Midweek Slices: FAQ on farmer protests <>The paper that helped the homeless <>Pinterest reveals AR Try on <>HBR's 9 trends that will shape work <> An artificial cornea transplant raises hope
I am pretty sure the sight of tractors crashing barriers on India’s Republic Day made you squirm. If you are Indian, chances are you have been in chats that have had heated debates on the farmer’s protests. However, one has noticed a singular lack of knowledge about the farm laws itself. Most of our arguments are based on forwards and tweets by interested sources. So, it was godsend to read this piece on Medium posted by Yogesh Upadhyaya. I know Yogesh personally and have great respect for his opinion and writing, which is always grounded in facts. In the FAQ, he answers the following questions:
Why can’t the government support farmers? Why can’t the government increase the price it pays farmers under MSP? Who does the food subsidy benefit? Why can’t the private sector be forced to purchase on MSP? Why do small farmers make very little money? Who is right, the government or the agitating farmers?
I would highly recommend reading the article in its entirety but the authors have wisely provided a summary at the end of their detailed answers to each question and you can have a quick read. It’s also something I would recommend using to teach our children the facts about this situation.
In 1989, rock musician Hutchinson Persons set up the street newspaper Street News in response to the increase in homelessness in New York.
The concept was to help the homeless support themselves, by selling the newspapers to the public at a profit.
Listen to the inspiring story here.
Pinterest has announced an augmented reality feature, AR Try On. You can see this video from Cheddar where they speak to the Sr VP of Engineering at Pinterest. Not surprisingly, a lot of the applications are to do with beauty as Pinterest has a larger female audience.
I personally believe that AR will see huge applications in business, retail being the most obvious. A lot of us played with fun apps that allow us to superimpose an animal or a bird in our living room and take a picture. This piece from Forbes tells us about slightly more useful applications of AR.
One of the few publications that I make an exception for when it comes to articles titled ‘10 things that will make you a better human being’ or ‘21 things that will change in 2021’ is the HBR. This piece titled 9 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2021 and Beyond has some thought provoking predictions. Like this one on work shifting from where to when:
5. Flexibility will shift from location to time. While enabling employees to work remotely became commonplace across 2020 (and will continue this year and beyond), the next wave of flexibility will be around when employees are expected to work.
Gartner’s 2020 ReimagineHR Employee Survey revealed that only 36% of employees were high performers at organizations with a standard 40-hour work week. Organizations that offer employees flexibility over when, where and how much they work, see 55% of their work force as high performers. In 2021, I expect to see a rise of new jobs where employees will be measured by their output, as opposed to an agreed-upon set of hours.
Have a read.
The last slice in this edition is one of hope. For the blind. Doctors in Israel have restored the eyesight of a person who has been blind for ten years by using an artificial cornea. From Mashable:
Doctors at Israel's Rabin Medical Center carried out the procedure as part of a trial for the firm's implant, which has been branded as KPro.
After being blind for 10 years, the patient was able to recognise his family members and read text thanks to the operation, which took less than an hour. Although cornea transplants aren't new for medical science, till now people had to wait till they could find a donor with a replacement for their damaged cornea.
Have a fruitful week.
Suprio
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