The mutual hostility between India and Pakistan has been around for so long that berating each other has become second nature to every pundit, journalist, analyst and talking head. You must have…
Month: August 2023
Entropy in history
The way we are taught history in schools is enough to put a whole class to sleep in a heartbeat. Don’t get me wrong. You may find many interactive classes, but teachers…
Winged-horses of doom
They say when television was invented, many sales reps and marketing executives refused to take it seriously. Out of the 360 degrees surrounding you, why would anyone want to keep looking at…
Wages of ideology
Bear with me as I first identify a few abstract thoughts and then seek to operationalise them. You will see they all come together in the end. Devil’s bargains don’t come cheap….
Opportunity costs
Call it a legacy of loss or the curse of Sisyphus, Pakistan’s history is replete with counterfactuals — the coulda-woulda-shoulda of our past. There is something genuinely bitter about knowing that you…
Age of acceleration is upon us
While we were destroying our brain cells in noble political battles involving questions like whether the faithful should break their eggs at the big end or the little end, The Future of…
What’s the point?
Farrukh Khan PitafiMarch 25, 2023 The writer is an Islamabad-based TV journalist. He tweets @FarrukhKPitafi and can be reached at contact@farrukh.net How many times must we ask the same question? Why bother,…
On conspiracy theories
“You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know…
Pakistan’s liberty deficit
Recently, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority announced that it was degrading Wikipedia services in the country on account of it not blocking some offensive content online. Later this throttling turned into a blanket…
The last workforce
In the dystopian sci-fi TV series, Revolution, where an unknown phenomenon causes the permanent shutdown of electricity worldwide (implausible, bordering on stupid, I know), there is a scene which merits mentioning here. The…