The Third Slip: Issue 88 - No Andaman is an Island
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that keeps on going because the other alternatives are terrible. That’s right, we’re like Gautam Gambhir in the commentary box - you can’t mute our stream of consciousness if you want to hear everything that’s happening on the ground.
This is issue 88 - a momentous one because we’ve now caught up with the Bugle series 4000 which had its 88th issue out yesterday. Yes, we’re now on par with Andy Zaltzman and his friends. Hah! Take that people who haven’t subscribed to us yet! How do you like that? Wait, you aren’t even reading this. Um.. can we start over? This is issue 88 - and as any self-respecting housie announcer will tell you 88 is ‘two fat ladies’, which is also what people call us in our DMs. But, we aren’t singing just yet. The show will go on - with the news…
India - through ignorant white dudes
The Missionary Position: is apparently the most popular way to get screwed in. This week, a 26-year-old American dude put up a strong nomination for the Darwin Awards by repeatedly making his way illegally onto North Sentinel Island, where a hostile tribe of people has lived peacefully for 60,000 years on their own. John Chau went over multiple times to preach Christianity and was finally killed. Apparently, even the isolated Sentinelese know that it’s 2018 and you should keep your religious beliefs to yourself, but not woke dudes from the states. RIP.
Retweets are not endorseyments - Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, this week upheld his platform’s popular user-generated maxim by disowning responsibility for a poster that he got from someone else while in India this week. Purportedly to address the issue of how women are treated on the vile live platform, Jack Dorsey was in India and was given a poster that said ‘smash Brahmanical patriarchy’ which he held up during a photo op. While Indian Twitterati predictably jumped into outrage mode because they don’t know the meaning of words, Dorsey found out for a minute what it would be like to be in Facebook’s shoes. Hopefully soon, he’ll learn what it's like to build an advertising platform that works too.
India - through ignorant brown dudes
The Legend of Shallot Surendran: It’s fascinating to see how bigotry and factionalism take root amongst a seemingly impenetrable state. And so, Kerala, a land where people live in harmony despite their skin colours varying from wheatish porotta complexion to beef dry fry complexion is the latest casualty of bigotry, fake news, and religious polarisation. The charge, surprise surprise, is led by the BJP and its leaders who do not give a damn about the cause they claim to fight and will stop at nothing to get votes.
Exhibit A - BJP state secretary K Surendran, nicknamed Ulli Sura (we’ve taken the liberty of translating that as Shallot Surendran) who was christened thus because he said that beef should not be eaten. Only for someone to bring up a picture of him enjoying beef with porotta, to which he retorted “that’s not beef, that’s onion fry” before proceeding to turn 6 vats of wine into water. Come Sabarimala, he broke religious traditions by going there (before one year of his mother’s death) to stir up the pot and desecrated his holy offerings in an attempt to pin it on the state police, only to be undone by CCTV footage. While we may laugh at his idiocy, the sad fact is that enough people have now been polarised. This is how the end begins.
WTF FaTWa: While Reliance may have no experience building fighter planes, it does have a lot of experience filing defamation cases against journalists. After all, Ombanney anagrams to Ban money. For the record: The resemblance of the word Ombanney to any famous family name is purely coincidental and any link between the two you’ve made is a product of your own imagination.
Putting the KO in Kom: In some inspiring Indian news, Mary Kom won a record sixth gold medal in the World Boxing Championships this week. What a legend!
Around the world
Canada Dry: Oh Canada, can we borrow all your news? Why, you ask? We’ll tell you. What is the one thing you shouldn’t do after drinking? Hurling. Curling. In Alberta this week a team of curlers, including an Olympic gold medalist, were kicked out of a tournament for being too drunk. That will be a blemish on his record. Alberta’s round his neck.
Cliche of the Titans: Finally, everyone in America agrees on one thing: That social media sucks. After all, Facebook now has a thoughts-and-prayers autoresponder so you don’t need to take the effort of actually typing, after seeing tragedy. (Imagine if TTS had an email format where you could tell us how awesome we are)
Termoil: And of course Trump doesn’t want to do anything to Saudi Arabia despite pretty much the rest of the world knowing its crown prince ordered a journalist’s killing and what he & his son-in-law did (exchange policy for money) amounts to espionage. Anyway, now that Democrats have more power after the Midterms, some fun will be had.
Oil term: We hate to stereotype, but getting a Russian to run a global police network is like getting Saudi Arabia to be head of a UN Human Rights Body… Oh wait. Although “be head” is something they’re totally comfortable with.
Hit the road Jap: Japan will pay people to leave Tokyo (meanwhile, the authors of TTS are waiting for a similar offer from the BMC).
Brexpecto Patronum: As Brexit increasingly starts to become real, poor Theresa May is begging her country to back her (isn’t that what she did that needless early general election for?).
BeeTeeDubs
Imaginary Friends: It took a Florida high court to confirm that Facebook friendships aren’t real friendships (but when you subscribe to TTS, you’re our friend for life, really!).
Dominoministers: The best satire of the week came from Russia, where there’s now a word to describe Brexit: Ministropad (meaning ‘cascade of ministerial resignations’). Not to be confused with menstruopad which is a healthy and hygienic sanitary napkin.
Tech
Linkedin Park: It had to happen, there are now LinkedIn Stories. LinkedIn is basically that uncle who asks a group of kids if he can play too, while being clearly unfit and obese.
Casting a wide net: Microsoft (who are famously innovative these days) is trying to help underserved communities in Michigan get internet by using unused TV waves.
Delight very: Amazon is doing everything to get parcels to everyone in India - including delivery in remote Havelock Island.
LinkedOut
Phew! Finally a piece which proves we’re not psychopaths and why waiting in line is actually torture. Thankfully you don’t have to wait to read this piece.
NYT did a nice series on China: How it became a superpower, how the American Dream is alive there, how it’s ‘wallet internet’ went from copycat to innovator, and how it’s doing infrastructure diplomacy. And how it controls its people.
In the age of e-commerce, ‘flagship stores’ for brands are becoming more (we hate to use that marketing term here) experiential. (Sort of related: Disney is spending more money on theme parks than ever before).
The US was never meant to be an actual democracy (13 out of the 15 first presidents were enslavers or pro-slavery). There’s still hope for the country (spoiler alert: It’s the youth). We just need to wait for the racist ol’ codgers to conk it.
Insight is scheduled to land on Mars tomorrow. Here’s The Oatmeal telling you what it’s all about - in the coolest possible way.
That’s it for this week. In case you’d like to get in touch with us on platforms we use sporadically find us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck). Or if you’d like to send us some non templated praise you can email us. If you really like us and want to buy us a beer, buy it for your friend and ask them to subscribe to The Third Slip. Until next week, may you tell someone that you miss them tentatively, only to be pounce-hugged in return. Bye!