The Third Slip: Issue 87 - Faked News’ Naked Fuse
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that’s like you when your colleague has gone away on holiday. You were supposed to cover for them while they were away, but really you just compiled a summary of all of their tasks into a list, without really doing anything else, so they have something depressing to look at on a Monday morning.
This is issue 87, and this week we’re in the eye of a storm - a cyclone actually. But you didn’t really know about any of that and you just cycled on obliviously while whining about your first world problems. Cyclone Gaja (meaning elephant) is also the first cyclone that you can’t use as a guess when you forget your woman friend’s name. Unless of course you’re addressing the elephant in the room. Which we shall do with the news…
At Home
Putting the Riot in Patriot: A BBC research report showed that nationalism is a huge driving force behind fake news in India. And rumour-mongering most often by the right wing sources is the cause of mob violence and lynchings in the country. Don’t be disheartened though, this problem is not just restricted to India - it extends to other countries also. Wait, that is disheartening. What we mean is, amongst the countries that have a big-ass statue of unity, we are first when it comes to dispensing fake news to kill people. Take that, rest of the world!
Shah-Varma Roll: The answer to - What unhealthy output do you get when you combine the 3-time winner of Man You’d Least Want To Be Stuck In An Alley With award, Amit Shah, with upper class Hindus in Kerala? Mr. Shah this week directly threatened the Kerala Government for… obeying the SC order and ensuring the constitutional rights of citizens. And, as it turns out has successfully managed to polarise a lot of savarna Hindus in a state that only in August this year was boasting of how it is a beacon of hope for the concept of unity in diversity. Oh well, at least they have delicious food. Hard to have a beef with that. No, wait.
Pyaar IKEA toh darna kya: Those goddamn Swedes! Not content with recycling so much they need to import trash, they now get their companies to solve other countries’ problems. IKEA is trying to recycle the waste straw that farmers in North India burn, causing all that pollution. Can the Scandinavians just take over the world, already?
Stream Engine: Forget statues, we now have the world’s biggest YouTube channel! That’s right, T Series has beaten out PewDiePie. Take that Sweden! You think you can just walk into our country and take away all our pollution?!
Mourn ki baat: After his hit 2013 single of comparing the 2002 violence in Gujarat to a puppy caught under the wheel of his car, the most amazeballs awesomesauce godincarnate leader of all time, Shri Narendra Modi is back with an even bigger hit in 2018 - telling us the appropriate period a father is allowed to mourn the death of his son. Spoiler alert: 1 year apparently. So why can’t you losers get behind the greatest economic debacle in the history of a democratically elected government two years hence? How much black money did you lose? Huh? Huh? Now stand up for the national anthem or go to Pakistan.
Textual Harassment: The RSS is trying really hard (1, 2, 3) to saffronize textbooks in Rajasthan. Funnily enough, about 50 years from now the young people in India will ask us WTF we were doing when all of this was happening. We recommend showing them your Instagram feed to show how you “stayed away from the noise”.
Manoos’ line is it anyway?: Raj Thackeray is now, hilariously enough, trying to woo Mumbai’s North Indians (it turned out that his previous vitriol-based approach wasn’t very good for votes, the only language politicians understand).
BeeTeeDubs
A friend of TTS recently alerted us to how BeeTeeDubs is actually a short form of the long form of the short form of the phrase. That’s amusing information you could have done without, just like this section.
A KG affair: We now have a new definition for the kilogram - sadly, your weight doesn’t become 10% less :(
Just-ice cream: There’s finally a Robert Mueller-themed ice cream truck in Washington DC. Oh, when will India get a Kulfi stand based on ex-CJI Dipak Mishra?
Dutch courage: Give a country semi-legal weed, and your problems are not lynchings and rapes, but cheesemakers trying to copyright a ‘taste’.
Pizza cake: Oh to be living in Iceland, where the biggest issue facing the President is what topping to use on a pizza.
International
USe Me: In the trash can of international news this week, Trump appointed a new flunkie who could shut down the whole Russia investigation - but is unlikely to (a reassuring read here). And, in a plot twist Stormy Daniels’ (porn star who Trump bonked and paid a lot of money to keep quiet) lawyer was accused of domestic abuse. But don’t worry, when it comes to a vote, the US has more guns than people! Hey, but at least North Korea is behaving and not making nukes anymore… Oh wait.
Brexciting news! Just when you thought something was finally happening (read: a 585-page Cabinet-approved document was made), 2 members of Theresa May’s cabinet resigned, throwing the whole damn thing into chaos again. Forget Black Adder / Yes Minister - surely the best British sitcom of our times is Brexit, now in S03E10.
Putting the FU in refugee: The Rohingya who fled for their lives from Myanmar - are being sent back to where thousands of their friends & family were slaughtered. Remember, this country is run by a Nobel Peace Prize winner (though Amnesty International has stripped her of her award).
Life Jingo la la: On the 100th anniversary of WW1, France’s Emmanuel Macron spoke of the dangers of nationalism, even as Trump & Putin were in attendance. There’s this phrase in Malayalam that goes “Give meaty roles to the guys who are likely to boo your play”...
Too many cokes spoil the bro: The Mexican drug lord, El Chapo, faces 17 criminal charges.
Executive decision: Saudi’s annoyed that so many people are outraging (it only killed a dissident journalist!) so they’re executing some people, even though CIA confirmed that ‘modern leader’ Mohammad bin Salman was behind it.
Wikileakleak: It was accidentally revealed that once-hero-now-turd Julian Assange will be prosecuted.
Putting the slam in Islam: “Stop. Brainwashing. Your. Muslims, China!” - the UN
Business & Tech
NYT sent a poke to FB: If there’s something the public already knows, the NYT will confirm it with a 10000-word story: True to form, there was a huge article about how FB knew about the Russian meddling in 2016’s election and did nothing about it. Facebook did reply, though with measures, rebuttal and earnest, but nobody loves them anymore (even their employees and Instagram’s new senior leadership who left). Except all the billions of users and advertisers, of course. Oh yeah and they hired a fake news making company to counter criticism of FB. PS: There’s this idea of a Facebook Supreme Court floating around that’s not as crazy as it sounds.
A picture is worth a thousand advertising paramters: Facebook’s not-giving-a-fugg department, meanwhile, released a patent which could use your family photos to target ads to you. Which you must admit is less scary than FB using your real-life-what-you-do to target messages in your family Whatsapp group.
Amazon not-so-prime: It’s incredible how the richest man in the world got states to pretty much give him money and begged them to set up a headquarters in their state (Amazon - Virginia - New York). And both those states are hardly going to benefit, but the Big A will, as pretty much everyone’s reporting. Plus, taxpayers are going to fund Jeff’s new helipad. Well done Amazon, you’ve actually managed to get NYT, WSJ and Fox News to agree on something.
Upsetting the app-led kart: Binny Bansal quits Flipkart. Turns out it’s because of a consensual extramarital affair. Um, okay.
LinkedOut
Rolling Stone thinks the album is dead.
What do you mean we have no positive Kerala stories this week? The tale of India’s first ever 3D movie that was way ahead of its time in 1984.
We’ve often maintained that you should talk about your favourite restaurant only to a very few people - enough to keep the business going, but not so much that it becomes way too crowded. This man didn’t listen to our advice and he shut down the best burger place in the USA. Read this fascinating story.
RIP Stan Lee, the man who some of us discovered only this week, but made the rest of us dream for a long time.
That’s it for this week. If you enjoyed reading this, tell a few of your friends - just enough so that we continue this newsletter, but not so much that we become arrogant pricks. If you’d like to get in touch with us, find us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck) or send us your thoughts on email. We’d love to hear from you. Until next week, may you find out how much awesomer you’ve become in the last five years and thank your friends for it. Excelsior!
