Happy Tuesday !

This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how the oil market chaos might accelerate the shift to electric cars. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

And now for some news you really N2K!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Air Canada CEO to retire over failure-to-speak-Fre …

• Schools are leading an increasing tech backlash

• Inside OpenAI’s decision to axe its much-hyped vid …

• The 'I'm not paranoid; you're sketchy' app

• Will private credit cause the next big crash?

What’s the stock market up to, eh?*

$SPX ( ▼ 0.39% ) $DJI ( ▲ 0.11% ) $NDX ( ▼ 0.73% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$AC.TSX ( ▼ 2.23% )  $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.31% ) OpenAI $BX ( ▲ 3.27% )  

Air Canada CEO to retire over failure-to-speak-French faux pas

In what can only be described as a masterclass in how not to handle a crisis, Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau announced his retirement Monday following a spectacularly tone-deaf response to the fatal crash at LaGuardia Airport.

Au revoir, old friend.

After an Air Canada Express flight collided with a fire truck on March 22 — killing both pilots, including Quebec native Antoine Forest — Rousseau released a condolence video almost entirely in English. His French contribution? A cheerful "bonjour" and "merci."

The backlash was swift and unanimous. Quebec lawmakers voted to demand his resignation, and Prime Minister Mark Carney declared himself "very disappointed," the Canadian equivalent of a verbal takedown.

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada didn't mince words: "He has a responsibility to respect the people and our Francophone community. He didn't do that, and I think he lost the respect of our Francophone community," she told the New York Times.

Air Canada has helpfully noted that French fluency will be a priority for his successor.

Song of the Day: Death Cab for Cutie, ‘Riptides’

"Riptides" by Death Cab for Cutie is an upbeat yet moody, slow-burn lead single from their upcoming album “I Built You a Tower,” which explores feelings of exhaustion and personal struggles amidst global turmoil. It’ll be familiar to readers of this newsletter.

Schools are leading an increasing tech backlash

Turns out giving every 12-year-old an unlimited portal to YouTube and video games wasn't the educational revolution we were promised.

After spending tens of billions of dollars putting Chromebooks $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.31% ) in children's hands, schools across America are experiencing what can only be called "buyer's remorse." Studies now show these digital tools haven't improved academic results or graduation rates.

McPherson Middle School in Kansas is leading the charge back to sanity. Principal Inge Esping, Kansas' 2025 middle school principal of the year, collected all 480 student Chromebooks in December after years of battling video game addictions and Gmail bullying.

"This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education," Ms. Esping told the New York Times. The results? Students are actually talking to each other. Thirteen-year-old Sarah Garcia noted, "Since we don't have our Chromebooks in front of our face, most people now interact with their, like, peers and stuff."

Even California Governor Gavin Newsom admitted his son watched manosphere podcasters on his school Chromebook. "It was YouTube. It was the Chromebook and all these algorithms,” he said.

The pencil deserved more credit all along.

Inside OpenAI’s decision to axe its much-hyped video app, Sora

Nothing says "strategic vision" quite like burning billions on an app that lets users make Martin Luther King Jr. announce new Fortnite seasons. Sora was supposed to be OpenAI’s next revolutionary tool, piggybacking off of ChatGPT to let anyone create videos of themselves lightsaber-fighting Darth Vader.

Disney's $DIS ( ▲ 2.06% ) Bob Iger was so enchanted he pledged $1 billion and offered up Mickey Mouse for the AI treatment. Then Sam Altman unceremoniously pulled the plug, leaving Disney executives blindsided with less than an hour's notice.

The problem? Sora was hemorrhaging money and devouring precious AI chips faster than users could generate "woolly mammoths in snowstorms." Usage peaked at a million users before cratering to half that, while the app produced what critics called "AI slop" rather than "AI magic."

An OpenAI spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal the company is "ruthlessly giving priority to its computing resources" — corporate speak for "we finally did the math."

Perhaps most telling: OpenAI retained key talent by throwing money at them during Meta's poaching attempts, then handed them a project destined for the digital graveyard. Altman framed the shutdown as making "difficult trade-offs." Disney, left holding nothing, offered diplomatic praise for "what we learned from it."

Expensive lessons all around.

Quote of the Day

The 'I'm not paranoid; you're sketchy' app

Ever felt like the five-minute walk to your car is actually a gauntlet through a horror movie? Enter Bond, the app that puts a personal security agent in your pocket so you don't have to awkwardly pretend to be on a call with your imaginary, muscular significant other.

CEO Doran Kempel explains that for people like "Lisa," who finds herself two cars away from a "wrong person," the two-second closing time makes 911 useless. "Starts with a peace of mind situation. It's too early to dial 911...it's gonna be too late to dial 911," Kempel said. Basically, Bond is for that sweet spot between "I'm fine" and "I'm being kidnapped."

The best part? You can summon a human witness to stare at people for you over the phone. "You have an agent up there, basically as soon as you press that button." Kempel says agents will even politely tell creeps, "Sir...the lady or the gentleman feel uncomfortable." It's the ultimate "Can you not?" delivered with professional backup. A way to handle the world without actually having to engage in confrontation.

Of course, there are some assailants, I fear, who might not give a damn that you’ve got a witness to their misbehavior. I’m sure Bond has figured out a fix for those, too.

Free yourself from advertising forever!

Will private credit cause the next big crash?

When Wall Street starts marketing complex debt instruments to retired doctors in Provence, what could possibly go wrong? In the annals of financial genius, few moments shine brighter than trillion-dollar behemoth Blackstone $BX ( ▲ 3.27% ) mailing brochures to 77-year-old retirees offering them a piece of the private credit action.

As Mathieu Chabran of Tikehau Capital told the Financial Times after his father received such an invitation: "Obviously, there is a difference between my father and an Asian sovereign wealth fund in how they underwrite an investment."

Here's the problem: Private capital firms have amassed $22 trillion in assets, largely outside banking regulators' purview, by financing corporate buyouts at sky-high valuations with mountains of debt. Now those deals can't be sold, the loans backing them are souring, and the funds are burning through cash faster than investors can flee. Over $200 billion came from ordinary wealthy individuals who were promised easy redemptions but are now being "gated," or locked in while their investments crater.

"There was too much money, everyone got greedy, and they killed the golden goose," summarizes wealth manager Patrick Dwyer, who's advising clients to run for the exits.

However, industry titan Michael Arrougheti insists "there's nothing flashing anything other than green right now," and former Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz (yes, that Bear Stearns) reassures us the problems aren't "as deep and systemic" as they were back 2008.

So I guess we can all sleep tight in our beds, then, yeah?

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

Nope.

Poll of the day: Au revoir? Or Depeche Mode?

Poll of the day: Electric cars are still a ‘no’

We asked: “Are you more likely to consider an electric vehicle today than you were a month ago?”

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No. I’m waiting for an EV that runs on pure spite and the sound of falling stock prices. (226)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Absolutely. I want a vehicle that’s as quiet as my portfolio's growth potential this week. (125)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Maybe. If the power goes out, can I charge it with a treadmill and a very motivated hamster? (149)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes! If civilization ends, I’d rather listen to my apocalypse playlist in a silent, leather-wrapped cabin. (86)

586 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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