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 …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Are American billionaires and political elites becoming more odious or less odious? Rick Rosner: It depends on your time frame. For one thing, we didn't always have billionaires. But if you're talking about the top one-hundredth of one percent of Americans, your time frame is a century, 50 years, or even 70 …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1238: The Odious Gilded Age with Electric Cars and Nike Sneakers
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think Twitter has been devolving since Musk took it over? Rick Rosner: It has. Twitter went downhill after Musk bought it. What, three years ago? It used to be where I followed hundreds of comedians and saw hundreds of jokes daily. It was fun and less political. When Musk came …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1237: Tripartite Religion of the H-1B
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why don't you like cardio? Rick Rosner: Why don't I like cardio? I don't like cardio because it's uncomfortable and boring. With weights, I used to read between sets at the gym before COVID-19, and that made the gym a little less boring. I'd only read for about 20 seconds to be …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1236: Why does Rick hate cardio?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Did you ever watch The Lord of the Rings? Rick Rosner: Parts of it—it puts me to sleep. Superhero movies do the same thing. I fall asleep for about an hour and 20 minutes, sleep for 10 minutes, and wake up refreshed, but still not caring about what I missed. It's even …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1235: The Lord of the Rings and PodTV
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We began collaborating 14% into the 21st century. Now, we are 25% into it. If you start counting the 21st century from the year 2000—which is slightly inaccurate but often done—we have completed 25 years. That means we are one-quarter of the way through the 21st century. Purists might argue that we …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1234: When is the end of our worlds?
Rick Rosner: I can’t recall why exactly, but someone on Twitter (I don’t remember their name) once gave a short talk where they mentioned that everyone they know with an IQ over 180 has trouble avoiding “doofus traps.” I love that term. It stings a bit because I’ve fallen into plenty myself—I used to call …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1233: What counts as doofus traps for smart people?
Rick Rosner 