Tangential speech and other symptoms of mental decline, as sketched in a recent New York Times article about a public figure:

• ... angry and rambling ...
• ... darker, harsher ... more profane and increasingly fixated on the past ...
• ... confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality ...
• ... rambles ... repeats ...
• ... roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical ...
• ... voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth ... digresses into bizarre tangents ...
• ... [uses] more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” ... more negative words than positive words ...
• ... confused about modern technology ... easily distracted ...

Scary stuff – worth watching for and (if possible!) avoiding or at least delaying ...

_{(cf Hypomania (2012-10-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-09}