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Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

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Just Joshin' #105 (Science)

1 Family Photo: Water Cycle The Discovery is a science museum in Reno. We celebrated Lawrence's birthday with a visit. The museum's biggest exhibit is a model of the Truckee River watershed and the water cycle, complete with "clouds" cut from stacks of pringles-shaped platforms towering 3-stories above the atrium. The clouds create an irregular jungle gym for "climbers of all ages". Lawrence loved the clouds—undeterred by their height—dragging me up and down the tiny crawlspaces they created....

2 days ago • 3 min read

1 Family Photo: Raccoon! We had a cabin visitor this week. A raccoon popped over and looked in on us. He didn't just pass by—he stopped, pulled on the sliding glass door to check if it would budge, peeped through to see what was happening inside. It felt like a zoo exhibit, but in reverse. I could hear the raccoon thinking: "LOOK AT THE ADORABLE HOOMANS! HOW SAD THEY'RE TRAPPED IN GLASS BOX. DON'T THEY WANT TO EXPLORE OUTSIDE?" The raccoon started at us. We stared at him. He wouldn't leave us...

9 days ago • 7 min read

1 Family Photo: Screens This week, we only stopped once on our seven-hour drive to Truckee. In travel-dad golf, that's shooting birdie on a par 3. [*insert joke about drivers*] The boys passed some of the time looking at their books, drawing on little pads, singing songs, and napping. Mostly though, they just gazed out their windows, occasionally asking questions about things we passed. I don't know if it makes any difference to life-outcomes (and I don't judge anyone else's parenting...

16 days ago • 4 min read

1 Family Photo: Suffering Jensen Huang (The Nvidia Guy) had some advice for Stanford students: "People with high expectations have low resilience. Unfortunately, resilience matters in success. I don't know how to teach it to you except—I hope suffering happens to you." He added, "Greatness isn't intelligence, greatness comes from character. And character isn't formed out of smart people, it's formed out of people who have suffered...I wish upon you ample doses of pain & suffering." -- A...

23 days ago • 5 min read

1 Family Photo: Disappointment The SLO Railroad Museum is only open on Saturdays. Calvin knows it is only open in Saturdays. His first question when he wakes up in the morning is often, "Is today a Saturday?" by which he really means "Is the train museum open today? Can we go to the train museum today?" He's often disappointed to find out today is in fact not a Saturday, or even a weekend. We sometimes still go to the train museum when it is closed. A couple weeks ago, due to a few wrong...

about 1 month ago • 4 min read

1 Family Photo: Endurance "I'm tired," said Calvin. "I know you're tired, but if you can still put one foot in front of the other then you can keep going. Don't worry about anything else. Don't worry about how far we've gone or have to go — let's just try to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Does that make sense?" "Yeah Dad," Responded Calvin. "But I'm still tired."—"Will you carry me?" And that's how our family walked/scootered/carried almost a fifth of the Bob Jones Trail. --- As...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read

1 Family Photo: Humor Why did Joshua have no parents?Because he was the son of Nun. This joke is not funny. Its premise describes some sad orphan situation. Its punchline relies on bible trivia. It was also my favorite joke when I was 6. This is worse when I think about confused strangers assuming the setup was autobiographical. I'm lucky we didn't send kids to therapy back then. It reminds me of another piece of poorly constructed humor. In Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy in the Muslim...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read

1 Family Photo: Pleasure On the first day of college, my economics professor lied to me. He said economics is a positive science—it describes the world as it is rather than how it ought to be. Then he explained utility—valuing all the pleasure and future pleasure in a thing. He said we can't see inside people's heads to sum up all that pleasure, so instead economists assume people are rational, count the dollars they're willing to pay for things, and approximate value that way. Then I spent...

about 2 months ago • 5 min read

1 Family Photo: Happiness Building Art in New Orleans I traveled for work this week. I used to travel for work all the time—not so much since Calvin was born. When you travel for work all the time, you get status with your preferred airline. Status comes with extra conveniences. Silver: your checked bags are free. Gold: you can choose any seat on the plane and sometimes get bumped to first class. Platinum: you get even more benefits. Then there's a tier above Platinum where they let you board...

about 2 months ago • 2 min read

1 Family Photo: Joy Polaroids of Calvin and Lawrence from SLOMAchildren's art day in the style of a current exhibition. What's the Venn diagram of Joy, Happiness, and Pleasure? I interrogated ChatGPT. It gave me this list. Is there a better way to study deep human emotions than through the eyes of a robot? Is there a better way to use seeing robots than to study deep human emotions? My conclusions from the chart: Pleasure takes place in the skin, Happiness takes place in the mind, Joy takes...

2 months ago • 2 min read
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