👀 Winds of change

Namaste! We hope you are keeping your lofty new year's resolutions. If you are like the vast majority of resolution-makers who fail to see February through, you can still keep one by reading a bit more...right here!

La eta hernus

Remember how Deuba and the Nepali Congress (NC) got screwed over in the Oli-Prachanda-led switcheroo? In another surprising turn of events, NC, the largest party in the House of Representatives, gave Prachanda a vote of confidence. Prachanda secured the support of 268 out of the 270 lawmakers who were present for voting. Much like Tay-Tay in the pop music industry, Americans in American football, and the Bavarians in the Bundesliga, Prachanda will rule unopposed.

Looking ahead: On Tuesday, the 21st day after he resumed office, Prime Minister Prachanda inducted 15 new ministers, expanding his cabinet to full strength. We’ve got four new deputy prime ministers, including both Rajendra Lingden and Rabi Lamichhane, presidents of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), respectively. The rise of the RSP was one of the biggest takeaways from these elections. Now that Rabi sir and the independents control three ministries and a state ministry, will they make significant attempts to turn our glorious nation into Switzerland? We certainly hope so!

Transport

At least 70 people are dead after a Yeti Airlines flight crashed near the new Pokhara Airport. Seventy-two people – four crew members and 68 passengers – were on board the ATR 72 plane when it crashed.

In a decision that left many puzzled, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal declared that Monday would be observed as a national holiday to mourn the victims. A five-member committee has also been formed to investigate the cause of the crash. The group has 45 days to provide a report to the government.

Unsafe skies: The deadly crash of the Yeti Airlines flight 691 is drawing attention to the country’s air safety record. Accidents have been a persistent problem for Nepal's aircraft industry, but Yeti Airlines looks to have a particularly poor track record in this regard. Yeti and its affiliates have experienced 14 accidents throughout their 24 years in the air. There are many causes for our dangerous skies; for more information on the tragic aviation history of Nepal, we suggest reading Pranaya Rana's article in this Off the Record substack.

Tech

If you've been following the tech news over the past few weeks, you may have seen a spike in tweets including screenshots of a bot (ChatGPT) responding to chat messages. ChatGPT is a prototype dialogue-based AI chatbot capable of understanding natural human language and generating impressively detailed human-like written text.The language model was created by OpenAI, a San Francisco research lab that was founded in 2015 with a combined $1 billion pledge from chief executive Sam Altman, Musk, billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel and others.

At its core, ChatGPT is a large language model, which uses algorithms to analyze a massive corpus of text, often scraped from the internet, to respond to user requests in language that can sound surprisingly human. OpenAI claims that the ChatGPT system uses a technique called reinforcement learning to improve in response to user input. The company enlisted “human AI trainers” to converse with the model, playing both user and chatbot.

Some examples: People are using ChatGPT in endless ways. Here's two examples.

This one will make our chests swell with pride.

This one’s creating some controversy in the twitter-sphere.

Have you tried it? The best way to get a feel is by using the bot yourself. Visit this link (https://chat.openai.com/chat) to join the conversation and begin asking your questions. Feel free to tag us so we can see how you are experimenting!

Sports

The Lumbini All-Stars won the inaugural Nepali Twenty20 League last week after defeating the Biratnagar Super Kings by 24 runs. Having our own tournament speaks volumes about how far cricket has come in the country. However, the tournament was more in the news for the controversies attached to it rather than for actual cricket. The Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) came under fire even before the competition began for leasing the tournament for eight years to an unproven Indian business called Seven3Sports without holding an open bidding process. Gyanendra Malla, the former national captain who captained Kathmandu Knights in the tournament, made a shocking revelation that one of his colleagues was offered money to fix a match.

Wait, there’s more!

Jatin Ahluwalia, the manager of Seven3Sports, allegedly fled to India in the middle of the competition. More like Jatin AWOLuwalia, amirite? Here’s hoping for a better tournament next year!

Fatafat

Stat: Nepalis can travel to 38 visa-free or visa-on-arrival locations out of 227 destinations, according to the Q1 2023 edition of the Henley Passport Index. Nepal is ranked 103rd (out of 109 countries), tying with Palestine and below North Korea. We've also seen a decline in our position throughout the years. We were ahead of 22 countries on this list in 2006, but only 7 in 2023. Eat, Pray, Love doesn’t come easy to us.

Quote: “I lost the elections due to Setopati”

In a TV interview last week, Rastriya Prajatantra Party leader Rabindra Mishra attributed his loss in the previous elections to Setopati, a national daily. Mishra argues that Setopati damaged his campaign by declaring his opponent as the predicted victor a week before the elections, using sloppy data collecting and analysis. While Mishra’s claim is probably far-fetched, he does raise important questions about the robustness of data collection and analysis methods used to forecast elections in Nepal. If any of you want to be the Nepali Nate Silver, the field seems uncontested - model away!

Read: Saaid Koirala’s take on Nepal's Internship Culture https://saaid.substack.com/p/on-nepals-internship-culture

Three news briefs and a lie

Three of these news briefs are real, and one is faker than chiya which comes with tea bags. Can you spot the odd one out? (Scroll all the way to the bottom for the answer).

1. The former commissioner of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) was convicted of corruption and sentenced to jail for three years and three months.

2. Nepal Water Supply Corporation is in ✨hot water✨ for publishing the results of a candidate selection entrance exam a whole twelve years after the exams were conducted.

3. Home minister Rabi Lamichhane has recommended that mayors in Nepal host regular Tiktok live sessions to solicit feedback from the public, citing the app's popularity in the country.

4. Ra.Pra.Pa president Rajendra Lingden didn’t recognize his own son during a party event as the latter was wearing a mask.

A request

If you’ve enjoyed the (short) journey with us thus far, please help us spread the word about this newsletter by asking your friends, dads, maijus, neighbors, and your fupajus to sign up by forwarding them this email! If this email was forwarded to you, please consider signing up using this link! We've also got a discord server, you can join us here. (Answer to three newsbriefs and a lie: Although we'd love to see elected officials going "paraaaaaa k ma hancy chuina ra?, the third one is a lie.)