The Third Slip: Issue 104 - Who will check the chowkidar?
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip—the weekly newsletter that is like that annoying guy you know who loves to ask: “What do you mean you haven’t heard of this cool sounding thing I just heard about on a podcast?!” Well, this means I can mansplain the whole thing to you poorly and appear intelligent.
This is issue 104, which means we’ve kept this scam going for exactly 2 years. And that’s surprising because we ask questions like “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” when we could have easily said the more popular and understandable version—“who will watch the watchmen?”. Or in a more topical context, “Who will check the chowkidar?”
What’s happening in India
Poll-dance: Elections have been scheduled to be held in 7 phases from April 11, 2019, to May 19, 2019! That’s a lot of sloganeering you can expect over the next couple of months (though the EC is being quite strict this time, even mandating digital political ads be certified). True to form, the Modi machine has bolted first with a #MainBhiChowkidar campaign but also ran into the occasional gaffe like welcoming a Nirav Modi parody account to be a part of it. But also, here’s a look at how the last four years have been.
Taking the RBI out of the arbiter: Two-and-a-half years after demonetisation, we’ve finally learned that the RBI board was not in agreement with the government on the stated mission and impact of demonetisation, because well, it was a poorly thought through idea. And that’s the beauty of democracy, we have such robust institutions to stop governmental overreach and this is why demonetisation didn’t happen on November 8th, 2016. No, wait…
Quotable courts: Last week, we spoke of the rather absurd claim of the government in court seeking to dismiss Rafale documents because they violated some antiquated law. This week, the SC rightly said: “Public interests outweigh official secrets,” and that RTI trumped any colonial-era secret law. Also, injunctions filed against The Wire for its articles by BJP MP and Republic TV entrepreneur Rajeev Chandrasekhar were rejected by a Bangalore court which said, “The press is functioning as the watchdog of the Constitution” without adding that the MP’s Republic TV, on the other hand, is more like a lapdog.
Tragedy has no clever headline
Even for a time as bleak as ours, last week was particularly bad.
First, an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed, killing all 157 on board. It was the same Boeing model as a Lion Air flight that crashed in Indonesia 5 months ago, and is increasingly being grounded by airlines around the world as it turns out the company didn’t pay too much attention to safety.
Secondly, a country priding itself on being welcoming and liberal, New Zealand, saw a mass shooting which could have followed a US script: A white supremacist terrorist gunning down 50 Muslims who were praying. NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern assured everyone that all immigrants are a part of New Zealand, and white supremacists and other hate mongers are not. Also, they’re changing their gun laws right away.
Thirdly, also inspired by US happenings was a school shooting in Brazil.
And, lest we forget, in Mumbai, it was another month, another infrastructure-related tragedy (a bridge collapsing in one of its busiest stations), another stupid utterance by a politician (“natural calamity”, apparently), another report that experts warned this would happen. The last time something like this happened, change did happen: to the station name.
Around the world
Make or Brexit: Imagine that a cranky husband’s been saying he’ll file for divorce, despite him being the one not cleaning up the dishes or changing diapers. Then, two weeks before the divorce date, he has nothing planned yet except lots of printouts which he himself has rejected, and it’s likely, he’ll be kicked out of the home without any share of mutual possessions. The wife is still happy to take him back, like how things were before (but is also secretly wishing he leaves). Meanwhile, the antics of the husband has provided comedy for the neighbourhood and social media, especially the wife’s gentle taunts. That painful analogy is largely what Brexit is (the UK parliament rejected a no-deal option this week and will probably beg the EU for more time).
Donny DeVeto: In a rare show of unity, Dems & Republicans both said no to Donald Trump’s wall and said yes to ending the Yemen war. Meaning the Prez, now fairly frustrated by all this, is likely to use veto powers. Make no mistake, this biscuit is slowly crumbling.
School is a prison anyway: China has been alarmingly detaining Muslim minorities, and have a strange defence: You say: “Muslim detention camp”, we say: “school with free food”. Po-tay-to, poh-tah-to.”. To be honest, we’ve not heard anyone pronounce it ‘poh-tah-to’, however in Kerala, we do say “pottetto” but wait what were we talking about?
Winds of change: Kids from around the world took to the streets with one message to adults: fix climate change. “The kids are alright,” as The Who once sang.
Cheater Teacher: Apparently, everyone in the US is outraging because rich parents paid colleges a lot of money to falsify documents and records to cheat their way into admitting their kids into college. In India, kids were outraged, finally telling their parents, “Dekho, Steve ka pitaji…”
Tech
DubDubDubsbash: Happy 30th birthday, WWW! Here’s the original proposal by Tim Berners-Lee for the new web standard (“vague but exciting”, his boss’ feedback), and here’s his essay from this week, with what we need to do to make sure we all survive.
You get a stream! You get a stream! On Mar 25, Apple’s going to announce details of its upcoming streaming services, having already tied up with a bunch of talent including Oprah. And, YouTube Music and Premium launched this week. Finally, you can play music on YouTube without having the app in context… provided you pay for it.
A chicken and fox problem: France hired Facebook to solve its anti-semitism problem. The jokes write themselves. (And their head of product quit. Whoa.)
What a world!
Kid you not: Sure, all eyes have glaringly been at you at one point for loudly dropping a plate at a buffet. But imagine what it felt like being the Saudi woman who made a plane do a mid-air turnaround because she forgot her baby at the terminal.
What’s up, doc?: And teens are now using Google Docs to chat in class. Best.
Hey, Chuck maybe we should try this too in the TTS draft doc?
But what if it makes it to the published version?
Nah, no chance that will happen, we’ll edit it out no?
LinkedOut - The best things we read this week
Those expecting Robert Mueller’s report to totally find Trump guilty are going to be pretty disappointed.
A lovely A to Z of the internet to celebrate the 30th year of WWW.Don’t feel too bad about not segregating trash—recycling is in chaos.
So many Democrats have put their hat into the ring for the 2020 elections, it’s easy to lose track of who’s saying what. Elizabeth Warren is a great choice.
In the wake of the terror attack in New Zealand, tech platforms have been questioned on why they couldn’t stop the videos from spreading. The truth, disappointingly, is that they aren’t capable of stopping it.
Happy birthday to us: We’ve turned two! And we’ve turned to...you. If you would like to see us keep going, do support us with your contributions via Patreon. A big thanks to all of you who keep supporting us, and we hope to continue churning out this newsletter (noiseletter? niceletter?) every week.
That’s it for this week. We would love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email or if you’re young and hip like us on TikTok Twitter (Chuck | Tony). Make sure you subscribe to this newsletter to improve the quality of spam in your inbox. If nothing else, Google will show you more classy ads. We guarantee it. Until next week, may you always find a willing mate to check off bucket lists with. Bye!
