Issue 7: This time, we talk about Trump at the end

Hello and welcome to yet another Mother’s Day where you try to alleviate the guilt you build up over the year with a emoji-laden Whatsapp message. Perhaps you’ll feel a little less guilty once you see what people around the world have been doing. Let’s dive in.

Phew revoir

Late last Sunday, France had its elections (you probably missed that since you were reading Issue 6 of TTS?). Thankfully, the sane candidate, Emmanuel Macron of the centrist En Marche! party, won. Sure he’s probably a nice guy who helps old ladies cross the street and doesn’t steal office supplies, but we’re actually celebrating the fact that the xenophobic, far-right Marine Le Pen lost. The result is reassuring for a number of reasons : Europe, like an overloaded speeding goods truck trying to take a U-turn on NH4, was swerving a little too dangerously to the right, and this victory will be accompanied by quite a few sighs of relief. One trend that has not changed, however, is political n00bs occupying highest office - like Trump, Macron has never held office. Second, you never want to see ‘Russia’ and ‘firing’ in the same sentence, unless the latter term is preceded by ‘back’. So yeah, the public was smart enough to see through Russia trying to smear Macron with its French cover version of the US Smash Single ‘Hillary’s Email Leaks’. Macron’s party is also likely to win the legislative elections in a couple of months. Sensible - perhaps we should all have wine and Nutella for breakfast.

(An issue of The Third Slip NOT beginning with TRUMP?? Well, you’ll just have to wait)

Happy anniversary!

It’s been 6 months since that blunderheaded genius move to remove 86% of the cash from a cash-heavy economy (if you’re from Bandra - imagine banning Kale from a hispters’ salad convention). How did that work out for you, then? Worked out quite well if you’re the PM / BJP, it turns out - despite people dying and the economy taking a beating - their blind sheep followers just kept voting them into power. Which, scarily, means the BJP knows it can get away with anything: Random laws, painful new procedures, anything Aadhaar, forcing people to listen to Yo Yo Honey Singh on loop. Oh well, at least we got 9 million new income tax payers out of it.

AAPle of nobody’s eye

Look, to be honest, we really like the AAP and what it stands for. But the most ardent Gandhi-cap-toting supporter will agree that Arvind Kejriwal needs to take stock of his party’s situation. His silence on allegations of corruption within AAP (by someone who was ex-AAP, Kapil Mishra, at that) was so deafening it made Manmohan Singh’s sub-decibel-challenging non-ologues seem like a metal concert. The AAP’s been trying to draw public attention towards EVM tampering - which nobody really cares about apart from the nostalgia it evokes for the good ol’ days of ball tampering. Meanwhile, Kejriwal wants to make Delhi mosquito-free. We’re pretty sure that if getting rid of noisy, pesky things that seem to spread disease is what he’s going for, Mishra would be first.

(Trump? Trump what? You bloody West loving fool, you first see what’s happening in India. You know the name of your own mayor or what?)

A law unto himself

The legendary 19th century cricketer, WG Grace, was notorious for helping the umpire out. When dismissed and shown the (index) finger, he would tell the officials, “The crowd’s come to see me bat, not to see you umpire” and cheerfully carry on. Well, it seems that Yogi Adityanath has sent a similar message to the courts: “They’ve come to see me murder, not to see you legislate.”

Judge me not

Part-comically, (former) Calcutta Kolkata Calcutta High Court Judge CS Karnan said that 20 judges were corrupt - the judicial equivalent of a creative director in an advertising pitch telling the client that the strategy team’s research was a SurveyMonkey link circulated to interns. He was sentenced to 6 months for contempt of court - but you probably never heard of that because the SC gagged the media. Um.

exit();

The Indian IT sector has survived by brandishing a lot of big-sounding numbers, but here’s a gloomy one for you- 56,000. That’s the number of people being laid off by big IT firms. No, it’s not The Orange One’s fault: IT maintenance isn’t as important to companies around the world, and automation is also to blame, drawing up the same AI-taking-jobs debate. To beat AI, we suppose people will just have to start getting more creative - just like CTS is - apparently people were not fired, they were ‘voluntarily separated’.

NEETly done

Let’s make this clear: “Take your bra off” is acceptable only in two situations: Consensual sex, and rebranding of the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Not in any other situation, including, er, while writing an exam. But then, the geniuses who run the CBSE think that women are likely to hide chits / devices in their underwear. Well, making stupid rules like that probably why the board was too busy to print English textbooks or declare results on time.

Strictly for GK buffs

Also, you might know that we have our own presidential election happening (for a role that means absolutely nothing, except a bullet point in 2nd standard GK books). Potential candidates to succeed what-exactly-did-he-do-Pranab Mukherjee include Gopal Gandhi (ye ol’ MK’s grandson), Sushma Swaraj of badass-tweeting-EA-minister fame, former speaker and baith jaiye specialist Meira Kumar, another trivia-answer-former-vice-president Hamid Ansari, hey-remember-I-was-controversial-once MM Joshi, here-take-participation-certificate-from-PM LK Advani and hilariously enough, Sharad Pawar. That’s right. We could have an answer to the question, “Who is the only person to have been President of India, the ICC, have a housing scam and wheat scam to his name?”. Move on, nothing to see here.

Kashmir

There’s a lot happening in Kashmir and we don’t want to get into that right now - the only takeaways you need to know are : People still want jobs, and failure to resolve the Kashmir issue could be Modi’s biggest failure (and given the unmitigated disaster jolly good move that was demonetization, that’s saying something!)

Everybody’s migraine

Arnab Goswami’s Republic is live. You couldn’t have missed the announcement - the billboards were as loud as the channel itself, even if nobody will watch it. While time will tell whether there is quality journalism there, for now, it seems overly reliant on the Loud One. Oh, and given the number of BJP MPs / MLAs and spokespersons that have congratulated (and funded?) Arnab on starting Republic, you can expect him to be as neutral to the news as acid is to pH paper.

Finally, Kerala again…

See, we don’t want to seem biased (go Tuskers!), but every week’s depressing domestic news is being balanced out by something awesome happening from the desi Down Under. This week we learnt the Kochi Metro is going to hire people from the hijda community.

(So much India news. Surely it’s White House comedy time now. No? Bloody)

New leader ahoy

We’re not the only ones ushering in a new president - South Korea elected liberal Moon Jae-In, in. While on the face of it that seems nice (he’s the son on North Korean immigrants!), he doesn’t believe in Washington’s sanctions-based approach on Pyongyang and is more open to dialogue. And given the nutjob we have in the Oval Office, that should cause a little regional jitteriness.

DEV CONF 5!

The Economist put into words what we all suspected - oil is not the world’s most valuable resource, data is (though it’s hard to think that the US would bomb a war-torn country for their huge stacks of servers). Snap Inc (parent of the app nobody over 25 understands, Snapchat) didn’t do very well with its first earnings - but hey, they must be on to something since Facebook copies everything they do. Remember the ‘Stories’ they announced at the developer conference f8? (No? Hear about it on Simblified, the podcast one half of the dashing duo behind this newsletter runs). Speaking of dev confs, Microsoft had one as well and all went very 2017. There was a smart speaker, some VR stuff and some AI assistant stuff. Speaking of AI assistants, makers are trying hard to make them seem more human. Oh, and remember that laptop ban thing? It could be back again - from ALL European flights!

Tesla’s been in the news: They opened up solar roofs for pre-order (only Elon Musk can make tiles sound sexy). Which is a good thing, because a certain someone still doesn’t believe in climate change - enough to want to purge all government websites of references to it. Strangely enough, the unlikely champion of globalization in 2017 - China (!) - is committed to tackling emissions.

(Hey hey you mentioned Trump, surely now… What, just one more piece before him? Yay.)

Check out these worms eating plastic, dude!

(Dei thoo enough. Trumptime now)

Ok here it, er, Comeys

Trump’s love for FBI Director James Comey back in November (when the FBI was looking into Hillary’s email server) soon turned to anger when said Director turned his skills to, er, Trump’s own connection with Russia. So Comey was dismissed quicker than you could say Nixon. What was hilarious was the official reason given- Comey’s “handling of Secretary Clinton’s emails.” Ungrateful wretch... that’s like banning cleavers after having the turkey. What’s next? A Trump-appointed Director (oh, joy!) and quite possibly, a Moscow-bound email with the words “That was a close one, Vlad”. Or perhaps not. Trump’s Russia-based actions (including being paranoid enough to ask Comey if he himself was under investigation and letting only the Russian media into a White House meeting) are increasingly having a Streisand Effect - add that to his plummeting popularity, and he might have a task on his little fingers.

Need to be reassured? The motormouth gun-toting Filipino Prez, Rodrigo Duterte, has been invited to the White House, and Saudi Arabia is boosting investment in the US. What could possibly go wrong?

That's the week, then, folks!
Follow us (Chuck and Tony) on Twitter and tell us how much you love us. If you're old-school, you can email us. Bye!