com/pub/buildphi...

16.02.2026 21:29 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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Regarding the Purpose of the Philadelphia Home Defense Reserve Part I on the History of the P.H.D.R.

Check out a history of the first six months of the Philadelphia Home Defense Reserve - a little known paramilitary organization from the first world war

open.substack.com/pub/pigeondr...

25.04.2025 03:58 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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A Random Walk Through Philadelphia Week of 2/24/25

open.substack.com/pub/pigeondr...

02.03.2025 06:42 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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One of the great things about doing thus kind of research is finding all kinds of interesting tidbits - this is a future philadelphia mayor talking about why he got intk politics in 1950

24.02.2025 05:40 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

which begs the question, for councilmanic prerogative, does a district council member really "know their district best" when their district is composed of 150k residents?

Prerogative emerged when that number was closer to 10k

24.02.2025 05:39 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Philadelphias city council has varied in size and composition quite a bit - it got at big at 145 members in 1920

The number of residents per council member has increased 17x since 1860

24.02.2025 05:39 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Jackals and Bosses A look at the history of the structure & powers of the Philadelphia City Council

Philadelphia friends: I wrote an essay on the history of the structure of city council, and how that relates to councilmanic prerogative - you can see it here: open.substack.com/pub/pigeondr...

24.02.2025 05:35 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

There's a group that meets at bike stop ~monthly - phillyrubberclub on IG, that's probably a good starting place

24.01.2025 04:46 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

bluesky got milkshake ducked?

15.07.2023 16:44 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

a king among men - thee steps ahead of me

08.07.2023 01:11 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

thing to include in the regex is probably filtering out stuff about the tv show always sunny in philadelphia

08.07.2023 00:00 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Unique politicians names would probably work well ish too

07.07.2023 23:59 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

hoagie and wawa will both have a lot of south jersey/ delco overlap

so I guess the q is if we’re limiting to phila proper or the philadelphia metro region

07.07.2023 23:50 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

wondering how good the hit rate on β€œcenter city” would be …

07.07.2023 23:49 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

is jawn too mainstream?

07.07.2023 23:48 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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smdh all these people hopping on blue sky who haven't read the book first

01.07.2023 20:59 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

One nice benefit of Elon completely fucking up Twitter is the VC’s and Investors can shut up now about operating a tach business with only 20% of your staff

01.07.2023 20:09 πŸ‘ 48 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 0

deep cut

21.06.2023 02:26 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

it also has a remarkably high success & recovery rate for younger people with early intervention and defibrillation!

how could someone say that you'd have been better off without the attempt??

20.06.2023 23:07 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

what does that even mean? at a basic level... you only do CPR on someone who is already, for all intents and purposes, dead - and it seems hard to do more harm then "dead" under almost any sensible ethical system

20.06.2023 23:03 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

that's like so horrific and callus - but also - medically illiterate - real one two punch

20.06.2023 22:49 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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boop boop

20.06.2023 22:34 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

..... what!?

20.06.2023 22:23 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

when you go to a bar that has no beer taps - that's when you know

28.05.2023 19:30 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

really is feeling like 2009 era facebook out here

13.05.2023 03:22 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

you see this kind of behavior with (I’m sorry) people with medical backgrounds a lot too

hell hath no fury like an male doctor who is informed that his MD does not, actually, impart mastery over anything other than the general practice of medicine (and maybe not even then)

11.05.2023 22:30 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

that behavior is telegraphing insecurity like a lighthouse in the fog and demonstrating that attainment of an economically valuable technical skill does not make you either a model of virtue nor a particular thoughtful or wise person

11.05.2023 22:27 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

the almost compulsive snideness that some CS / eng people display when someone questions their credentials / suggests that an eng background doesn’t make you an intellectual ubermensch is quite unbecoming

11.05.2023 22:22 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

gen ed curriculum still exists and includes math right? or is that just a liberal arts thing?

11.05.2023 21:34 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0