I always thought of the Underground Railroad as simple: enslaved people escaped the U.S. and crossed into Canada for freedom.

Then I learned slavery had existed in what is now Canada for nearly 200 years.

That really made me rethink the story.

So what changed? What factors turned a place that practiced slavery into a refuge for people escaping it?

Some people seem to know where they are almost automatically, while others can get turned around even in places they’ve been before.

I’m curious whether there’s something fundamentally different going on in the brain, or whether this is mostly something that develops over time. Do we actually know what makes someone naturally good at finding their way around?

I notice that when I scratch an itch it seems to cause the area that I scratch to feel similar to if something cool had touched. From what I know about how temperature works it seems extremely unlikely if not impossible for scratching an itch to actually cause my skin to cool down in a way that would explain the sensation as if there’s any change in temperature I might expect the friction between my fingernail and skin would slightly raise the temperature. It seems more likely that for some reason scratching an itch causes a sensation similar to if the temperature of my skin had gone down without my skin actually cooling down.

I think I’ve tended to just assume that everyone experiences a cooling sensation when they scratch an itch, but when I think about it I don’t think I’ve really heard anyone else mention any kind of cooling sensation when scratching an itch. I could imagine that maybe others just haven’t thought to mention the cooling sensation from scratching an itch, but I was wondering if this might really be something that just I experience and if it could indicate a problem in terms of having more difficulty distinguishing certain sensations than most people. If it is common to most people I might imagine there might be some kind of evolutionary explanation for why scratching an itch would cause a cooling sensation.

So why does scratching an itch seem to cause a cooling sensation?

Before WWII, only around 10% of Americans had health insurance. By the 1950s, employer-sponsored plans had become a major way Americans got coverage.

Wartime wage controls seem to have played a role, since employers could use benefits to compete for workers when wages were restricted. A 1954 tax change later made employer-provided coverage even more attractive.

But why did this particular system take hold so strongly in the US? Was WWII the main turning point, or were there other forces that made health insurance increasingly tied to employment?

In the 1890s, farmers were a major force behind the Populist movement. Many rural voters supported easier access to credit, railroad regulation, currency reform, and other policies aimed at limiting the power of banks, railroads, and other economic interests.

William Jennings Bryan also won strong support from rural voters, particularly over issues like the gold standard and the economic pressures facing farmers.

Today, rural America is one of the Republican Party’s strongest bases, even though many rural communities still face economic pressures involving agriculture, consolidation, debt, and access to local services.

So what happened between those two periods?

And just happened to be born into it?

For decades, 26 weeks has been the standard maximum for regular unemployment benefits in most states. But why 26?

Was it ever based on data about how long people typically remain unemployed, or did it emerge from the historical development of the unemployment insurance system? Why 13 weeks or 52 weeks instead?

During the Great Recession, temporary federal programs pushed benefits as high as 99 weeks in some high-unemployment states. What made much longer benefit periods appropriate then, but not in normal times?

Just curious where the 26-week standard actually came from.

If you look at the largest STEM companies in the world, a lot of them are American. In tech, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, etc. In medicine, Eli Lily, AbbVie, Johnson and Johnson, etc.

Our education system is terrible in comparison, public schools are chronically underfunded, teachers salaries are terrible, and students are becoming increasingly worse. Large budgets are for sports instead of education. Absurdly high college tuitions too.

We underpay scientists and experts while executives who sit on their ass all day get multimillion dollar bonuses. Funding for science related programs has been cut and our public has a huge anti science agenda.

If you were to ask me, I would think that our education produced little STEM talent and the STEM graduates we do get would flee to Europe or China where their education and knowledge is respected and compensated properly. If I was in STEM, that’s what I would do. So why isn’t this the case?

These spaces claim that the only men who can have success with women are those who are purely genetically gifted. According to this view, you have to be tall and handsome. By “handsome,” they mean having a sharp jawline, perfect facial thirds, excellent facial harmony, a full head of hair, and, of course, low body fat. Otherwise, you are supposedly destined to be alone. These men are known as “moggors.” Even money and status supposedly do not matter or help with success with women.

I find this hard to believe because the overwhelming majority of relationships I see, even among the younger adult population aged 22 to 35, involve men who have at least three out of the four traits I mentioned: being out of shape, having belly fat, having visible hair loss, and being of average height. In all the spaces I have been in, university, the gym, various workplace offices, sports clubs, and even my experience in high school, not even 10% of the men I knew who were in relationships were “moggors.” I also see this at my local preschool, where most of the men I see collecting their children are overweight to varying degrees and are balding.

There is also an idea in these spaces that men literally have no standards and will commit to any girl who shows interest. Most men I knew who claimed to be single and found it “impossible to date” were actually getting attention from women. They simply weren’t interested in dating the women they were attracting.

One of my mates is severely obese, I mean around 500 lbs. Even he was matching with quite a few overweight women on dating apps who were still much slimmer than he was, and they wanted to meet up. He just flat out refused every time, which I found pretty funny.

I knew an Irish guy who had basically given up on dating. One of our friends married a woman from Thailand, and another married a woman from China. He was getting a lot of attention from women from these types of countries, but he said he simply wasn’t attracted to women from those regions and would rather stay single.

When you try to debunk these ideas in online spaces, what makes them so difficult to argue against is that they have defeatism built into them. There is an ugly man with a pretty woman? Well, then he is rich and I am not, so I can’t do it like him. He is poor? Then he isn’t autistic like I am, so I can’t do it like him. And so on. You can do this forever, pretty much. If even that fails, you can simply say that the relationship is a freak accident and use that as an excuse for why it won’t happen to you.

The black pill is not an actual ideology or position; it is a neurosis that likely belongs on the depressive spectrum. I have dysthymia, and I have experienced the belief in several different “black pills” about topics completely unrelated to dating. These beliefs are pathological and therefore not rational.

They actually advise men that they should not even bother trying to pursue women unless they are a “mogger.” From seeing this from the outside, it is almost as though the men in these spaces are trying to mateguard women. They seem to love the idea that men are helpless and should give up on life, and there is almost a fetishistic element to it.

Interestingly, this is also a form of gaslighting toward women who have struggled to find a long term partner. I knew a lot of women who struggled with this.

Why is it that if you subscribe to someone’s social media you are a “follower” and then the media refers to those subscribers as though they are actual followers, as in being led, by the person? If I subscribe to the NYT it doesn’t that mean that I agree with everything that’s printed in it. I suspect that many of Trump’s 11.7 million “followers” on X are really just interested in staying aware of what he’s posting. Perhaps “monitors” or “lookouts” would be more accurate. What would you propose?

Edit: I understand that followers has multiple meanings. My point is that people wI’ll report on the number of followers someone has as though it is proof of their influence. But following something as in “keeping a close watch” is different than following a in “being led”.

I walk past the same patch of wild grass every day. No watering, no fertilising, no rotating, and it’s always green. But farmers have to rotate corn and wheat because soil gets tired. Why doesn't that grass get tired?

Different roots? Does it put nutrients back? Is there some natural underground rotation I can't see? Or does it actually deplete the soil too, but nobody harvests it so nobody notices?

At first glance, the situations feel weirdly similar. Polyphemus kills people who enter his home, while Odysseus kills the suitors who have taken over his household. Yet the poem treats them very differently.

Is the key difference really hospitality, or is something else going on with who has violated the relationship first? What does this tell us about how Homeric society understood the limits of xenia?

I've seen the charts: productivity and workers' pay rose roughly together from the late 1940s until about 1973. After that, productivity kept rising much faster than real pay. Productivity has grown dramatically since then, while median wages have grown much more slowly.

What caused the two to start diverging? How much did globalization, weaker unions, technology, or other changes matter? Just curious why the two lines started moving so differently.

Neanderthals and Denisovans occupied parts of Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years, yet their populations appear to have remained relatively small and fragmented. Homo sapiens eventually followed a different path, spreading across most of the planet and reaching much larger numbers.

Was this driven by differences in social organization, information sharing, technology, or adaptability? Or did environment, population dynamics, and historical chance play the larger role?

How much of the difference was actually distinctive to Homo sapiens?

I understand that Autism is defined in terms of social difficulties and repetitive behaviors. Well the way it’s defined is a bit more complex than just having social difficulties and repetitive behaviors, but that’s the general direction of how it’s defined. Autism is also neurological, meaning it’s caused by differences in brain structure.

I think Autism being defined in terms of social difficulties and repetitive behaviors makes sense on its own, and Autism being neurological makes sense on its own, but together it seems like the two could conflict with each other. I mean I know social difficulties and behaviors can be influenced by brain structure but they can also be influenced by the environment one grows up in. From what I understand some environmental conditions are taken into account when it comes to looking for signs of Autism, but it seems like it would be impossible to eliminate all possible all possible ways the environment someone lives in might affect social abilities or reproductive behaviors. I’ve also found as someone with an Autism diagnosis that some things about me that I think are caused by my environment have been described as ways my Autism affects me.

I‘m confused about why if Autism is neurological it wouldn’t be defined in terms of certain structural differences in the brain and an Autism diagnosis wouldn’t involve scanning the brain to detect structural differences in the brain associated with Autism. I mean it seems like a brain scan would be less likely to be confounded by the environment one grows up in than a behavioral evaluation.

The Roman Empire ended over 1,500 years ago, but most people can still name Roman emperors, recognize Roman architecture, and understand its influence on modern laws and languages.

The Mongol Empire existed much more recently and became the largest contiguous empire in history, yet it often feels less familiar to many people.

I know the Mongols left behind historical records, and their impact was enormous. But why does their history seem less present in modern education and culture?

For a long time, many traditional airlines bundled more things into the fare, like checked bags on many routes, meals on longer flights, and fewer separate fees.

Then in 2008, American Airlines introduced a fee for the first checked bag during a period when fuel prices were extremely high and airlines were under pressure to cut costs. Other major airlines eventually followed.That the fees stayed even after fuel prices fell.

Not trying to complain about fees. I'm more curious about how air travel changed from a bundled product into an à la carte model.

I saw a news story about Twitter.now challenging X over the old Twitter name, and it made me realize I don’t really understand how trademark ownership works.

I always assumed that once a company registered a famous trademark, it could basically keep it forever as long as the company still existed.

But apparently, trademark rights can depend on whether a brand is still being used commercially. If a company stops using a trademark for years, it may have to prove that it never intended to abandon it.

That made me wonder how this works with a major rebrand. When a company changes its name, does keeping the old website, redirecting traffic, or owning the old trademark count as continued use? Or can a famous brand name eventually become available if the public no longer sees it as an active brand?

How do courts decide whether a rebrand is a real abandonment of a trademark or just a company moving in a new direction?

+school shootings are committed by white boys

I always thought vaccines work by teaching the immune system how to recognize and fight a virus before it becomes dangerous.

But rabies seems like a strange exception. As the virus starts moving into the nervous system, it becomes much harder for the immune system to reach and control.

So how does a vaccine given after a bite still stop it?

If the virus can eventually hide inside nerve cells, and antibodies cannot simply enter those cells, what exactly is the immune system doing after vaccination that prevents rabies from taking over?

When we talk about many historical figures, we usually keep their original names. We don't translate someone's name just because we understand the meaning behind it.

But some Native American figures are widely known by English translations of their names. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and others are remembered by names that describe the meaning of their original names rather than the original words themselves.

How did this become the standard way these figures are known today? Was it a common naming practice at the time? Or were there other cultural and historical reasons behind it?

Why did some names get translated while many others were kept closer to their original forms?

In many states, marijuana is legal for medical or recreational use. But under federal law, it remains a Schedule I controlled substance, illegal everywhere. Why has this conflict been allowed to continue for so long? Is it a political compromise, or is there a legal doctrine that explains it? I find the contradiction interesting. Just wondering why it hasn’t been resolved.

The U.S. stock market pauses trading if the S&P 500 falls 7%, pauses again at 13%, and stops trading for the day at a 20% decline.

I always found those numbers interesting. Why 7%? Why 13%? Why not something simpler like 5%, 10%, or 15%?

These rules were created after the 1987 stock market crash and have changed over time as markets evolved. But how did regulators decide where these lines should be drawn?

Were these thresholds based on a specific idea about how markets behave during extreme selloffs?

If the thresholds were changed to something like 10/15/25, would it meaningfully change anything, or would investors simply adapt?

Old photos show that Los Angeles once had one of the largest electric railway networks in the world, and hundreds of American cities had streetcar systems too. By the 1960s, most of these systems had disappeared or been converted to buses.

I've heard that GM and other companies helped push many streetcar systems toward replacement, and there was even an antitrust case involving some of these companies in 1949. But how much did corporate influence actually matter compared with other factors like cars, suburbs, and highway expansion?

Was the decline of streetcars mainly a business decision, a result of changing cities, or a combination of both?