The Third Slip: Issue 75 - Trump Alone Truths
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that keeps going like a hamster on a wheel. That’s right we go around in circles without any displacement of anything, we ham up the headlines and attempt to stir up some food for thought with very little success. But, we’re kinda cute if you squint and look at us while performing the Dele Alli challenge unsuccessfully.
This is issue 75, 75 as all of you know is a full 1.67 higher than Virat Kohli’s average in the ongoing test series in England (Yay 2-1!). And if we are punching higher than Kohli and have kept this going for so long, it can mean only one thing - we have too much time on our hands, and clearly, practice doesn’t make perfect in some cases. Yes, we do offer a degree in false equivalences why do you ask? On with the news...
India
Dam-cell in Distress: The rain finally abated in Kerala this week and the rescue operations have been completed with over 400 lives lost and a million people ending up in rescue camps. The long haul rehabilitation is underway with Kerala saying the central government needs to help more and then great drama unfolding with the centre saying it cannot accept 700 Crores offered by the UAE because of its policy and then a debate over whether the offer was made or not. However the people of Kerala turned out to be the real heroes with everyone’s humanity triumphing artificial divides of religion, caste, and culture. The state celebrated Eid and Onam with temples, mosques, and churches opening up for people of all religions.
The scales are falling from our eyes: Here’s a fun story - first you change the GDP calculation scale so that the numbers look better than they used to and cheer about how you’re moving the economy forward at a rapid pace. Then when you need to compare with data from the previous regime by applying the same scale and find out that the GDP growth was actually higher during non Ache Din days, you call the report a Work In Progress and remove the report and relegate it to a corner after tagging it unofficial. Pure genius from the people running our nation. Now you know why the synonym for scale is ruler.
Godawful: In a move from the 17th century, Punjab this week decided to bring in a tough law against sacrilege of religious texts punishable with life imprisonment. Lawghable! In unrelated news, we are starting a religion and this series is our holy text. If you leave hateful comments in the comments section the IPC will get you.
Hug? Ugh!: In 2018 in India, it seems there is no such thing as a free hug. The latest in the list of hugging offenders, apparently, is Navjot Singh Sidhu who attended Imran Khan’s swearing-in Islamabad cordially hugged the Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and ended up with, wait for it, a case of sedition against him.
You da bomb!: In 2018 in India, it seems If you want gau rakshaks to take out a parade in your name, then just plan to bomb public places. That helps. It also helps if you belong to a group whose members were already arrested for the murder of a rationalist.
Not privy to privacy: It’s been one year since the Supreme Court’s privacy judgement! We have no idea what that means. To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of this landmark ruling, the central government asked Whatsapp to build traceability.
I-slam: The good news: Hindus in UP are doing something Muslims are doing (yay! Peace? Unity?). The bad news: Something = Hindu courts on the lines of Sharia Courts (yaar!).
Fun Interlude
Think your neighbour playing Suprabaatham in the mornings is annoying? One woman in Slovakia was arrested for blasting the same song for, er, 16 years.
Two goats - not Federer or Messi - ran amok on the NY Subway.
You know how they say ‘this too shall pass’, well not always it seems. In Goa, this there was a test taken by 8000 accountants and no one passed. Oh no, sudden IIT JEE preparation flashback! Ah! Stop!
Around the world
Shampaign Managers: It’s been one hell of a week for Trump. His former campaign manager (Paul Manafort) was charged with enough tax fraud and connections-to-Russia that could get him 80 years in prison (unless the President pardons him. Which he might very well do, but his pals advise him not to, as it’ll draw him closer to checkmate in the Mueller investigation). Also! Trump’s personal lawyer (Michael Cohen) pleaded guilty to several things - but most importantly, using campaign money to pay off the several women who he slept with during the campaign for silence. Meanwhile, Trump’s new attorney Rudy Giuliani said this week that he doesn’t want Trump to testify because, wait for it, “Truth isn’t the truth”. This means only one thing: their stellar credentials will interest Indian parties for elections in 2019.
“I’m peach”, Impeach?: It gets worse (better?). The CEO of close-to-Trump National Enquirer (who had bought the ‘rights’ to the above hush payment story with the idea of killing it) has been granted immunity by prosecutors. Wait, there’s more! The Attorney-General (who Trump hates for not originally taking up Mueller’s job, which meant the investigation would have died) told him to fugoff, saying the Justice Department will not be influenced (then he got some love from Democrats, something that’s never happened). All this has led to Trump going on air discussing how bad things would be if he were impeached (which is kinda true, Mike Pence as president could be even worse).
Putting the goon in Rangoon: Just how bad is Myanmar’s reputation over their treatment of their own people (the Rohingyas)? 132 MPs from Indonesia (part of which is under Sharia Law), Malaysia (who cracked down on human rights defenders), the Philippines (well…), Singapore (homosexuality illegal), and Timor-Leste (huh?) are trying to take Myanmar to the ICC. No, not that ICC, the International Criminal Court - if rewarding a country with cricket for killing its own people was a thing, India would… Ok, best to end this joke here.
Down Blunder: Something happened in cheerful, beer-guzzling, happy Australia and a conservative who opposes same-sex marriage and immigration is their new Prime Minister. Oh well, given he’s the 6th PM in a decade, maybe we won’t have to worry that much…
Business
TMI (Trademark Information): Procter & Gamble want to trademark LOL, WTF, NBD and FML in order to maybe create brands out of them. Now you know what the F in FMCG stands for.
Target Audience #ThisIsNotAnInstruction: Facebook is going to rate users basis how well they flag fake news. This… Might not end well. And this week in FB desperately trying to regain trust: Removing 5000 terms that would help advertisers target by religion/race/culture.
Elon Wolf: “If you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job,” Poor Elon Musk on Tesla. Looks like he is broken, and possibly broke soon.
LinkedOut
In the context of the Kerala floods, Amit Varma writes about the two ideas of India and the real tukde-tukde gang.
Trump has been tom-tomming about how he’s been amazeballz for the economy. Well, in truth, a lot of it was just a trend from the Obama era. You know the bar is low when a labour economist says, “I’ll give the president credit for not steering the economy into a ditch”.
With nobody trusting Facebook and Twitter being a cesspool of trolls, could this be (shock, horror) Snapchat’s moment?
If we need to achieve climate change goals, we need to kill cars. And Germany is proof.
How Tripadvisor changed travel.
Recently, we lost both Vajpayee & Karunanidhi - both born in 1924. Their un-parallel political lives (one rising to national, one restricted to regional) showed several things wrong with India - including (you guessed it) caste.
That’s it for this week. If you’d like to find us in the outside world engage a private eye and stalk us through the day. If you’d like to find us online instead, we’re on Twitter (Chuck | Tony). To receive this nonsense every Sunday, subscribe. And get your friends to subscribe to so that you can make niche in-jokes around people you don’t really like but have to put up with so that they go away. Have you discovered the 17 errors in this piece? Or is there anything else you’d like to tell us? Tell us over email. Come on, tell us a joke at least. Fine, be this way. See if we care. Hmph. Until next week, may you receive as much validation as a CAPTCHA code. Bye!