"""
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)
Senator Murphy:
It’s pretty wild that the corruption is so brazen, is so transparent.
Vought sent out this tweet yesterday saying, I’m canceling energy projects in the following states, and listed the states.
And every single one of them is a state represented by two Democratic senators.
And the one Democratic senator who voted for the Republican continuing resolution
—that senator’s state wasn’t on the list.
So, you know, it’s just there for everybody to s…
I'm pretty sure Kiley is getting ready for a post-Trump *anti-Trump* GOP. Like they were towards Bush after 2008.
I hope that's right. It is also possible that the GOP will notice his stream of NPR and MSNBC appearances and launch the flying monkeys. https://
I wonder how hard it would be to fabricate something that might (inadvertently, of course) disrupt the functioning of a drone that was, for instance, flying around a peaceful demonstration? I know it’s a federal felony (punishable by up to 20 years in prison) to shoot them down, or point a laser at them. But maybe something in a pocket, or backpack? So it’s not visible? #askingforafriend…
I haven’t added an example of how you implement migrations with Kitten’s¹ built-in JSDB database² yet but here’s one that I just used when renaming a field (property) in a table (JavaScript object) from “account” to “data” that illustrates the general granular approach you should take within persisted instances of JavaScript classes.
This is, of course, an advanced use case of the built-in JavaScript database that all Kitten apps have.
Kitten is simple for simple use cases. So ch…
Sources: AI video startup Runway is looking to raise ~$500M at a $5B pre-money valuation; rival Luma AI aims to raise $1.1B at a $3.2B pre-money valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/runway-luma-talks-mul…
The corruption of our the once-vaunted non-political integrity of our military takes another step forward (or I guess a better word would be downward):
"Navy reverses demotion of Rep. Ronny Jackson, former White House doctor"
https://apnews.com/article/trump-navy-…
Increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensionsin the nation’s third-largest city.
“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Sunday on CNN.
“They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone.”
U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status and children have been among those detained
in increasingly brazen and aggressive encounter…
Leading up to the government shutdown on Wednesday,
congressional Republicans and Donald Trump have
repeated misleading claims
that Democrats were trying to pass a resolution that would provide
“free healthcare for illegals”.
It’s become a well-rehearsed refrain fueling GOP lawmakers.
At the White House on Wednesday, the JD Vance said the Democrats’ spending plan
“would have undone” the work of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)
– which en…
A judge has ruled that, for now,
asylum seekers are not required to pay an annual fee for each year their application is pending.
The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP.)
The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which became law on July 4, 2025,
instituted a new fee system for people in the immigration system,
including asylum seekers.
The legislation requires that they pay a $100 filing fee and an Annual A…