🌊 Time to Google a Lawyer, Buddy

Average sight for a New York City morning commute.

50 years ago today, French stuntman Philippe Petit made his notorious tightrope walk between the World Trade Center’s twin towers. Petit stepped out onto the wire — which he and his accomplices had illegally set up the night before — shortly after 7 AM and made eight crossings over the next 45 minutes. As to why he did the stunt, Petit explained, “If I see two towers, I have to walk.”

Petit’s feat remained the most impressive thing New York had ever seen for decades. But then, in 2021, Joey Chestnut ate 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes. America beats France yet again.

–Max, Max, and Owen

KEY STORY

Walz’ing to the White House?

Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate

• Walz ascended to the top of the VP contenders list in recent days due to his outspoken advocacy of Harris and his repeated labeling of JD Vance and other Republican leaders as “weird”

• In a statement, VP Harris said, “It’s personal. As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his own”

• Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign said in a statement, “It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate”

Dig Deeper

• Walz was not a frontrunner for VP just a few weeks ago. At the time, betting markets and political analysts projected that Harris would choose Josh Shapiro (Gov., PA), Gretchen Whitmer (Gov., MI), Roy Cooper (Gov., NC), or Andy Beshear (Gov., KY). But Walz’s forceful and often viral media blitz vaulted him to the top of the list

• Republicans are already criticizing Walz’s oversight of the George Floyd riots in 2020 in the Twin Cities and his allegedly “radical” progressive agenda. Democrats are touting his bold vision for the future and unapologetic progressivism as a “working class” teacher and veteran

KEY STORY

Google Guilty

A US federal court deemed Google a “monopolist” in one of the biggest antitrust wins ever vs. Big Tech

• In 2020, the Trump Justice Department (DoJ) and various states accused Google of eliminating competition by paying tens of billions of dollars to make its search engine the default on web browsers and devices. Most notably, it paid Apple $20B+ a year to make Google search the iPhone’s default

• A judge ruled that Google broke the law and is a “monopolist” because its deals blocked small firms’ market access, making it impossible for them to grow. He’ll now consider possible remedies

Dig Deeper

• The judge said that Google’s deals deny smaller firms a significant amount of market access, making it impossible for them to “scale” – which he called “the essential raw material for building, improving, and sustaining” a search engine

• Google, meanwhile, said it beat the competition: “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available”

• Google will appeal

ROCA’S PARTNERS

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• Water is half the battle, but to truly hydrate, you also need proper electrolyte intake

• LMNT packs just the essential electrolytes into their drink mix without the dodgy additives of sports drinks

• Get a free Sample Pack with any drink mix purchase here

Dig Deeper

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KEY STORY

CrowdStrike Claps Back

CrowdStrike says that Delta’s recent meltdown is on the airliner, not itself

• Last week, Delta’s CEO said his company would sue CrowdStrike and Microsoft after the infrastructure outage cost the airliner $500M. Since the July 19 CrowdStrike bug, Delta – the most reliable US airline by several metrics – has canceled 5,000 flights and continues to have issues

• But CrowdStrike’s lawyers now say Delta is to blame, as the airliner refused immediate on-site IT help and struggled more than other airlines. While Delta will seek a significant financial payment, CrowdStrike says its contract limits its potential liability to the “single-digit millions”

Dig Deeper

• While Delta’s CEO has not responded to CrowdStrike’s lawyers, he said last week that Delta has suffered because it was more exposed to CrowdStrike and Microsoft than other airlines

KEY STORY

From Finance to Gold Medal

Several years after working on Wall Street, Kristen Faulkner won Team USA’s first cycling medal in the women’s road race in 40 years

• Faulkner, 31, went to Harvard for college, where she competed as a varsity rower. She holds the Harvard record for the fastest 2 KM indoor rowing time for lightweight women

• After graduating in 2016, she took a job at a venture capital firm in New York. While there, she decided to take a beginner’s cycling class in Central Park

• She eventually quit her job to become a full-time professional cyclist. A teammate resigned her spot in the road race this July, and Faulkner took her spot. She won the race by nearly a minute

Dig Deeper

• In an interview with the AP, she explained that her career as a venture capitalist has been instrumental in her success as a cyclist: “I learned how to calculate risks and assess risks,” she said. “In a race I take that mindset with me: What is the risk-reward ratio? Knowing when to go all in”

• It was her lifelong dream to compete in the Olympics, she said. Only previously, she thought it would be rowing that took her there

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🚨 Hamas named Yahya Sinwar – its top official in Gaza and the mastermind of the October 7 attacks – as its new leader. Sinwar is a secretive figure close to Iran who has spent years building up Hamas’ military strength, and analysts said his appointment signals the group’s readiness to continue fighting

💥 Also Tuesday, just before Hezbollah’s leader gave a speech marking one week since Israel killed the group’s top military commander and Hamas’ leader, Israeli warplanes reportedly broke the sound barrier three times over Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, within 30 minutes. The flights caused loud booms, sending people running for cover

📦 Elon Musk said he has “no choice” but to move X’s flagship office out of San Francisco. Musk’s statement comes weeks after he announced he would move X and SpaceX to Texas due to new California state laws. “No choice. It is impossible to operate in San Francisco if you’re processing payments. That’s why Stripe, Block (CashApp) & others had to move,” he wrote on X

📺 Google announced it will stop making Chromecasts. The company launched the streaming devices in 2013 and said Tuesday that “technology has evolved dramatically” since then. Google will now offer the $99.99 “Google TV Streamer” set-top box with a 22% faster processor 

💧 Olympic triathlon swimmers from Belgium and Switzerland withdrew from the mixed relay competition due to illnesses, and organizers canceled a marathon swimming practice session on Tuesday due to “water quality concerns.” France spent ~$1.5B to clean the once heavily polluted river Seine for the Olympics, but recent samples showed bacteria levels exceeding accepted standards. Both athletes swam in the Seine last week, although the sources of their illnesses remain unconfirmed

COMMUNITY

🧠 Yesterday’s question: Do you feel older or younger than your age?

🧠 Today’s question: Why do you think people become happier as they get older? (Not an observation, but what the data show).

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🌀 Debby does blow: Hurricane Debby blew 25 packages (70 lbs.) of cocaine worth over $1M onto a beach in the Florida Keys

🗡 Power restored: A federal judge ordered the DOJ to return to the “QAnon Shaman” the spear and horned helmet he wore during the January 6 riot

🏟 Dale! Pitbull Stadium: International music star Pitbull — nicknamed Mr. 305 after Miami’s area code — is purchasing the naming rights to FIU’s football stadium in Miami

🦷 AI bites back: Perceptive, a Boston-based robotics and AI startup, claims to have completed the first fully robotic dental procedure on a human

🐦 Bonnie & Glide: A seagull robbed a man on Nantucket in Massachusetts. As the man was loading groceries into his car, the seagull swooped down and took his wallet from the top tray of the shopping cart

ROCA WRAP

Which Came First?

Which came first: The chicken or the egg? Last month, this age-old question sparked a fatal stabbing between two drinking partners. 

The duo was in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country, with nearly 281M people; has the largest Muslim population of any country; and is the world’s largest archipelago, comprising over 17,000 islands, ~6,000 of which are inhabited.

On one of these islands, a deadly stabbing occurred in a village on July 24 when a man attacked another man during a night of drinking. They reportedly didn’t know each other before meeting at the drinking spot, where they started joking and exchanging riddles, including the classic “chicken-or-egg” debate.

The perpetrator reportedly became emotional, left the gathering to retrieve a sharp weapon from home, returned, and brutally stabbed the man 15 times, killing him on the spot. Witnesses rushed the victim to the hospital but couldn’t save him.

The perpetrator fled on a motorbike and later surrendered to the police, who are treating the incident as a murder. Unfortunately, this riddle ended not with an answer but with a tragic crack.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Imagine being the victim of the seagull theft in Nantucket and having to explain to the cops what happened. Also, did it say “Mine” before grabbing the wallet like in Finding Nemo? The hardest part would be answering the police’s question, “So what did it look like?”

Happy Hump Day. Watch those shopping carts today.

–Max and Max