The Third Slip: Issue 100 - A chuck-ton of news
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip—the weekly newsletter that had proved to the world a while ago that randomly edited Google Docs can lead to satire, hilarity, and, embarrassing points of view being published on the internet. But our alternative news is just so niche and hipster that it's basically alt-alt-news.
This is issue 100! A significant milestone if you believe in the decimal system, and this means that every issue from now will definitely have at least one character extra. And assuming we average about 1,250 words per issue with a character length including spaces of about 8 per word, that one character is a huge improvement of 0.01%. Take that, people who say this publication doesn't have enough character! Or news…
At Home
Tragedy: There are times when the emotional enormity of news does not lend itself to any kind of levity. This is one such moment. This week, we saw the deadliest terror attack in recent times in Pulwama in J&K resulting in the death of 46 CRPF personnel (you can help support their families here). While it’s clear that the perpetrators Jaish-e-Mohammed are based in and aided by Pakistan, it is equally clear that there needs to be a lot of nuance in the response from India. Using words like “avenge”, “revenge”, and reducing loss of life to a sport of escalation against senseless terrorists from living rooms is certainly dangerous. We hope sense prevails, and someone somewhere is asking “How is the hosh?”.
Cellf goal: This week, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal showed us exactly how fast the Vande Bharat Express is by tweeting a video of the train, sped up to 2x its normal speed. You can’t really blame him, you know the attention span of people these days demands shorter videos. This seemed like a minor transgression towards the end of the week though, because Pratik Sinha of Alt News showed us how a major party’s workers and even a union minister will tweet anything blindly from a prescribed Google Doc of the party’s IT Cell. And, if you’re able to edit it, you can get them to say things like “Modi govt has not made inclusive development as the focal point of its functioning”. LOL. And we thought he’d just developed a conscience.
Bananas Republic: There are some things that we have a difficult time reconciling. Exhibit A: How to be on the side of Republic TV and cry foul against Shashi Tharoor whose complaint led to the court filing an FIR against Arnab Goswami, because you can’t impinge on investigative journalism and free speech. But then, this is the organisation that barged into a university campus without permission and started recording while accusing the students there of being terrorists, and then played the victim when they were asked to stop filming. Finally, 14 students from AMU have been charged with *ugh* sedition. Sigh. We’ll go have a banana split now to cool down.
Refuelling Rafale: This week, we got to find out that Anil Ambani was in talks with the French well before the Rafale deal was signed and—here’s the kicker—the anti-corruption clauses were conveniently removed. You couldn’t spell crony capitalism better if you had five spelling bee champions at the Oxford Dictionary headquarters. Sponsored by Adani.
Tech my breath away: Of late, the government of India has been acting like that difficult client you have who says “Yaar, mera campaign ka reach kam pad raha hai. Aap log kuch nahi kar raha hai, CEO ko bulao!” issuing a summons to Jack Dorsey of Twitter for dwindling retweets of right-wing handles. You can’t make this up. Also in vogue, wanting access to private Whatsapp messages, banning Tik-Tok, and imposing China-like Internet censorship. Digital India yougaiz!
Mechanical engineering?: One can’t accuse the BJP of lack of creativity: The Niti Aayog disputes all economic data and wants to “improve the quality of data” in much the same way you improved your mech lab observation data to get the perfect graph.
Hooch farak nahi padta: Several people died because of illicit liquor. Prohibition (and high taxes) do not make a difference, people will still seek their vice: For instance, just imagining your protests if we miss an issue is what keeps us TTS authors going...
Around the World
Rooting for Joe: It’s not often that we lead with cricket in the international section. Rarer still that we’re in the corner of an English batsman, especially if said batsman is playing against a resurgent West Indies team (who are now not even trending because Kusal Perera pulled off an incredible last wicket win against South Africa in Durban yesterday). But, Joe Root gets our props for telling off Shanon Gabriel who asked him if he liked boys by replying: “Don't use it as an insult. There's nothing wrong with being gay”
Chapo stick: El Chapo, the Mexican drug lord, has been found guilty and will now be in the slammer for life.
Our princess is in another castle: The story of a Dubai princess trying to escape is something else, but we feel more is needed before the Disney animated adaptation. After all, all women are subjected to discrimination across societies in the world and fighting to escape an unjust system. Where’s the novelty?
Income outcome: Apparently, free money (UBI) is great for well-being but not so much for improving job prospects. A study in Finland says so. The Third Slip, on the other hand, gives us a lot of work and no money (which you can now change by supporting us on Patreon).
Vanilla Manila: The Philippines has been cracking down on news media critical of the government which calls it all fake news. Same story, different shade of melanin.
Crystal clear: North Korea, the country where you can access fewer websites on the internet than in the rudimentary browser in the GTA game (true story), is strangely more tolerant in other respects though. Weed is pseudo-legal and there are no laws against homosexuality in North Korea, but this takes the cake, or should we say Blue Sky: On Chinese Lunar New Year, they exchange meth as presents.
The USA Segment: A very good week, a very bad week
The very good: Finally, they decided to stop funding the deadly Saudi-fuelled war in Yemen, propose an environment-friendly economic Green Deal and pass a bill to conserve their natural land. All it took was having a few less codgy ol’ white men in the Senate. They also managed to avert a second shutdown, but that brings us to...
The very bad: Trump didn’t get his wall the regular way, so he simply decides to use his Emergency powers to build it. Well, at least it took him this long to figure out he had such powers. There’s still a long way to go for the wall to get built, but since he’s now in campaign mode and it’s all about the optics (the wall will be ineffective anyway), he can tell his base, “Hey, I tried!”. Welcome to an era where ‘step marks’ are enough to get you an A+. If only the CBSE would listen. Oh and the US has been trying to sabotage Iran’s missiles and nothing’s changed a year since the Parkland shooting, except kids’ lives.
Tech and all that
Game rover: “My battery is low and it’s getting dark” was the final communication received from our beloved rover on Mars. This week, NASA finally announced that this was the end of the Opportunity rover after over 14 years. RIP Oppy (also, this heartbreaking xkcd cartoon).
I’d like to return this item: Amazon pulled out of their plans to build HQ2 in New York! Who woulda thunk it? The biggest city in the world, groveling and offering a billion dollars in incentives to a ruthless company headed by the richest man in the world to set up base in the city, offering jobs that most residents aren’t qualified for and drive up rents: leading to a backlash. Nobody (except everybody but Bezos and a few disillusioned Wall Street types) saw that coming.
iScam: The Apple guy who was supposed to prevent insider trading was charged with insider trading :D
LinkedOut - The best things we’ve read this week
A high-profile Googler left recently and her reasons why leaves no doubt that “Don’t Be Evil” is now just nostalgia.
And a scathing, beautiful read on why Silicon Valley’s “grow fast at any cost” is flawed and unsustainable.
A fairly reasonable argument as to why America should invest in public goods. Colour us Left, but maybe some of that might not be a bad thing?
A great read about how journalism isn’t dying, simply returning to its roots.
After the Great Tech Backlash of 2018-19, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple will survive. Google, Facebook, maybe not. And a Gizmodo reporter tried to go one week each without one of the big five tech companies (and one without any!).
If you liked Gully Boy, here’s a good profile of the 10 other “gully” rappers in Mumbai.
That’s it for this week. If you’d like to get in touch with us, find us on Twitter (Chuck | Tony) or email us. If you enjoyed reading this, make sure you subscribe so you do not have to depend on the vagaries of social media reach to find us each week. And also, share this with your friends because we depend on the vagaries of social media to grow our base. And of course, supporting us with a contribution on Patreon. Until next week, may you find a surprisingly able partner when the chips are down to pull off a stunning win against all odds. Bye!