Researched and collated by: Rachel John & Sara Varghese
The gorgeous Splainer X Champaca gift box
We’re a bit nervous about this one as it’s our very first gift box—curated with great love and care by the team. We teamed up with our partners Champaca—a wonderful women-run independent bookstore—did our collective best to create a goodie bag designed to inspire wonder, laughter and delight. It makes a lovely gift for any occasion—weddings, festivals or birthdays. Or you could just treat yourself!
Please note: This gift box is part of our promise to offer special value to our subscribers. So this is just for you—we don’t make money off this box :)
What you get: The box includes three books—each unique and wonderful in its own way. And to add a splash of beauty, the package includes a beautiful box of silkscreen cards that you are sure to treasure. We have lots more detail on the books and the cards over here.
The big bonus: The box comes with a quarterly gift subscription worth Rs 900. You also get two specially-illustrated Champaca bookmarks—so you can keep track of your reading in style ;)
The very big discount: You pay only Rs 2,500 for this gift box valued at Rs 4000—a massive discount that is available for just 30 days. In other words, be sure to snap these up before November 20.
Buy it here: You can buy the box over at the Champaca website. Please be sure to fill in this form once you buy the box—so we know whom to gift the subscription to!
Big breakthrough for Indian cricket
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that the women’s cricket team will receive exactly the same match fees as men. So everyone will now get Rs 1.5 million (15 lakh) for a test match, Rs 600,000 for an ODI and Rs 300,000 for a T20I. Until now, women only made Rs 250,000 for a test fixture and Rs 100,000 for an ODI or T20I. While this is cause for great celebration, there will still be a big gender gap between men and women. The reason: women play far fewer games, period—as this table shared by Scroll’s sports editor Vinayakk Mohanarangan reveals:
Another point to note: There remains a yawning gap between contract salaries for men and women. The very top women players make only Rs 5 million (50 lakh) annually. The top male players, meanwhile, are in a special A+ category—making a whopping Rs 70 million (7 crore)—while those graded A earn Rs 50 million (5 crore). ESPN CricInfo and Scroll have the deets. FYI: we have a lot more on Indian women’s cricket and IPL in this Big Story.
Meanwhile, at the T20 World Cup: India cruised to an easy 56-run win over the Netherlands. But Pakistan lost to Zimbabwe by a single run in yet another last-minute heartbreaker. The Telegraph has more on a match many are refusing to call an “upset.”
Watch Zimbabwe fans celebrate below:
Meta is falling, falling, falling…
The company lost $85 billion of its market value—after reporting its earnings in the last quarter. Its stocks plummeted by 24.6% just in one day—and is now down more than 70% in 2022. Meta revealed that its quarterly revenues had dropped for the second consecutive quarter—dipping by 4%. Stock market analysts are also unhappy with the company’s ballooning costs as it pumps billions into its pivot toward the metaverse.
Wall Street quotes to note: A shareholder called the company’s investments “super-sized and terrifying” while analysts deem its inability to cut costs “confusing and confounding.” Then again, others are still optimistic about Meta’s future:
“Our old swim coach once crudely said, ‘The bad news is you suck, the good news is you can only get better. There was some truth to those words, and perhaps the same holds true here.”
Wall Street Journal and New York Times have more.
Meanwhile, over at TikTok: The company is getting ready to enter the gaming world—and will launch a dedicated tab for video games. This is a bit like Netflix’s push in the same direction, except TikTok has a clear advantage. Its parent company ByteDance makes a number of games—and is looking for a global audience ever since Beijing cracked down on gaming. (Financial Times, paywall, Mashable)
A big apology from The Wire
The context: The digital news site published a big scoop that appeared to show that BJP IT chief Amit Malviya had the power to take down Instagram posts at will. It sparked a heated and public battle with Meta—but ended in Wire’s ‘evidence’ being proved by independent experts to be fake. See our Big Story by Samarth Bansal on the evidence—and the weak editorial process inside The Wire.
What happened now: After taking down its Meta stories, The Wire released a lengthy statement—which, in essence, confirmed that there was little or no editorial oversight or verification of the story. And it suggested in passing that the documents were fabricated by someone on the inside—citing “the deception to which we were subjected by a member of our Meta investigation team.” Meanwhile, Malviya announced his intention to initiate both criminal and civil proceedings against The Wire.
Twitter’s big Musk day
Elon Musk has finally closed the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter—after months of refusing to do so. His first move: firing CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety. That’s two desis in one fell swoop!
As a sign of his good intent towards the rest, he showed up at the company’s San Francisco headquarters with a kitchen sink—a visual pun that few understood. He has now dubbed himself ‘Chief Twit’ and promised not to cut 75% of the jobs. Musk also tweeted out a lengthy letter to advertisers, assuring them that Twitter will not become a “free-for-all hellscape.” Quartz has more on why he is making peace with ads—and what it may mean for content moderation on Twitter. Washington Post has the latest on the Musk takeover.
What Musk is not talking about: Potential criminal probe over Tesla’s self-driving claims. Reuters has that exclusive. See the ‘kitchen sink’ moment below.
China’s latest government diktat: Make babies!
In a Weibo post, a user shared the story of a newly-wed colleague who received a call from a local official who asked if she was pregnant. He also informed her that the local government "wants newlyweds to be pregnant within a year and their target is to make a phone call every quarter." The post has since been deleted, but other users shared similar experiences. One of them received two calls, including one in which the person said: "You are married, why are you still not preparing for pregnancy? Take the time to have a baby.” Why the big push for babies: the country’s punitive one-child policy has created a population crisis. New births are set to drop below 10 million from last year's 10.6 million, a decline that will follow an 11.5% slide in 2020. South China Morning Post has more on that angle. (Reuters)
Speaking of babies (sorta): A new study reveals that cats react to baby talk—but only from their owners. What this means for those owned by cats: “The findings…suggest cats—like dogs—may understand that their relationship with us is akin to that of a parent and their baby. ‘We are the caregivers—they can sense it…It reflects and reinforces that bond’.” (Science)
Swiggy’s ‘Dineout’ is in trouble
The company bought the restaurant discovery and booking platform earlier this year—to expand beyond the food delivery business. But many restaurants are unhappy with the model—claiming it requires offering cashbacks and deep consumer discounts that hurt their bottom line. YourStory reports that 400 brands (of varying scale of operations) and over 900 dining outlets across 13 cities in India have delisted themselves from Dineout. And another 2,000 are expected to follow suit. The Swiggy spokesperson insists that only “a handful” have opted out. YourStory and Inc have more.
Taylor Swift album sparks ‘fat’ controversy
The music video for the track titled ‘Anti-Hero’ on her new album ‘Midnights’ shows Swift stepping on a weighing scale—which reads ‘fat’. The scene is presumably about body anxiety among women—and Swift’s own acknowledged struggle with eating disorders. But it has been criticised as being ‘anti-fat’—or framing being fat as a bad thing. The brief glimpse of the weighing scale (see below) has since been silently edited out—without any official comment from Swift.
Variety has more on the edit while The Cut lays out the fatphobia debate.
In other celebrity news: Kanye West is being rapidly cancelled by brands—and in a very public fashion. Skechers announced that its security guards had to escort West off the premises after he showed up “unannounced and uninvited” at their LA HQ and "engaged in unauthorised filming.” We assume Ye was shopping for a new home for his Yeezy sneakers—now that he has been dropped by Adidas. (BBC News)
Three things to see
One: Once again, the BJP is being accused of buying opposition MLAs—this time in Telangana. The ruling party Telangana Rashtra Samithi released the following footage from a police raid—that allegedly caught three BJP operatives trying to bribe four of their MLAs. NDTV and The News Minute have lots more details. FYI: the video doesn’t seem to show very much other than a bunch of men hanging out at a hotel.
Two: Thousands gathered to mark the 40-day anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody. They defied curfew to gather at her grave—and were met by teargas and police fire. (The Guardian)
Three: Rihanna is finally back! The pop star will make her long-awaited return to music with ‘Lift Me Up’—the lead single for Marvel’s ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’. Since it comes out today, we can’t share the track. But here’s the lovely teaser released by RiRi on Twitter. We can’t wait! (Variety)
