Run 637: Also inconsistent, but with bonus being slower, too

Run 637
Average pace: 5:35/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:23 pm
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:14
Weather: Clear
Temp: 15ºC
Humidity: 68%
Wind: light to nil
BPM: 168
Weight: 166 pounds
Total distance to date: 4770 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 8
Shoes: Saucony Switchback ISO (130 km)

Conditions for tonight’s run were good, with the temperature only slightly cooler than Tuesday, but still dandy for running. I knew almost as soon as I set off that this run was not going to proceed as well, though.

For whatever reason–perhaps the shock of doing a full 10K, followed by a 5K and now another run–my legs were creaky and sore. Not just the knees, but the shins and upper leg muscles, too. It took a few minutes to warm up, but they were okay after that. This early stiffness convinced me to maintain a moderate pace–helped even more later by a stitch threatening to develop–and I correctly predicted I would end with a pace over 5:30, coming in at 5:35/km.

A few puzzling aspects, though. For one, my BPM was the highest its been in awhile at 168 and I’m not sure why. Because it was cooler and my body was working harder to stay at the same level? That seems like the likeliest explanation. I’m curious to see what BPM will be after the next post-work run (though there won’t be a whole lot of those left for the year, it was already noticeably dimmer running tonight vs. just two days ago).

The other puzzling part was a repeat of the wild inconsistency. As I said up top, I did not fire the afterburners or put in any extra effort, I just keep going steadily–and indeed, I felt fine stamina-wise–yet my pace is all over:

First km: 5:22
Second km: 5:42 (a whopping 20 second increase)
Third km: 5:49
Fourth km: 5:25 (a 24 second decrease)
Fifth km: 5:39 (14 second increase)

I would not have guessed that my speed shifted up or down so dramatically at any of the above points. It’s weird.

I’ve had two anomalous results now with the Series 5 watch, but maybe it’s just a coincidence. The overall pace for both runs seems about right, so in the end it looks okay, but the huge shifts in pace are strange. I’m curious to see how this will play out at the next run, which should take place at the lake. If the forecast stays accurate, my luck will hold and I’ll get another run free from rain. And I won’t complain. (I’m a poet.)

Book review: Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect by Mick West

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mick West was a video game programmer in the 90s who cashed out, retired early and became fascinated with conspiracy theories–and then more specifically in debunking them. With plenty of time to support his hobby of debunking, West went on to create multiple sites on the subject, with https://www.metabunk.org being perhaps the best known. This is his first book on the subject.

Escaping the Rabbit Hole delivers exactly what the sub-title promises. West devotes space to general techniques and methods on debunking conspiracies, with the aim of helping you (the reader) to help someone else (referred throughout in the book as “your friend”) break free from believing whatever conspiracy or set of conspiracies they are holding to. He also offers more specific information on some of the more popular–and in one case, more fringe–conspiracy theories, including the claim that a controlled demolition brought down the World Trade Center towers, that the Sandy Hook shootings never happened, the theory that contrails from planes are actually chemtrails either changing the weather or poisoning us (or both), and, of course, the flat earth theory. The latter may boggle any sensible person, because it is by far the most extreme and easily disproved conspiracy theory, yet West provides an example of someone who genuinely believed the earth was flat.

West accompanies each specific conspiracy theory with a shorter chapter chronicling how a particular individual escaped the rabbit hole (such as the aforementioned flat earther), showing how for some it can happen swiftly–in a matter of a week–and how for others it may take years. Often it is the patient work of a friend that pulls them out, but sometimes it is seeing a specific video or getting a critical piece of information at the right time that gives the conspiracist just enough pause to start questioning what they believe. West also shows how it can also be a matter of adherents to a particular theory crossing a line that the believer isn’t prepared to step over.

Throughout the book, West keeps repeating his mantra of being respectful and patient, urging the reader to avoid arguing and mocking the conspiracist’s beliefs, rightly stating that this puts them on the defensive and makes them less receptive to hearing other points of view. He emphasizes the use of examples and evidence, or actual demonstrations where possible that show how the conspiracy theory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Anticipating one of the claims conspiracists will throw at him–that he is a simply a paid shill–West spends a chapter providing background on himself and how he came to be a debunker. Reading where he came from and how he ended up running metabunk as a hobby, I both envy and admire him for having the freedom and funds to not just pursue a hobby, but one that will genuinely help to make the world a better place.

He perhaps puts too much faith in the efforts of social media giants like Facebook and Twitter to combat bots, disinformation and conspiracy stories/videos. He is heartened by the work they have done (I am more skeptical), but still warns it is likely to get better before it gets worse, with AI growing ever-more sophisticated in its ability to present itself as credible-sounding “people,” not to mention the work being done in the area of deep fakes where pulling apart what is real and what is a fabrication will get increasingly difficult.

Escaping the Rabbit hole is a thorough, sensible and compassionate toolkit for getting someone you know out of the world of conspiracy theories. Even if you don’t know anyone personally who has gone down the rabbit hole, the book’s techniques and background are an interesting examination of modern conspiracy theories and the damage they can do.

Recommended.

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Run 636: Good but weirdly inconsistent

Run 636
Average pace: 5:29/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:18 pm
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 27:32
Weather: High clouds, partly clear
Temp: 17ºC
Humidity: 69%
Wind: light to nil
BPM: 163
Weight: 166.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4765 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 8
Shoes: Saucony Switchback ISO (125 km)

Three days after my first 10K run in over a year and a half and I set out on my first post-dinner 5K in awhile.

Although it was 17ºC it felt a bit cooler, another sign that fall is here. Running-wise, the temperature was fine, of course. The sun is also low enough now that even when it’s clear I don’t encounter it on the river trail past 6 p.m.

I started out unsure of how the run would go, then felt like I was hitting my stride later on before giving a good, final push in the final km.

While I encountered no issues (yay) the results–the first using my new Series 5 watch–were strangely all over the place (note that the GPS reading still comes from the phone, which remains my iPhone 8).

My overall pace was pretty good at 5:29/km and my BPM, while higher than the 10K, was still well under 170, coming in at 163. But the km to km pace was…weird.

First km: 5:25, about what I’d expect, coming in under the average, all fresh and zippy. Second km I drop to 5:32, which is not huge, but notable. Third km is 5:37, so another smaller drop–again, this is not unusual. But the fourth km my pace switches up to a blazing 5:11. I do not recall turning on the afterburners for the fourth km, so have no explanation for this, other than if I really was moving this fast, I must have felt pretty good while doing it.

The final km, where I deliberately started pushing harder, came in at…5:38, the slowest pace of all. Weirder still, at about 4.3 km in, I glanced at the watch and my current pace was 5:26–which in retrospect seems about right. Since I pushed after that, I am puzzled as to how that pace kept dropping all the way to 5:38.

In the end the overall pace was decent and seems about right, but the wildly shifting numbers are odd.

Overall, then, a good if somewhat baffling effort. There was still plenty of daylight left at the end of the run, though the stairs connecting Lower Hume Park to Hume Park were a bit gloomy. I suspect they will be gloomier still on Thursday when the sun will set within 15 minutes of the run being completed.

Things I like: The saga continues

There could be some duplicates on this list. I didn’t check first because I also like being lazy.

  • Turkish Delight
  • Running
  • The first three weeks of fall
  • Switching to Daylight Saving Time
  • Mango passionfruit tea
  • What the brightest, kindest and most innovative people can achieve
  • The smell of the sea breeze
  • Sketching random junk
  • Finding quirky things to take photos of
  • Serendipity
  • Fonts
  • Cats
  • And as always, lists

Mac mouse mayhem: More and then no more (for the moment)

I don’t actually have a Magic Mouse 2, I just love pictures of them being charged. Image is courtesy of geek.com.

A small but persistent annoyance in writing on my Mac mini is the way the mouse cursor behaves. Or in this case, misbehaves.

I noticed it when I connected my Logitech Marathon 705 via USB wireless receiver. Mouse movement would seem okay, but on closer inspection there is always some glitches in the form of the cursor jumping ahead or stuttering. I installed the Logitech drivers and found no change.

I then switched to a Logitech M720, which connects via the same receiver. The erratic mouse movement was even worse. I tried using both mice directly on my desktop, no mousepad. No improvement. I tried various things like software updates, restarting in safe mode and so on and again, no change. Jiggly mouse syndrome persisted. I did not want jiggly mice.

Searching for troubleshooting tips largely produced results that were obvious and unhelpful (“check to see if there is gunk in your mouse”) or obscure enough to make me wonder if Macs are just really bad with third party mice.

Since both tested mice are wireless and using the same receiver, I decided to try a different approach. I unplugged the receiver and plugged in my old wired Steelseries Rival 300 mouse. When I used this mouse with Windows, I quite liked it and only replaced it when I went wireless (with the Logitech G700, which I adore, save for somewhat short battery life). After plugging in the Rival 300 I waited a few moments, then moved the mouse. It moved exactly as intended. No jumps, no jiggles, no erratic behavior. It was super slow, as is always the case with the default mouse settings on a Mac (why this is so is a question left for the ages). I bumped up the tracking speed and voila, it is working just fine.

So now I wonder, is it the wireless receiver? Is it a Logitech thing? Would this happen with a Bluetooth mouse? I am okay with using the Rival 300 as a stopgap but given the Mac mini and PC share the same desk, I really prefer wireless for both. I’ll probably try digging out my old Microsoft Bluetooth mouse and see how it fares, as soon as I remember where it is. In the meantime, I accept a tail on a mouse to end the mouse mayhem on my Mac.

Also, to paraphrase Phil Schiller, as others have done a billion times or so already, “It just works, my butt.”

I wore my shorts today

Wearing shorts is not exactly unusual in the summer. I’ve been wearing them most days, though recently the weather has taken on a more fall-like aspect, leading me to occasionally wear horrible long pants.

But today the temperature climbed close to 20 degrees and the sun came out, so the shorts went on. It was nice. Being the second to last day of summer, and with rain forecast for tomorrow (update: It is very much raining on the last official day of summer), this is likely the last time I’ll wear shorts for summer 2019 and thus it shall be recorded here.

Summer 2019 was a bit odd. After two consecutive years of the worst forest fires ever, accompanied by weeks of haze hanging over the city due to the ever-present fires (see the yellow-tinged look to every photo I took on Barnston Island for evidence), this year I never even saw the FIRE DANGER signs go up at Burnaby Lake or the Brunette River, the first time this hasn’t happened since I moved to New West in 2011.

One of the reasons we opted for a mid-July vacation instead of late August was to reduce the chance of hitting a fire ban, because camping without campfires is sad and unCanadian. But the fire ban never came.

While we did have some hotter days, they were fewer in number and we never really had a hot stretch where everyone lamented how hot it was and wouldn’t it be nice if it cooled down and rained a little–at which point people would effortlessly switch to griping about the rainy, non-summer-like weather.

Running-wise it was great. I never encountered more than a few sprinkles on my runs and most of the time it was surprisingly comfortable for jogging, with a nice balance between warmth and humidity. I saw very few instances of dry mouth and nearly every time it was humid (sweat city) it was offset by temperatures being lower. And not having to run with fine particulate smoke hanging in the air was nice, too.

And yet I still lament in a small way the lack of a “traditional” summer where it gets hot and sticky (and stinky) and people complain about the heat. Because as horrible as it might be for running, as bad as it may be for the skin, and as terrible it might be with the greater risks to our forests burning, that feels like summer.

With the leaves turning and fall officially started tomorrow, I’m already thinking about winter. The long term forecast seems to be suggesting it will be milder and maybe wetter? I don’t think anyone really knows, given the climate upheaval we are clearly in the middle of. I’m just hoping there’s no snowpocalypse to match 2016-17.

But before the snow, there is still some time for more possible wearing of shorts before it gets a little too chilly to be a reasonable thing to do. Checking the 10 day forecast, the best opportunity appears to be…this Tuesday, with a forecast of mostly cloudy and a high of 18. After that we are definitely in more “people will start looking at you funny” territory.

Another palindrome birthday (55)

I am writing this birthday post a day late because I got busy/distracted and forgot to do it yesterday, my actual birthday.

I turned 55, which is much better than not turning 55.

I don’t feel much different than I did a year ago. In fact, I’m probably in better shape now.

I got a mini-cake at work. That was nice. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to me, which I kind of hated, but I appreciate the sentiment.

I didn’t run after work, telling Jeff “I am invoking birthday privilege.” Despite not running and eating cake, I was actually down a little this morning. And I ran 10K today (see previous post), so I’ve more than made up for being a lazy sod for my birthday.

Other than that, it was a day much like any other. Official birthday dinner is tomorrow and I get to decide where. I have joked about going to Wendy’s for a couple of Baconators, but that would be grossbuckets. No offense to Wendy’s or fans of excessive amounts of bacon.

Here’s hoping I get another 50 or 100 birthdays. As long as I’m relatively nimble both mentally and physically, I say keep ’em coming.

Run 635: An actual 10K run

Run 635
Average pace: 5:51/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:19 am
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 58:36
Weather: Clouds and sun
Temp: 15-17ºC
Humidity: 75%
Wind: light to nil
BPM: 158
Weight: 164.8 pounds
Total distance to date: 4760 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 2, iPhone 8
Shoes: Saucony Switchback ISO (120 km)

I set out to do an actual 10K run today and I did, yay.

My last 10K was before all the knee business started last spring. I checked and found it happened on February 3, 2018–594 days ago. Yikes.

On the encouraging side, my pace today of 5:51/km–which is almost exactly what I was expecting–is actually six seconds faster than that run 594 days ago. BPM and weight are both lower now, too, so it seems I am heading in the right direction.

This was also the first run after my birthday. I think 55 is still considered early retirement age, so perhaps I should be waving a cane and yelling at clouds, but the run went fairly well instead.

I started on the south side of the lake, just before the 0K marker. I did this because I expected to be slow and wanted to avoid the possibility of having to start a second loop to hit 10K. My devious plan worked. Because I had to run uphill and over a slippery dam and down narrow wooden stairs, I did not come flying out of the gate. In fact, it wasn’t until the third km that I actually came in close to my overall average pace. My best km was the last one at 5:32/km, when I applied a little gas to end on a high note.

I debated on how to dress before the run. The temperature was forecast to be around 17ºC, which was accurate, but there was also a chance of rain. I opted to risk that by sticking to a short-sleeved shirt and was glad I did because a long-sleeved shirt would have been seriously overdressed.

With high humidity but lower temperatures, I didn’t have to worry about dry mouth and though I was sweaty around the forehead, my upper body stayed surprisingly dry. Stamina was not an issue at all–I deliberately avoided pushing at any point, choosing to stick to a comfy pace and as I moved past the 5K mark where I’d usually end a run I was confident I could go the full 10K.

The knees did not hurt exactly, but I could feel them, especially on the back half of the run, but the stiffness was pretty minor. I even did some running on the shorter walk back from the lake.

The sky was cloudy at the start of the run, but the weather improved as I kept going and the sun eventually came out. Although we are still a few days away from the official start of fall, the sun has already lost that “gonna make you sweat like crazy” feel. It felt a bit warm, but that was all. A few more signs of impending fall are also on view–the lily pads are starting a slow retreat that will accelerate over the next month, and some trees are sporting copious numbers of yellow leaves, though The Great Shedding has not yet begun.

Despite being a weekday morning, there were a fair number of people on the trail, though there were no traffic issues, save for one jogger coming toward me on the same side of the trail. I was on the right side (in both senses) and did not alter course. She switched over, but seemed to do so reluctantly. Escalator rules, lady! Also, one big dog off-leash came up to me but fortunately did not impeded my progress. I was too in the zone to even offer a look to the dog’s owner.

Overall, I am very pleased at how the run went and now realize I could have been doing 10Ks earlier. I don’t regret the wait, though, because you have to be physically and mentally ready and the mental part was definitely not there yet. I am tentatively planning another 10K on Sunday, though the forecast is calling for rain and a 10K run in the rain would be poopy. But we’ll see.