The Third Slip: Issue 40 - 2G’s Badi Hai Mast Mast
Hello Slippers and welcome to The Third Slip - this week we are trending only at #2 in most important things of the week because of some little thing called Christmas. Bah, humbug! Okay, let’s not get cynical - it’s a beautiful time of the year, one where everyone puts aside their differences and joins hands to create something beautiful. The season to forgive and forget our minor transgressions - the season of sab mile hue hai and no one goes to jail. The only ideal today’s politician holds is the one that always puts under the lime light and he rejoices most when his chamcha tells him “Saab, lime hue hai”. On with the news...
HOME IS WHERE THE HURT IS
And you thought Manmohan Singh was silent? The main barb thrown by the quite locquacious BJP leaders in the buildup to the 2014 elections was the relative reticence of ex PM, Manmohan Singh. Well, after failing to say anything on gau-rakshak killings, the Rajasthan hate murder and other Hindutva-fuelled campaigns - let alone deaths due to demonetization and economic slowdowns thanks to GST - we’re wondering where all the loudspeakers are. Oh, that’s right - telling Rahul Gandhi off for watching Star Wars. So sorry.
Putting the mock in Democracy: Hey, remember the 2G scam of “Rs 1.76 lakh crores” (WTF is a lakh crore?! Probably the number of Zimbabwean dollars that would get you a tall Americano at Starbucks) when Peter Pettigrew Kapil Sibal one-upped Aryabhatta with the invention of zero-loss? Turns out the mother of all scams was actually not a mother at all. And we can’t even assume its gender. A special court acquitted A. Raja, Kanimozhi and everyone else accused in the case, and observed that the CBI had failed miserably in this investigation and had performed the same role as coherent writing does in a mainstream Bollywood blockbuster. Naturally, the UPA opened its closet and skeletons tumbled out rushing for microphones claiming “we told you so”
Adarsh Scam: The scam which all fledgling scams envy and look up to for its beautiful name is back in the news this week as the Bombay High Court set aside the governor’s nod to prosecute former CM Ashok Chavan in the scam involving the Adarsh Housing Society, which tops the list of TTS’ year-end list ‘Most Unlikely South Bombay Heritage Monuments We Missed in 2017’.
Also making its return to ‘Scams You Thought Everyone Forgot’ Lalu Yadav got convicted in the fodder scam case and is back to jail. So yes, this one has a happy ending.
Connect the dots above y’all! It’s a magical time of the year, and so let’s relive The Prestige: Every great magic trick consists of three parts - the first part is called The Pledge - The politician claims he will fight to uproot corruption, for instance. The second part is called The (u)Turn - Under the same politician, all scams that once were magically become non-scams. But wait, you won’t clap just yet. Because the best part is the one that follows: The Prestige - the same politicians will promise you the same thing in the next election cycle and we’ll all chant his name like transfixed sheep. Yay 2019!
The North Polls, The Right Trolls The BJP won Gujarat and Himachal. Nobody really cares about the latter, but the former was less comprehensive as it was supposed to be - either the Congress created a dent, or people finally woke up to how crap the ruling government is. The fact that this happened in the PM’s home state makes it all the more significant, but that little blip didn’t stop super-defensive social media trolls from saying all was well, 2019 is in the bag, and even berating poor RaGa for going and watching Star Wars after the defeat (does this mean the authors should not have played Contra after failing to clear IIT JEE? No wonder we’re stuck making newsletters now). The BJP’s less-than-polite approach to win the elections has even got it flak from… The RSS. Which is like being told off by Geoff Boycott for playing a tad too defensively. Also yes, we know, Gujarat is not ‘north’ but making the pun work is more important to TTS Authors than factual correctness.
We’re not hacks: One of the things TTS has not reported over the last few months is about the allegations of EVM tampering. This was a conscious call despite the noise around this, because it is important to cast doubt in the direction of logic, and separate facts from fantasy. We do not think large-scale EVM tampering and poll hijacking is logistically possible or easy to pull off. Here is a look at why it takes a heck of a lot to hack an EVM.
Oh, and Merry Christmas! Unless, of course… You’re a Hindutva group, who tries to throw a saffron rag over everything. Want to celebrate this anti-India festival? Go to, er, Pakistan.
AROUND THE WORLD IN HATE-Y DAYS (ugh)
Is(this the)rael Life? It's mostly just fantasy. If you’d ever wondered what the world would be if a bunch of 8 year olds ran the most powerful country in the world, now you have it. After Trump said Palestine will be Israel’s new capital, the rest of the world (almost) said lolbro and voted against, in a resounding 128-9 vote in the UN General Assembly. Not pleased, Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, actively threatened the other countries, cut aid to some of them, while throwing a party for the 8 ‘friends’. Also keep in mind the president eats a lot of junk food and Diet Coke - he’s just a Spongebob Squarepants underwear away from actually being an 8-year-old. Which… Never mind.
The latest with the Orange Ogre Oh, he just pffafed some more on how the US needed to protect itself against Russia, China (both of whom are quite pissed off now), Iran and North Korea, forgetting he’s not campaigning anymore. And as marketing students, both authors are now keen to learn from Trump - how he manages to sell something so bad for the American Public (the tax code) to them. Genius. The tax code, by the way - is probably great for the short term, will be cheered on by corporations, but is pretty much going to hurt American in the long term, and everyone who’s not an unprincipled Republican or reads things like ‘17 Stocks to Ensure You Can Buy Your 3rd Yacht by 2019’ will suffer. Several companies have, however taken some press-release-friendly ‘benefit trickle down’ measures.
A Streisand Effect for Obamacare Trump’s mission to undo everything Obama has done has had a strange effect - it ended up creating more visibility for said everything, making more and more people realise those things weren’t that bad in the first place. The result? Close to 9M people signed up for Obamacare, despite everything Trump did to relegate it to Breitbart’s list of ‘10 Things The Glorious Nation of Nazi America Won’t Miss in 2018’.
That’s (not) right As authors of TTS, we try to be as balanced as possible with respect to political reporting, but our inclination to tilt slightly leftwards is not a secret. That’s probably also because anything going the other way - principles apart - has been associated with nothing but bad news in the last two years. So it’s worrying that the cancer that’s got the US by the balls (an apt choice of words given who the president is) and occasionally flirts with the various scrota of Europe has now spread to several countries in South America - where now Chile is the latest ‘victim’ with a presidential victory for a conservative. The left hasn’t exactly done themselves any favours, for any Google search for ‘Latin America left government’ inevitably ends with lists such as ‘17 Hugo Chavez jokes you missed in 2017’.
BIZ AND TECH
Can we make it feel like 2015 again? Sure. Ola buys Foodpanda (yay, food offers?), there’s a $500 smart pillow, and a $399 ‘smart oven’ raised money from VCs. Breathe in that glorious air of optimism enough, and it’ll almost feel like there’s no chance a deranged lunatic becomes president of the United States. If you want something more 2017, though, here’s a 34-page document compiled by an ex-Uber employee, of alleged criminal activity he’s seen while at said company.
iPhone 5S - S for Slow So Apple admitted they slow down older phones to deal with battery issues. While that might be a legit reason, most people are outraged that they didn’t get to know of this earlier. So now people are leaning towards Androids that probably do the same thing anyway, but have the benefit of being the less cool underdog that nobody can hate, even if some variants make it to ‘List of Spontaneously Combusting Gadgets You Can Use If Your Fireworks Display for NYE 2018 Falls Short'.
Old Uncle Fitting In News:You can request for an Uber on BBM Messenger. Please expect Amazon deliveries to happen through Orkut scraps, next.
Food goodness’ namesakes! Poor DJ Ajit Pai is getting a lot of hate, not for playing music via a USB but for sharing a name with the dickwad who killed net neutrality. Watch out, DJ Donald Trump!
OTHER FUN THINGS
It’s said that IKEA is one of the most innovative companies around, and that’s true. Just ask the European Union, who had a look at its rather creative corporate structure which helps it avoid taxes.
Edward Snowden now has an app! And yes, it helps protect you.
In just 5 years too late, after focusing on more important things like round display images, Twitter clamps down on hate speech
Accenture’s latest client for digital communications? The Vatican!
If you’d like to give that complacent heart of yours a bit of a workout, we highly recommend investing in Bitcoin. You will now have an average daily heart rate equivalent to what would arise if you were to do Crossfit all day.
Facebook is clamping down on posts that shamelessly beg for engagement. Which means if The Third Slip were a Facebook post, it would be demoted by their algorithm. Thankfully it’s not, so please please validate us. Love me, love me! Oh look, mistletoe!
Heartwarming News: When Netflix helped a guy propose to his girlfriend. Total aw.
TTS Trivia Section
Who’s the new chairman (and lifebelt-giver) of Hyperloop One? Richard Branson, of course.
What’s 25004? The percentage return of a Bitcoin hedge fund in 5 years. One more week has passed, and still, nobody understands how it works.
LinkedOut
When Jerusalem changed the world. A look at its history over 100 years.
The quiz writer is a magpie by nature, a collector of facts and curiosities. An interview with Thomas Eaton
Plug: A short story written by one half of TTS is on Juggernaut. A fun, light read, with rave reviews from the other half of TTS.
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So that's it then, for the penultimate issue of TTS for 2017 (!). Thank you for reading this far (this issue and all the ones so far). Have we made your list of 'Best Things To Happen To Me In 2017'? We use darn hope so, because it's made it to both of ours. Say hello to us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck), or if you're feeling less trolly, Instagram (Tony | Chuck) or even email! Till next week, have a good Christmas. You can fill up OUR stockings by sending TTS to a friend who will enjoy it. Or even hate it - apparently hate spreads faster than love, and we could use the visibility so we can cash out to a VC while they still exist. We might lean to the left on some accounts, but what's left in our accounts are quite lean. Cheerio, Slippers!