The Third Slip 64: Roland Trump
Hello, Slippers! And welcome to The Third Slip, the weekly newsletter that speaks truth to the power so much that we have to charge our cell phones 5 times a day. Oh, wait, that might just be because we’re constantly refreshing our inboxes in the hope of some validation from our readers.
Anyway, this is issue 64. 64, of course, is the number of clay court titles Rafael Nadal wins before he brushes his teeth each morning. Yes, we used some word clay to extend the word count. What are you going to do, take us to Court Fillup Chatterer? Hehehehehehe. Apologies for the word clay, but everyone should just be in rapture with Rafa’s #11 at Roland Garros, so how does it matter anyway?
Around the World
Schulz Out: Charles M Schulz steps down as Starbucks Chairman. What? Why are you nodding along? That’s the creator of Peanuts da. You will believe anything we write is it? Please fact check everything always. Sunday sermon over, moving on - Howard Schultz steps down as Starbucks Chairman, and rumours are that he’s running for President.
Sab Changi!: So yeah, the NK-Trump thing is on. Will history be made in Singapore on Tuesday? And (ugh) the 21st century Hitler - Syria’s Bashar al-Assad - wants to meet Kim (who’s got quite the image makeover!) as well.
Row Row Row Over Boat: And of course this happened in Dubai: “A Russian Oligarch’s $500 Million Yacht Is in the Middle of Britain’s Costliest Divorce”
No longer on the rocks: The world’s friendliest dispute - the one that involves Denmark and Canada (of course) leaving whiskey for each others’ soldiers (of course) is alas, about to be ‘resolved’.
AWG7WARD!: Trump meeting with all the people he’s pissed off recently, under one roof? (Not if he can help it - he skipped the second day!) Get set for a diplomatic roast! The reason: Tariffs that have not just annoyed the allies, but also business-minded Republicans and donors. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Dainik Jargon: In the US, the Democrats did well in their California Primary. This strong showing means they could control the Senate in the upcoming midterms. No idea what that means? Neither do we. But the upshot is: The Republicans are getting screwed. That’s a good enough TL;DR.
Trump is taxing: If you want some comedy at American taxpayers’ expense, look no further than EPA head and miserable Trump sycophant Scott Pruitt: A $43k phone booth and several legal violations make him a Colbert staple. And of course, Trumps loves him. Also, Trump’s lawyer said that Trump had the power to pardon himself, even if he shot James Comey. What a time to be alive!
Jesting Trudeau: Remember the Canadian PM’s disastrous India tour earlier this year? He has now said that he’s not travelling anywhere anymore. LOL.
In India
RSS Feed: You know that annoying alumnus from your B school who keeps muttering some stuff about culture and all years after leaving college and will accept any invitation to go back and remain relevant? Wait, this might be us. Anyway, for some reason, the RSS (you know, the BJP puppetmasters) invited Pranab Mukherjee (you know, ex-Congress dude) to speak at their headquarters, who proceeded to say “Mahatma Gandhi is awesome and you dudes should stop polarizing the country!”. Nobody knows what to make of this. (Meanwhile, next week’s TTS might be delayed as the authors have been invited to speak at a serious journalism event.) However, Pranabda did manage to create a stir by praising the bigoted RSS founder. In the visitor’s guest book, and raising rumours about a potential Prime Ministerial bid.
Bhimaeup Scotty, it’s pathetic down here:200 years ago, the Dalits fought with the British against upper-caste Marathas in a teeny village near Pune called Bhima-Koregaon. And won! To this day, they celebrate it as a victory for the oppressed. Now, that should go down well in a Brahmin-run, toxic-right-wing environment, no? The result: Lots of violence, police arresting Dalits for attacking other Dalits and for good measure, an alleged Modi assassination was thrown in.
Barkhaing up the wrong tree?: Probably the most abused Indian online (Woman! Journalist! Speaks truth to power! Short hair!), Barkha Dutt sent out a series of tweets talking about how she kept getting threats. For doing her job (but hey, as Cobrapost taught us, who cares?). In unrelated but homophonic news, Denmark banned the Burqa.
This week in NDA achievement: We at TTS will give praise when it’s due, and here is this week’s: The NDA has managed to reduce farmer suicides in the last 2 years to… Zero! Wow! Yes! Unbelievable. After all, there is no published data on farmer suicides, so that must mean… No? Doesn’t work that way? But in Yes, Minister they… Oh, ok. Sorry. Ignore this paragraph.
Airplane Mode: Special Offer: Buy a useless Air India, get its Rs 33k crore debt free! And Unions headaches too! Number of bids: zero. Oops, so much for Modi’s business savvy.
The Hope section: It’s not all gloom & doom!
The Taliban agreed to their first-ever ceasefire (in Afghanistan) during Eid.
Saudi Arabia finally gave driving licensed to women!
Spain’s new PM appointed a ⅔ majority female cabinet!
We live in a world where there is not just GDPR, but GDPR-themed sleep music!
Business
What’s up with the Fantastic Four? Apple’s annual conference had the usual rubbish to get millennials excited (new emoji!), but had more important announcements - features to deaddict you from your phone, and Safari features to stymie data sharing. And good timing, too - 14 million Facebook posts accidentally went ‘public’. And gave data to 60 device makers (Good thing for Zuck that nobody cares). Meanwhile, Googlers are getting uncomfortable about helping the US Military with AI. And Microsoft bought Github (showing how much they heart open source now), but will have to deal with headaches like XBox emulators and (mostly Chinese) users who have a liberal approach to censorship. Interestingly, Facebook has internal red flags for detecting when emojis are being used for hate.
Meet George Jetson: Yes yes, flying cars are coming. Larry Page’s project has an ultralight thingy that looks fun. While testing is happening in Las Vegas now, imagine heading to Lower Parel in one of these.
LinkedOut
Of returning socks and a beautiful, not easy to understand, polyamorous relationship.
Indian education is good for many things: Getting 8-year-olds fluent at mugging up, selling Clark’s tables, but is not very good at preparing them for life. As you grow, you need roti, not rote.
Anthony Bourdain left the world poorer this week with an untimely departure. Here’s one of his first and finest pieces from The New Yorker.
Sunil Chhetri’s viral video filled up the Mumbai football stadium this week. But his great achievement has been bringing in a new demographic to the stadium writes Srinath Sripath who caught the action live.
That’s it for this week. If you’d like to check out how often/rarely we tweet follow us (Tony | Chuck). But you won’t, because you are a closet reader who uses this to fill up the short elevator ride in order to not talk to anyone. And while it does put a smile on your face, you won’t even bother to email us an acknowledgment. Fine, be this way. For you ‘what’s in it for me’ gang, we have introduced The Third Slip pyramid scheme. The more people you get to sign up to The Third Slip, and the more they, in turn, sign up, the further and further up Maslow’s Pyramid we ascend. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe, and share. Until next week, may that thing that you have been putting off and dreading turn out to be surprisingly pleasant. Bye!