Merry Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing!

@Katamount:
Ugh, been through colonoscopies before myself down at Saint Michael’s. Not fun preparing for that, no. At least that hospital is considered one of the big places world-wide for gastroenterology.

Amusingly, after previous comments about Black History month and the person who came in on the Metro Morning show to talk about the Negro Leagues baseball museum, I started listening to my old Stringband albums, since they had a song ‘The Secret of Life According to Satchel Paige’. Running through that reminded me of ‘Show Us the Length’, another song by Stringband, a rather NSFW (and unfortunately NSFRadio either) song based loosely on the apparently real-life reaction of a California high school student to an upcoming beauty pageant back in 1974 or so, where she suggested that the town mayor show off his own ‘measurements’.

Show us the length of your ****!
Are you hung like a beaver or hung like a bear?
Let me check the weight of your rocks.
So we can have a standard by which to compare.
You men, don’t worry of it’s very very slender,
Your personality is as important as your member.
So drop your trousers and make the news!
Or don’t judge, lest we judge you.

The double-standard may be weakened, but still around over forty years later…

Confidential to HH: Trust me, this thing with RP will not end well. Is he a distraction from potential charges of treason? Why not take up drinking instead!

Barf Bag
Report: Hope Hicks, Who Is Dating Rob Porter, Helped Craft White House Response to Abuse Allegations
Ellie Shechet
Yesterday 5:30pm

Welcome to Barf Bag, a daily politics roundup to help you sort through the chaotic Trumpian news cycle.

Is it just me, or is there so much more face contouring going on in the White House than there’s ever been before?
Here’s all the shit we couldn’t cover today:

Sources have told CNN that White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, who was recently revealed to be dating now-resigned Staff Secretary Rob Porter, helped craft the White House statement responding to the multiple domestic abuse allegations against him. Chief of Staff John Kelly has also been going to bat hard for Porter, despite reportedly having known there was a restraining order out against him. [Twitter/CNN]

Hello.

So, it seems that if you sell cakes, you can not refuse to sell them to homosexual persons (which is good), but if you cook cakes, you are allowed to refuse to cook them to persons your religion condamn (christian in this case).
Well, it is not the decision of a higher juridiction, so it can change (and let us hope it will), but it is always so easy to refuge yourself behind religion and stuff to hide your assholenessery.

Have a nice day.

It’s almost as if there are no Bible verses prohibiting the faithful from doing those things!

Well, there are a few in the Old Testament about not trading with/working for the unclean.* If you squint hard. And are of the tribe of Levi – ie. a hereditary priest. And completely ignore the Johnnie-come-lately who broke bread, consorted with, and loved those same unclean – you know, the actual Son of God.

But hey, what does He know, right? It’s not like He was the new covenant or anything.

*Being merely a person who attempts to live as god wishes instead of using the bible to hit people with, I don’t have the relevant biblical verses ready to hand. Sorry.

Good to hear from you, David! Thanks for letting us know.

@David
Hurray for hopefully being better soon!
This is one of my favourite places on the internet, a great blog and a great community.

I have tried commenting from time to time, but I always sabotage myself, because it gives me social anxiety:
Everytime I post something I immediately think everything I wrote was stupid and/or wrong and/or unintelligible. So I never go back on the thread to see if someone reacts to it. I would like to be more active in the community but I can’t, because of brainweasels.

But I love reading everything from you and the smart an funny regulars and that makes me very happy.

So thanks for that to all of you!
Lets hope I don’t chicken out this time 🙂

It will be lovely to have you back when you’re ready, David. You don’t owe us any kind of explanation, so you can share as much or as little as you want.

Also, this tweet made me do the proverbial drink-snort, so thanks for that…

@Moon_custafer

“I noticed that “The Babe Ruth Story,” rushed into production as he was dying, and considered the worst sports biopic ever made, ends with him agreeing to try a new experimental drug…So that part of the movie, at least, was actually kind of accurate.”

Heh, I’ve never seen it. I’m not really super into Babe Ruth, I just found it interesting snapshot on how cancer treatments were developed, and on how Cancer patients were treated in Babe Ruth’s day. 🙂

@Katamount

I was thinking about the Gamergate-Alt-Right to White Supremacist pipeline the other day, and it really does start with the grievances against the same people.

There was so much in your post I wanted to respond to, but I’ve already hogged the thread, plus it’s almost bedtime for Mish, but…
re the bit I quoted above: one of the things Carl was especially angry about was that the alt-righters weren’t angry enough at sjw folk; too much focus on teh jooz, he complained.
I found that particularly disturbing, given how much it suggests about his views.

@mrex

I’m not that into baseball myself, I just started googling Ruth. Another not-so-fun Babe Ruth fact:

I used to occasionally read in trivia books that the Baby Ruth candy bar is *not* named after Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, but after President Grover Cleveland’s daughter.

While this apparently was and continues to be the manufacturer’s official position, everyone who looks at the timeline can’t help but notice that when the candy bar was introduced and trademarked in 1921, Babe Ruth was already a pretty well-known baseball player, whereas “Baby Ruth” Cleveland was a relative of a president from thirty years earlier, and moreover had died in childhood and so wasn’t around to claim royalties for the use of her name.

Apparently the excuse held up well enough in court that they successfully blocked a candy company in the 1930s who actually did have Babe Ruth’s license to use his name, for being too similar to “Baby Ruth.”

David, really good to hear from you again.

No explanations needed.

Get better – and know we’re all rooting for you and you don’t have to do anything else.

@Jenora

I’m still trying to keep track of each of Toronto’s hospital specialties. General has the heart clinic (and now liver clinic that has moved from Western), Western has the neuro clinic, Sunnybrook and St. Mike’s seem to be the go-to trauma centers, SickKids… well that’s obvious, Princess Margaret I think specializes in cancer, and I actually thought Mount Sinai had the best gastro clinic. It’s where I was referred after I graduated from SickKids (although they could have been lazy and just referred me across the street). 😛

I was actually born at Mount Sinai, so it was kinda like a homecoming. Its Wiki page says it has the best natal care in the city too.

Ah, good ol’ Hospital Row. I remember back in the bygone Skule Daze during Frosh Week that the lads at Suds (the Engineer-run bar) were like “if you’re under 19, you’re not supposed to be drinking, but if you do find yourself drinking and drink too much, there’s like six hospitals just down University Avenue so you’ll be fine.” 😀

ETA: Hospitals have not gotten less confusing in recent years. Mount Sinai’s ground floor is floor 3. What kind of sense does that make?!

@David! I’m so glad to hear that you’re on the mend. I have my guesses on what the issue has been and I hope that it’s been okay the last few months! You just keep getting better and don’t feel obliged to tell us, apologize, etc. It’s all okay.

@Sseba, I’m glad you commented <3 Welcome! Brainweasels are terrible. Feel free to keep commenting if you want to, but don’t feel obliged if the anxiety gets bad!

@eli, oh no! That’s terrible :C <3 all the love and hugs you want. I hope it gets better for you soon.

@mrex,

Wonder why things, whether good or bad, seem to come in bunches?

It’s just how random distribution is – it’s clustered. You only get nice smooth probability curves with large sample sizes, and as an individual you have a lifetime sample size of 1. I could say a bit more but it’s sort of dry statistics stuff; it basically boils down to the fact that each “thing” is independent of the others.

It’s called the Clustering Illusion. People underestimate how much clustering goes on in a random pattern. Very normal, everyone does it.