🌊 I Left My Corpse in San Francisco

Drinking rules for tonight:

• Take a sip every time Kamala giggles, begins an answer with “Look,” or refers to her running mate as “Coach Walz.”

• Take a sip every time Trump calls her Comrade Kamala, calls him Tampon Tim, or discusses his crowd sizes.

• Finish your drink if Kamala tries out a new accent, asks “Do you think you fell out of a coconut tree?,” or tells the Philly audience she ate a cheesesteak at both Pat’s & Geno’s for prep.

• Finish your drink if Trump calls Kamala a “nasty woman,” shows up with an excessive amount of tape on his ear, or agrees with her.

Ehh, scratch all this — we don’t want to encourage alcohol poisoning. Instead, watch with a bottle of Xanax and an emotional support pillow.

–Max, Max, and Owen

KEY STORY

Robot Mushroom Walks

Researchers created a robotic walking mushroom

• A group of scientists at Cornell University and Italy’s Florence University created an interface that measured electrical signals from a mushroom and converted those signals into movements in a robot

• Because mushrooms are naturally sensitive to light, the mushroom – a king trumpet, which is edible – wheeled around or pumped its legs depending on the degree and type of light to which it was exposed

• “The potential for future robots could be to sense soil chemistry in row crops and decide when to add more fertilizer,” one of the authors said

Dig Deeper

• The technique – converting electrical signals into robotic movement – has been applied in numerous recent studies

• In one, an artificial worm brain was installed in a Lego robot; in another, it was used to improve human prosthetics

KEY STORY

Succession IRL

A News Corp investor is pushing to end the Murdoch family’s control over the company

• 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch and four of his six kids control News Corp – a $15B conglomerate that owns nearly 40 media entities, including the Wall Street Journal – through a family trust. The trust owns 14% of News Corp and controls 41% of its voting shares

• Activist investor Starboard Value sent a proposal to News Corp shareholders that would end the Murdoch family’s control. Starboard’s CEO added, “There are no reasonable arguments to extend… de facto control to the inheritors of a founder”

Dig Deeper

• Three of the Murdoch children have sued their father, Rupert, who recently assigned his son Lachlan – whose conservative politics align with his father’s – majority control over the trust upon his death

• Starboard’s CEO, who would need nearly all non-Murdoch shareholders to agree to his proposal, argues that the schism between the Murdoch children “could be paralyzing to [News Corp’s] strategic direction”

ROCA’S PARTNERS

Put an End to Those Pesky Spam Calls

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• There are few things more frustrating than dashing across the room to answer your ringing phone, only to see “Potential Spam” on the caller ID (probably for the third time today)

• If you want to cleanse your phone of this annoyance (and increase your personal security), you have three options:

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  2. Individually block each unknown caller

  3. Stop spammers from getting your number in the first place with Incogni

• We highly recommend option 3, and not just because electronic garbage is bad for aquatic life

Dig Deeper

• Incogni’s automated personal information removal service hunts down and removes your breached personal information from the web. Plus, Incogni will reduce the number of spam emails in your inbox

• Roca readers can get 55% off an annual plan using code “ROCA10”

• Get started with Incogni here

KEY STORY

Fyre Festival’s Return

Entrepreneur and convicted fraudster Billy McFarland revealed plans for Fyre Festival II

• McFarland co-founded the Fyre Festival, a “luxury” music festival on a Bahamian island promising top entertainment and amenities, scheduled for spring 2017. Mismanagement and deception, however, led organizers to cancel it once attendees arrived and found dire conditions

• In 2018, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud related to the festival and served four years in prison

• On Monday, McFarland shared details about Fyre Festival II with NBC News. The event – reportedly priced at $1,400 to $1.1M per ticket – will take place in April 2025 on a private island off the coast of Mexico

Dig Deeper

• McFarland co-founded the festival alongside Ja Rule to promote his music talent booking app. Celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski also promoted it

• Attendees arrived to find disaster relief tents for sleeping, cheese sandwiches in styrofoam boxes, and no music. The fiasco became the subject of several documentaries

• When asked how he plans to attract artists to Fyre Festival II after 2017’s failure, McFarland said, “We have the chance to embrace this storm and really steer our ship into all the chaos that has happened”

KEY STORY

San Francisco’s Public Overdose Problem

Over the last four years, at least 730 people have died from drug overdoses in public places in San Francisco

• 68% of the public overdose victims were homeless, and 22% had been diagnosed with severe mental illness per reporting from The San Francisco Standard

• San Francisco’s overdose death toll hit an all-time high of 806 in 2023. 653 of those came from fentanyl

• To reduce such deaths, San Francisco’s health department says it has trained every city employee – cops and librarians included – on how to reverse an overdose

Dig Deeper

• To put the public overdose number into perspective, between 2020 and 2023, the city recorded 212 homicides

• That means 3.4x as many San Franciscans died from drug overdoses in public than from murder anywhere

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

👑 In an emotional video message, the UK’s Kate Middleton announced that she has finished chemotherapy

💸 Discount retailer Big Lots filed for bankruptcy

🗳️ A new Pew poll found the US electorate perfectly split between Harris and Trump, with 49% of registered voters saying they would choose each candidate if the vote were held today

📱 Apple revealed its AI-focused iPhone 16

📈 US stocks ended Monday sharply higher after a Friday sell-off ended the market’s worst week since March 2023

COMMUNITY

🧐 Yesterday’s question: What was the highlight of your weekend?

🧠 Today’s question: Who will win tonight’s debate? Read below Wrap for more…

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

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🙏 Look at the stars: James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in “Lion King,” died at 93, with no cause of death confirmed

🍖 Flavortown Faux Pas: Food Network star Guy Fieri revealed he was once mistaken for catering staff at Sylvester Stallone’s house. A lady came up to him in the cigar room and said, “Lose the jacket, get going”

🦞 Servant of the people: New Hampshire’s governor helped save a contestant choking on a lobster roll during a seafood festival eating contest on Sunday by performing the Heimlich maneuver

⚠️ Algo Affirmation: YouTube is updating its algorithm to limit the promotion of videos featuring non-violent aggression and idealized physical appearances to teenagers

🍿 Happy Gilmore 2 before GTA 6: Netflix announced that production has begun on the sequel film “Happy Gilmore 2.” The original film starring Adam Sandler came out in 1996

ROCA WRAP

Roca Votes: Who Will Win the Debate?

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off tonight in what may be their only presidential debate. Who do you think will win? 

Right now, polls show a dead heat between Harris and Trump. Polling averages on RealClearPolitics show them within 1.5 points in all seven swing states. In Pennsylvania, perhaps the most important swing state, polls have the two candidates tied.

Betting markets show Trump leading Kamala as the favorite but only by the slimmest of margins. The crypto-based betting platform Polymarket gives Trump a 53% chance of winning, while the British bookmaking site Smarkets gives him a 50.5% chance.

Aside from the Super Bowl, few if any US telecasts draw more viewers than a presidential debate. In 2016, an average of 84M viewers tuned in to the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 drew an average audience of 71.3M.

While the stakes are high for both candidates, they arguably couldn’t be any higher for Kamala Harris. Harris has done only one interview since replacing Biden – whose last debate performance got him nixed – as the Democratic presidential candidate. Voters are less familiar with her and her policies than they are with Trump and his.

The debate will take place in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center tonight. It will air at 9 PM EST and run for 90 minutes with two commercial breaks. ABC News will host it. There won’t be a live audience, and mics will be muted – contrary to the Harris campaign’s request – while the other candidate is speaking. The candidates have not agreed to another debate, so this may be their only one.

For the purposes of this “Roca Votes,” the definition of “winning” is purely political: Who will win over more voters in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina? Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

ROCA VIDEO
Exploring Chicago’s Most Dangerous Hood

ICYMI last week. We covered the DNC from Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood, which is in contention with Englewood and West Garfield Park for the title of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhood. Our conversations were fascinating, and we hope you enjoy the vid!

Make sure to subscribe to the channel!

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Happy 34th anniversary of the premiere of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on NBC. That’s gotta be a top five TV theme song of all time. Maybe we’ll ask about that in the newsletter tomorrow because those are fighting words. Have a great Tuesday and happy debate vieweing!

–Max and Max