The Third Slip: Issue 29 - Puns don’t kill people
Hello and welcome to Issue 29 of The Third Slip. 29, of course, is the highest prime number age that you can be single at before your aunts and uncles force you to become a composite number and factorise you into an arranged marriage. This issue, like many eligible bachelors, stands on its own - defiant, bold, and hoping to God that someone will right swipe it on Tinder.
That’s the way the Khakra crumbles
Let’s begin with this perfect visual metaphor for 3.5 years of Achhe Din - which involves claiming to know stuff you have no clue about, and in the process breaking the back of the economy, while sycophants cheer you on from the sidelines.
Achhe Din continued to make our lives glorious this week with some choicest cherries picked from the garden to try and tell us that the economy was in fact not all the way down the toilet as anti-nationals are suggesting, but it had just fallen in and we can pick it up, dry it, use it again and not tell anyone about it.
In unrelated news, GST on Khakra was reduced from 12% to 5%. And you don’t need a PAN card for jewellery purchases above Rs 50,000. What do you mean Gujarat elections are around the corner? We had no idea.
God’s own comedy
If you are from Kerala, or have spent any amount of time with Malayalees, you will realise that the BJP occupies the same amount of mind space as Sreesanth - they care about both only because they are prime fodder for some hilarious memes. This week, Amit Shah went to Kerala for a march titled “Janaraksha Yatra” to save the state from tasty beef curry, and promptly beat a hasty retreat ahead of schedule because, apparently, nobody cared he was around.
Now, if you are the BJP and want to influence a state that is widely regarded the best in class on Human Development Index parameters, who would you pick to show the people there that there is further scope for improvement? Why, Yogi Adityanath, of course. He showed us why satire in the form of fake news was rapidly going out of style by saying that Kerala should learn how to run hospitals from UP. Cannot.Add.More.Jokes.
What Taj?
Think ‘UP Tourism’ and what comes to mind? Exactly. Now that one thing has been taken off the list as well. Yogi bhai seems more insecure than an engineer who’s been told he needs to teach a newly-recruited IIM grad all his skills ‘by end of month’.
How Facebook uses its awesome technology
By apparently choking criticism of the BJP and the right. This could, of course, be inevitable - no bhakt is capable of writing something coherent enough for Facebook to understand, to block. Ah, loquaciousness shall be the fall of the left.
They were right - Aadhaar does have benefits
It gives scammers another way to get to your bank accounts, for instance. Yay!
Other random things
If anyone wants to do a parody song “Flip-flopper”, then this week’s candidate can be Arun Jaitley, who squashed his own economic logic to roll back oil price increase. Sure, the common man is important, but votes more so.
Remember the news about molestation during the Elphinstone Road tragedy? Turns out it didn’t happen. Bad, bad The Hindu.
Prakash Raj tried to criticise the best PM ever. He has a case against him now.
Guns do kill people :(
A shooting happened in Las Vegas, the worst in modern American history with close to 60 dead. The shooter was white, meaning the predictable followed. Best summed up by this tweet:
There have, shockingly, been 1516 mass shootings since 2013 in the US - a statistic that is 8-people-die-daily-on-Mumbai-locals-esque in its sheer regularity and apathetic reaction by officials. Conservatives maintain that this may not be the appropriate time to talk about gun control because gun control is sensitive and we don’t want to hurt its feelings. Data, on the other hand, suggests that gun control is clearly effective.
A bad analogy
Imagine an angry dog wants to bite you because you’re riling it up. A friend comes and calms it down. Then you tell your friend you’re wasting your time because the dog’s stupid and throw a rock at it. So that’s pretty much what happened when Trump said Sec of State Rex Tillerson was wasting his time trying to negotiate with Kim ‘Little Rocket Man’ Jong-Un. What does the dog do next? Keep saving up for that bunker. (Also, Rex called Trump a moron.)
How not to treat people in crisis
Puerto Rico was battered by hurricanes, and Trump shows up - throwing rolls of toilet paper like a rock star throwing out CDs to the crowd, basically said the locals weren’t doing enough and complained that the precious US budget was being thrown out of whack thanks to them. On the insensitivity scale, this is a hurricane.
How to treat people in crisis
Shunned by their own country (and its Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader) and gigantic India, the Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar had refuge in… Bangladesh, who plan to build one of the world’s largest refugee camps.
More From The Tangerine Turd
He said that companies don’t need to pay for employees’ birth control. Now, there are many sides to this, but here’s a shorthand: Religious groups are happy, which automatically means it’s a bad thing.
From the business pages
Quick: What situation is this likely to be? You get something taken from you, then you retaliate by bringing two friends to the fight and say “So there!”. Schoolkids fighting? Nah, just the Uber board, that’s all.
Possible new countries alert
Catalonia (of Barcelona fame) wants to break away from Spain, but that’s unlikely to happen, despite all the violence. Iraq’s Kurds want a separate country too, but regional pressures are on to make sure that won’t happen. Beleaguered Geography students heave a sigh of relief.
So much Google!
The new high-end Pixel phones were released. More high-end specs, more camera, new squeeze-to-Google (!). They also took away the headphone jack and introduced Pixel Buds, taking away the one point-and-laugh that Android fans had. But they have introduced a killer feature that will excite Douglas Adams fans - it translates languages real-time.Thanks, Google. And the adorable Google Clips? A camera that uses AI to take pics so you never have to. And a very expensive Chromebook.
A blow to food copywriters
The FDA has announced ‘love’ cannot be an ingredient. One wonders if the FSSAI would do a similar crackdown on pani-puri vendor’s, er, secret formula.
Tech
Everyone’s talking electric cars - someday, electric planes might be a reality, too.
If for some reason, you still use a Yahoo! email ID, now might be a good time to deactivate it. Verizon who (for some reason) acquired the company earlier this year, said all 3 billion email IDs (including, possibly, one author’s deepthegreat@yahoo.co.in) were compromised in the 2013 leak. Stop judging. The leak, that is.
You can say use any of these adjectives to describe Engineers - smart, intelligent, shy... But, the mot juste to classify all of them would be - Horny. (Questions on how much autobiographical truth there is in this joke may or may not be answered over email). A sex robot was at the receiving end this week as it was molested and broken by a few tech dudes. Yup, they were so horny that they broke a sex robot.
TTS Quiz:
Who are Karl Kreile and Bodo Mende? The first German gay couple to marry after legalization.
What has been described by Verge as a ‘high tech game of Frogger’? The International Space Station avoiding space junk.
LinkedOut:
Did you know there’s a documentary about Mahinder ‘Sexpert’ Watsa?
How Breitbart smuggled Nazi ideas into the mainstream
We just missed this last week, Sharda Ugra’s tribute to Tom Alter
That’s it for this week. Many thanks to all 0 of you who wrote in asking how the fever was. You can also not write to us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck). Another way to express your apathy is by ignoring this email address on which you can reach us. Until next week, stay indifferent.