#culture

Did you know that in what is now Afghanistan, there was a university so old it makes Oxford and Cambridge look like toddlers? Yep, it was called the University of Balkh (or the “Madrasah of Balkh”), flourishing around the 9th century in the city once known to the Greeks as Bactra. This scholarly hotspot was a melting pot where Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and Persian sages gathered to debate the stars and human nature. Imagine a place where everyone swapped ideas over steaming mugs of cardamom tea! 🤓✨

Picture this: luminaries like Al-Jahiz and the mathematician Abu-Mansur of Garras roamed those halls. They were so prolific, churning out scrolls on philosophy, astronomy, and medicine by the dozen, that they often needed extra hands just to carry all the manuscripts. Meanwhile, tea brewed constantly and debates raged hot—sometimes literally, since there wasn’t a central heating system back then. ☕️😄

After the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, the Madrasah of Balkh was largely destroyed, but its manuscripts scattered far and wide: some ended up in Baghdad’s libraries, others made their way to India. Without those preserved scrolls, many Greek and Persian texts might have vanished forever. So here’s to Balkh for saving a chunk of world knowledge—like a medieval backup drive for civilization! 📚🌍

Today, all that remains are a few weathered ruins and a handful of stone carvings, but the spirit of that university lives on in Balkh’s narrow streets, the stories of its elders, and the dusty libraries where medieval manuscripts still rest. If you want to impress your friends on Zoom, just mention you’re studying at “Afghanistan’s first Harvard,” and watch their jaws drop in scholarly envy. 😏🎓

I’ve never taken the LSAT, but I have taken a lot of breaks in diners. Waffle House, Huddle House, Joe’s Diner, Lena’s Diner, Friendly’s when they still had the booths with jukebox buttons. Once, I watched a man in Alabama write his resignation letter on a napkin while drinking five cups of coffee and eating a slice of lemon meringue pie he didn’t seem to enjoy. He looked calm. Maybe calmer than I’ll ever be.

(For context: tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian famously decided to abandon law school plans after walking out of the LSAT and heading straight to a Waffle House. Reddit was born soon after. I’m just saying.)

There’s something about diners. They’re less judgmental than cafés, less chaotic than Sheetz, and more permanent than fast food. They sit still while the world spins around them—open late, open early, and open to everyone. And if you sit long enough, maybe over hash browns and an existential crisis, you start to realize that diner menus aren’t just food lists.

They’re records.

Notebooks of regional identity, economic history, culinary defiance. Why does this place serve grits with everything? Because it’s the South. Why is there still liver and onions on the menu? Because someone out there still wants it. Why are the prices in Comic Sans? Because nobody told them not to. And why do so many menus feel like a mash-up of grandma’s handwriting, local tradition, and a mid-’90s Photoshop experiment? Because that’s exactly what they are.

I stopped for pancakes at a diner just off Route 9 in Plattsburgh, NY (ZIP: 12901, for my fellow map nerds). It’s one of those places where the menu hasn’t budged since about 1983—and neither have the prices, bless their hearts. As I drowned my short stack in syrup, I overheard the table next to me stumbling through their breakfast order in hesitant French, earning bemused smiles and gentle confusion from their very-much-English-speaking server.

Here’s the kicker: Lacolle, Quebec, is a breezy 40-minute drive north. Cross that line, and French flows effortlessly—c’est naturel. But in Plattsburgh, French feels oddly out of place, like cowboy boots at a vegan potluck.

Contrast that with Texas, where you can be miles and miles from the Rio Grande and Spanish is as comfy as old denim. Of course, Texas spent a significant chunk of its formative years as part of Mexico—history has deep roots, deeper even than pecan trees. In fact, there's still a quiet undercurrent among some Texans who feel the border never quite landed right, culturally speaking. Texas is practically its own country—Tex-Mex traditions, bilingual street signs, and communities where crossing linguistic boundaries happens every day without a blink.

Why the stark difference in Plattsburgh, then? Historically, the border between the U.S. and Canada was largely shaped by treaties between distant governments rather than by cultural or economic tides. The northeastern U.S. border, once delineated, hardened into an identity line. Economics played its role too: trade, jobs, and daily life largely stayed separate, preventing cultural blending.