The Third Slip: Issue 192.168.1.1
This week, we talk about boycotts, love jihad, RCEP, and a whole bunch of tech stuff. And some router jokes you never asked for. Don't steal our IP.
Hi everyone! Welcome to issue 192 of The Third Slip, the weekly newsletter which is like Madhya Pradesh’s new love-jihad rules. It adds nothing new, while packaging existing things with fancy verbiage to appeal to a trendy demographic for cheap thrills. This is issue 192, the number commonly found at the beginning of IP addresses. So let us just router you on to the news and all the nice Linksys we have for you. Yes, there are going to be bad jokes but we hope you’re not Belkin at them. Anyway… news time, so sisready, sissteady, Cisco...
What’s happening at home?
Cut JeM: Okay, first, we gotta give credit where it’s due. A planned terrorist activity in J&K by the Jaish was foiled. Well done to everyone who was involved, including the government. Bonus: The JuD chief & Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed gets 10 years.
Old outrage in new bottle: Like how an old advertising idea used for a failed pitch is just given a new campaign slogan and recycled for another one. This week, Madhya Pradesh’s state government said it would introduce a 'Love Jihad' bill. Now you could groan/celebrate (depending on your point of view) except… This is nothing new, laws already exist. This is just rebranding. So to make up for anything useful here, take this nice history of love jihad and how a silly issue has been politicized. It’s nice that at a time when our country’s being economically and pandemically ravaged, our lawmakers still take out time for things like this, or (as Barkha Dutt pointed out) marital rape, which still doesn’t have a law against it.
Best trolling: Amidst all this, the Uttarakhand government is actually offering ₹50,000 as a cash award for interfaith marriages to encourage such alliances. HAHA that’s amazing, what a progressive, forward-leaning… Wait, Uttarakh… Who is the party in power, did they mean Keral… Oh BJP… Wait. BJP just… Ok confused nothing makes sense anymore.
Geoffrey, what do we boycott today?: If you have the habit of getting on to Twitter, do yourself a favour and ignore the trending topics. Apart from stupid hashtags by phone companies, you’ll find the boycott du jour for the most random of reasons. After Swara Bhaskar complained to Zomato that their ads were funding hate on you-know-which-channel, the brand said they’ll look into the matter. We’ll leave it to you to figure what our cheerful IT cell did next. Some other brands were #boycotted for equally random reasons. But in a way this is a step up. A few years back we libtards would complain that all that these trolls would do is outrage. Now at least they provide a call-to-action as well.
Quickly, everything else...
SColding: “What mechanism do you have against fake news?” - Supreme Court asks Centre. Oooh, somebody gonna getta hurt, er, transferred real bad.
OPIndia: Important! PUBG might return to our shores, with an Indian workforce and local servers (and gaumutra power-ups, one assumes)
Festival of lights (we think, we can’t see them): A day after Diwali, Delhi’s air quality dips to its worst in four years.
Whotshop: Amit Malviya - the nice fellow who heads the BJP IT cell - has been put in charge of the party’s West Bengal election campaign. What does this mean? Expect mishinformation, not mishti doi.
Patna on the back: Nitish has been sworn in as Bihar’s CM again. Here’s a nice article of his astonishing transformation from Modi critic to Hindutva exponent.
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What’s happening around the world?
Trade block: Globalization lives! Globalization lives! This week, we saw news from two major regional trade agreements (which basically make trade easier, lowers tariffs, and all that). Africa got one step closer to ratifying a cross-continent thingy called AfCFTA. But the bigger story is the China-to-New Zealand RCEP. Which is either a great thing for Asian trade or another way for China to flex muscle, depending on your point of view. India definitely thinks it’s the latter and sat out, which could be a costly mistake, especially since, y’know, recession and all. All the atmanirbharism rhetoric won’t compensate for the hard fact that we still depend on countries for raw materials / manufacture / exports. Still, nothing an IT Cell hashtag can’t solve, eh chaps?
This adorable illustration by Harini Kannan who is now worried when the authors say things like “can’t wait for the next UN General Assembly Meeting”
Breminder: Brexit’s supposed to happen (pakka promise this time, our correspondent’s been told) by end of year. Nobody has any idea what is going to happen, but some smart people predict that the UK's growth will halve. Still, nothing some rhetoric delivered with a posh accent can’t solve, eh, guv’nor?
Taking the sin out of Sinaloa: Mexico might legalize weed, but given the underground, this could end up being very dangerous indeed. (Alt pun for this news piece: Narcos and Effect. Thanks.)
Won’t put the ban in Bangkok: Despite all those protests, Thailand’s parliament said we’re still gonna have the monarchy, thank you very much.
WFH WTF: Deutsche Bank reckons companies should levy a tax on employees working from home. See, now you’re outraged. How they could have appealed to the left is by rewording the major takeaway: “Deutsche Bank wants companies to pay those who need to physically come into office higher”. See, this is why you need good PR.
Wait and Washington: Haha lol you thought we were going to leave you without talking about the USA or what. Ok, see, so just assume that the Orange one is going to continue insisting he win, while firing people who say otherwise, while his personal lawyer continues making a fool of himself. Also assume everyone - business leaders, other countries, even the Republican party and FOX News - are simply carrying on, even as Biden continues making transition plans. Still, nothing actual American (not ‘Mericun) resolve and spirit can’t solve, eh? (great read, that, BTW)
Quote hanger
“Michelle would leave me” - Obama, on why he’s not taking up a role in the Biden administration.
Interlude: Outtakes from TTS Authors jokewriting session
Chuck: Machan you know I would get a letter to exactly your toilet no?
Tony: Er…
Chuck: I’d send it to your IP address
Tony: (mental note to never allow Chuck to author the first para ever again)
Whole bunch of tech and business news this week, accompanied by poor quality puns.
Didn’t get an F(B): Big Tech’s election post-mortem: Not too bad.
The Taipeing Point: China actually depends on Taiwan a lot. So maybe that bullying won’t escalate?
Going Elong on Private Space Travel: SpaceX becomes the first non-government company to launch humans into the ISS and let’s not for a moment pretend that pun wasn’t horrible.
My way or the Huawei: The Chinese telecom behemoth had to sell off Honor, because the US was cutting its chip supply. No idea what this means (even rival Xiaomi’s shares fell), except that it’ll lead to many people saying “Huawei lost its Honor” for many months.
Better Luck Next Time:Google Pay is now in the US and we wish our American brethren all the very best to get tickets to Philadelphia or wherever.
You will completely believe what happened next: Buzzfeed bought Huffpost, continuing the trend of media consolidation. Ezra Klein, who co-founded Vox, left his company for NYT, along with his chief editor.
Prime Pill: Amazon is now getting into the online pharmacy business and let’s just assume Jeff Bezos is eventually going to launch a left-lib pun-heavy newsletter to crush TTS in 2 years’ time, yeah?
AI-la: It looks like robots aren’t coming to take all our jobs after all. An MIT report says so. Unless, yknow, robots wrote it.
Putting the NA in Vienna: Apparently, Austria thinks if it bans something on the internet, nobody around the internet should be able to see it. Dei dei don’t give people ideas.
Listing listed: Airbnb’s going public. That’s pretty cool. One of our TTS authors wrote about it in his other newsletter you should totally subscribe to (it’s paid, but this one’s free for you folks).
Hey, what’s up with that virus thing?
Oh yeah, that. No stress. Both Moderna and Pfizer are rockin’ it with their vaccines which have just enough success rate to save the world but still get rejected by Delhi University. The major issue is, of course, refrigeration and logistics (though some firms are working on tech to solve that). Cases are almost at 200k per day in America (sorry - ‘Murica), Sweden’s stoic strategy seems to have failed, and in India, we’re reckoning with the general uselessness of Arogya Setu.
And in the cutest news of the week, the USA’s top infectious disease expert, Antony Faucis reassures kids that Santa has innate immunity and won’t spread Covid. Aw.
LinkedOut: Some great reads we came across this week
Harry Potter escapism on Tiktok.
The problem with market definitions in tech. Thought-provoking piece by Benedict Evans.
America (not ‘Murica). The can-do power.
Interesting article on why The Netherlands being the plant-based protein research capital of the world.
Fast Company spoke to two Amazon employees - one on the sidelines, one who worked from home. The results will not surprise you.
Prediction time is starting, and here’s a good place to start as The Economist looks to 2021.
And finally, let’s all just appreciate the amazing science behind the vaccines and why it’s such a big deal not just for Covid, but for future diseases. Science FTW.
And that’s a wrap for issue 192!
Say hello to the authors on Instagram (Chuck | Tony), Twitter (Chuck | Tony), or by replying to this email. Until next week, may your office not impose a WFH tax, while sending you a new router that never fails on you. See you next week!
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