The Third Slip: Issue 59 - Stop The Pres!
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the newsletter that is a 5-time winner of The National FML Awards but we’ve got nothing to show for it because, to paraphrase Groucho Marx - we refuse to accept any award that would choose us as its winner. That’s right, this newsletter has unoriginal humour and quite often its authors appear Grouchy and Marxist. In reality, we are not party animals. We just embrace satire in its etymological sense - broken down as sat-ire - wherein you rest with your bum in a chair for several hours and feel righteous rage at the wrongs in the world, and so loudly proclaim it through bad puns which are infinitely sexier than bad words.
What ho! What ho! What ho!
At home
Ko with the vind: In an unpresidented unprecedented National Film Awards function, several awardees boycotted the ceremony as only 11 winners would be awarded by the President this year. The confusion occurred because apparently, the President as per his new protocol will attend all such functions only for a duration of 1 hour unlike the ones during the previous 64 years. The blame fell neatly on the Information & Broadcasting Ministry which for its part looked genuinely stuck in the middle with no viable options saying “Bro, what did I even do? This is like getting run out off a straight drive while at the non-striker’s end.”
The President of India does not really hold any executive powers or make any important decisions on his own in a normal state of affairs, but we must remember that he is also not a figurehead or a rubber stamp. The duties of The President has been described as “unputdownable” not because it’s a thrilling read (let’s face it, even your quizzer friend will have to Google to tell you what The President really does), but because even in 2018 blasphemy is a thing and you can’t really criticise the first citizen of India. In other news, attempts by all other non-first citizens of India to alter their job descriptions and cut down their working hours from 8 a day to just 1 was met with deserved scorn and derision.
BJP Labs: Older citizens of the internet will remember Google Labs, where Google tried and tested some wild products in the real world until it shut down in 2011. Taking a cue from the Silicon Valley giant, the BJP has unleashed its own set of social experiments in the real world. The first prototype has his name derived from the idea itself Tripura CM, Bjplab Biplab Deb who continues to shock and amuse with ‘Mahabharata Internet’, ‘real Indian beauty that is not Diana Hayden’, ‘Civil Engineers for Civil Services and not Mechanical engineers’, and advice for the youth of the nation - ‘open paan shops and milk cows instead of seeking government jobs’.
This experiment serves the dual purpose of helping evaluate the limits of idiocy people will put up with before they realise they’re part of an experiment, and in a genius use of the Contrast Effect make its other leaders like Yogiji look like legit leaders.
Exponent 2 of the experiment Sadhvi Saraswati went to Kerala last week and said that people who slaughter cows should be slaughtered in the public square. But, the quick brown foxes from the state saw through the nonsense experiment and inundated the Sadhvi’s Facebook page with delicious beef recipes. You’ve been served. With lots of deep fried coconut slices, shallots, and garlic. Yum!
<Apologies for a 15-minute break as the above item has elicited some Pavlovian reflexes and the authors will now go off to pound some porotta with beef fry>
Tharoorbacks: Shashi Tharoor who increases the average GRE scores of Indian aspirants by 3 points each week (and last week taught us the word Roorback which has now been cleverly deployed in a TTS headline involving him, okay maybe we will take that award) made an endearing post and a boo-boo this week. First, he posted an esoteric pun with a footnote so that everyone can understand the joke (TTS fully endorses this behaviour “Machan, but will TTS readers get the joke” “What is there? We will give full explanation in triplicate so people can appreciate our cleverness”). Then, he shared a fake news item about Raghuram Rajan being appointed the Governor of the Bank of England. Though he clarified this later, imagine the power of Fake News in a world in which your parents with zero internet nuance believe any and every Whatsapp forward as Gospel Truth.
The skip this if you read TTS because you’re friends with the authors but you also illogically love the saffron party section: See, we want to be supportive of the incumbent party, but it’s kinda hard to do. (And for a moment, let’s cast aside the disastrous outcomes of some forced policies rushed through against the better judgment of experts). They politicised the Kathua rape, promoted a rape-accused-supporter to the post of minister, admitted they lied about Aadhaar (nope, you don’t need to link it to your mobile) and their Karnataka CM candidate cheerfully suggested people be tied up and brought to the polling booth so they could vote for the BJP (well, at least he cares about voter turnout).
In the meantime, their unchecked loonies proudly stopped a Muslim namaz, created trouble in a university because Jinnah’s portrait was hung there (has always been there), filed a case against a journo who shared a critical cartoon and for good measure, beat up a hugging couple. Oh well, at least the BJP has provided India the best stand-up comedian of 2018 so far - Tripura’s Biplab Deb. Meanwhile, nobody knows of a viable alternative. That NOTA button is gonna get a beating next year.
But who said they’re not inclusive?: Last week we mentioned that the non-discriminatory Aadhaar leaked data of 69 lakh MNREGA workers. This week began with 69 lakh students’ data leaking. But as Bhakts would say, what do these kids have to hide anyway, eh? #InclusiveAadhaar
International
Koreagraphing Korniness: North Korea has vowed to denuclearize, and in a symbolic gesture, moved the country’s time zone to match that of the South. The South, in return, took down those infamous loudspeakers that blared K-Pop to annoy the folks up north. Challenges exist to full peace, but the world is assuming it’s on the cards, to the extent where a ‘peace music festival’ is being planned around the DMZ, currently the most militarized area in the world. We sincerely hope this love affair gets cornier by the day.
Trumpistan
The most hilarious thing happened: The tree that Macron gifted Trump went missing.
Ok, two hilarious things happened. Trump fired one lawyer to get in another one because he was more proactive. And boy, was he - he went on to a TV show hosted by Trump’s biggest media supporter, and pretty much admitted that the ‘Stormy Daniels payment’ happened. Oops! Nobody breaks it down better than Colbert.
If this were a movie, it sure feels like an Indian theatre would awkwardly place in an ‘intermission’ around now. Mueller has questions for Trump, and things are heating up. Trump, left with no defence, just blabbed about how disgraceful it was that the questions had leaked.
Meanwhile, Ty Cobb has been kicked out of Trump’s legal team (recipient of “Best Moustache for a Person Fired By Trump Award”) replaced by a cantankerous gent called Emmet Flood, much to the delight of headline-writers around the world.
To make Trump look better, what do you do? Get an ex-convict coal mogul to run in an election. Oh, GOP.
Trump Allies Emotion Index: Still annoyed.
Business & Tech
Cambridge Analytica shut down. Aw.
Tesla is keeping everyone on the edge of their seats: Losing more money than ever, but promising that production of the Model 3 is on track. And make the world’s largest energy storage project. We see Musk as a saviour, but the sheen is clearly going out - here’s a list of all the ways Tesla could go bankrupt next year.
Sprint and T-Mobile merged. That’s big, we guess?
Facebook (and the world) seems to have moved on from the whole scandal. It’s now introduced a dating feature, based on shared events, even as Zuck says he needs 3 years to ‘fix’ Facebook - starting with hiring people to vet political ads and operate at a loss.
Oh, by the way, WhatsApp’s CEO has left (he was basically pissed off that FB wanted to monetize it badly). An Indian could be the new CEO, so prepare for patriotic forwards on, well, Whatsapp.
If you’ve had enough of ‘influencers’ spamming your feed with bad hashtags, get ready for those in the artificial world as well. There are CGI influencers. Hi 2018.
Blame EDM and pop? Iconic guitar brand Gibson has filed for bankruptcy.
Comic Belief: This image has alt-right text
LinkedOut
An excellent analysis of why there is a cash crunch: Everything from the demonetization spook, the ease of accumulating Rs 2000 notes, to (yes) Aadhaar.
The fascinating story of a counterterrorism expert who became a beat cop. From The New Yorker.
Why it actually takes a lot of emotional labour to delete Facebook
This week, Liverpool marched into the Champions League final. They didn’t walk there alone, they were carried on the shoulders of the amazing Mo Salah. Read how is this magical Egyptian and his public display of faith breaking down cultural barriers.
That’s it for this week. Do you have anything to tell us? Is there a format of writing you prefer? A section you love? Something else you’d like to see us do in the newsletter? Comments about how ugly our faces are? Get in touch with us on Twitter (Chuck | Tony) or tell us in private via email. Go on, write to us. We promise we will not sell your data to third party advertisers - unless you know, they offer really good beer in return. Until next week, may you not have to fold the clean laundry that’s made its way to that living room chair, and may you be happy with it. Bye!