Category: Uncategorized

Emotional Extremes

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

Emotional processing happens on a scale. Its extremes are unhealthy while the mid-range state is optimal.

“I feel everything and then some” and “I feel nothing” are equally unhealthy. A permanently overheated emotional state is as bad as a permanently frozen one. People in the two extremes often take a moralistic position vis-à-vis each other, but they are equally unhealthy.

People who exist in the state of a permanent emotional dysregulation tend to present it to others as a particular kind of sensitivity that makes them special and unique. Those who are dissociated advertise themselves as particularly stoic and strong. Both use their dysfunction as a cudgel to beat those around them into servicing and feeding their unhealthy state.

Brezhnevism Is Alive

~ Clarissa ~ 10 Comments

This is exactly, EXACTLY the tone and the vocabulary that the Soviet press used to write about the Secretary General of the Communist Party:

The only difference is that the Soviet journalists who wrote like this didn’t have a choice. The whole weight of a totalitarian regime pushed them to do it. Americans, on the other hand, gave away their free press completely willingly.

Also, Harris can’t even find a non-fake pose for a staged photoshoot. Look at the hands. Whoever sits like this in real life?

What an incredibly fake, vapid person. This fawning over her is especially galling given what an utter non-entity she is.

Defense of the Nation-state

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

It would be great if Europe accepted that too, of course, but you know.

Once Again

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

Once again, people who do the responsible thing and buy used cars for cash to avoid debt are screwed.

AI Effect

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

I know nobody cares right now because of the election but I need to share that I let my students use absolutely any AI tools during the midterm and they made the exact same mistakes as students from several years ago when there was no AI.

I observed zero AI effect.

This year’s grades are actually about 7-8% lower than in 2021 in an identical assignment with no AI.

If you are nervous about the impact of AI on your teaching in the Humanities, maybe let students use it freely and then you’ll feel better when you see it changes nothing.

I have no idea how it works in the sciences, sorry.

Comforting Fairytales

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment
https://twitter.com/FreeTrevian/status/1844209990124671018?t=WZ6Kj1kiOkTZKOjreVkM4g&s=19

I’m so sad for these people. So deeply sorry. They are telling themselves these absolute fairytales about winning the black vote, getting a landslide in New York, turning Cali red. And it’s all absolute lunacy. Instead of concentrating on what’s actually winnable, they convince themselves of these insane fantasies and then can’t comprehend when reality turns out to be different.

Unpatriotic Leadership

~ Clarissa ~ 45 Comments
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1844387359036669967?t=BL5qPBR52jZuAT_ye25PTQ&s=19

This is why I just can’t bring myself to vote for him. This. Unpatriotic, inane drivel that repeats what our worst enemies try to convince themselves of.

This is an amazing country. The best place to live in the world. And it has problems. It’s not heaven on Earth. Heaven on Earth is not going to happen. But our problems are pinpricks compared to what other countries are experiencing. I don’t even mean really failed nations like in Africa or, increasingly, Mexico. I mean Canada, UK, rich developed countries that are doing worse than we are.

If we are a failure, then who isn’t? I want to hear the names of those much more successful countries.

Yes, Kamala is just as bad with her libels about how we are “structurally racist” and all that crap.

Can we get a leader who admires this country and doesn’t call it names every two seconds? Is that too much to ask?

Science Funding and BLM

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

This is true. I was officially told that we must reorient our research towards the importance of the BLM in Hispanic countries to get funding. When I said that BLM is a US fad with no relevance to anybody else, this was greeted with shock. “So you don’t want to get funded?” I was asked.

Please take a moment to ponder this. The federal government prioritizes funding to people who manufacture evidence that American ideological hangups are shared by the rest of the world. People are desperate for funding. The only research that counts for anything is often the research that receives external funding. Nobody cares that I have publications coming out the wazoo in prestigious peer-reviewed journals around the world because I get zero external (meaning, outside the university) funding. I don’t get tempted but many people will. Think about the consequences of that. A quarter of all funding is an enormous figure. We are destroying our country’s scholarly advantage by doing this.

This will have terrible effects down the road.

Anxiety

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

Anxiety is fear that has lost its object. Find the object, and anxiety will leave.

Hero Worship

~ Clarissa ~ 17 Comments

I’m personally very indifferent on this subject but Trump’s supporters who are against foreign aid must be livid, right?

Nope. They are not. Because God forbid we have principles instead of hero worship.