Dear Umesh Yadav,
Thanks for being ultra-fast as per Indian standards and making Indian selectors go blind when your name pops up in the selection meetings.
Ever since you earned your maiden National call, on the backdrop of a tepid domestic record, everyone is gung-ho about how quick you are and how you have filled in the gaps of the search mission of Indian cricket. Rest is being shelved aside again and again and it cost Indian cricket more losses than victories. Metaphorically, you have become a politician who demands more wages and security in lieu of nothing, who demands VIP treatment without justifying the cause for those demands.
As ironic it may sound, but your quickness is something which makes us wonder how good a bowler you can be but when coupled with your wayward lines and...
Lifestyle
Dear President Sullivan,
We recently learned about deeply disturbing actions by one of your Deans against a sexual assault survivor and member of the UVA community. We are writing to request that you put a stop to what we regard as a re-victimization of this young woman.
A lawsuit has been filed naming as plaintiff Dean Nicole Eramo, an associate dean of students at the University of Virginia, and former chair of the Sexual Misconduct Board. The suit names as defendant the Rolling Stone Magazine and seeks damages for defamation relating to the November 2014 article about sexual assault at UVA. We have followed this case and reviewed the plaintiff’s filings. In our view, the filings display a very troubling pattern of abuse towards “Jackie”, a woman profiled in that article, which...
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Dear Mariano,
I apologise for writing you another open letter. I did try to write to you at your office but that letter was returned undelivered (addressee absent).
I just wanted to express my gratitude that, after four years of careful negligence, we have finally been gifted with a State Research Agency. Ciencia (science), a word spoken so commonly in your Cabinet as part of the word paciencia (patience), will finally get a brand new agency to distribute its miseries. I don’t blame you for not realising that the loss of 12,000 researchers that the country has suffered since 2010 has had little to do with the lack of such an agency. I know you like dominoes, so let’s use them to help you assimilate this figure: stand 12,000 of them, side by side, on their edge. Yes, I know, it will...
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Dear Rahul:
I am keeping this simple and in plain English. Just so that you don't have to struggle to comprehend. I have observed you with amusement, anger and at times, amazement. You seem to have a rush of ideas which, most of the time, make no sense but your excitement seems to suggest that they are life altering. But sadly, only in your pretty little head. This country has had the privilege of being served by your family and no one can take that contribution away.
Sadly, you lost two of your family members to assassins' bullets and no family needs to go through this but you did and this country will be forever indebted.
But then here's the thing. You don't have perpetual rights over India. No one does. This is not an HUF that we must be forever grateful to you. Instead,...
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Dear Tan Sri Adenan Satem
The late great American author, Mark Twain once said “Loyalty to country always, Loyalty to government when it deserves it.” Here in Malaysia that line has been blurred so much that people are made to believe that love for one’s country equates to the love of the ruling government.
With all the different issues and scandals surrounding the current ruling BN government, from allegations of corruption and misused of power, and also the passing of oppressive and flip-flop policies have clearly shown the incompetence and ineptness of the government to continue to rule our country.
Permit me to remind you Tan Sri, it was you that have admitted how such policies have a negative effect on the state as well as how we have been short-changed especially when it...
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One of the most important skills for a software engineer is the ability to examine your assumptions and verify that they are correct. I believe Gamergate’s underlying assumption that attacking me has tactical value for your cause is outdated and incorrect.
Why are you continuing to harangue me on Twitter, through email, though doxxing me, through spreading malicious rumors about me, and through hostile threads on KiA? What’s the point? What does this accomplish for you?
It's a question worth thinking about, because it seems completely at odds with the things you state that you believe - such as developers should be free to ship games without censorship. It doesn’t seem logically consistent to rally to defend games like Dead or Alive from a few stray feminist Tweets, while...
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Dear New Idea,
I write to you on behalf of Australia. You see, something has been bothering us. Really bothering us. I write to you to ask…no, implore you to STOP PICKING ON LLEYTON AND BEC HEWITT.
I’m not the only one that’s noticed that they’ve been getting a divorce since the very day they got married. And we’re sick of it.
Why is it really so hard to believe that an Aussie tennis legend and a Summer Bay sweetheart could just be perfect for one another?
Since I was old enough to read, I have been one of those customers you hate. The ones who stand in line at the checkout and flick through the latest issue of your magazine, but only actually buy it once every 3.75 years. Because what sort of 10 year old can afford your exorbitant $4.30 on a 52-page catalogue of barely-...
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Dear Marc and Angel,
I have a big problem. I’m intelligent, highly educated in my field of study, and have achieved numerous professional accolades while working for large corporations over the years, but now that I’ve branched out on my own as an entrepreneur I’m stuck in a rut. I have dozens of good ideas that I can easily execute on, but every time I rev up and start taking massive action, I get overwhelmed and scared. I start second-guessing my choices and myself. Or I start worrying about and obsessing over all the possibilities for both success and failure, until everything comes to a halt and I’m utterly exhausted. There’s so much I want to achieve, and I know I’m capable if I could just get beyond this. What do you recommend?
Sincerely,
An Overwhelmed Student
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Dear #fitgirls,
I’m worried that if I see another green smoothie on your Instagram, I might throw up on it. Or in it. The minute I see your muscular bodies, fluoride smiles and read you telling me I have the moves, my body is thrown into a fit. Not fit the way you’d like it. I am motivated away from your sugar-free dessert recipes on your blog and want to go and have myself a cake.
I am confused because you all seem so high-performance, but I can’t keep my heart rate up at 85% RPM. In fact I don’t feel like that’s very regular. Thankfully I took your quinoa salad recipe advice, and that has kept me regular. But regular is not very high-performance is it?
The #ThankfulnessThursday hashtag on Instagram confused me. I muddled it up with #ThrowbackThursday. I realized that I shouldn’...
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Dear White People in My MFA Program,
Over the last semester, I may have said some inflammatory statements that made you uncomfortable. Inflammatory statements about race — I know, I know, who talks about race in a creative writing MFA program? How gauche. I realize that this was not a good or cool thing to do, that your safe writing space was interrupted by an uppity Latino with a big mouth. So let me apologize for all of the statements that I made:
I’m sorry for saying that the one Latin@ character you wrote in workshop was both clichéd and racist. I see now that if you write a maid character, OF COURSE she would need to be Mexican. Have you ever seen a non-Mexican maid? Ha! The concept doesn’t even make sense! And if you have a Mexican maid, she should OBVIOUSLY speak broken...
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