The Third Slip: Issue 54 - The AfterMath
Hello Slippers, and welcome to The Third Slip, the weekly satirical newsletter in the new financial year. We’ve just been told by our marketing department that it does not exist and what fantasy world are we living in? But, in solidarity with big brands getting some good PR, we have deleted The Third Slip Facebook page which had millions of ‘likes’. Yes, that’s right. It's April 1st, don't believe everything you read on the internet today. Just like the other 364 days in the year.
Today is also Easter Sunday and it fittingly coincides with April Fool’s Day, because this day 1989 years ago according to the world’s major religion, Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest April Fool’s Day prank by resurrecting himself. You should have seen the look on the faces of his persecutors. Jesus, of course, famously said "Law is made for man, and not man for the law" and received the reply "That and all okay, you please voluntarily enroll for Aadhaar now, it's already past March 31st".
On with the news...
Sports
Tamper Tantrams: For the second week running, we lead with some depressing sports news - this time the aftermath of the yellow tape sandpaper saga. Cricket Australia crafted bans of 12 months each for Smith and Warner and 9 months for Bancroft. Then Steve Smith broke our hearts with a tearful press conference that was hard to watch. The average Aus-man feels that the sanctions were too harsh, but Osman tells us why Australia has had this coming for a while.
Who’s the man? Zlatan: TTS Trivia: Who puts a smile on our face after some depressing sports news? Zlatan Ibrahimovic of course. Last week we reported how he joined LA Galaxy in style. This week, he debuted for them and scored a 90th-minute winning goal after opening his account with a screamer. Everyone can go home now. (Please don’t, please read the rest of this newsletter no?)
Home
This doesn’t add up: What’s worse than a X standard maths board exam? Two X standard maths board exams. That’s right, after a paper leak some students will have to retake the X Maths and XII Economics board exams again. This is like that exam nightmare we all have from time to time coming true. (No? Just me?)
How many cups of tea does it take to change a lightbulb?: 18,500 apparently. The Maharashtra Chief Minister’s Office is under a tea scam allegation. To be fair though, we all drink around 18,500 cups of coffee to get through Monday.
True Digital India: The NaMo app has more permission requirements than your girlfriend’s dad, and shares all info with a US company. Meanwhile, instead of doing something about Facebook+Cambridge Analytica, the BJP & Congress continue to give us tennis that shames that Mahut/Isner match: Lobbing the ball into each others’ court (heh) since forever.
Suseguard: Residents in Goa want villages to stay that way, and are protesting urbanization (Bonus joke: Did you know Goans call cricket abdomen protectors ‘susuguards’?)
Respect my Aadhaarity: After ‘women are safer here than Saudi Arabia’, comes ‘Your data is safer with Aadhaar than with Facebook’. The government seems to have aced the Logical Reasoning section of CAT while missing the point like Roberto Baggio.
Je sui cide: If you want to commit suicide, then skip the messy/uncertain jumping/hanging/rat poison and just do some inconvenient journalism. Like poor Sandeep Sharma who uncovered illegal sand mining in MP, begged for police protection, and was promptly run over by a truck. No, not shady at all. If you insist on journalism, stick to reviewing restaurants. The prestige might not be there, but the worst thing that could happen to you is food poisoning.
Khaps and Balls: As always, the good news of the week came from our Supreme Court, who told Khap Panchayats to bugger off, consenting adults can live together if they want to. Er… Heterosexual married ones as of now, but hey, any step in the right direction will do for now, standards are pretty low.
Post-mortem: Oh, and vitriolic site Postcard News’ founder got arrested for spreading fake news. We stand safe, there are no laws around bad puns as of yet (However, in China…)
All class, no caste: In some heartening news from Kerala, 1.24 lakh students have stated that they don’t belong to any religion or caste as per their enrollment records.
International
News that surprised many people
#DeleteRussia: Of all the countries to wag a finger at Russia poisoning those spies in England, one didn’t expect the one led by the one who delivered a ‘Hey Vlad, congrats on winning that sham of an election’ message. Well, the US did just that, joining 17 other countries to jettison Russian diplomats. Keen to give some back, Russia expelled 150 westerners themselves, in this global diplomosmosis.
Kim-chi: North Korean bad-haircut-in-chief Kim visited Beijing. This is his first foreign visit since ‘taking’ office in 2011. Look forward to a Tripadvisor review of T-Square! (India also met China to talk about trade imbalance and all that, and hopefully bring back some nice technology and cuisine better than Gobi Manchurian) He will also meet South Korean head Moon Jae-in (who deserves some of the praise for Kim’s irrationally diplomatic behaviour of late) - best case world peace, worst case, Hello Kitty-themed nuke bombs.
Is it too late to say sorry?: (Justin Bieber reference to attract a younger audience to TTS. Soon we shall be on Snapchat too) Anyway, Facebook said sorry using print ads. Aww, you guys <3
I’m missing more than just your story: (Story rhymes better than body no? Justin, if you want lyrics consultants…) Well, they kinda needed to, Facebook lost $100 billion (!) in market value and nothing prompts corrective action like the looming threat of falling profits. An internal memo from 2016 also showed one of the top execs of the company saying ‘growth at any cost’, including potential deaths. And Playboy deleted its account. Oh no.
Putting the nasty in gymnastics: While everyone zigs to hate Facebook, Trump zags to hate Amazon. Whataguy!
News that surprises some people
Five stars: The best place to work in the US is… Amazon.
Handle with care: Trump now wants your social media handles for a visa - thankfully ‘Newsletter’ is not one of the several platforms asked for.
Jail Fail: Malaysia will imprison you for a decade if you spread fake news!
Zuck received two event invites: Testifying in Britain, and testifying to US Congress. He turned the former down. He also told all FB users: Hey, you signed up for this!
Bald Eagle: You might remember Eagles of Death Metal - the band at whose concert that Paris shooting happened. Their lead vocalist turns out to be a bit of a turd - slamming the anti-gun protests. Well... What do you expect from a Trump supporter? (Oh, oops - ex-fans are not amused)
Cairo On: That Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will be re-elected as Egypt’s PM is such a foregone conclusion that people aren’t even bothering to come out to vote. Obviously keen to avoid Putinesque optics, his government is paying people to just come out and vote!
You-safe? Sigh: Malala returned to Pakistan for the first time since the 2012 attack!
News that surprises 0 people
Eye of a Stormy Daniels: The former porn star continues to be a thumb in Trump’s eye: suing his former lawyer who tried to buy her silence. She’s now joined by other people accusing Le Prez of naughty doings. At a time when L’Orange needs all the legal help he can get, he refuses to hire them - sort of like a patient in the ICU rejecting oxygen saying “Let’s do this the way real men do.”
Status update: Trump, in the meanwhile, wants to ask people in a survey what their citizenship status is - which is much like joke about a Pepsi employee testing positive for ‘Coke’.
This week in #NotTheOnion
Elder Japanese women are deliberately getting arrested because prison offers better community and care than real life. looooooooool
Business
Annoying shareholders are forcing Shell to look at Hydrogen-based energy. Ugh, why can’t these greentards let us burn our fossil fuels in peace?
Apple made a cheaper iPad to get back into education computing, but Chromebooks are still a better, cheaper option.
Gene-edited food is coming. Get used to it.
LinkedOut
Forget self-driving cars. What we need are self-parking ones.
Clearly, this whole give-data-for-free-services thing isn’t working out as well as we hoped it would. A pivotal moment in technology, maybe? (And some more what-would-a-new-social-network look like)
This is a damning, scathing look at the PM of India: His past, his psyche, and his followers. The last paragraph (don’t read that first) is the last-over equivalent of what Holding did to Boycott. Brutal.
There’s a lot of talk about Cambridge Analytica and the Facebook data leak story. Here’s why most of the reportage is rubbish.
That’s it for issue 54 of The Third Slip. Have something to say? You can find us on Twitter (Chuck | Tony). Or better yet, send us your thoughts, feedback, suggestions etc on email. We’d love to hear from you. Have a lovely week ahead, may you roam a random street at night and break into an off-key song that makes you happy. Bye!