The Third Slip: Issue 37 - We Air Quality, Indexed News
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that boldly asks the most important question that mainstream media is too scared to ask: ‘Why have you not subscribed to us yet?!’. This is issue 37. 37 as we all know is a prime number (which for the arithmetically challenged high functioning lateral thinker is not the most commonly used anaesthetic, but an integer that can only be divided by 1 and itself). Numerology fans will also know that the digits of the number 37 when added together gives 10 and when the digits of 10 are added together again, you get 1 and using this process we have successfully lost 30 seconds of our time on this planet in a completely pointless endeavour. What a beautiful metaphor for life itself.
New readers to The Third Slip may not notice this, but we are actually all about the news. This upfront disclaimer is necessary because you may not notice it even after you read one whole issue. Onward....
What’s happening at home?
Real excitement in an India Sri Lanka Series!!!!! No really. Nothing much has changed in the lack of competitive cricket department - Sri Lanka is still being thrashed by India, Virat Kohli is scoring double hundreds for fun, and Russell Arnold continues to be boring in the commentary box - but on Sunday there was real action in the Test Match at Delhi. (Editor’s note for our non-cricket following readers: Test Match, in this case, does not refer to what an arsonist does as part of his preparations, but to a variant of cricket played over 5 days). In the post-lunch session, several Sri Lankan players took to the field wearing masks because of the terrible Air Quality Index in Delhi. Finally, things came to a head when Sri Lanka had only 10 players on the field and Virat Kohli declared India’s innings (and some choice words for the Lankan players).
Just a gag: Remember from last week how the judge who was at the helm of a case in which Amit Shah was the accused probably didn’t die of a heart attack as was thought? This week, the CBI had enough and told the media they couldn’t publish proceedings. Thankfully several questions are being asked. Meanwhile, the government in power is busy upping the quality of political discourse in the country - saying Rahul Gandhi is a Catholic, not Hindu. (In unrelated self-preservation update, Chuck would like to clarify that his real name is Deepak Gopalakrishnan and therefore not Catholic, and Tony does not particularly like felines and is therefore not a cat-holic)
We’re growing: The Gross Domestic Product (For the uninitiated, GDP is an economic indicator and not the trash that you put outside your home every day) grew 6.3% in the last quarter, after 5 consecutive declines. Arun Jaitley said ““This indicates that the impact of demonetisation and GST is behind us,”, which loosely translates to “thank goodness you 1 billion suckers are hardworking enough to mask our political blunders and let us claim credit for it”.
Zomato Soup: This week, the online food ordering app received a dish it had not asked for - Steaming Hot Outrage with a side of Silly Sauce - because of its new advertising campaign. Social media continues to entertain and Zomato responded with a spicy new offering from their menu.
New Jersey: Sachin Tendulkar’s number 10 Jersey was retired by the BCCI, partly to preserve the man’s legacy and partly to quell outrage by his manic fans when other cricketers use the number. We are not sure if we can use 37 in this issue because the digits of 37 add up to 10... #recursiveJokeAndAll #SoCoolYeah
Chuckle Section: What tickled our toe-knees
How can she slap?!: In more “just Delhi things” an airline passenger and an Air India duty manager slapped each other in Delhi, then went to the police station, apologised to each other and resolved the issue amicably. Santa first put them on the naughty list and then had to take them off because an amicable resolution melts his heart.
Guilty Con-science: An Australian showed us how science has practical applications this week. Our hero played golf instead of being at work on 140 occasions in two years and avoided GPS detection by putting his personal digital assistant in a chips packet which acted as a Faraday Cage. He was fired from his job. Meanwhile, his impressive ability to shirk work and play golf instead has made him a worthy candidate to be the President of the United States.
The TTS There Is No Hope Section
Meanwhile, North Korea’s missiles are getting better. (This is not a good thing)
Universally recyclable headline: Right Wing party creates ruckus over religious non-issue. This time in Pakistan, where the Law Minister had to resign to end a three-week standoff.
The TTS Hope Section
Net Gains: Not all is gloom and doom even back home! Guess who is TRAIng very hard to keep net neutrality afloat in India, even as it looks to be crumbling in the US.
Going out to battery: South Australia fired up the world’s largest battery - built by Elon Musk who promised it would be done in 100 days, or free of charge. Green energy (or at least move pollution away from cities) FTW?
The Sitcom The World Doesn’t Need: The USA
That’s right! Trump shared anti-Muslim videos (some fake, some old) on Twitter, leading to the predictable praise from the right, more face-in-hands from the left, and even derision by Theresa May (who could use a few distractions from all that Brexit nonsense).
Israel capital shifting? Who’ll Tel Aviv? Trump wants it moved to Jerusalem, which will piss Palestinians off, please Trump’s right-wing base and generally mean some more middle-East fun over the next few weeks.
Flynn & Out Special counsel Robert Mueller has managed to get ex NSA dude Mike Flynn to plead guilty about lying to the Russians during the Trump campaign. This could be damning for the President and his grease-faced son. Don’t celebrate because president Pence could be much worse.
Putting the ex in Rex If you do a good job in Washington, chances are you’re on your way out. Secy of State Rex Tillerson made good sense recently - trying to negotiate with Kim the Rocketman, declaring Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingyas as ethnic cleansing… All of which meant Trump would kick him out eventually. Incompetence = longevity here. Or sexual misconduct, it would seem - all high-profile men who’ve done naughty things are being booted out by the week, except… Trump himself. Maybe because the thought of that wrinkled ol’ turd having sex in the first place is so revolting nobody wants to think of it, or maybe America just assumes Trump can have whatever sexual escapades he wants - after all, he’s been f***ing the USA for well over a year now.
US Logic When your people are killing people with guns, most civilised countries would think, take away the guns. Not the USA! They say “people might learn how to use guns better if we remove age restrictions”. The result? In Wisconsin, a 4-year-old killed a deer. Stay away from that country for a while… Like a few centuries (Not a few Kohli type centuries, but like actual 100 years.)
Tech & Biz
Gloating over your new 4k TV? Stop, because 10k might be coming. RIP data packages.
About Time TIME magazine (and the rest of the company) has been bought over by Meredith Corp, backed by conservative billionaires, the Koch Brothers. TIME has struggled with print, coming to prominence only when Trump tweets about how he so doesn’t care if he’s their person of the year.
Cryptocurren$$y Bitcoin has surged 1000% since January. NASDAQ now has Bitcoin futures. Despite all this, nobody understands how Bitcoin works.
Oh, Snap! Snapchat is desperately trying to do stuff to set it as the anti-Facebook. Which means its new features will be copied by Facebook soon. Meanwhile, for some reason, YouTube wants to do Stories too. STOP.
Quickie Corner
Best headline of the week: “Is Cocaine Vegan?”
The man who deserves a medal: Meet the dude who deactivated Trump’s account.
Stuff we don’t give a hoot about unless The Bugle reports it: Prince Harry got engaged. May 26 is the date to close your Twitter tab.
LinkedOut: Our favourite reads from the last week
Been missing our Aadhaar rants? No problem. Here’s a good one (which actually has data instead of poor jokes)
Amazon’s going all out to woo Indian merchants and niche products onto its site.
Don’t worry about China taking over the world - they’re doing way too many foolhardy investments and things. What you might want to worry about is a potential ripple effect in case things fail. That’s right, the next economic collapse could happen because of Communist China. Let that irony sink in.
A generation faces a lonely death. This fascinating long read on a depressing problem in Japan.
That’s it for this issue of The Third Slip. If you enjoy reading us, do share this with your friends, seed it on torrents, and rename your WiFi Network to The Third Slip so that your sneaky neighbour who leeches on it will also get to know about us. If you’d like to get in touch with us, we’re on Twitter (yeah, we’re cool like that) - Chuck | Tony. If you want to drop a note which we would dearly cherish and put up on our non-catholic Christmas trees, you can reach us on Gmail (yeah, we’re old like that). Until next week, we hope you don’t have to put on a mask. Bye!