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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I’ve used the system pretty regularly. To be fair, I live in a small city (150,000) within the golden horseshoe, so definitely better care compared to many throughout rural areas.

    In the past few years I’ve had the birth of a child including all the various follow ups and shots, a stress test, blood work to rule out several heart issues, a halter monitor test, an ultrasound of my heart, three sets of baseline blood work, and four family doctor appointments.

    The biggest fee at each was parking.

    I don’t disagree we have tons of room for improvement. Our contributions each year (ie personal amount of taxes we pay for healthcare in Ontario) have not been sufficient to keep up with the growing and aging population. We desperately need greater cancer screening and diagnostic services, as prevention and early detection can save billions in future chemo/rad or operations. Rural areas and family doctors need a rework, as many people are without one due to fewer and fewer docs entering that field.

    That said, I would never take the US system over Canadas. The enormous stress illness would place on a family doesn’t seem worth it for the meager tax savings, and the low wait times seem to only be avoided in the US system by paying out of pocket, which is not feasible for many.




  • Not the person you were responding to, but this article definitely has some big problems, the largest of which is they don’t cite any sources. None. That’s a significant problem for a ‘scientific’ article.

    The first claim - Women hunted too - they present good evidence for, and a number of other studies have shown that many other societies had more integrated roles.

    The second claim - Women are better at endurance than men - is shaky.

    If you follow long-distance races, you might be thinking, wait—males are outperforming females in endurance events! But this is only sometimes the case. Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S.

    Looking back at the placements, I agree women are definitely doing well, but they’re not what I’d call dominating. Women’s 1st place is placing ~5-10th overall. Impressive, for sure, but not dominating. They again, provide no sources, years of the race, or names of these women.

    The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.

    An enormous leap. This is a great theory to test and analyze, or link to others who have tested it, but not something to state as fact in a scientific article.

    As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women’s events because of the belief that they will make the women “artificially faster,” as though women were not actually doing the running themselves.

    Once again, I’m curious what races. I’m involved on the running scene, and have never heard of this rule before. Google results didn’t show anything either. Once again, a distinct lack of sources.

    Women are definitely capable of doing super endurance events, but they are not the equivalent of men on setting records for any race I’ve found. See below for a few ultra endurance races I know of.

    One called “backyard ultra”. Basically you do a lap of 6.7km each hour until everyone else drops out. World records are all men by a long shot - https://backyardultra.com/world-rankings/

    Fastpacking, a slower event than the backyard ultras, involve hiking/jogging through hiking trails while carrying what you need. Definitely slower pace, and I’d argue closer to what I’d imagine with a long, days-long hunt would be like for ancient tribes. FKT, or fastest known times, are often found at this website. Looking at all the times, men carry a significant lead in both supported (ie someone else carries your food/water/sleeping gear), and unsupported. As an example, look at the Appalachian Trail – https://fastestknowntime.com/route/appalachian-trail

    Even the RAAM shows solo male records much faster than women: https://www.raamrace.org/records-awards

    The thing the article failed to mention (and the thing I think is key) is that women excel at doing these things, typically, with less energy burnt both during and after the races. This is hinted at, implied, and signalled, but never outright stated.

    Women on the whole are smaller, and tend to have better insulin responses (as mentioned in the article) which means their blood sugar stays consistent during exercise and after. Consistent blood sugar means less wasted energy. Larger heart and lungs, combined with higher type 2 muscle fibres compared to women’s type 1 (from the article) means, again, less wasted energy and more efficiencies. Less muscle damage, as mentioned in the article, means less to repair, which means more saved energy. In a hunter/gather society, this saved energy can be significant.

    With modern access to food, that evolutionary advantage seems to vanish, and the article doesn’t even touch on it.


  • Women are definitely capable of doing super endurance events, but they are not the equivalent of men on setting records for any race I’ve found.

    One called “backyard ultra”. Basically you do a lap of 6.7km each hour until everyone else drops out. World records are all men by a long shot - https://backyardultra.com/world-rankings/

    Fastpacking, a slower event than the backyard ultras, involve hiking/jogging through hiking trails while carrying what you need. Definitely slower pace, and I’d argue closer to what I’d imagine with a long, days-long hunt would be like for ancient tribes. FKT, or fastest known times, are often found at this website. Looking at all the times, men carry a significant lead in both supported (ie someone else carries your food/water/sleeping gear), and unsupported. As an example, look at the Appalachian Trail – https://fastestknowntime.com/route/appalachian-trail

    Even the RAAM shows solo male records much faster than women: https://www.raamrace.org/records-awards

    The thing the article failed to mention (and the thing I think is key) is that women excel at doing these things, typically, with less energy burnt both during and after the races. Women on the whole are smaller, and tend to have better insulin responses (as mentioned in the article) which means their blood sugar stays consistent during exercise and after. Consistent blood sugar means less wasted energy. Larger heart and lungs, combined with higher type 2 muscle fibres compared to women’s type 1 means, again, less wasted energy and more efficiencies. Less muscle damage, as mentioned in the diagram, means less to repair, which means more saved energy. In a hunter/gather society, this saved energy can be significant.

    With modern access to food, that evolutionary advantage seems to vanish, and the article doesn’t even touch on it.


  • Worth pointing out that there is lots of existing races that would compare “sustain exertion for longer”.

    One called “backyard ultra”. Basically you do a lap of 6.7km each hour until everyone else drops out. World records are all men by a long shot - https://backyardultra.com/world-rankings/

    Fastpacking, a slower event than the backyard ultras, involve hiking/jogging through hiking trails while carrying what you need. Definitely slower pace, and I’d argue closer to what I’d imagine with a long, days-long hunt would be like for ancient tribes. FKT, or fastest known times, are often found at this website. Looking at all the times, men carry a significant lead in both supported (ie someone else carries your food/water/sleeping gear), and unsupported. As an example, look at the Appalachian Trail – https://fastestknowntime.com/route/appalachian-trail

    EDIT: The thing the article failed to mention (and the thing I think is key) is that women excel at doing these things, typically, with less energy burnt both during and after the races. Women on the whole are smaller, and tend to have better insulin responses (as mentioned in the article) which means their blood sugar stays consistent during exercise and after. Consistent blood sugar means less wasted energy. Larger heart and lungs, combined with higher type 2 muscle fibres compared to women’s type 1 means, again, less wasted energy and more efficiencies. Less muscle damage, as mentioned in the diagram, means less to repair, which means more saved energy. In a hunter/gather society, this saved energy can be significant.

    With modern access to food, that evolutionary advantage seems to vanish, and the article doesn’t even touch on it.


  • I can speak to this as I’m just going through it now.

    I’m a young male in good health. I started having weird heart palpitations randomly starting last year. Had them four times, but they normally go away after 20ish mins. GP reviewed me, said it seemed fine, but to go in to ER if anything about them changed (ie more frequent, more intense, lasted longer).

    Last friday they went on for an hour, so I went in. Entered at 11am.

    Was triaged within 15mins, including an ECG. Once they confirmed it wasn’t an active heart attack, I sat in the waiting room for two hours. I then saw a doctor, got a chest X-Ray, and bloodwork taken within 45mins. I proceeded to sit in the room hooked up to the vitals monitor for four hours while they ran my bloodwork, and the ER doc came back. He sent me a requisition for a cardiologist and told me to take aspirin until I saw the specialist.

    I saw the Cardiologist on Wednesday, and he’s explained he’s not concerned given my lack of other risk factors. He’s now sent me over for an ultrasound and 36hr halter monitor next Monday. He said unless something weird comes back or he wants another test, he won’t see me again, and I should follow up with my GP 2 weeks after I finish the halter monitor.

    So within 3 or 4 weeks I had a full range of tests done, and my biggest expense was $7.50 parking for the 30min cardiologist appointment, which I was actually unironically complaining about to my wife last night.


  • Ehh, reading the article makes it clear that the farmer fucked up.

    Best case, he gave it a thumbs up to show he read it and then forgot to ever follow up or reject the contract. However it seems like he had previously accepted and executed contracts via text, which reduces this likelihood.

    Worst case, he did the thumbs up to show he agreed to it, and now is trying to back out either because he can’t make the deadline, or because the price of it has shot up.

    Neither case is great for the farmer. Contracts can be made from whatever form - verbal contracts are perfectly acceptable, so I’m not sure why people are freaking out about this. If he had said “Agreed”, or “yes” in response to the text then that would be taken as confirmation of the contract too.