The Third Slip: Issue 60 - Repeat itself & it’s history
Image courtesy @NGOwallah
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the newsletter that puts the weak in weekly, because to be honest neither of the authors is an expert in anything and are comfortable cowards who want to change the world from the convenience of their couches. This doesn’t prevent us from holding hard points of view though. A beautiful dichotomy of cowardice and courage that complements our cognitive biases. If The Third Slip were a dish, it would be Chicken Stronganoff. Hehe.
It was a week in which we learned that even scientists, those paragons of objective certainty, are fickle. They are yet again unsure if Pluto is a planet or not, so then what hope do lesser mortals like us have? Or to look at it another way, screw consistency. Let’s wildly dance to the end of the world that’s imminent.
Phew! This is why intros shouldn’t be written under a hangover cloud. On with the news…
There is still hope!
Live-in Genes: The Supreme Court said that two adults could live together without being married. Expect outrage from uncles on your Whatsapp Family group whose idea of consent is ‘we are liberal, we let you choose which branch of engineering to do’.
Jesus Saves: Ok, so we grudgingly accept religion has its uses: It gives us holidays and helps preserves green spaces in Bangalore.
Not a Bad-gag: Iraq had its first elections since the fall of ISIS. A quarter of the seats must go to women. So now a country that was being torn apart by ISIS a year ago is now safer for women than Haryana and most Silicon Valley boardrooms.
The Third Slip?: And nearby, Pakistan passed a law that recognized transgender rights.
Yes we can can the canning: And hey, if the world depresses you, at least we have new Rick & Morty and Brooklyn Nine-Nine to look forward to. (Also, did you know Adult Swim is owned by Cartoon Network?!)
Other domestic things
Fake it so you make it: Recently, some anti-nationals christened our honourable Prime Minister “The Lie Lama”. This is extremely deplorable. Meanwhile, during election rallies in Karnataka, the stated strategy of rewriting history to say that everyone before 2014 was a non-patriotic antinational continued. This makes sense because if you keep repeating half-truths and inaccuracies long enough, the factual narrative can be altered. This time with some historically inaccurate question about Bhagat Singh and Congress leaders. While this is not new and your liberal bubbles may fact check some statements, the brutal majority in a democracy does not and we have already moved into a world where fake news determines the course of history. If this does not scare you, nothing will.
Why this Kaveri Di: Karnataka and TN have been fighting forever over waters. The Supreme Court had enough and told Karnataka to release water to TN. The BJP is trying its best to not make this happen since it will hamper election chances in the state. So basically, TN just needs to wait till… The next elections and things should be normalized. Er, yay, democracy?
Carrying coal to Newcastle: Like when you take more alcohol to cure a hangover, the Indian government is looking to fight pollution with… Giving more freedom to thermal plants. A drink sounds about right now.
Around the world
What’s the price of free speech?: The Phnom Penh Post has been sold, and with it, free speech in Cambodia. Like, imagine if The Third Slip was bought over by Republic TV.
Smell the coffee and wake up: Jeez, Nestle paid Starbucks $7b for the right to sell its coffee. With no Nestle branding. That’s like Arnab paying TTS 10 crores to please feature it on air.
Men swear: In case you missed it, Putin was sworn in as President after an election more farcical than the definition of a debate in Arnab Goswami’s dictionary (Republic hatrick. Yay!). Anyway, he says he wants to improve the condition of his country. He still hasn’t mentioned whether he’s going to use Facebook / nerve poison to do it.
Down the Malay alley: A coalition led by a 92-year old won the Malaysian elections (the first time the opposition has won in close to 6 decades!)
Add to mart: Oh ya and Walmart bought Flipkart, you knew that.
All your base are belong to us: Now, if you want to do business in China, you can’t say ‘Hong Kong’, ‘Macau’ or ‘Taiwan’ as the Big C considers them to be part of the country. Lulz!
The never-ending content-providing machine that is Trumpland
Rat of the deal: Well, he did it. Trump went ahead and pulled the US out of the Iran Nuclear deal which Obama worked so hard to getting done (basically, Iran de-nukes itself, while receiving much-needed aid from the US, and things were going along pretty well). This pisses off the US’ allies (who can’t wait for 2020, really) and throws the mid-East into a bit of uncertainty (a day later, Iran and the US ally that nobody else likes, Israel, fought in Syria). Obama is to blame here, he did way too many good things. Maybe he can fix this by phoning Trump and saying “Good job, I hated that deal anyway, the Republicans made me do it.”
Don + Badman: But in good news, he will meet Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12. You might want to use some filters for ‘Trump’ and ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ in the same sentence. This comes on the back of 3 detained Americans being sent back. Trump insists Kim treated the three ‘prisoners’ very nicely, which then begs the question, why were they so anxious to leave in the first place?
Who will watch the watchmen?: New York’s attorney-general was accused of sexual allegations (#metoo) and apparently Trump and his personal lawyer were aware of said allegations for years (#theyknew)
A lawyer unto himself: While we’re talking about the personal lawyer (Cohen), it’s been revealed he accepted payment in exchange for ‘access to the president’ (AT&T took up the offer, for one). It’s like… A tatkal bribe, basically an Indian politician’s wet-dream.
Ad nauseam: And in case you’re still interested in Russia’s meddling in the elections, Democrats unearthed 3500 ads run by the charming folks. Imagine the size of that PPT.
TTS Trivia Section
Google, while processing 3.5b searches a day, accounts for 40% of ‘internet carbon footprint’.
How cool! To try and promote European togetherness and all that, the EC is offering free train rides to 18-year olds across the continent. In India, you know something like that would massively benefit fake ID hawkers.
Humans Taking Care of Overpopulation Section Of The Week: Australia saw its deadliest mass shooting in 22 years when a shooting actually led to strict gun control laws. This time, ‘only’ 4 people were killed, but still.
Weirdest Headline of the Week: This. “Canadian zoo faces charges after taking bear out for ice cream at Dairy Queen”. Let he who has never bought a bear an ice cream cast the first stone.
For whom the bell trolls: A hacker sort of got into a North Korean radio station and started playing hair metal.
Business & Tech
Google Dupe-ex: Years of data + investment in natural language understanding + billions of research money = Google Assistant seamlessly being able to make actual phone calls. It helps that the announcements come from a friendly-faced Sundar Pichai, it doesn’t look like that nice Indian man who studied at the same college N. Shenoy did - would do anything evil. Would he?
Go ogle: In the same conference, Google announced a bunch of things (including stunning new visual search tools) but nothing better than the term JOMO - Joy Of Missing Out. #TimeWellSpent is truly a theme.
F8Coin?: Facebook is launching its own… Cryptocurrency?
Shut up and take my data: Nobody (still) gives a crap about Facebook being embroiled in that scandal thing.
But we can’t handle your data: Klout - that site you vainly used once in 2009 - is shutting down. This after the EU’s GDPR laws which clamp down on privacy violations in a really strong way.
You’ll never walk Elon: SpaceX is testing a big-ass rocket. That’s good. The quicker we can leave the planet, the better. Speaking of Muskian companies - the best thing Tesla probably has is investor confidence.
I’m not in the zone: Amazon decided not to use those ‘product listing’ ads on Google anymore. Only an ecomm company backed with Bezos’ balls could pull that off.
LinkedOut
If you want to be future-proof, study Liberal Arts, not engineering. Tell your parents that wearing a Fabindia Kurta and smoking pot at JNU is better for your future than slogging for AIEEE.
Fed up of the BJP and can’t wait for the elections next year? Now close your eyes and imagine Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister. 2024-2018 = 6 (in case you needed the math).
On globalisation and the demise of the nation-state.
The problem with letting geeks run the world is that they will find ingenious tech solutions to fairly easy social interaction challenges. What does Google Duplex mean?
That’s it for this week. If you’d like to get in touch with us and follow our nonsense outside of this newsletter, you can find us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck). Now that Google has made email writing easier with predictive sentence completion, please do write to us and share your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you. Until next week, may all the rainchecks in your life return with interest and even more happiness. Bye!