Clarissa&#039;s Blog

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I decided to be fair to the Democrats and research what they’re proposing to lower gas prices. Here is what ChatGPT found for me. If you have better sources, please list them in the comments, but what the notoriously left-leaning AI engine found is this:

Prohibit exports of crude oil, gasoline, and diesel;
Tax oil-company windfall profits and rebate the money to households;
Create an FTC unit specifically to monitor fuel markets for manipulation or fraudulent behavior, increase transparency;
Restoring clean-energy tax credits, speeding permitting, expanding transmission and storage, making large data centers pay more of the costs they impose on the electricity grid, and strengthening consumer protections against energy-price increases.

What do you notice in these measures? Trump is already proposing to ban diesel sales overseas and send dividends to voters. This takes care of numbers 1 and 2. Number 3 is create more bureaucracy.
Number 4 is go back to the Green New Deal.
If people are planning to vote Democrat over high gas prices, which is a very legitimate concern, can they please point out which of these measures proposed by the Democrats to address the issue makes them confident that they will manage to tackle it?

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economy, elections

High Gas Prices and Elections

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I decided to be fair to the Democrats and research what they’re proposing to lower gas prices. Here is what ChatGPT found for me. If you have better sources, please list them in the comments, but what the notoriously left-leaning AI engine found is this:

Prohibit exports of crude oil, gasoline, and diesel;
Tax oil-company windfall profits and rebate the money to households;
Create an FTC unit specifically to monitor fuel markets for manipulation or fraudulent behavior, increase transparency;
Restoring clean-energy tax credits, speeding permitting, expanding transmission and storage, making large data centers pay more of the costs they impose on the electricity grid, and strengthening consumer protections against energy-price increases.

What do you notice in these measures? Trump is already proposing to ban diesel sales overseas and send dividends to voters. This takes care of numbers 1 and 2. Number 3 is create more bureaucracy.
Number 4 is go back to the Green New Deal.
If people are planning to vote Democrat over high gas prices, which is a very legitimate concern, can they please point out which of these measures proposed by the Democrats to address the issue makes them confident that they will manage to tackle it?

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Uncategorized

An Intolerant Home Aide

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My mother wants us to hire a Ukrainian-speaking home aide to help her during the day. Yesterday, she interviewed her first candidate.

“So?” I asked expectantly, “Did you like her?”

“No! I hated her! She’s very intolerant. I can’t be around such an intolerant person! All this negativity is not going to help me with my symptoms,” my mother replied.

“What did she do?” I asked.

“She offered to pray together and quoted the Bible. I told her I don’t believe in God, and if he’s real, I hate him! Can you believe the level of intolerance on that woman?”

I guess we should start looking for an atheist home aide.

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Uncategorized

Food Prices

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I can’t wait to go to Spain to take a break from the extremely high food prices in the U.S. Every time in Spain, I stand at the grocery checkout looking dazed because I can’t process the low total for the food I purchase.

“Is it okay, cielo?” The cashier usually asks me, “Is it not what you expected? Is it too high?”

No, it’s most certainly not too high.

Of course, salaries in Spain are enormously lower for comparable jobs than in the U.S., so for people who live there, it all evens out.

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Welfare

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I moved significantly to the right in the past year, and there is one issue that is driving this.

The issue is welfare. I was always and remain strongly in favor of a wide range of welfare protections. However, after the fraud scandals of the past year, I no longer believe that the United States government can successfully provide welfare protections without having much of the funds eaten by outrageous, insane fraud. This fraud creates chaos and dysfunction at home and abroad. COVID fraud, for example, finances gang hits in this country and overseas, such as the assassination of the president of Haiti in 2021. These COVID payouts created terrible inflation that is eating the earnings of every one of us, and what is the upside? And besides PPP loans, all of the other forms of welfare are deeply compromised by dishonesty and fraud. They foster racial and ethnic animosity, drive up rates of diabetes and heart disease among African Americans, and vitiate the political process.

So, in theory, I still support welfare protections, but in practice, we have run into a wall, and I think they are no longer serving a useful purpose that outweighs the negative effects.

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liberals

Masked Lesbians

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A lesbian bar in Massachusetts decided to relax its mask mandate (yes, right now, in the year of Jesus Christ 2026), and the patrons are extremely upset, accusing the bar owners of trying to murder them.

But whatever, who cares about masks anymore? What I wanted to share is the text of the message in which the people who run the bar announced their intention:

It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask-optional to try out typical club nights with themes/hosts/DJs/full capacity.

Accessibility is a pillar of our mission, AND our mission is also to make the space work for everyone and everything radical; sometimes that’s being wild! We strive for solidarity, transparency of risks, and connecting us all in this revolution. We still give priority to public and private Masked bookings and continue a recurring monthly Masked Social prioritizing safety. It is only after an outpouring of feedback from our regulars, volunteers, and team that we make this addition.

https://notthebee.com/article/boston-lesbians-fiercely-divided-after-gay-bar-drops-mask-mandate-in-2026

Is this the most geriatric thing you have ever read or what? Not because of the masks or the disabled thing, but notice the vocabulary. “Radical, wild!, this revolution, outpouring of feedback, it is with love.” Does anybody under the age of 70 speak this way? This has strong “flower power” vibes.

I’m happy that grandmas are still trying to get it on in a lesbian bar, that’s all I can say. I’m guessing at their age, masks are helpful for that purpose.

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AI

Being Human

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If I were in charge of firing and hiring at my department, would I fire our secretary Julie, given that an AI agent can do everything that she does?

No, absolutely not. Julie has what the AI agent never will. She’s a people magnet. She genuinely loves people and is curious about them. People flock to her. The department came alive when she started working for us. Julie is very good at being human, which is exactly the thing that AI can’t do. She is the beating heart of the department. We’ve had other secretaries, and I can absolutely see how they can be substituted with AI.

The things that social media and remote work have taken away from us, AI can give back to us. This is not my idea. It’s my sister’s, and I don’t want to be a plagiarist, so I’m crediting her for it. We have a bunch of people among service personnel who never came back after COVID and continued working remotely. They will now have to think hard what it is that they offer to the workplace that cannot be outsourced to AI.

There was a person in student advisement with whom I had a great relationship that brightened up my life. Then she went remote and became a drone. The university eventually got rid of her position, and I can see why.

We all experienced this during COVID when, for example, all of our conferences became remote. At first, people were excited because you can save money and trouble. But after two years, everybody was sick of the experiment. The university raised the amount it gave us in funding to go to in-person conferences, and everybody was ecstatic to jump back on the conference circuit. Everybody discovered that the human aspect was the most important part of the conferences.

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crime

Street Takeovers

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Hispanic father and daughter were part of a street takeover on the sixth street bridge in Los Angeles, California

Officers stopped the takeover, but the Hispanic father says they should be allowed to do have these takeovers

“She’s 13, I’m her dad. i allow her to ride ’cause I’m right next to her — As long as we ride together with them, as a parent, it shouldn’t be a crime and it shouldn’t be illegal”

https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2102083710694600707

This absolute moron who taught his 13-year-old child to be an entitled public nuisance, then proceeds to claim that the law is subjective and he should be able to clog up the street whenever he feels like it. “It shouldn’t be a crime so it isn’t a crime” he informs the interviewer.

These “takeovers” are part of a big new wave of diverse people overrunning public spaces and making these spaces dangerous and uncomfortable for everybody. First, it was blacks. Now it’s also Hispanics. Malls, parks, highways, residential streets, etc., get overrun by groups of people who bring children, often very young ones, to be able to explain the event as a childish prank.

The point of the activity is to be a nuisance. It is to disrupt well-ordered, peaceful environments for no reason other than because you can.

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AI, higher ed, teaching

The Death of PP

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I’m going to be teaching a course in a different discipline in the spring. I asked the person who is currently teaching it for the syllabus so that I can see what the course normally looks like. I was absolutely stunned to find out that she requires students to make a PowerPoint presentation and even specifies the number of slides.

Making PowerPoint slides is no longer a marketable skill. No human being ever needs to make another PowerPoint again. Assigning 15% of the final grade for something that every student who is not a clinical moron will outsource to AI is insane.

Forget AI. I explicitly started prohibiting students from using PowerPoints for presentations in my courses back in 2014 or 2015.

People are paying for this education. They need to get some value out of it. This is not offering value.