How do misinformation ecosystems, material limits, and cultural taboos intersect?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen opens by asking where to begin; Rick Rosner argues that gullibility clusters, using anti-vaccine grifts as a gateway to wider conspiracism. They pivot to physics: how close can a manufactured sphere approach an ideal one, and what do ball-bearing tolerances imply about cost and limits. Rosner then detours into “pornfluencers,” describing collapsing boundaries between adult work, fame, and mainstream life, plus his personal “rules” for ethical consumption. The discussion returns to geometry and materials, proposing electrons, Euclidean lines, and carbon lattices, including diamond’s slow surface loss. Finally, he surveys political anxiety, warning that weak enforcement enables drift.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are your ideas to start the session?

Rick Rosner: First, I want to talk about the charlatan industrial complex. If you fall for one kind of bullshit, you are more likely to fall for other types of bullshit.

On Wednesday mornings, I am often an extra guest on a show with doctor Michael Patmos on Pod TV. He talks about anti-vaccine charlatans, vaccine safety, and the public-health impact of vaccination. Immunization prevents an estimated 3.5 to 5 million deaths every year from diseases such as measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and influenza. Modern vaccination dates back to 1796 with the early smallpox inoculation.

Anti-vaccine movements often deny or minimize these benefits, circulate misinterpreted or low-quality claims presented as “studies,” and promote alternative products or protocols. During COVID, for example, some promoted ivermectin despite central health authorities concluding the evidence was inconclusive and recommending its use only within clinical trials.

Once you buy into that world, you can become more open to other claims: that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen, that climate change is a plot, that universities exist to control people, or that COVID was deliberately engineered to control people. The common theme is that elites use expertise to plot against ordinary people, while “doing your own research” supposedly reveals the truth.

Believing one falsehood is often correlated with accepting others.

This also draws in educated people: nurses, some doctors, professionals, and ex-military individuals who assume that expertise in one domain transfers broadly. Instead, people can become overconfident outside their field, and sometimes even within it.

That is the point. It feels obvious—depressingly obvious.

Jacobsen: Given the scale of the universe and the minuteness of its lower bound, how precise could we ultimately make a sphere, or something approximating that mathematical object? A sphere assumes infinite precision.

Rosner: SR. The quick answer is the ratio of the radius of an atom to the radius of the sphere. If you line up all the atoms correctly, you need a rigid structure to hold them in position. You then polish the surface so that every atom is as close as possible to the ideal center of the sphere.

You would have to control for gravity, which might require building it in space to eliminate the need for weight. There could also be thermal issues. In practice, we already see this with ball bearings. They are manufactured at different levels of precision, depending on how close they are to a perfect sphere. You can buy low-precision ones cheaply, and higher-precision ones for more money, depending on the application.

Ball bearings that are closer to perfect spheres last longer. For relatively little money—on the order of hundreds to a thousand dollars—you could probably get a sphere made to about one part in a million. As precision increases, cost likely rises roughly in inverse proportion to tolerance. If one part in a million costs about a thousand dollars, then one part in ten million might cost ten thousand, one part in a hundred million around a hundred thousand, and one part in a billion on the order of a million dollars, where the deviation from perfect sphericity is one part in a billion.

It is not apparent why most applications would need that level of precision. Historically, extremely high precision was required for mirrors and lenses, especially for large reflecting telescopes. Those mirrors had to be polished to tolerances of one part in a million or better. Today, however, telescope design has changed. You can build extensive systems from many smaller mirrors and use computation and active correction to bring them into focus.

Jacobsen: Any stray topics?

Rosner: I have another topic: Pornfluencers.

Recently, there was a high-profile college football championship game, and social media reacted the way it often does when a well-known adult performer appeared in the crowd. Cameras cut to her, people made jokes, and commentators acted as though they did not know why she was famous.

It later emerged that she had attended the university, had retired from pornography several years earlier, and was now a law student and a genuine fan of the team. I will not name her because that would fall under the conventions around adult entertainment and publicity. The broader point is that the barriers between fame, respectability, and adult work have been falling.

I was watching videos and came across a woman who presented herself as an influencer with a large following. She was charismatic and appealing, and when I looked her up, it became clear that her online identity blended influencer culture with adult content. That is a relatively new phenomenon.

Historically, people who made pornography were heavily stigmatized. The definition of pornography itself was also much broader. In the 1960s, the threshold was far lower; even topless imagery could be classified as pornographic.

Showing your butt was considered porn. Anything more explicit than that was rare. People who made more hardcore material usually lived marginal lives and were not famous, although a few exceptions existed.

Marilyn Monroe, before becoming a major film star, posed nude for a calendar shoot. Playboy later purchased those photographs and used one on the cover of its first issue in 1953. She survived that exposure and went on to a historic career. Others followed similar paths. Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Anderson posed repeatedly for Playboy and later achieved mainstream success. Dorothy Stratten appeared poised for major stardom after Playboy, but her life was cut short when her former partner murdered her.

At the time, that was close to the boundary of what someone could do and still maintain a conventional career. That boundary has been shifting. It is striking that people who make pornography are essentially doing, on camera, things that most people do or would like to do in private.

For years, I used to say that roughly one million people—primarily women—were posting sexualized images on OnlyFans. More recent figures suggest several million creators worldwide. That implies a scale large enough to rival or exceed the number of people in some traditional professions, depending on how one counts active participants. The broader point is that adult content creation has become normalized at scale.

Under current conditions, if someone is sufficiently talented, or makes early decisions they later regret, or is highly exhibitionistic, it is now more possible to move on to other careers. Tracy Lords, for example, performed in adult films early on and later established a legitimate acting career. I expect post-porn trajectories to continue becoming more lenient and socially inclusive.

That brings me to what I half-jokingly call the “rules of porn.”

There are limits to what people find acceptable. Material that feels exploitative, disturbing, or personally uncomfortable tends to cross a line. Masturbation to pornography is already somewhat awkward as a human activity, even though the overwhelming majority of adults engage in it at some point.

I did not mention the name of the woman at the football game because it closely resembles my daughter’s name, which leads to one of those informal rules: you do not consume porn involving performers who share a name with your child. That is unsettling. By contrast, performers who share a name with one’s spouse do not carry the same psychological issue, and resemblance to one’s partner is often part of attraction.

Another rule is that once you learn a performer has been murdered or has died by suicide, their work no longer feels consumable. That knowledge changes the context irreversibly.

Some people, like Adam Carolla, have spoken about being drawn to performers from the 1970s and 1980s. Those performers may now be elderly or deceased, which is not necessarily disturbing, but it does add a layer of melancholy about time, aging, and human vulnerability.

Those are my personal rules. They are subjective, but they seem reasonable. Ideally, any engagement with pornography happens privately, after everyone else in the household has gone to bed.

You do it in a way that you will not get caught. That is basic courtesy.

Can you masturbate while other people are awake and in the house? It depends on the circumstances. Not while you are babysitting. You cannot disappear into a room while you are responsible for other people.

For clarity, my child is an adult. And obviously, you cannot masturbate to anyone under eighteen. That is unacceptable.

If your wife is downstairs on a Zoom call or watching a cooking show, can you go back to bed, say you are taking a nap, and masturbate? Probably, as long as you are lying down and could plausibly be asleep if she comes in. Sitting upright and watching porn is a bad idea.

Do not masturbate sitting in an office chair. I learned this the hard way. It puts too much strain on the lower abdominal wall. During the writers’ strike, when I had too much idle time, I aggravated an old hernia. If you are quick, you might get away with it, but if it takes a while, do not do it. It is not suitable for you.

Masturbation itself, however, is generally considered healthy. Some studies suggest that more frequent ejaculation is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer, compared with very infrequent ejaculation. The exact mechanisms are not fully understood, but regular activity appears to be beneficial.

Those are some of the rules. Do not be excessively creepy.

If you realize mid-act that a performer later died by suicide, that discomfort alone is reason enough to stop for the night, abandon porn, and go to sleep.

For people in long-term relationships, can you masturbate next to a sleeping partner? Possibly, as long as they are not aware of it. There is often tacit deniability on both sides. Sometimes, the other person may notice but choose not to acknowledge it, understanding that private release can be preferable to waking them.

That is about all I have on that.

Jacobsen: What are the most efficiently structured objects, in theory, in one dimension, two dimensions, three dimensions, and four dimensions? Are we talking about things like a point, a line, a triangle, a tetrahedron, or something similar?

Rosner: What do you mean by “most efficiently structured”?

Jacobsen: They can form a robust, self-sustaining architecture that holds itself together with as few parts as possible.

Rosner: If you are looking for a real-world analogue of a zero-dimensional structure—a point—the closest example is an electron. As far as we know, it has no internal structure. It is described as a probability distribution rather than a composite object. Other elementary particles may be similarly simple, but electrons are among the cleanest examples we have.

For linear structures, I assume you mean rigid ones. Truly linear rigidity does not exist in the real world, because maintaining rigidity requires a framework—many atoms locked into a stable configuration. If we are talking abstractly, then the relevant structures are those of Euclidean geometry, which assumes flat space. In Euclidean space, parallel lines never intersect, even at infinity. That is the classical notion of a line.

For real objects, it is less clear. Carbon-based structures are the best candidates. Carbon is often the material of choice when rigidity and strength are required. Its bonding versatility allows for extreme, locked-in configurations.

In science fiction discussions of a space elevator, for example, the cable would be anchored to a geostationary mass in orbit and to the Earth at the other end. That cable would need extraordinary tensile strength to support its own weight and any payload. In those scenarios, it is usually imagined to be made of a carbon-based material, such as carbon nanotubes or diamond-like structures.

Diamond is an extreme case of carbon bonding. Its atoms are packed so tightly that the structure is under constant internal stress. Over extremely long timescales, individual carbon atoms can detach from the surface. In that sense, a diamond can be said to “evaporate,” not through heat-driven vaporization, but through exceedingly slow surface loss driven by thermodynamics. Even so, this process would take billions of years under ordinary conditions.

So that is my best answer. If you were going to build something like a buckyball—a small, geodesic structure with a spherical surface tiled by polygons—you would almost certainly make it out of carbon.

That said, other possibilities exist. Proteins and other long-chain molecules can form extended, flexible, and sometimes self-assembling structures. Stringing atoms together into long chains can yield stability in different ways. Beyond that, I am speculating. I am not a materials scientist.

Jacobsen: What is another way of characterizing the evaporation of a diamond?

Rosner: I do not know the precise term, and “evaporation” is probably not the right word. Another way to characterize it is in terms of surface effects in crystalline materials. A diamond is a crystalline lattice, a rigid matrix, but atoms in any solid are not perfectly still. They undergo constant motion due to thermal energy and quantum effects.

In any solid, atomic positions are not sharply defined. They are described probabilistically. This is where phenomena like quantum tunnelling come in. An atom or electron confined in a structure has a probability distribution for its position, and a small part of that distribution can extend beyond what we would classically consider its boundary.

In principle, you can confine that probability distribution more tightly using external fields or measurement, but fundamentally, every particle has a probability cloud. At the surface of a diamond, most of a carbon atom’s probability distribution is locked into the lattice, held in place by bonds to neighbouring carbon atoms. You can think of those neighbouring atoms as forming a kind of cage.

Because the position is probabilistic, there is a nonzero chance that a surface atom’s position fluctuates far enough outward that the forces binding it weaken rather than strengthen. When that happens, extremely rarely, an atom can detach from the surface. The probability is tiny, but over geological timescales—billions of years—it adds up to a measurable surface loss.

I assume something similar happens in other crystalline materials, but to a lesser extent. In crystals with less internal stress than diamond, atoms have more freedom to fluctuate without being ejected. The bonding environment provides enough flexibility that atoms do not reach the extreme edge of their probability distribution, where detachment becomes likely.

I do not know whether quartz, for example, loses atoms from its surface at a comparable rate. It may have enough structural leeway that atoms do not drift far enough, probabilistically, to escape the lattice under ordinary conditions. That is my working understanding. What else?

Jacobsen: Any thoughts on Greenland, Denmark, and international reactions? 

Rosner: People keep wondering how far Trump will go and what, if anything, might stop him.

Many people who are not part of MAGA are discouraged that so little seems to have restrained him. This marks roughly a year into his current term, and for many observers, it feels like a continuation of the same pattern. Outside his most committed supporters, there is widespread frustration that he continues to push forward largely undeterred.

He is not entirely unimpeded. Lawsuits challenge some of his actions, but he often responds by pursuing other avenues. That has reached the point where he has publicly floated aggressive rhetoric about Greenland, while remaining deliberately unclear about how far he might actually go. That uncertainty alone is destabilizing.

People protest. Others write angry posts online. None of this has much effect. His core supporters show little shame or hesitation. They tend to embrace whatever he does and retroactively frame it as what they wanted all along.

One example is the Epstein files. Trump campaigned on releasing them in full. To date, only a small fraction appears to have been made public, according to reports circulating online. This issue once animated his base intensely, yet many now seem indifferent. That pattern repeats: standards shift, and contradictions are absorbed.

His approval ratings have declined in some polls, dipping below 40%, with disapproval exceeding 50%. Still, those numbers have not translated into meaningful institutional resistance. No significant cabinet resignations have occurred publicly. Congress occasionally pushes back, but not consistently or forcefully enough to impose absolute limits.

There was reporting about a War Powers resolution aimed at restricting unilateral military action, possibly related to Venezuela, but its practical impact is uncertain. Even when such measures exist, enforcement is weak, and executive workarounds remain possible. Laws without penalties or enforcement mechanisms often amount to symbolic gestures.

The Epstein disclosure issue illustrates this problem. Legislation mandating release reportedly lacked clear penalties for noncompliance, leaving the executive branch free to delay or ignore deadlines without consequence.

People often draw historical parallels. After Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933—without a majority—he used legal and constitutional mechanisms to consolidate power rapidly. Within weeks, he controlled the levers of government without formally violating existing laws. The comparison raises uncomfortable questions about how democratic systems can fail from within.

In the United States, Trump wields significant influence across the executive branch, the judiciary, Congress, and large portions of the media ecosystem. Mass protests that might paralyze countries like France or the United Kingdom do not have the same effect in a country as large and decentralized as the U.S.

That is where things stand. I recently read an Atlantic article that compared the national mood to a collective defensive crouch.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

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