The Third Slip: Issue 113 - Godse’s own country
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that’s like an exit poll being broadcast on television. The presenters did no actual work on it, they cherry-picked a dataset that validates their implicit bias, and in all likelihood, the picture presented has very little relation to the truth. But, hey, it’s still less boring than all those tasks you have to do - so let’s have at it.
This is issue 113, for the week beginning 19th May 2019 - which means this will be the last issue with Captain Caveman in charge. This is of no significance, of course - irrespective of the election outcome, we’re faced with a media that sings praises to the incumbents and sets society into regressive thinking because they’ve been completely bought out by vested interests. As you can see, we’ve inverted the model by er… paying to bring you the news. Sheer genius! Let’s get cracking...
Electile Dysfunction
Wingardium Lavasa: Tired of being the only dissenting voice in the Election Commission, whose comments were not even placed on record, Ashok Lavasa decided to up and leave from the EC. This obviously led to a lot of back and forth, and presumably, the letters were written on the tons of clean chits issued by the EC.
Press con: If you’re a website developer and have trouble conveying the concept of URL redirects to a client, just show them Modi’s “first press conference” where questions intended for the PM magically ended up being answered by Amit Shah (who is either a puppeteer or the puppet. We’re not quite sure). Remember when we used to make fun of a credible economist for being “silent” as a PM? Bonus: Try accessing pmmodi.live (yes, it redirects to amitshah.live).
Putting the ban in Banerjee: Usually, “BJP leader arrested” would make us happy - thinking that finally the EC has had enough of the hatemongering, misogyny and Model Code violations - but it turned out to be for making a meme of Mamta Banerjee. How blessed are we as a country where political parties find novel ways to get outraged, and sentiment takes precedence over actual issues enough for this to be a Supreme Court issue? (Bonus Weekly Outrage: Nutjobs trying to boycott Amazon for selling… Well, see for yourself. The same outrage wasn’t there for Pragya Thakur calling Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin a deshbhakt, though, because that wasn’t on the BJP IT Cell’s job list)
Voter voter everywhere: We’ve been unfair on the BJP saying they’re goons: They’re actually quite nice. Take these nice gentlemen who’re even helping people in Haryana by voting for them. Aww :’)
MahaGDPbandhan: Those anti-nationals over at Bloomberg dared to say that the economy is suffering under Dear Leader. How dare they bring data to prove their point, don’t they see all the statues? Or… How Adani is doing?
Hum tum ek camera me bandh ho: And finally, to end things, may you give as many f***s about something, as Dear Leader does about photo-ops as he meditates in a cave, ostensibly to be away from camera crews. Maybe he was thinking about how he used a digital camera & email in 1988.
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Nuts
Mi casa, sue casa: Aboriginal Australians are suing the government for not acting on climate change, saying it’s affecting their culture. You can do things like that? Excuse us while we try our luck at something similar (next week’s issue of TTS might be delayed in case things don’t go as planned)
This picture of Durian’s grey: Sticking with Down Under: The Uni of Canberra evacuated itself owing to a huge smell - turns out it came from an infamously bad-smelling fruit, the Durian.
Drag-on: Wow, people really don’t like GOT S08. 16000 of them have a petition to remake the season! In funner dragon news, A little girl tried to bribe NZ’s Prime Minister to open up research for dragons :D
The common man’s tissues: A Danish politician is advertising on Pornhub “to reach his voters where they are”.
The big cheese: And if you need to contact the US embassy while in Austria, you can just call ‘em using the hotline that’s at… McDonald’s.
A section on its own
That’s the way to be happy and gay: There’s a lot of less-than-cheerful news here (surprise!) so let’s first take a moment to celebrate Taiwan becoming the first country in Asia to legalize gay marriage. Bonus: Dutee Chand becomes the first Indian athlete to acknowledge that she’s in a same-sex relationship. More power!
International News
What a Budapest! Trump invited one of the world’s most right-wing leaders, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, to the White House - probably to get tips on things from the man who’s erected fences to keep immigrants out. He got some practice with making some vague new ‘merit-based’ immigration policy (look forward to “Sharmaji ka beta got H1B visa…”).
Al-blame-ya: It’s 2019, and the USA is giving stiff competition to many other countries vying to top the dumbness index. Apparently, Alabama & Georgia have some crazy for words anti-abortion laws in place now. (By the way, even Trump supports abortion in cases of rape/incest - if you’ve let this man win the moral argument, you know you’re something else only!). But then, denying women the right to choose and blaming and shaming them is a grand old human tradition. Long live the traditionalists.
Can’t bear Canberra: Of all the countries to swing rightward, you probably wouldn’t have expected the beer-guzzling, surf-happy, big-noting chirpy chaps from Down Under to do so. Alas, Australia re-elected their PM, Scott Morrison, hopefully for his economic policies more than anti-immigration ones. Only time will tell, mate.
Sancti(on)mon(e)y: Don’t look now but the US and Iran are squabbling again. So are the US and China (but over trade and sanctions, and we might have Xi to blame for talks breaking down, not Trump).
Putting the last in plastic: 180 countries around the world signed a deal to reduce plastic waste in the oceans. Not among the signatories? You guessed it - the USA.
Terror in judgement: Those hoping terrorist strikes would cause social unrest have got what they wanted in Sri Lanka: There’s now a curfew following attacks on Muslims. Groan. Tell us again why religion is a good thing?
An element of drought: You might not think it looking at its most prominent face, but North Korea is going through severe drought. South Korea is trying to help, using the bait to try and get its pugnacious neighbour to the negotiation table and we’re very happy we used the word ‘pugnacious’ in TTS, finally.
Tech
Double-edged Helix: A little away from Silicon Valley, first up: Scientists in Cambridge have created the world’s first living organism (an E.Coli bacterium) with fully redesigned DNA. Lots of potential uses (and, well, doomsday scenarios) ahead!
There’s no ex in XP: Microsoft released a critical security patch for… Windows XP. That’s worrying because MS stopped making updated for your preferred childhood pirated OS years ago, meaning some shit has hit the fan. Worse, some really important places still use XP. Err...
Facebookistan: Boy, everyone wants FB to be broken up: Its co-founder, and pretty much every Democratic candidate (Warren, Harris, Biden). All this has left FB spewing firefighting pfaff to the effect of “you need to be a company of our size to take the steps to counter all the problems we’ve pretty much caused”. At least we know criticism is working: After much negative reportage, FB has increased pay for content moderators, those poor souls.
Com-petition: Other companies with headaches this week: India’s CCI thinks Google’s Android is stifling competition, the US Supreme Court allowed an antitrust case against Apple,
Casting a wide net: Elon Musk’s SpaceX is shooting 60 satellites into space that aims to provide internet to the whole world :O
Taking out the late from translate: Google is working on technology to make your voice speak in another language. Impressive. So far, only alcohol could do this.
LinkedOut
In a week where abortion took centre stage, many people debated when life actually begins in the womb. It’s worth reading this mind-bending long read on consciousness.
Grumpy Cat passed away peacefully, and her passing is a sign of the end of the joyful internet (well, TTS is still around).
China’s most important export now is… Tiktok.
Lastly, the world has taken such a dump on tech over the last few years: Here’s a nice defence of the industry which has given us so much, including this newsletter (group hug!)
The world is going to the dogs: That was a lot of heavy stuff, so let’s end with this - A page in the yearbook of Marjory Douglas Stoneman - the Florida school with the horrific shooting last year - has a page dedicated to therapy dogs for the survivors.
That’s it for this week. If you’d like to get in touch with us, we’re on Instagram (Chuck | Tony), Twitter (Chuck | Tony), and good ol’ email. Until next week, may you move at 75 like how the real Jagger does.
