The Third Slip: Issue 130 - The gift of the cab
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that’s responsible for bringing the entire media industry down since millennials subscribe to us and no longer consume traditional news media. We don’t even need an IPO to let the world know that we’ll never make any money, but we’d love for you angels to invest in us.
This is issue 130, coincidentally published on Engineers’ day by two engineers who are known in their friends’ circles for doing a variety of things on a daily basis - none of which are engineering related. Unless, of course, you believe in anagrams and have worked out that engineers is an anagram of sneeering. Yes, we engineered that with an extra e to intensify the biting sarcasm. Like they say, life is a btech. And now for something completely different - the news…
International
Metaphors be with you: Brexit is still complete chaos… Instead, take this pic of PM Boris Johnson doing... something.
Giving us a long Europe: Meanwhile, EU ministers are meeting up to see how they can further lessen fossil fuel use. So if you need to choose a continent to emigrate to… We have a tip.
Vlad-am-i-’earing?: Putin’s opponents are winning elections in Russia. This is shocking because:
Putin has opponents?!
Putin has opponents who are alive?!
Russia has elections?!
Familiar Tehran: An Iranian woman wanted to watch a football match in a stadium, which is banned (!). She got caught and tried to set herself on fire, and died. Her country in the meantime brazenly continued its march towards nuclear annihilation.
Ben & jeery’s: Israel’s Netanyahu is amping up the rhetoric himself, targeting Iran (probably to impress Russia & USA). Facebook even suspended his campaign account for hate speech.
Nominal variation: The big news this week was the US Democratic primary debates - things are essentially a three-horse race between Biden, Sanders & Warren - the latter’s been on the rise and rightfully so. Can Trump be beaten? Only Trump can beat Trump, he’s imploding while deepening connection with his brainwashed base.
USmmary: Elsewhere, Trump fired his national security advisor John Bolton fired (That’s 51 so far for this administration, worse churn than an ad agency after appraisal time), allowed factories to pollute water more, absolutely screwed up a stupid ‘negotiation’ he wanted to do with the Taliban while his stooges in the supreme court have allowed him to close the border to a lot of migrants (At a time when the US is more racially diverse than ever and most new workers are minorities). Elsewhere, business leaders and mayors are asking Congress to do something about gun violence, and Big Pharma is finally getting its comeuppance for its role in the opioid epidemic. This is a country where a fast-food chain’s new chicken sandwich is doing so well that it’s told people they can bring their own buns.
But before we move on to the Indian shit show...
The boy who cried volfefe: JP Morgan - not the first name you think of when it comes to satirically-named financial products - developed an index of stocks, volatile under ‘Covfefe’ Trump, and they called it… The Volfefe index.
Bahamian Rhapsody: After hurricane Dorian, The Bahamas is still open for tourism! This reminds us of a certain Kerala ad :’)
Figurine it out: A 6-year-old wrote to a toy company asking why there were no female armypeople figurines. The company is rolling them out next year. Maybe in about 30 years, we can have 6-year-olds writing to toy companies asking what a gun-wielding human is.
Hari potter: Mumbai and Delhi are among the world’s highest pot consumers. This correlates exceptionally with our reader demographic as well. We’re not saying that correlation implies causation, but well done, TTS readers!
India
Marital Arts: Our favourite headline this week: “Frogs That Were Married in July to Please Rain God Now 'Divorced' After Severe Rainfall in MP” - News18. Isn’t trickle-down economics wonderful?
Hindisight bias: It turns out that Hindi Divas is not the collective noun for the bunch of drama queens currently running our country. It’s a day for Amit Shah to shove Hindi down everyone’s throats and for several people to tell us how we should learn our national language. We’re not going to educate them on how Hindi is not our national language, because, you know, they may just rewrite the constitution in 3 days just to shut us up.
Gold, Kashmir, and frank-incense: India and Pakistan continue to squabble about Kashmir, but as long as it’s words and not bullets - let ‘em do what they want. Meanwhile, it’s been over 40 days and the most ideal democratic shutdown vow of silence of the people of Kashmir continues because India is treating them so well.
Putting the cab in the cabinet: In any other week, Piyush Goyal’s ridiculous Einstein-didn’t-need-Maths-to-discover-gravity statement would have taken the top prize. Just his bad luck that Niramalaji’s got the gift of the cab. Elsewhere, our plastic waste sorter extraordinaire gave us a golden quote... “Some people, the moment the words Om and gai (cow) fall on their ears, their hair stands on end.” - Modi. Why, yes, sir, that is true - they’re often just trying to escape your friends, the lynchers. Meanwhile, the government is trying to use media to tell us that Kashmir is fine and cutting down all those trees in Aarey is okay.
Handing love: Lastly, something positive: This pic of Hindus & Muslims in harmony celebrating their respective festivals together <3
Tech cetera
Huff - Big Tech’s trying to fix itself: Google will promote original reporting (we at TTS expect a surge in traffic), every week FB does something or the other to make sure 2020 won’t be like 2016 (though, with FB’s user base, it’s like whack-a-mole… This week we found what a trove of fake news Instagram is - beyond influencers photoshopping clouds)
Puff - or employees will remind them: Amazon workers are going on strike over the company’s inaction on climate change. This follows a trend of tech workers standing up for what they believe is right.
Blow them down - otherwise, lawmakers will do it for them: Antitrust proceedings against Google & Amazon are underway. But the biggest tech news of the week - California demanded that gig economy companies like Uber make its contract workers employees - leading to jubilation (workers), indignation (companies), inspiration (other cities) and confusion (other semi-gig-economy companies). Probably unrelated - Uber laid off 400+ employees. This on the back of a 5 billion dollar loss. Don’t be too sure about renewing that share pass.
Odd or eleven: New iPhones for your rich office hipsters to show off. But at least they’re becoming more sustainable.
Ma lyf Ma rulz: Jack Ma retired from Alibaba, but not before he looked like he was auditioning to headline Glastonbury.
E-vaporate: Quitting vaping is a cool trend in the US, as vaping itself was once. Going up in smo… Er, vapour.
LinkedOut
Google, the beacon of happiness and morality, endured 3 years of hell (a great read).
The sad saga of Chhatisgarh’s drive to recruit transgenders for police.
The logic-defying dominance of men’s tennis’ Big Three.
A lovely read on the surprisingly insane physical demands of… Chess.
20 years ago, WiFi came into being. Here’s the story of how it almost didn’t happen and was almost called FlankSpeed.
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 you co-exist separately and together like the many ingredients in an Onam Sadhya. Burp!