I thought this article on the vagus nerve was interesting!

The [vagus nerve stimulation] VNS device currently used for epilepsy, which delivers a pulse every few minutes, is a direct descendant of Zabara's invention. A pivotal study demonstrated that it cut the frequency of seizures by 45 percent on average after a year. It is believed to work mainly by stimulating the afferent fibers, the ones leading up to the brain.

The treatment had a remarkable side effect: over time it made people happier. Their mood lightened even if they still had frequent seizures. According to Tracey, when doctors told these patients they could remove the implant, many of them replied, "No, leave it in. It makes me feel good." This anecdotal evidence prompted the device maker to begin marketing its vagus nerve stimulator as an innovative treatment for depression.

The article is full of caveats and cautions not to read too much into it, which is how you know it's real.

Mossy Character sends in Under siege in Léré, the latest Malian town cut off by jihadists. Mossy did not include any commentary, trusting my background expertise to fill in the gaps.

stomp stomp stomp

I know everyone wants to take a media break (besides maybe Stormcrow?) so I'll stomp on this post as soon as it's up. But isn't it insane that Musk is the one that killed the spending bill and then Trump took his orders from Musk?

Musk announced his opposition to the bill at 4:15 a.m. ET Wednesday.

"This bill should not pass," he said on X.

The statement put Musk out on a limb as one of the first political figures to come out against the bill, but 13 hours later Trump himself spoke out in agreement. What happened in between was a furious online campaign directed by Musk to try to kill the bill, which he said was "criminal" because of its 1,547-page length and how much money it would spend.

I mean, we know that Trump is easily manipulated. But his toadies manipulate him in different ways than his strongmen. This makes it look like Musk has overt power over Trump.

What tedious or onerous tasks have you flipped the bird to since the election? Like, if America can't be bothered to clear the lowest bar of election basics, why should I work so hard to do [X task]?

Brought to you by: I take my diet coke to work each day, and there's no goddamn recycling here, and I dutifully pack the empty home to recycle it, instead of throwing it out. Since November I wonder, "Why do I deal with empty can every day when Americans can't even be arsed to vote for a competent president?!"

The lazy shortcut I would most like to take is shopping on Amazon, but that's still specifically fraught because Bezos can go eat a bunch of dicks. So I haven't accelerated my shopping on Amazon. Fuck you, clown.

Lw writes: Larry David is a successful comedian and writer. Here's an essay that contains some bits of biography that I found interesting, along with a bunch of commentary about his work, some synoptic and the rest vapid. Maybe something to chat about. Here's the meaningful biographical info:

[B]orn in 1947. His parents were Mortimer, who worked in the garment industry, and Rose, a housewife. He was raised in south Brooklyn, graduated from Sheepshead Bay High School, and then attended the University of Maryland at College Park, where in 1970 he received a BA in history. After graduation, he joined the US Army Reserve, as he told Conan O'Brien, to avoid getting drafted and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. (David eventually got his time in the Army Reserve cut short after persuading a psychiatrist to label him mentally incompetent.)

Given his position on Hollywood's C- or maybe even D-list, contemporary readers might be curious as to why David wasn't forced to devote himself to another vocation, as so many struggling comedians do. The reason, in part, had to do with another "last": In the 1980s, he lived in Manhattan Plaza, a federally subsidized affordable-housing complex designed for artists. And this cheap housing gave David far more than shelter; his time at Manhattan Plaza also provided him with some A-level material--it was there that David lived next to Kenny Kramer, who became the basis for Seinfeld's Kramer.

His 2007 divorce after 14 years of marriage doesn't seem to have been especially horrible-- Google's AI summary guesses CA community property laws mean half the family's wealth at the time went to his wife, so maybe he's not entirely the animated toejam of a human being he plays on television. I disengage immediately when confronted with his stuff on someone else's TV, his eagerness to excuse selfishness completely outweighs his marginal talent as a social observer. There's a great documentary about Manhattan Plaza, itself the outcome of an earlier housing bust, Miracle on 42nd Street.

Heebie's take: The dude who wrote that is a bit more fawning than I can handle. All his utter pronouncements of glory that he makes over David make me suspect he just isn't quite funny* enough to get more recent humor. He kinda maxed out in the 90s and some of the most brilliant stuff since then has passed him by.

Anyway, that's fascinating that there was federally-subsidized artist housing. I had no idea there was anything larger scale than one-off residencies here and there. Also, Larry Davids is a great character to argue about.

*What's the word that's means you have great taste in humor, but not that you necessarily make it yourself? Like a fashion sense, but for funny.

I know I have posted something very similar in the past, but you know, mists of time, etc.

Suppose you have a city and you care about the city's budget. Say they currently spend about 20% of the city's general fund on the police department. And say you wanted to be able to offer up a different percent as a target for what we could envision aiming for. How would you possibly arrive at a justifiable number?