Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What's the scariest thing you've ever watched? In person? On television? Let's start with something from fiction and then something from real life. Rick Rosner: We'll do fiction first. JD and I were driving back from a Lance show one night just as a wildfire started along the 405. We drove through …
Rick Rosner: So, Skippy the Horse. When I was a teenager, there was a story about a horse named Skippy that was allegedly dissected by extraterrestrials. According to the tale, you can tell when aliens perform a dissection because they remove the animal's rear end perfectly circularly. It also turns out that in nature, certain …
Rick Rosner: The battle is between the obvious benefits brought by technology and the relentless bombardment of nonsense. This struggle is not unique to America—it's happening worldwide. When you're fighting dangerous forms of fundamentalism or totalitarian religious forces, if enough people can see the benefits of modernity, don't you think they can be persuaded to …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What technological changes are going to supersede all this political and social nonsense in the next four or five years? What technical changes will occur during that time? Technical and scientific advances. Rick Rosner: So, is AGI—for Artificial General Intelligence—that it? Is it AI that can think? It once seemed like AGI …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1245: Technological Changes in the Midst of Adversarial Politics
Rick Rosner: Okay, I have a topic. People seem to be backing off of Trump—comedians, the press—and there is a growing trend of acquiescing to authoritarian tendencies before they fully materialize, driven by fear and self-preservation. I myself have largely stopped tweeting harsh criticisms of Trump. Before the election, I tried to post at least …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1244: Tread with the Trends of Caution or Caution to the Wind?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your opinion of Speaker Johnson being re-elected with a vote of 218 to 215? Rick Rosner: I watched some of that. The Democrats were making a big deal out of the possibility that something else might happen, but it was inevitable. He got elected on the first ballot. They just …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1243: The Speaker Mike Johnson Rick Roll Ramble
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What can people do to extend their shelf life? Rick Rosner: I take a lot of fisetin, a senolytic. It helps your body eliminate cells that should have died off because they no longer function. A senolytic kills senescent cells. In many people, Senescent cells hang on, increasing inflammation and using up …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Here's a topic. If you're on Facebook and you like those zit-popping clips from Instagram or wherever, try searching for farrier or blacksmith recovery videos. They take out nails and rocks embedded in horse hooves. Sometimes, the hoof grows around the rock; they dig it out, and there's pus and blood. Rick …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1241: I have no idea, also aging
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How can you construct feelings into robots if that can be done? Rick Rosner: Well, an editorial in the LA Times this morning asked, "Are you going to be mean to your phone when it has emotions?" It suggested that phones might have emotions within the next 10 years. That's plausible. I forget exactly …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1240: Constructs with Contructed Feelings
Rick Rosner: Let's talk about jewelry for a moment. In the realm of gold-coated pieces, quality varies widely based on how thick the gold layer is. For instance, a gold wash is the lowest-quality coating—if you buy a piece of jewelry with just a gold wash, that layer will wear off within a decade or …
Rick Rosner 