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The Middle-Ground Fallacy of Hybrid Work

Humans have been negotiating since time immemorial, perhaps even before we developed a word for it. According to social contract theory, people live together in a society by agreeing to surrender some of their freedoms in exchange for the protection of their rights and the maintenance of the social order. This means that negotiations formed a basis for the creation and continuance of civilizations. The word negotiation originated from the Latin phrase “negare otium”, which means “lack of leisure”. It later came to mean “business” when it entered French and Spanish. Although we have been negotiating with each other about everything on a daily basis, we never emphasized it as much as we do now. Perhaps, we don’t recognize how ubiquitous negotiations are in our daily lives nor do we understand how fundamental negotiations are for the existence of civilization. Everyone now wants to be the best negotiator and everyone thinks they can become the best negotiators. But just like everything el...
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Yes, the odds are always stacked against you!

We all might have had this feeling that the odds are always stacked against us. Trust me, it is very true. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not you but everything else! When it comes to dealing with things, we generally make our decisions based on how they would affect us. Make no mistake, I’m not suggesting that we should turn our other cheek to accept the unfavorable things just like the favorable ones. In fact, we are wired this way. I mean, we are all egocentric, but that is the mechanism we are bestowed with, thanks to evolution, for our survival. However, I believe that this very nature is directly responsible for our hypocrisy and double standards even when it comes to understanding things around us. There is a saying which runs “to destroy is easier than to create”. It looks like it makes a lot of sense on the surface, right? Well, let’s run some test cases and see it for ourselves: a) It is easy to decimate a building, but it takes a whole lot of time to erect one. b) It is easy to...
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Controlling the transmission is as important as immunization

As the vaccination rate is increasing  across the world, we see widespread relaxation of COVID-19 appropriate behavior leading to increased risk of new variants and transmission. In fact, people see such relaxation as an  incentive to get vaccinated . There is no doubt that vaccination plays a crucial role in the fight against the pandemic, but we need to understand that the vaccination against COVID-19 is aimed at achieving herd immunity. The transmission of a disease stops only after a certain percentage of the population has developed immunity against the disease, called the herd immunity threshold. This number varies from disease to disease. For example, the herd immunity threshold for measles is 95% and for polio, it is 80%. We still do not know this number for COVID-19. This means we have to aim at vaccinating the entire population of the world! To achieve this herd immunity against COVID-19, we need time. It takes several months to fully vaccinate the global popul...
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Who is a writer?

An inscription of Hieroglyphs in Louvre Museum For centuries, writing was not a common skill even among the aristocracy. However, in the 21st century, it is not uncommon for people to think that writing is not a great skill. After all, over 86 percent of the global population can write today , right? Well, there is always a subtle difference between ability and skill . Don’t look up the dictionaries, they aren’t really helpful! Let’s try to make sense in a different way. In a general sense, any mode of communication is just a tool to express your thoughts and feelings. So, whether you write, speak, draw, etc you just try to express what is on your mind without any regard for the outside world. However, when you are a writer, you do the opposite! As a writer, you think about the target audience and carefully choose your words to make sense, to attract people, or to put a notion inside people’s heads. You know why snipers are fascinating weapons! The difference between writers and those ...
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Tear down this wall!

Walls — the seemingly harmless structures have always been the subject of controversies, debates, and therefore politics. Donald Trump only stoked the emotions around them and reintroduced it to the millennials and Gen Z. Ironically, the last time when walls polarized people, it was again the US President, Ronald Reagan, who called for tearing down the Berlin Wall. His famous " Tear down this wall!" speech resonated with people across the world.  To be fair, Uncle Sam's love-hate relationships with walls is not hypocrisy but politics. It stems from the philosophy of John Locke that advocates the ideas, " people are naturally free " and " states possess territorial rights ." Uncle Sam takes refuge in these ideas, respectively, to justify his stance on the "Berlin Wall" and the " Trump wall ". And, it is not just Uncle Sam, walls and the controversies they beget are common across the world and thought-out history. The purpose of wall...
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