Author: Joel Gross

I climbed two 10ds, a 10a and two 5.9s.

Child’s play and the one next to it were the best. I almost sent the arete but gave up too easy once on the rail when all I had to do was reach up.

This blog post inspired my post here.

A fascinating phenomena occurs in both human society and in the natural world: a small percentage of sports franchises / businesses / species end up with a vast majority of the success. Why is this?

First, let’s look at some examples in human society as well as the natural world:

• 1.4% of tree species account for 50% of the trees in the Amazon
• Just two franchises have won almost half of all the championships in NBA history.

Growing up, I attended a redneck Christian elementary school and high school. I also went to a pretty goofy church. Both places told me lots of “facts” that turned out to not actually be true upon further review:

• That if the Earth was one inch closer to the Sun we would burn up, and if it was one inch farther away we would freeze to death.

I have realized that work can provide purpose which is essential to happiness in life. I read a fair bit of Reddit and the people who always complain of being the most depressed are those who are unemployed. I have noticed in myself that when I am on vacation or on weekends are the times I am most susceptible to depression.… read more “Work & Happiness”

Laurel and I saw “Get Out” yesterday. I won’t give away any spoilers but I highly recommend you see it!

From 2006 to 2009, I worked primarily in the SEO and Reputation Management division of Visible Technologies. Another big division of the company did Social Media Analytics. Basically, we were forerunners to the companies talked about in this article – the ones that provided Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, and others the data and capabilities to swing voters opinions with well placed lies, fake news, and exaggerations that play on their fears.… read more “Fake News & Lies”

Diseases like cancer, heart disease, and dementia are really just symptoms of aging. They almost entirely afflict our elders. Instead of trying to fix one disease when ten other diseases are right behind it to kill one of our elderly, I’d like to face the problem of aging itself head on.

Our society loses a huge amount of wisdom and talent to the ravages of aging – just as has happened for all of human history.… read more “Solving Aging”