Peter Rooney

@itskyleconner.bsky.social is excellent on the Motor Trend “Inevitable” podcast. Measured and informative. So good

@mcuban.bsky.social is outstanding on Pod Save America. Perhaps uniquely among business leaders, he has real political insight

@davidfrum.bsky.social’s answer to what happened to working class wages in America is a tour de force of exposition describing recent economic history

First, it establishes that spyware companies can be held liable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That creates a significant new legal risk for them that may hurt their ability to raise funds and sign clients. Second, it establishes that spyware companies can't claim immunity for their actions solely because their clients are government agencies. The courts ruled firmly here that the malicious hacking of innocent people is illegal even if a government paid them to do it.

Wrote a rare spot of *good* news in tech: a $167 million ruling against NSO Group means it's going to be harder for commercial spyware companies to target innocent people www.platformer.news/whatsapp-nso...

On this 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride, I keep thinking of a few lines from the last stanza of Longfellow’s poem:

“And so through the night went his cry of alarm…
A cry of defiance and not of fear…”

“In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear…”

DOGE Is Just Getting Warmed Up DOGE has tapped into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. Now it’s starting to put it to work.

This is the game. Unite and then manipulate the data for whatever mischief you want to do www.wired.com/story/doge-i...

If we make it through this dark period with democracy intact, it may be because the administration's incompetence was greater than its depravity.

US citizen says he and his wife detained for hours after Canadian trip | CNN An American citizen says he and his wife were detained for hours by U.S. border agents when they returned to the United States after a short trip to Canada.

An American citizen says he and his wife were detained for hours by US border agents when they returned to the United States after a short trip to Canada: cnn.it/4cIHYMI

Quite literally whitewashing the purpose of the Underground Railroad www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Topeka Kansas April 5th
Photo credit to 'AloneTulip'

My son @natfrum.bsky.social tonight reminded me of a bit of movie dialogue

"We all know how much you love to say, 'I told you so.'

"When that day comes, even I won't want to say so."

We're headed into the deep dark, and it may last a long time.

Vladimir Putin is the most successful investor in the history of the world.

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.

Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

As the economic news keeps coming out over the coming weeks keep one thing in mind: this is the fault of one man and didn’t need to happen.

Exactly right

We’ve got a lot to build in this country, and we need a lot more builders.

So we’ll cover training costs and make it easier to work anywhere in Canada.

It’s going to be a great time to be in the skilled trades.

‘The Terror Is Real’: An Appalled Tech Industry Is Scared to Criticize Elon Musk A huge swath of Silicon Valley is horrified by what Elon Musk is doing — but they’re increasingly afraid to say so.

Profiles in non courage www.politico.com/news/magazin...

stevenrattner.com/article/new-... what morons.. WE all knew

The image is a screenshot of a tweet from Brandon Bradford (@BrandonLBradfor ). The tweet reads: "Deporting Americans without due process then saying they no longer get due process because they aren’t in America means no one has rights, FYI. Nightmare scenario."

If you think this can’t happen, remember that of the 125,000 Japanese Americans who were interned during WWII for years without charge or trial, two-thirds were U.S. citizens. Including me.

Robert Wolf on Fox News: "This big beautiful economy that actually was rolling pretty good with jobs and inflation coming down feels more like the Game of Thrones red wedding. I mean, it's not going well."

1) Fox News is for real not showing stock-market ticker during this week's collapse.

2) Its economic news is "strong jobs report."

3) Every time I've checked in today, the coverage has been "illegal immigrants committing new crimes."

This is state propaganda, on a par with North Korea or PRC.

Periodic reminder that the law makes no provision for the president to just extend the deadline as many times as he wants

Stock market chart from 1920 to 1960, showing peak in 1929 and then severe crash. Red arrow when the stock market had fallen about 20 percent in value from 1929 peak. It went down much further after that.

Lesson of real stock-market crashes:

They're usually worse two months in, than two days in. (With some "dead cat bounces" in between. I say as a fan of cats.)

2025 will not be like 1929. But for perspective, here's roughly where we'd be now, in loss-from-peak terms, on the 1929 track.

How would you feel if overaged and legally blind person were at controls of your fully loaded A380.

And said "Hey, watch this!" as he put the plane into a dive.

And cockpit crew (M Johnson, J Thune, Marco, etc) looked at each other but said nothing as we all headed toward the ground

America: 2025

They told me if I voted for Kamala the market would crash, and then we’d probably have a recession. They were right.

The American Age Is Over Emergency Triad: The United States commits imperial suicide.

Americans may not comprehend the gravity of our situation, the rest of the world most certainly does.

open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Now that Wall Street correctly believes, in light of his tariffs, that Trump is insane, is it really going to look with favor upon the law firms that shamelessly caved to him?

Asking for a profession.

We all must make sacrifices for Party and Leader

For imported coffee, we can substitute proud American chicory or acorns flavored with coal tar, as the Germans learned to do during their experiment with national socialism

Big Law firms and partners have choices about whether to capitulate or to stand tall. History is watching.

I had been reluctant to amplify the theory that Trump's "reciprocal tariff rate" for a given country was based on the dumb calculation: (bilateral trade deficit) divided by (imports from that country)

But now USTR has confirmed it. Brief 🧵