Clarissa's Blog

I keep complaining that Amazon’s recommendation algorithm stinks but it turns out that they are using all their data mining experience and personnel to battle out-of-this-world theft and fraud. There are people whose only pursuit in life is defrauding Amazon. They create thousands of accounts each and engage in all sorts of inventive fraud. And theft in warehouses is ridiculous.

For such an enormous organization, the only way to make it work like clockwork for the customers is to allow extreme chaos on the inside. And chaos is where fraud breeds.

I guess I won’t complain about recommendations any more.

On black Friday, are there discounts on food? Does anybody know? I don’t shop on black Friday, so I have no idea what goes on.

Canada’s NDP (the leftie party) wants to set up lethal injection sites for kids. Now that they’ve gotten pot legalized, it’s time to legalize heroin and use it to bump off the undesirables. It’s best to get them while they are still young. It cuts down welfare costs, too, so what’s not to like.

Why is the NYTimes writing about Sherrod Brown? It can’t be because he’s inspiring many voters and could be a great choice in 2020. No, the only reason is that he’s the dreaded “white guy.” Recently, a store assistant told me a propos an item I was looking at “We have that one in white, too” and I felt nauseous. I can’t even hear the word white any more it’s been so overused. I left without making a purchase.

Betsy DeVos keeps rolling back Obama’s ridiculousness and I’m grateful for that. Recently, a student shared something personal with me (not related to sexual assault), and I had to quote paragraphs and paragraphs from the handbook at her like a total idiot. I’d much rather engage as a human being. But I’m afraid of sanctions. These regulations have to go.

Funny new words and expressions from Spiked.

Stacey Abrams finally conceded but not really because she says it’s just not right that she should lose. I’m seeing all these Democrat-initiated recounts with great dismay because we are setting ourselves up for the opponents to refuse to accept any of the races whose outcome they don’t like and claim we did it first and many times, too, so we can’t object.

I’m envisioning a close presidential race where we’ll be bogged down in an endless recount that will go on forever. You can’t question the legitimacy of every loss and not have it done back at you. And given that Republicans are, for some utterly mysterious reason, simply better at getting what they want, for all of our failed recounts they’ll get very successful ones.

And yeah, there has already been a presidential recount. Please remind me who initiated it and who lost.

I just saw an article titled “Obesity is good for your health, scientists say.” This wouldn’t even be shocking if the article weren’t in Ukrainian. The crazy moves at the speed of light these days. Unfortunately, intelligence is a lot slower.

The reason why I like my fitness program is that the routines are always different. The trainers always come up with something new, and you never know what to expect. I have a very busy brain, and I get bored very easily with repetitive stuff. (Except for teaching. I never get bored with explaining the subjunctive or the object pronouns. It’s weird how I’m a completely different person in teaching than with everything else. As a teacher, I’m kind, compassionate, warm, and infinitely patient. Impossible to believe, I know).

Also, at the fitness club we have challenges that are always different. Right now, we are doing one where you get a ticket for every extra exercise you do on top of the workouts. You put the tickets in a box, and then there will be prizes. The prizes are extra special secret workouts.

The main reason I joined this group was that I fell asleep during a solitary workout at my regular gym. Like, literally. This gave me a clue that I wasn’t doing it exactly right. Because I’m pretty certain your heart rate should be elevated and not the opposite during a workout. But I can’t deal with a personal trainer because I hate having somebody stand there and stare at me for 40 minutes while I puff and huff.

I recommend this great article on the Classical Learning Test (CLT), which is an alternative to SAT and ACT. I never heard of it before but it sounds interesting. And the article is well-written and funny. The part about penguins is simply excellent.

N got me a subscription to National Review for our wedding anniversary. Obviously, because I asked him to. He wouldn’t know the difference between National Review and Vogue to save his life.