Author Archives: Camilla

Latest News: Absolutely Not – No AI Chat Bot

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June 16 2025

No, absolutely not. If you’re an admin for any groups, this feature can be turned off in the group settings. While I’m at it, if you don’t want AI results when searching on Google, just type -ai at the end of your search phrase. For example, what is critical thinking -ai … ✊✊✊

It’s way past out of hand. Along with hundreds of other author’s books, my first book was pirated and used my META to train AI. In addition to stealing copyrighted materials, it’s devastating for the environment, it kills critical thinking, and blurs the line between truth and fiction. It really could be the end of us.

I figured out how to remove the AI results without having to use the -ai. This way you only get web results, like it used to be. The AI results are there, but those results have their own tab. Google does not want you completely turning the feature off, so there’s no way (that I can find) to do it. Here’s a video explainer for what I did (not created by me) and a screenshot of how my searches look now.

Chad Basil the First – An Update – Please Help if You Can

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June 21 2025

Chad Basil the First had to visit the emergency vet a couple of weeks ago. $$$$$ For those that don’t know, Basil is Thomas’s emotional support cat. 😻😻😻 Thomas created a GoFundMe.

If you’re able to, or would like to help, sharing the content from Thomas’s post:

“My name is Thomas, although many people know me as Gigi. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ve probably become well acquainted with my cat, Basil. In the middle of June, I was woken up by him crying, which continued constantly for a long while after. He’s a very quiet and reserved cat who does not like to speak, even when he is very clearly in pain, so I knew he must be having an excruciating experience. When he started throwing up, I figured that he must have a severe blockage that was preventing him from going to the bathroom, since I’d noted that he hadn’t gone to the bathroom in days. If you are unaware, this is considered a medical emergency for cats, as they can die if it goes untreated.

My normal vet redirected me to a vet ER, where they took him in for scans. This was very early in the morning, and I was completely exhausted from having been kept up the nights before. After they didn’t find anything initially, they implored me to get yet another scan, which I caved to because of how out of it I was. After that one came back, they told me that nothing was really wrong (besides something else he’d eaten and would pass) and that he was good to go. It seemed like everything would be fine.

Not really. We ended up having to pay about $1500 just to learn he was fine. Although this was something we could technically handle budgetarily, it was extremely difficult. My mother’s work situation is already precarious, as both her income sources depend entirely on the funding for disabled service providers that the current administration is constantly cutting. I have only been working part-time due to being a full-time college student.

I know that these are difficult times for everyone. I don’t expect anyone to give something they can’t, and this is probably a minor situation in most people’s view, in the grand scheme. But even giving a bit of money is that bit more we can put back into paying this off.

Attached is the bill that we were charged. I will not be accepting any more money than what we were charged, and everything will solely be put towards it.”

Enjoying this Gig – Disability Ethics Teaching Assistant

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June 15 2025

Just finished my 1st week of TA’ing for the Disability Ethics class (Teaching Assistant). I’m assigned to week 1 and 3. I’m really enjoying this. However, some of the students may not be enjoying me due to my obsessive attention to detail. 🤣 I thought it was an exaggeration that students are using AI generated answers. Every once in a while I found myself reading the same answer over and over … Hmmm … Wait a minute! Pretty cool gig as I’m earning 3 credits for it. 💥💥💥

Cool answer bro. But it does not answer the actual question(s). 😁 I’m wild. I did a copy and paste of all the similar/identical answers so I could compare them as I went along. I’m visual so needed to see them together. I refuse to use AI even to test for AI. I’ll let the professor do that. 😎

I’ve been a student there now for a few semesters. I have met mostly impressive critical thinkers. It’s been great. It seems the critical thinkers are the one’s who speak up and want to discuss things in class (I know I do!) so maybe that’s why I’ve not seen the flip side to that. This is my first time being a TA so I’m seeing work product from the entire class.

Brain Puzzles – I Love Writing Essays

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June 7 2025

After two semesters and this summer class, one thing I’m learning about myself is how much I enjoy writing essays, putting texts in conversation, connecting dots = critical thinking. It’s like putting together a puzzle and it makes my brain happy. I’m also a title nerd. I love creating titles, especially edgy, attention grabbing titles. I wish I could linger a bit longer with so much of the material. I’m saving everything for when I (hopefully) have time!

Professor feedback for my Modern World essay:

Camilla,
This is a fascinating paper, linking the emergence of feminism to the printing press, the spread of literacy, etc. As you point out, Martin Luther and Olympe de Gouges were not the first to question the church and/or patriarchy, but it was difficult to spread those ideas without the right technology. Print was a crucial catalyst for the spread of radical new ideas. The paper also does a great job of connecting the emergence of first-wave feminism with a number of other radical movements: Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Reformation, etc. It was a period of change and feminists were involved in all of these movements. It’s not only a tour de force of key moments from our class, but also a thoughtful contextualization of the emergence of western feminism.

Great work on this,
Dr. Morse

The Modern World – Core Credit – Finished!

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June 6 2025

Next to last core requirement done! We took the mid-term last Thursday and the final exam today! And the class is finished! A 14 day whirl wind of The Modern World. Wild times! I really loved learning about, and brushing up on, this time period. It’s absolutely mind blowing. Here’s the material we covered after the mid-term:

Industrial Revolution

Sarah Stickney Ellis from
The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits
(1839)

Friedrich Engels
The Condition of the Working Class in England
(1844)

Charles Darwin
Excerpt from On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
(1859)

Manifesto of the Communist Party
by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
February 1848

World War I and Interwar Period

Dulce et Decorum Est
BY Wilfred Owen
1921

William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming
(1919)

Milk Raj Anand
Across the Black Waters
1937

Mohandas K Gandhi
from Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule
(1938)

Sigmund Freud
Civilization and Its Discontents
1933

World War II and Decolonization

Elie Wiesel
Night
1958

Aime Cesaire
Discourse on Colonialism
1955

Edward Said
Orientalism

Postwar Period: Cold War, Postmodernism, Neoliberalism

United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Jean-Francois Lyotard
T
he Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
1979

Jean Baudrillard
from The Precession of Simulacra
1981

Wendy Brown
Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution
2015

We also had to write a 5-7 page essay:

In this essay assignment, you will identify a key theme that strikes your interest from among those we studied over the term and argue its importance to the modern world by pointing out the thinking that makes such a theme possible.

My goal is to graduate Spring 2026 so I had to take a few summer classes. Fascinating to connect the dots to what is currently happening with this fucked up administration. Half the population needs to take this class.

Date Day With My Amazing Teen – Reno Riverwalk

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May 27 2025

Date day with this one. I love conversations with you, chatting about our UNR classes, laughing and raging together. I love that you want to hang out with me. I am one lucky and blessed parent. 🖤🖤🖤

Update: Five Days Down – This is Wild

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5 days down of the 14 day compressed UNR class, The Modern World. 9 more days to go! Midterm exam is next week. This is wild!

We began with Hamlet as he was perhaps the first modern character, struggling with doing what he was supposed to do and wanting to think for himself and investigate.

Hamlet (Modern, Editor’s Version)

I also watched Kenneth Branagh’s film, Hamlet. At 4 hours in length, it is the complete dialogue. That’s why I chose this version. I wanted to deepen my understanding. I didn’t look at the cast names and was continually surprised by the big name actors and actresses in the film. Made my heart so happy when Robin Williams walked into a scene!

Modern History Sourcebook: Martin Luther (1483–1546): Address To The Nobility of the German Nation, 1520
The Three Walls Of The Romanists

Nicolaus Copernicus
On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543)

Chapter 6: On the Immensity of the Heavens in Relation to the Magnitude of the Earth
Galileo Galilei, Excerpt from The Sidereal Messenger (1610)
THE SIDEREAL MESSENGER

The New Organon: or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature
Francis Bacon

The Essays of Montaigne
Of Cannibals

Letter to King Ferdinand of Spain, describing the results of the first voyage
Christopher Columbus (1493)

Mary Wortley Montagu
LETTERS (1716-1718)

Charles de Secondat, Baron deMontesquieu from THE SPIRIT OF LAWS (1748)

Olaudah Equiano
from THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO, OR GUSTAVUS VASSA, THE AFRICAN (1789)

Modern History Sourcebook: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
CHAPTER XIII:
OF THE NATURAL CONDITION OF MANKIND AS CONCERNING THEIR FELICITY AND MISERY

Modern History Sourcebook John Locke: Two Treatises of Government, 1690
CHAPTER II: Of the State of Nature

Adam Smith
For Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

IMMANUEL KANT
An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?”
Konigsberg, Prussia, 30th September, 1784.

Emmanuel Sieyes
from WHAT Is THE THIRD ESTATE?(1789)

The Black Jacobins
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE AND THE SAN DOMINGO REVOLUTION SECOND EDITION, REVISED
C.L.R. JAMES

Declaration of the Rights of Man – 1789
National Assembly

Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Woman-Citizen” (1791)

Mary Wollstonecraft
From Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein – reading for next week

For extra credit, we were to find a meme that ties in with our readings from last week. The printing press changed the world. It’s unbelievable that half the population seem to want a return to pre-Modernism and pre-Enlightenment.