Hello, and welcome to The Third Slip—the weekly newsletter that aims to deconstruct the happenings around the world but ends up like a strongman leader de-constructing democratic institutions and trivialising issues. But we trundle on regardless, because really what other choice do you have? That’s right, your lack of choice gives us a voice. One day, they’ll make a movie about this called Default in our stars. (Oh, happy 2019! You already know what our resolution is not.)

This is issue 94. 94, of course, was a glorious year in which Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption, and Forrest Gump squared off at the Oscars with FG finally winning. Keeping the spirit alive, we wrote three versions of this issue and ultimately chose the least good one as the one that would be published. Pun, For-rest, Pun. And maybe also, some news.

Let’s begin 2019 on a happy note.

Taking the ick out of cricket: 2018 was a great year for Indian cricket, and it ended with India virtually sealing its first series win in Australia. The highlight has been the entertaining stump mic banter between the two keepers, Tim Paine and Rishabh Pant. Pant, who was asked while at the crease if he would do some babysitting for Paine, posed for a picture with Paine’s baby on the new year sending us into all sorts of awws!

Bonus: In the best improvement since the Indian pace attack that has been sending down unplayable deliveries, the Bharat Army gave us a very playable delivery with perfect line and length at the SCG (earworm warning, very catchy). Sport is our only hope.

Now for some less important news.

ANI publicity is good publicity: Narendra Modi finally gave a full-fledged interview to media outlet ANI and addressed a wide variety of issues. A series win in Australia AND an interview from the PM in the same week. Waah 2019, waah! The level of difficulty of the interview on a scale of “Flat-track” to “Cracked up fifth-day pitch” could have been chalked up to “net bowling” though. Rahul Gandhi stepped up to the stage to call the interviewer “pliable” leading to massive outrage, but also a change of narrative where he ended up stealing the headlines from Modi.

Rioting is on the wall: The year got off to the best possible start in Kerala with women comfortably outdoing both Rahul Dravid and Pujara combined to create a 680 km-long human wall for gender equality. Fifty lakh women are estimated to be part of this show of strength. Meanwhile, two women finally entered Sabarimala this week and predictably set off a hartal in Kerala organised by the BJP, who now have a better strike rate than Kohli in Australia. There was some violence, and even a journalist was attacked. Sigh.

Tohfa Kabul Karo: LOL! Did Trump just make fun of India for wanting to build a library in Afghanistan? If he is not pissing off key allies while being obnoxiously ignorant, is he even really Trump? To be honest, we’d think his revulsion was more against the concept of books and literacy than against India.

International news

Moony tunes: China landed a rover, for the first-time ever, on the far side of the moon. If that makes you wonder which side the US landed on, it was the near side. As for the Pink Floyd album, that’s the dark side.

Sanction Sanctorum: Remember all that US-North Korea bromance last year? You can start 2019 safe in the knowledge that Kim will still blow the US to smithereens if sanctions aren’t lifted.

It’s not i-deal: Britain should consider Brexit insurance (to get you up to speed: On March 29, they will leave the EU—and there is still no semblance of a deal).

Recession re-session?: Feeling nostalgic for those good times in 2008? No problem. 2019’s starting off on a nice note: Wall Street keeps using the R-word, the Chinese don’t want to splurge, and some companies have muted outlooks, like Apple (though, just because iPhone X anagrams to Phoenix doesn’t mean you bring on ridiculous prices. These are phones, not IPL players). While many say fears are overblown, but the reassuring thing is that we’re at least talking about it rather than waiting for a once-B-school-dream-company to implode and throw us all out of jobs. (Also, at this point take down your stockings, not your stocks.)

House fries: Now that Democrats have control of the House, and Trump critics are in key positions, a lot of L’Orange’s plans will face a Dravidian defence with Pantish pushback. And much like the client of a newly-won account cheerfully announcing on day 1: “This is not going to be easy and I hope none of you like weekends. The Democrats came out aggressively, even raising talks of impeachment! The government is still shut down, though. The better news is that Elizabeth Warren is considering running in 2020, and this is why that’s awesome.

Tech

Codeable quotes: “Senator, we run ads” was the best of 2018 in tech. Here are 14 fantastic quotes to sum up the tech year. And here’s what’s in store for 2019.

Teching it to the next level: CES, the massive expo where tons of new gadgets and stuff are revealed, is next week. From breakthrough technologies (bendable screens!) to ones that we’ll make fun of through the year (seriously, internet-connected toilets?), it’ll all be here.

FOMOphobia: Netflix. Calm down. We can’t keep up with all your original programming – all 1500 hours released in 2018 of it :O. Maybe if there was a weekly newsletter summarising…

LinkedOut – the best things we read this week

• Do the exploits of Silicon Valley make you feel stupid? Don’t worry, this list of 60 stupid things to happen in tech will make you feel way, way smarter.
• Wait, we were supposed to fix all this sh*t in 2018, right?
• Seriously, who has time to make music these days? Definitely, not pop stars.
• Finally! Gosh, how good was that 2018 lookback video from Vox?

That’s it for this week. If you enjoyed reading this, why not subscribe? And, share something smarter with those friends who keep sending you memes, or you could share this newsletter instead. If you’d like to get in touch with us outside of this newsletter, you can find us on Twitter (Chuck |Tony) and Instagram (Chuck | Tony). Until next week, may you receive a book that you would never have picked up and enjoy it. Bye!

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