The Third Slip: Issue 121 - We’re all in the same bottle
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that makes a cringey analogy in its introduction to pitch itself as metaphors for events from around the world. But we’re also self-aware and wanted to change things around this time. You could say we decided to channel our meta force instead.
This is issue 121, in a week in which we’ve embraced the bottle cap challenge because after politics, and humanity have let us down so too has our last resort - sport. India is not in the finals, and Nadal has crashed out, so we’ve now embraced the bottle cap challenge - where you take off the cap of a bottle of alcohol and drain it to the bottom to cope. Hic! On with the news...
International
Squeaky wheel gets the Greece: Tired and broke, Greece elected a new Prime Minister. Thankfully, it didn’t succumb to the populism that’s plaguing the rest of the world. We guess at the end, sloganeering and idolatry can only go so far if people have nothing to eat.
Suit Yourself: Douche Deutsche Bank’s image is not having a great time: Till now, it had those connections to Trump to worry about. Now, news emerged that top management was getting fitted for £1200 suits on the day they fired 18000 people. Not the best time for the company to have a CEO named Christian Sewing.
Ghetto the point: You might know that China’s cracking down on its own Muslim population. 22 countries have politely asked China to stop. Among the 37 countries saying “lol carry on”: Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea and African beneficiaries of “infrastructure diplomacy”.
This week from “Land of the free, home of the brave”...
Bullshit in a China shop: (long breath) Let’s treat people fleeing from violence back home like filth, and sexually assault their kids. After that, let’s raid our country to find undocumented families and kick them out. Once we’re done with that, we’ll wait for our president to sexually harass a 22nd person, hold a social media summit consisting of meme-makers and right-wing trolls, and go wage war on Iran who dared stand up for their own rights (thankfully Democrats passed a bill which might stymie Trump’s happy-go-lucky-to-war tendencies). After that, just to piss China off, let’s go and give $2b worth of arms to Taiwan. Yay ‘merica!
This headline was deleted: The British ambassador to the US resigned. Why, you ask? Leaked cables show he called Trump ‘inept’, and he didn’t get too much support of this otherwise popular opinion which was put in writing. This is why those millennials use Snapchat instead.
Smother nature: If all the above news is depressing, do not worry! For it’s going to end soon. Indeed, the entire world will end soon - quicker if you’re in coastal cities. Antarctica’s glacial melting is now irreversible.
Who run the world (cup): There’s another World Cup that ended - The US Women are the new football (er, soccer?) champs! This is symbolic, of course - because of the charismatic skipper, Megan Rapinoe’s Twitter spat with Prime Turd Trump, and the boisterous calls (and crowd chants) for equal pay.
Our weird world
When life gives you Lehmans: Yes, Lehman Brothers stocks are worth something! Collectors are scouring eBay for them. Hmm, must check if there are Kingfisher Airlines documents lying around…
Cut them some slack: In “Either efficient or depressing” news this week - families in the US are increasingly using Slack to communicate.
Metal stimulation: There is a heavy metal knitting championship. And yes, it’s in Finland. Plus, the best way to teach your kids ABCs? Metallica’s new book.
Baggers can't be choosers: A Canadian store tried to shame plastic bag users by printing embarrassing messages on them. You can guess what happened next. Yes, people wanted to collect the funny bags so they bought more.
Je na sais turquoise: What happens when there's a toxic lake in Russia, whose chemicals give it a beach paradise-esque turquoise colour? Naturally, Instagrammers are flocking to it.
“Will summarize news for beer” interlude
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At home
Kangana Runout: Sorry to mention that word that triggers the worst semifinal memories for Indian fans, but hey we’re struggling to cope too and better run-out than pun-out. In Bollywood stars jumping the shark news, Kangana Ranaut first bizarrely lambasted a critic for being critical of her performances, then issued a non-apology in which she actually said: “there is nothing in the constitution to stop these pseudo-liberal types, so I’m taking it upon myself” finally leading to journalists standing their ground and pushing to boycott the actor.
Truth or raid: If you are a lawyer named Indira, and you’ve pursued cases against the best most knowledgeable venerable wisdomous home minister of India, Shri. Amit Shah ji, what are the chances that your offices will be raided by the CBI in 2019 for completely unrelated reasons that are not meant to silence or intimidate? Well, this is only a coincidence and a conspiracy theory. There’s no link between the two. Bharat Mata Ki Jai.
Pulp friction: The government’s latest attack on the media is an unconventional one: Raising import duty on newsprint. Is this a sort of depaperization? Since a digital pfaff slide saying “this is to boost credible digital news outlets like The Third Slip” has not been uncovered, our top guess is that someone told the government that material used by media could be dangerous and then their intelligence kicked in.
Putting the weep in sweep: BJP MPs try to use a broom for a photo-op without practising (or in Hema Malini’s case, probably never knowing what a broom is). What happens next is predictable facepalmery and Twitter trollage. Enjoy.
Casteaway: A Dalit man was hacked to death. By his in-laws. The rot runs deep. Also, watch Article 15. In another incident, the daughter of a BJP MLA run away with a man of another caste and fears honour killing and is putting out videos begging her dad to call off goons.
Pappu Sultan: So Rahul Gandhi has finally resigned as the Congress President. This is less like Elon Musk quitting Tesla, and more like Sultan Zarawani quitting the 1996 UAE cricket team: Attaining position and respect because of birth, and probably a nice guy but totally in the wrong post (Oh, and Sultan had the balls to face Allan Donald without wearing a helmet and got promptly hit on the head because he didn’t have the skills to duck - you can complete this painful analogy yourselves).
Last resort: There’s some sort of crisis happening in Karnataka government as some MLAs have left the ruling party for some resort or the other, leaving it majority-less. Nobody (except politicians) cares, of course - think of this as the announcements in Mumbai local train stations going kaput. Nobody would really notice and things would carry on fine (maybe better!).
Tech cetera
Doing fine: The USA’s FTC slapped Facebook with a $5b fine. After which share prices rose. Which means getting fined after mishandling user data is an excellent way to get richer. And you thought it would be slogging for IIT-JEE would be the way. Ha!
Finest hour: Facebook can swap notes with British Airways, which broke the World Record GDPR Fine this week.
Auto-mate: It’s not often there’s a positive Amazon story: The company is spending $700m to re-train its work force which could be replaced by automation.
Struct your stuff: Back home, the government seems to have finally woken up and ordered all e-commerce companies to tell it how they’re structured and what exactly they’re up to.
Netflix and chillar: A fabulous (and long) read about the wars to win streaming. There’s the big N… And everyone else.
For whom the bell icon takes toll: YouTube’s been trying hard to find ways for their creators to earn money: Like merch and tickets and stuff. So has Facebook. The Third Slip, of course, is looking at Patreons like you!
Social notworking: Don’t look now, but Google’s trying its hand at social networking again. At this point, it feels like a really bad comic repeatedly coming back for open mic slots thinking this time will be different. (Some of this our content may be autobiographical)
LinkedOut
Norway loves electric vehicles so much it’s now part of their tourism.
All that machine learning, it turns out, has a real environmental cost. Think about that next time you ask Alexa to play you cat videos
If the American ‘empire’ of “you have oil? Looks like you could use some democracy!” is collapsing, we should celebrate.
The internet’s central villain: Digital advertising (Maybe we should measure a new CPC - Cost Per Catastrophe?)
Even the most peaceful religion out there - Buddhism - is turning to militancy. Hooray for Nationalism.
That’s it for this week. If you’d like to get in touch with us, we’re on Twitter (Chuck | Tony). Or you can reach us on good ol’ email. Until next week, may someone remind you of your old email ID that brings a smile to your face.