Mug, Mug, Mug

The weekend went too fast. I don't know where the time goes. I mean, I did things and stuff and sundry. I went to a concert, took some photos at the bird baths, went for a few walks, bought some art supplies, watched a movie (Looper), fixed my mother's BluRay player, and ran a bunch of errands. Now the weekend is nearly gone. I feel like there should have been more.

It's very frustrating how quickly time passes. And it's not just the weekends. The weeks go every bit as quick and the months quicker yet. Let's not even think about all the years. Heaven, forbid. I wonder if I move in slow motion? That might explain where the time goes. Would you even know if you were moving in slow motion? Maybe not. How would a sloth or even a redwood tree perceive time, if they did or do in fact do so?

Could it be I go so slowly time races right past me? I don't think so. I walk considerably faster than most people on the street. I can objectively determine this to be fact because I overtake and pass nearly everyone but the very tall and leggy. And I typically solve a Rubik's cube in a little over a minute. Granted, that is very slow in the world of Cubing, but I don't study my algorithms or practice as I should. I'm only now learning F2L.

Maybe my perceptual integration faculties are slowing down? That could be it. I don't care for this aging situation one bit. I didn't especially care a great deal for my youth at the time either. I reckon this is about as good things are likely to get, give or take a little. An optimal strategy is no doubt to plan for distortions in my perception of time and research methods to mitigate them. I'll probably have to exercise more. Exercise, Mindfulness meditation, and vegetables are evidently the cure for almost everything. I keep hoping they'll add whiskey and ice cream to the list, but so far no luck.

I've had far too much coffee today. You may have guessed as much.

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Selected readings...

• How the Chinese Cyberthreat Has Evolved, The world’s most populous country is home to a slew of cyberspies and hackers who have likely stolen more secrets from businesses and governments than any other country. (Scientific American)
• When YouTube Removes Violent Videos, It Impedes Justice, When the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mahmoud al-Werfelli in August for the war crime of murder in Libya, it marked a watershed moment for open-source investigations. For those of us who embrace the promise of the digital landscape for justice and accountability, it came as welcome validation that content found on Facebook and YouTube form a good deal of the evidence before the Court. (Wired)
• New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Neural Networks, Even as machines known as “deep neural networks” have learned to converse, drive cars, beat video games and Go champions, dream, paint pictures and help make scientific discoveries, they have also confounded their human creators, who never expected so-called “deep-learning” algorithms to work so well. No underlying principle has guided the design of these learning systems, other than vague inspiration drawn from the architecture of the brain (and no one really understands how that operates either). (Wired)
• Elon Musk Leads 116 Experts Calling for Outright Ban of Killer Robots, Some of the world’s leading robotics and artificial intelligence pioneers are calling on the United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots...The UN recently voted to begin formal discussions on such weapons which include drones, tanks and automated machine guns. (The Guardian)