Author: admin

22Feb By adminNo Comments
Column, Op-ed

“Unnamed”

by Daniya Osamah I feel my memories slipping. They shouldn’t slip away, not like this. Not when it was the house I grew up in, not when it was my home for twelve years. Not when someone says ‘home’ and it’s the place that comes to mind. Not when I’m so desperate to keep them intact.  The architecture is blurry, I don’t remember the paths, I forget the rooms, I forget the stairs. I have trouble remembering the kitchen. One cannot claim that this house was home and forget the details of everything, can they? What I do remember comes from fond re-tellings, “remember when you fell down the stairs?” And for a fleeting second, I remember the stairs, and I laugh at the memory, at the collective sadness that seems to always lie within these conversations. The mere mention of ‘Yaad hai?...
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10Feb By adminNo Comments
Op-ed, Opinion

The Emotional Blueprint Behind Modern Politics

by Muhammad Ali Political campaigns each year remind us of something very important: the winning of the election is not necessarily based on the most realistic policies. It is, oftentimes, about the ability to talk to people and make them feel heard. A good example of this, though not the only one, is the recent electoral success of Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.  It cannot be denied that his campaign was a massive hit. However, the question that truly matters is whether the success was brought about by the policies that he brought to the table. Some of his flagship ideas, such as the rent freeze proposal, have been greatly criticized by economists. Assar Lindbeck, a well-known economist, famously said rent control is "the most efficient technique presently known to destroy ...
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8Feb By adminNo Comments
Arts & Culture, Op-ed

A Deceptively Melancholic Moment in Song; Why Cyndi Lauper is a Marxist.

by Hussain Khalid Feroze Have you listened to the 80’s classic “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper? Well if you say you haven’t you probably just don’t remember it by name because that song plays absolutely everywhere. If after listening to it you still don’t remember ever hearing it then you're welcome, I have just introduced you to one of the biggest songs of all time and one that I think is deceptively melancholic. In “One Last Song” by Mike Ayers, musician Courtney Barnett talks about how the song she would want played at her funeral would be “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. The reasoning she gives is it sounds like the perfect way to end the night and so it would be her ideal way of ending her life. But it really got me thinking about how it's actually quite a sad song. The...
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A Lobbyist’s Confessional
30Dec By adminNo Comments
Op-ed, Opinion

A Lobbyist’s Confessional

Author: Asfand Katchela The writer is from Sargodha. He writes every now and then. He has been a fan of LDS for very long. And as his first submission, he has clearly chosen the most popular take out there. There’s an American political thriller available online that’s far more gripping than the typical binge-watch fare. And no, for those of you who prefer your political dramas with a side of scheming presidents and backstabbing congressmen, this isn’t referring to House of Cards. The film I’m talking about is Miss Sloane, or perhaps more aptly, The Movie About Elizabeth the Lobbyist (cinephile creds destroyed already). The film is a masterpiece of suspense, pulling you into a high-stakes political battle where power, influence, and moral ambiguity c...
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Digestible Womanhood Only Exists Digitally
7Oct By adminNo Comments
Arts & Culture, Op-ed

Digestible Womanhood Only Exists Digitally

By: Ayatain Ali Identity presentation for women is a paradox, a liberating prison. It is my sisters being puppeteered, unaware of it because the confines of the box are vast and ever-expanding. Who pulls the threads when reality exists in various spaces? Perhaps more pressing is the question of whether awareness is even necessary when the illusion of choice provides enough bliss.  As digital spaces have evolved, a widespread yet individualized need to market yourself as an aesthetic class to prove your worth has emerged. "Aesthetic" has changed from an academic term and a tool used by auteurs and artists to a defining characteristic of our identities. It can refer to both individual taste and a nonspecific proxy for beauty. This shift has brought about the development, co-optin...
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A Golden Tragedy
16Mar By adminNo Comments
Op-ed, Opinion, Uncategorized

A Golden Tragedy

By:Maarij Ali Tarar Cruising on the M2 motorway through the fertile tracts of central Punjab in winter, one is likely to see fields of green wheat stretching to the horizon. Come spring, these young green saplings will have matured into golden stalks, ready to deliver their fat grains into the calloused hands of the farmers. Of courses, it is also in spring, as farmers begin harvesting, that a farce on a grand scale begins to play out. This farce is the Punjab government’s wheat subsidy programme, a series of procurements and releases ostensibly to benefit the small farmer and poor urban consumer. In reality, however, each and every facet of this complex mechanism is designed to benefit large farmers...
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The Streets Must Not Forget
9Mar By adminNo Comments
Sports & Travel, Uncategorized

The Streets Must Not Forget

By:Ahmad bin Tahir Raheem Sterling’s legacy has been tarred. Robert Lewandowski is no longer a memorable figure for football fans. Does anyone even remember Lukaku’s heroics for Inter Milan before his move to Chelsea? Football suffers from the epidemic of recency bias. Football is a dynamic game. It changes roughly every 3 years with respect to its tactics, playstyle, and marketing strategies. While FC Barcelona’s tiki-taka might have been the peak of sporting tactics in 2011, Dortmund’s gegenpressing in 2013 overshadowed its influence on the sport. By extension, player archetypes changed very rapidly as well, with Didier Drogba’s false-9 quickly being replaced by Louis Suarez’s poaching skills. As the whirlwind of managerial dynamism transforms football, players sometimes ca...
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Searching for the Global: Globalization and K-pop
7Mar By adminNo Comments
Arts & Culture, Uncategorized

Searching for the Global: Globalization and K-pop

By:Saleha Sultan In 2023, “Gangam Style” by PSY hit 5 billion views on Youtube. 11 years ago the song was going viral, becoming the first youtube music video to hit 1 billion. While it charted on Billboard and held an impressive record on iTunes,testament to its popularity, few people at that time associated it with the global cultural phenomena that K-pop has become today. K-pop, starting off as only a sub-culture in South Korea, is distinguished by its catchy beats, almost perfectly synchronised choreographies, and more often than not lyrics that effortlessly transition blend Korean and English line to line. K-pop artists, called “idols”, have even gone on to put out songs in English alone in recent years, like the ‘viral hit’ “Cupid” by FIFTYFIFTY, an acknowledgment of their ...
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