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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Part of the time scale was how low risk the issue ended up being. We knew from the first few months that even if it was a tumor, so there was no “rush” to get me in to see people.

    One of the ‘mindsets’ of single payer is that more severe/risky issues can get fast tracked over less severe/risky ones. Ultimately, all that was happening to me was that my vision was slightly affected (because my eyelid wouldn’t open fully). But had it been a tumour, I likely would have been on the surgeons table within a month of them finding out.


  • I also live under single payer healthcare, and I have experience with a much lower stakes “hail mary” type event.

    A number of years ago, I developed a growth on my eyelid that no one was sure what it was.

    We started with the optometrist, who thought it was a duct blocked by dirt and suggested a medicated cleaning regimen where they assumed it occurred. This didn’t help.

    So I got recommended up the scale to my GP, who took one look at it and said, “Yeah, that ain’t right. Here’s a recommendation to an eye specialist at the hospital.” which took ~1 month to get an appointment.

    A month later, I have my first appointment with the eye specialist, who isn’t quite sure what it is but knows that it’s an internal problem and not a blocked duct. After the third appointment (3 months after the first) she says that she’s narrowed it down to either a benign tumour or a blood clot, but isn’t confident in her eyelid surgery capabilities and recommends me to an eyelid specialist in a neighbouring province.

    6 months after the first optometrist appointment, I have my first appointment with the specialist who identifies it during the appointment as an internal scab that will decompose itself, but the wound isn’t healing. He says that surgery is an option, but there’s a chance I go blind and a smaller chance that I straight up die. He tells me that I’ll come back in 3 months because it’s not life threatening, and if it starts getting much worse, we’ll discuss removing it.

    After an appointment with him every 3 months for almost 2 years, it finally cleared up.

    The issue itself was relatively low risk, but it wasn’t until 6 months in that it was deemed “not cancer.” At every step, the risk was evaluated, and ‘hail mary’ options were discussed. But they were always discussed as “if it gets worse, we can do this, and the decision is yours”. So (at least where I live) there are hail mary options and you can take them, but only if the risk to your health is significant enough that the rewards outweigh the risk.





  • I had an almost opposite scenario to this happen to me in middle school.

    I was done of my classwork for the day, so I was playing games on my iPod Touch. Teacher notices it, confiscates it, and tells me I can get it back at the end of the day at the front office. Not so much getting an earful, just trying to get me to focus.

    At the end of the day, I go to pick it up and the teacher says “I didn’t realize this wasn’t a phone. I would’ve let you keep it if I’d known”



  • Just responding to the last one, it was that easy and that’s why nowadays the entire premises is swept for any potential aids before the tournament (I.e. the day before, go through every space and make sure that nothing is hidden), the player bathrooms are separate from everyone else’s so that no one can sneak in to place something there without going through player screening, and everything you carry into the match is thoroughly inspected to ensure it doesn’t contain a chess computer (to the point where they will check people’s lipstick).

    The reason the butt plug theory gained so much traction is that with the current security, there’s only one check to stop it (the metal detector), the cheating method itself is theoretically sound, and its attention grabbing enough as a concept.

    Much as with anything competitive, it’s an arms race to gain a leg up before the advantage is neutralized so I’m sure that someday we will see a genuine case of butt plug cheating or security measures put in place to specifically prevent anally assisted gameplay


  • While 6 bit encoding is definitely a more efficient way to transmit the data, when it comes to stuff like this transmission speed is rarely a consideration. In high profile tournaments, players may have several hours each during a game (for example, the game in which Niemann is alleged to have cheated used a time format of 2 hours for the first 40 moves, +1 hour upon reaching move 40, and +30 seconds after completing every move after the 40th. Across 2 players, and assuming they make the 40th move, that’s a 6 hour game total).

    So when it comes to things like this, the main considerations are accuracy in transmission and comprehension of the message. If the player has to compute from binary to the board (which is an albeit really easy skill), there is still a chance that they can misinterpret the data. For this reason, most formerly caught “at the board” cheaters have used the simple “count columns, count rows” method.

    More complex cheaters (who do not use an accomplice) have in the past gone to the washroom to find a stashed chess computer, plug in the position, see what the computer thinks, and come back.

    Even amongst some top players, it’s not uncommon for someone to play a move and then go to the washroom for up to 30 minutes and come back to see how their opponent responded. I mention this to further emphasize that 1) spending a really long time not making a move is relatively common and 2) while most cheating does occur in longer periods of thought, that in itself is not an indicator for cheating.

    As for your mention of sending information, it can be a lot simpler than what you proposed. Since this method requires a relatively unrestricted view of the board, it is more than likely they will also be able to see the player, making physical signals a far easier method of communicating “HELP!!!” than becoming a kegel master. You could organize before hand something like “if I run my left hand through my hair and shake my head, I need help”, and upon seeing this the accomplice could transmit the piece location.

    And my theory about the butt plug being able to be smuggled through a metal detector is not based in a proven fact, but rather the assertion that if you could get one through a metal detector, which may or may not be possible, there would be no other checks in place to prevent a player from entering a hall with one.


  • I find that the overthinking can be fun, but the most common cheating method is to simply relay the position on the board that contains the piece to move.

    For example, let’s say that the best move would be to move a pawn on b4 (same column as White’s left most bishop, in the 4th row) a signal would be transmitted of two short “signals”, a long pause, and then four more short “signals”. Thinking in Morse, this would be “…/…”.

    This tells the cheater that the correct move is made by the piece in the second column, fourth row, and thats usually all a top level player will need. They can stop calculating any move that isn’t from that piece, and there’s usually one move that is clearly better from that pieces immediate moves. The difficult part is now finding which follow-up moves are the best and how to punish your opponent for not playing them (which they would have been doing anyways, just with many more possible start points)

    This method has been used in the past with a device that will send a non-painful but noticeable electric shock to a player (usually on their thigh), and because these individuals got caught there are now methods in place at top level tournaments to try and prevent external cheating devices from entering the playing hall (ex/ they pat you down to try and feel something rigid on your leg).

    Thats where the butt plug theory comes in; it could theoretically pass through a standard metal detector, a security guard isn’t going to check your prostate for cheating devices, and it can still theoretically be used to communicate via 0s and 1s.


  • If it’s the same video I saw, it was the ankle guy. And yeah, when it comes to historical cases of chess cheating (almost always at a lower skill level) they’ll either use some form of chess computer that they sneak away to use, or have an accomplice and a one way method of communication.

    Another thing to keep in mind is that often times players at this level don’t need to cheat every move, they just need to be given the correct move at an important moment and they’ll be good enough to understand why they are being told to do that.