Great blog. Rhymes 1:1 with all the things I have seen and learned in my coporate career so far. To this list of things to avoid apart from policitics, I would additionally include avoid discussing other sensitive topics which are likely to trigger emotions like religion, gender wars, ethnic differences (in a diverse cultures like India people have strong opinions over their naive spoken languages , their vegetarian, non-vegetarian food preferances , your daring escapades, drunk parties etc )