Tootfinder

"""
In melancholy, the spirits are carried away by an agitation, but a weak agitation that lacks power or violence, a sort of impotent upset that follows neither a particular path nor the aperta opercula [open ways], but traverses the cerebral matter constantly creating new pores. Yet the spirits do not wander far on the new paths they create, and their agitation dies down rapidly, as their strength is quickly spent and motion comes to a halt: ‘non longe perveniunt’ [they do not reach far]. A trouble of this nature, common to all delirium, does not have the power to produce on the surface of the body the violent movements or the cries to be observed in mania and frenzy. Melancholy never attains frenzy; it is a madness always at the limits of its own impotence. That paradox is explained by the secret alterations in the spirits. Ordinarily, they travel with the speed and instantaneous transparency of rays of light, but in melancholy they become weighed down with night, becoming ‘obscure, thick and dark’, and the images of things that they bring before consciousness are ‘in a shadow, or covered with darkness’. As a result they move more slowly, and are more like a dark, chemical vapour than pure light. This chemical vapour is acid in nature, rather than sulphurous or alcoholic, for in acid vapours the particles are mobile and incapable of repose, but their activity is weak and without consequence. When they are distilled, all that remains in the still is a kind of insipid phlegm. Acid vapours, therefore, are taken to have the same properties as melancholy, whereas alcoholic vapours, which are always ready to burst into flames, are more related to frenzy, and sulphurous vapours bring on mania, as they are agitated by continuous, violent movement. If the ‘formal reason and causes’ of melancholy were to be sought, it made sense to look for them in the vapours that rose up from the blood to the head, and which had degenerated into ‘an acetous or sharp distillation’. A cursory glance seems to indicate that a melancholy of spirits and a whole chemistry of humours lies behind Willis’ analyses, but in fact his guiding principle mostly reflects the immediate qualities of the melancholic illness: an impotent disorder, and the shadow that comes over the spirit with an acrid acidity that slowly corrodes the heart and the mind. The chemistry of acids is not an explanation of the symptoms, but a qualitative option: a whole phenomenology of melancholic experience.
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)

Over nearly nine months,
the lawsuit challenging Trump’s attempt to slash foreign aid funding
has ricocheted around the federal judiciary
but still has not reached a final resolution.
It has been reviewed by 21 judges,
spawned thousands of pages of filings
and lumbered forward
even after the administration dissolved the U.S. Agency for International Development,
the government office responsible for disbursing much of the contested funding.

The Monthslong Legal Battle to Save Foreign Aid
One lawsuit, underway since February, has sought to compel President Trump to honor Congress’s vision for foreign aid. It still has a long way to go.

It's very amusing to read this piece by @… , "Harvard considered as a long-lived biological organism", examine the section "Harvard's defenses", and see how they seem so strong in normal times and are failing right now—as a bellwether of our times.

Facts: “The report shouldn’t be a shock to anyone...because zoning is just one factor of 100. I’m afraid ‘We’re going to sue the government until the capital markets do what we want’ is basically the textbook definition of San Francisco YIMBYism.” - @…

How the dreaded ‘builder’s remedy’ could come to San Francisco
Following a damning report, a YIMBY group is threatening to sue the city over its zoning plan.

Stability analysis of thermodiffusively unstable counterflow lean premixed hydrogen flames
Alessandro Porcarelli, Pasquale Eduardo Lapenna, Francesco Creta, Ivan Langella
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04197

Stability analysis of thermodiffusively unstable counterflow lean premixed hydrogen flames
This study investigates the effect of increasing strain rate on thermodiffusively unstable, lean premixed hydrogen flames in a 2D counterflow configuration through detailed-chemistry numerical simulations for the first time. The analysis of transient flame dynamics without imposed perturbations reveals that a steady-state flame front is achieved only when the strain rate exceeds a certain threshold. Below this threshold, the flame exhibits unstable oscillatory behavior. When subjected to a rang…

that was a really fun night
#deltron3030

Here’s the lightning sketch of Paul’s Treatise Against Efficiency that I’ve never written:
1. Efficiency is asymptotically inefficient: as costs approach zero, the cost of further reducing them approaches infinity.
2. Efficiency prioritizes the measurable over the difficult-to-measure.
3. Efficiency prioritizes what those in power see (or imagine) over on-the-ground reality.
4. Following from 2 and 3, efficiency reduces the amount and quality of information flowing into a human system.
5. Efficiency foments institutional inflexibility.
6. By removing slack, efficiency causes small failures to cascade more readily and increases the risk of catastrophic failure.
7. Following rom 4, 5, and 6, efficiency trades small costs for massive risks: from failures, from missed opportunities, and from inability to adjust.
8. Efficiency, when pushed, strangles the emergent phenomena that in the long term create all new things of value.
9. Thus, although it can be a by-product of evolution, efficiency as a goal in itself strangles evolution.
10. Efficiency as a goal strangles joy.

Felonious Stunk
bot by @…
No laws were broken in the making of this bot: let's not get carceral over comedy.
#satire #potus45

Felonious Stunk
bot by @…
No laws were broken in the making of this bot: I wanted to make you smile, not pursue charges.
#satire #potus45