The Third Slip: Issue 153 - Douche ex machina
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip, the weekly newsletter that's like Burger King's moldy burger campaign. It’s a campaign to showcase that we’re more than just a piece of meat and tight buns, we can ham it up and be cheesy as well. And even though this thing has gone stale and moldy no one can deny we’re funguy.
This is issue 153. 153, as you know, was Virat Kohli's score in the second test against South Africa in Centurion. Remember last decade when Kohli used to score centuries at will? Now we just wake up at 4AM for 5 days to watch India lose to New Zealand. Oh well, all good things come to an end. Which is probably why we're left with only the depressing stuff, like the news…
At Home
Gold of the machine: Deus ex machina (God of the machine), the hitchhiker's guide Wikipedia says, is a “plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence”. Someone read it with a typo and came up with the most fabulous story to solve all of India’s problems - a nonexistent 3000 tonne gold deposit in Sonbhadra in UP. It was tweeted not just by the likes of Amit Malviya, even by the MoS for commerce. Said story was such fake much wow that multiple news outlets carried it before GSI stepped in and debunked it. No miracle then, just a few hours encapsulating what the last 6 years has been like. As you were...
Machine of the Gods: Can anything be Supremer than the Supreme Court? Dear Leader of course. Who is not a man, but a God really. Don’t take our word for it, ask SC judge Arun Mishra who called him a “versatile genius” who “thinks globally and act locally”. This could have been the perfect sentence for a mouthwash product placement if we were a sellout media outlet. (But sadly, we’re not. So you can support us on Patreon instead. Heh). But, occasionally, when the Courts aren’t being puppeted by the government, they can be pretty awesome. This week, they allowed permanent commission for women officers, upheld the right to protest, and started a mediation team to speak to the Shaheen Bagh protesters.
God of the machination: Uddhav Thackeray met with Modi and said “Nobody needs to fear CAA/NRC” in much the same way that the class rep went to the prof about assignment date extension but came back saying “It’s in our best interest to submit it on the original date only guys”.
Dog of the machine: Sad pug. Yes, Vodafone is screwed. A merger with BSNL is an unlikely but excellent solution.
Matching of the Gods: Some matches are made in heaven, others just light fires wherever they go. Orange meets Saffron. OMG he’s coming to India finally. Come on, you know he’s going to say something stupid / inappropriate. Will he say something delightfully stupid about that wall in Ahmedabad? Perhaps CAA? How he loves Muslims like Modi does too? How he loves the Indian tribes back in the US? One assumes he has no idea what or who a Kashmir is - so no opinion there. He’s already tweeted out a video in which he’s … um… Baahubali. Anyway, the poor are being walled away, so that dear Orange sees nothing but a nice, shiny saffron India. Also, Melania Trump is going to be shown the fabulous Delhi schools, but Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia are being kept away. Meanwhile, no one knows the private organisation Donald Trump Nagrik Abhinandan Samiti which has invited him, and there’s going to be no trade deal, so one assumes this is entirely to satiate Modi’s need for optics, and Trump’s ego - he probably thinks all 1.3b Indians plan to come out to see him. Still, 56% of our countrymen approve of him, so…
Rage against the machine: Antinationals this week
The youth: Who are going from village to village to spread Gandhi’s teachings and telling everyone why CAA is bad.
The law itself: Which doesn’t allow census machinery to build NRC. Expect an amendment soon.
This teenager who believed in basic free speech and nuance: Who Zindabaded Pakistan, yes - but also Zindabaded all other South East Asian countries. But, as it turns out, there isn’t any point in expecting nuance from a raging bull. She was charged with sedition and her house was attacked.
Er… BJP’s own Subbu Swamy: Saying GST was madness. Um… Ah, what.
International
:(
Going viral: The Coronavirus has now killed over 2000 people, mostly thanks to China’s “what virus bro?” approach. And as if we needed another reason for US-China relations, xenophobia and the world economy to worsen. Air travel is down. Even Amazon and Apple are facing issues. Scientists are hard at work on a cure, and it makes me wonder why hedge fund managers are paid more than these stalwarts. India is doing its bit, by being the world leader in creating fake videos about the virus. Yay!
At Auschwitz’ end: A far-right terrorist opened fire on immigrants in Germany, killing 9. The far right. Germany. Hates people not like them. We’ve been here before.
Putin his finger into the elections: Apparently, Russia is working hard to try and get Trump re-elected. They won’t need to try too hard, given how the Democrats are self-destructing (especially Bloomberg’s disgusting throw-money-at-it campaign), so much so that the rest of the world is readying for four more years of the Orange Turd, best demonstrated by how they’re ignoring poor sec-of-state Mike Pompeo who is on a “please love us” tour of Europe and Africa. Meanwhile, Trump granted clemency to 11 “white collar” criminals and installed his stooge as head of national security. After all, he declared himself USA’s “chief law enforcement officer”.
Points and laughs: Britain has announced a new points-based immigration system to keep only the ‘best and brightest’ in. It’s… not going to go well.
:)
Kandahar can end a war: So the US & Taliban are agreeing to wind down their war. Meanwhile, someone from the Taliban wrote an op-ed in the NYT and the paper was predictably lampooned.
Pouring oil on troubled waters: Even Big Oil is waking up to climate change - BP wants to go carbon-neutral.
:’D
In(dia)tolerance: “This is Pakistan, not India” - Islamabad HC CJ, opposing curbs on Free Speech. H8ers will now tell him to go to… Oh wait
Out of Parasite: Trump made fun of the fact that a South Korean movie won an Oscar. The studio replied saying that made sense, since he can’t read. The president of the United States of America. What a time to be alive.
:’)
The One With No Clever “The One With” Jokes: But hey, there’s a FRIENDS reunion.
Tech
Winter of diss content: Did you know that the authors of TTS are also co-hosts of the Simblified Podcast? This week we mansplained Facebook’s Content Supreme Court. In related news, that law that allows tech firms to wash their hands off content that’s posted on it by others? That’s being debated.
Pledge Edge: Jeff Bezos looks like he’s had enough of people saying he’s not philanthropic enough and Amazon isn’t doing enough to fight climate change, so he’s putting in a whopping $10b of his personal fortune to aid efforts. Wow. That gives him immense influence over how climate change policy / research could be shaped over the next decade. But hey, we’ll take it. The world needs it. Good on ya, Jeff.
A coup of Java: The latest tech fight: Oracle vs Google over whether the latter copied former’s code to make Android
Brussels Sprouts: The EU is increasingly starting to dictate tech regulation. Good.
RIP: Larry Tessler, the man who gave us cut, copy & paste. Larry Tessler, the man who gave us cut, copy & paste.
PS I love you: A nice read about how ‘photoshop’ became a verb. Though, the company would prefer you say “The image was modified using Adobe® Photoshop® software.” (really).
LinkedOut
If you need to back up and revisit what Modi & the BJP have done to India, this is a good long-read.
This critical op-ed in the WSJ got three of the paper’s writers kicked out of China (but it makes valid points - something Xi seems to have a problem with).
Delhi elections saw the first use of deepfake videos in India.
Behind New Jersey’s hilarious Twitter account!
It’s hard to take some positives out of the Coronavirus-affected cruise ship, but the wonderful notes left by grateful passengers to the crew is one. And this incredibly empathetic letter by the CEO to the crew, offering them 2 months’ paid leave. There is some good in the world.
That’s it for this week. If you’d like to get in touch with us, we’re on Instagram (Chuck | Tony). Or you can reach us on good ol’ email. Until next week, may you never have the need to speak on the phone with your cab driver. Bye!