Clarissa's Blog

This is beyond cool, people.

‼️ ZELENSKYY: For the first time in the war, an enemy position was captured entirely by ground robotic systems and drones – without any infantry. A robot entered the most dangerous zones instead of a soldier and took the positions.

«The future is here, on the battlefield, and… pic.twitter.com/maqECUunEj

— Kateryna Lisunova (@KaterynaLis) April 13, 2026

This is a country that had no army at all in 2014. And wasn’t even really a country. And now it’s a global leader of defense. It’s extraordinary.

Klara refused to have anything to do with foreign languages her whole life. But today she looked deep into my eyes and said, “Necesito un helado de fresa, mami.”

There was absolutely nothing at that moment capable of convincing me to get her ice cream.

Except that.

Selling magic amulets also helps keep the accusations at bay. pic.twitter.com/2C0LB2CReE

— Burt Macklin (@BurtMaclin_FBI) April 13, 2026

Yes. That’s stupid. But this fellow is not forcing anybody to buy the amulets. Better yet, he’s not forcing anybody to inject them into their bodies against their will. Literally all I want from liberals (leftists, progressives, whatever) is that they leave me alone and don’t make me participate. The problem is that the whole leftist (liberal, progressive, etc) project is about forcing others to participate and loudly praise their magic amulets.

Have you noticed that JD Vance ends up assigned only the tasks he is guaranteed to fail? Not only because he’s useless but because the tasks are unfulfillable.

It’s enjoyable to watch.

And by the way, I have very little resentment towards the administration. When people have a strategy that they actively pursue, even if it’s hostile to my interests, I can respect that. The administrators were all here on campus every day during COVID starting on the day when the university reopened. I respect that. Administrators come to every event. I can’t get any professors to come to support their own students at the undergraduate research showcase. But the administrators are always there. Zero colleagues come to the presentations I organize at the International Studies Day. But there’s always somebody there from the Dean’s Office, asking questions, being actively engaged. Administrators are on campus on Fridays when professors treat Fridays like a part of the weekend, refusing even to answer emails on that day. They are always there during all events with students, 100% attendance.

It’s hard to be too upset with people who at least show up.

I know when all joy went out of my job as department chair. It was when the Boomers retired. Once the last one left, all I had was people who wanted to work as little as possible, work only remotely, come to campus twice a week at most, teach only the same old courses to avoid preparing new ones, assign as much stuff from self-grading digital textbooks, use pre-canned tests from those digital textbooks, and who have zero buy in into the future of the department or the institution.

Boomers were the soul of the university. Their retirements coincided with the post-COVID era when people discovered that they don’t like working. Moderate-effort workers turned into low-effort while the low-effort ones went aggressively zero effort.

On the subject of Orban in Hungary, he absolutely stinks and is disgusting. But the ways in which the liberal opposition in the EU tries to remove him also stink and are disgusting. This is the clearest situation of both options being worse. When you are choosing between the Russian hatred of everything good and the leftist hatred of everything good, that’s a sad situation.

God help Hungary.

We had on of the catechumens read in Arabic during the Paschal service. Now I wonder what he is converting from.

In any case, what a wonderful day. Let’s celebrate triumph over death.

“You know how you often go to restaurants with your friend Maria?” N asks.

“Yes.”

“I also want to go to a restaurant with Maria.”

“With my friend Maria?”

“No, with my friend Maria.”

“But you don’t have a friend called Maria.”

“Exactly!”

“Honey, what do you want?” I ask.

“I want to go to a restaurant with a friend but since I don’t have a friend, I’d like to go by myself.”

I have observed no change in how students learn as a result of AI. There are some attempts to cheat but they are in the same scope as 10 or 20 years ago. People on social media report observing massive changes in retention or attention spans. I haven’t seen anything of the kind.

Students almost invariably use AI as a limited-function Google. They aren’t very good at using it. I’m not seeing anything even marginally different in students, let alone anything catastrophic. It’s enormously easier to teach Zoomers than Millennials but this is not related to technology.

I have no idea where people find all this massive cognitive damage from AI they keep talking about. In my teaching, AI has the most marginal presence imaginable. I teach a lot in the computer lab. I tell students “use anything you want for the assignment.” They almost always go directly to Wordreference.com or Reverso.com.