Welcome to the Asylum

if you start a new medication and suddenly feel like you understand the universe, call your doctor. several relatively common medications can trigger mania or psychosis in a small, unlucky percentage of the population.

psychosis is often a combination of positive symptoms -- things that are there that normally are not, like hallucinations or delusions -- and negative symptoms -- the absence of normal things, like inability to feel joy or a lack of executive functioning.

there are people who are very aware of their symptoms, even while deep in an episode. there are people with little to no awareness of their symptoms, even when they are between episodes.

Mania is not always Euphoric. It can also be Dysphoric, which is characterized by negative feelings such as anger, anxiety, and paranoia. its still mania.

Melencolia I. Albrecht Durer. 1514. Engraving.

"The winged personification of Melancholy, seated dejectedly with her head resting on her hand, holds a caliper and is surrounded by other tools associated with geometry, the one of the seven liberal arts that underlies artistic creation."

"In medieval philosophy each individual was thought to be dominated by one of the four humors; melancholy, associated with black gall, was the least desirable of the four, and melancholics were considered the most likely to succumb to insanity. Renaissance thought, however, also linked melancholy with creative genius; thus, at the same time that this idea changed the status of this humor, it made the self-conscious artist aware that his gift came with terrible risks."

this has been mercilessly review bombed and called “propaganda” despite it being documented footage from that day and comprising the testimony of survivors and responders. I can’t imagine any other victims of such atrocities or any other documentary subject being maligned this way.

please don’t traumatize yourselves by watching if you do not feel able to, we all know what happened and we’ve been grappling with that terror and pain ceaselessly, but if you do want to bear witness or support these survivors, victims, and filmmakers, amplify it however you can.

Mentioning the hostages is propaganda.

Saying the hostages should be returned is propaganda.

Saying Hamas killed civilians is propaganda.

Saying Hamas raped people is propaganda.

Saying Hamas took hostages is propaganda.

Saying any of the above was bad is propaganda.

All of the above is also justifiable resistance.

If you disagree with any of the above, you are justifying genocide.

Probably if any civilians died, the IDF killed them.

Hamas attacked because Zionism, not because Jews.

Whatever Hamas did do means that Israel was oppressing Palestinians in ways that are equally bad or even worse.

Palestinians tried peaceful resistance. It didn't work. This was their only option.

Hamas attacked to Free Palestine. Israel attacked to commit genocide.

Nazis don't hate and want to eliminate Jews, they are Jews.

A concentration camp isn't a place where a marginalized group is imprisoned for medical experimentation, slave labor, psychological torture ("re-education"), and frequent arbitrary murder for funsies.

A concentration camp is a war zone where you can't cross the border without the permission of the neighboring country, which is charging $5,000-$10,000 per person who wants to leave.

Egypt charging refugees thousands of dollars to leave during a war is not war profiteering; it's fine; we don't need to protest it or demand it stops. We just need to help with all the GoFundMes we can.

Colonialism isn't when one country invades others, defeats them in warl

Poland didn't start the Holocaust with 3,300,000 Jews and kill 3,056,000 of them. Certainly not partly because the Polish government and civilians joyfully helped the Nazis hunt down almost every single Jew in the country. Poland DEFINITELY didn't make it illegal in 2018 to say that Poland shared any responsibility "for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich."

Obviously, the truth is that the 148,000 Jews who emigrated from post-Holocaust Poland are privileged white settler-colonialist oppressors; made up the vast majority of Israel's population (which by 1949 was 1,174,000); and should just go back to Poland (where there are currently about 5,000 Jews left).

Colonialism itself isn't when a powerful country invades others, uses genocidal rape, torture, and murder on everyone it doesn't enslave, and sends its resources back to the empire. That's just silly.

Colonialism is when people who have been enslaved, raped, tortured, murdered, and chased from country to country in between, for hundreds and hundreds of years, flee back to their homeland.

That's also white supremacy, surprisingly.

You can criticize hypocrisy without making homophobic jokes or using homophobic nicknames.

And if YOU feel YOU can't, that's just a fucking skill issue.

You can talk about the fact that it's really fucked up that his frequenting of gay sex workers was an "open secret," as was his sexuality full stop, without making jokes that boil down to "hahaha look at the faggot."

What's new in ties and shirts. General catalogue for 1910. Grace Bros. Sydney. 1910.

Hey like...

It was a hillside, viewed across a gully. The recorder was on one ridge, looking out over the hills. It was late at night, and that mattered not at all, because the picture was ablaze with light. There was so much fire.

Fire's noisy, you know, if you haven't seen the recordings coming out in their hundreds from that nightmare. Fire roars, it screams as it devours all the oxygen it can get to and makes it into more of itself, so at first I couldn't hear the airplane. When it appeared, engine roaring, very low over the ridge, there was only a moment to understand what it even was before it dropped its payload of water on the burning hillside, and all at once the picture went out. The fire went out. The screaming brightness was replaced with gentler dark. In an instant.

The airplane was one of the Canadian Super Scoopers, piloted by a Canadian fire pilot of incredible skill--you know what kind of mastery it takes, to fly a plane that size, that low to the ground, at night, in a place where it's being buffeted by horrific and uneven fire-spawned updrafts and turbulence, carrying a payload of over fourteen thousand pounds of water, and then to dump that weight and still be able to fly straight instead of being suddenly slammed around by the weight change? And this was a person who with others like him had come to California to fight a fire that had nothing to do with them, for no reason other than human fucking decency.

When I saw the video the first time I burst into sobs. I have cried more than once thinking of it since, feeling again that incredible relief as the light went out. My home was on fire. I couldn't be there to do anything about it; it doesn't belong to me anymore. And here came brave strangers to save it.

Yeah, therein lies my reservation with it: my dreams are really important to me and I usually remember a lot of them. I keep a dream journal and I use it for inspiration in my art. I took a class in college called Psychology of Dreaming because I wanted to learn more about why I have the dreams I do. And I even value my frequent and vivid nightmares; my first tattoo was based on a nightmare I had.

So that's a hard decision! When the nightmares are really bad I have said "I would give up dreaming altogether just to get rid of these," but now that the monkey's paw has curled I'm scared to follow through.

Valuing your dreams does make that decision tricky- if you have any kind of "sense" about if you'll have nightmares, Prazosin is a one-night-effect kind of thing. No weaning off, just take as needed and it works for that night. I've found myself with a sort of 6th sense on what nights I'll have nightmares or not, so it's worked for me, but guesswork on stress might also be able to?

[ID: Photos of an oxidized copper plate, an oxidized copper pipe, and oxidized pennies. End ID]

it's mouth season

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food