fact or fiction
Is it a fact or is it merely fiction? Fact or Fiction explores relationship myths and truths to get your head out of the clouds and back into romantic reality.
The Immune System’s "Civil War": When the body forgets its own identity and begins to dismantle the nervous system.
The smell of scorched copper and old, damp wool hit me first, rising from the patient's bedside like a foul incense. It was 3:14 AM. The woman in the cot didn't move her legs. She couldn't. She looked at them with a visceral detachment, as if they were two heavy logs left behind by a stranger. Her own T-cells, the very soldiers meant to protect her from the rot of the world, were currently stripping the insulation from her nerves. It was a microscopic demolition. It was a silent, internal arson. I watched her hand tremble as she reached for a glass of water—a jagged, stuttering motion that spoke of a command signal lost in a fraying wire.
By The Chaos Cabinet6 days ago in Humans
Falling Between Every System
Modern social systems are often described as safety nets. Employment law protects workers. Healthcare programs provide treatment. Disability benefits replace lost income. Unemployment insurance bridges job loss. Each system is presented as a safeguard designed to catch people when life disrupts their ability to function normally. Yet for many people living with disability, chronic illness, or injury, the lived experience is the opposite. Rather than forming a net, these systems stack vertically, each with its own eligibility rules, thresholds, and assumptions. Instead of catching the fall, they create gaps. People do not slip through because they failed to try. They fall because the systems were never designed to align.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast7 days ago in Humans
When the Train Didn’t Stop
The express train was not supposed to stop at Mehran Junction. It never did. People in the compartment had already arranged their bags for Karachi. Some were half-asleep. Others were scrolling through their phones, waiting for the familiar rush of the city to begin. When the train slowed down unexpectedly, a few passengers looked up, confused. Then it stopped. No announcement. No explanation. Just the sound of the engine breathing heavily in the evening heat. Ayaan closed his laptop with irritation. He had been reviewing notes from his interview in Lahore — a multinational company, a glass building, a salary package that would finally make things “stable.” At least that’s what he kept telling himself. He checked the time. “Yaar, why here?” someone muttered behind him. Ayaan glanced out of the window. The faded board read: Mehran Junction. For a second, it meant nothing. Then everything.
By Shahid Zaman7 days ago in Humans
The Friction of Order
They promise that if you follow the rules, the outcome will follow too. Study, work, pay, vote, obey. In return: stability. Healthcare when you are sick. Education when you are young. Justice when you are wronged. Safety when you are afraid.
By Dagmar Goeschick7 days ago in Humans
Nomophobia: The 21st Century Fear Nobody Is Talking About
Picture this: you reach into your pocket and your phone is not there. In the space of a single second, a wave of unease washes over you — a flutter of panic, a surge of disorientation, a sudden and overwhelming need to locate the device immediately. Your mind races through possibilities. Did you leave it at home? On the table at the café? In the taxi? And beneath the practical concern lies something rawer, something harder to articulate — a feeling not merely of inconvenience, but of vulnerability. Of incompleteness. Of being, in some fundamental way, cut off from the world.
By noor ul amin8 days ago in Humans
The Voucher Program
Tennessee's Education Savings Account program was introduced to the legislature in 2023 with a specific image attached to it. A poor child in a failing school whose parents finally have the power to do something about it. That image did most of the political work. The bill passed. The program launched. And then the data started coming in, and the data described a different child entirely.
By Tim Carmichael9 days ago in Humans
Trickle Them Down, But Not Out. Top Story - February 2026.
The thing about smart people is that they should know better, but alas, intelligence is not the same as wisdom. Not only do the mistakes of experts too short on vision—when they are not corrected—have the potential to do great and far-reaching damage, but they also undermine public confidence in the very notion of expertise. This is particularly so when expertise is wielded in defence of the rich and powerful as a cudgel against those laid low. As an academic, this lack of faith in “so-called experts” is painful to see as it plays out in the spread of dis-/misinformation, conspiracy theories, and anti-intellectualism writ large. But it is also an understandable impulse given the catastrophic failure of an economic ideology pushed by certain economic experts. Supply-side economics has shaped a broken system for the last half-century and has arguably done more to undermine the fabric of the American Dream than any policy framework of the past century.
By Cory Wright-Maley10 days ago in Humans
