Rick Rosner: So, I'm in the Writers Guild and the TV Academy. That means I can vote in certain Emmy categories and for the Writers' Guild Awards. I get invited to screenings of TV shows and movies, and I can bring Carol along. Someone from the production team, or even a few people, will often …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1205: ‘I’m in the Writers Guild’
*Interview conducted in October-November, 2024.* Rick Rosner: McDonald's has agreed to host a Trump event but has stated that it is not endorsing any political candidate. Many of their restaurants, perhaps most, are individually franchised. While I am not entirely certain, I assume some must be owned by the McDonald's Corporation, but the majority are …
*Interview conducted in October-November, 2024.* Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s try 2085 onward. I’d argue for whole-brain interfaces and the construction of immersive illusions. Entire systems will be constructed, including the manipulation of emotions without the need for electrodes. It could be done through subtle manipulation using magnetic waves or other advanced methods. That’s a tough …
*Interview conducted in October-November, 2024.* Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What technology have you found hardest to adopt in your life? Rosner: One of the things I missed out on culturally is gaming. I’m not a gamer. I’ve never played Call of Duty or any of the popular games. My last major gaming experience was Tank Command …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1166: Technology Adoption and Sexy Choir Ladies
Rick Rosner: In the Spike Jonze movie Her, Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his phone’s operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Spoiler alert, but the movie is already nine years old? I believe it was released in 2015. One of the factors leading to their separation is that the operating system becomes increasingly frustrated with …
Rick Rosner: So I watched all the episodes of America’s Sweethearts, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is it about? Rosner: It’s part of that team. It messes you up physically. They looked at one young woman who had to get a hip replacement after three or four years of being on the …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 973: Dallas Cheerleaders and Centaurs
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Masculinity—you get a pair of these giant testicles made out of plastic and hang them from the rear of your truck. So, your truck has testicles. What is another American cultural item, an Americanism that is also like this? Rick Rosner: It used to be barbed wire tattoos that run all the …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 938: Porn, Masculinity, and Virginity
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: So, I'm going through my book and talking, which is set like ten years in the future, about what life might be like then. You said to plug Carole's book, too. I've been working on this thing for years and years; you could argue for decades because I'm taking much stuff from …
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: I was talking about the square root law of mesh networks, which states that the efficiency of people whose brains are linked is proportional to the square root of the number of people in the network. Black box-ness. So, we see this with AI and Google Translate, where AI can be effective, …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 911: The Square Root Law of Mesh Networks
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: So, you should know that the main character is a celebrity and, to some extent, an industrialist who has used his celebrity to be the figurehead of a sizeable semi-insidious tech corporation, mainly in the 2030s; that is the period I am writing about. One of the things that he has access to …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 910: Rick’s Book is About a Celebrity
Rick Rosner 