🌊 The Day Donald Trump Got... Nothing

Why is Los Angeles burning?

When we started seeing UFO and Diddy coverup theories on social media, we knew it was time for Roca to investigate. Indeed, it can be hard to cut through the noise on social media, so we thought it might be valuable to lay out the facts for you in a 13-minute video. Did a perfect storm of fire weather conditions cause the fires? Could a more competent government have contained them? Could an even more competent government have prevented them? Is there footage of nervous Nickelodeon execs dumping gas cannisters in the Santa Monica mountains at night to destroy evidence?

We investigate these questions — okay, maybe not the last one — and continue to pray for our Los Angeles readers as this crisis unfolds.

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Trump Sentenced

A New York judge sentenced Donald Trump over his 34 felony “hush money”-related felony counts

• The judge gave Trump no penalty, allowing him to walk free on an “unconditional discharge.” He said Trump’s position as president-elect necessitated the sentence

• The sentencing may mark the end of Trump’s legal battles: Two federal cases involving his handling of classified documents and alleged attempts to interfere in 2020 were shut down after his election victory, while an interference case in Georgia hit a wall over improper actions by the district attorney

Dig Deeper

• Trump's sentence had been recommended by the state, whose prosecutors said it was the only viable sentence given Trump’s status as president-elect. The judge said that while that position necessitates the non-sentence, it “[does] not reduce the seriousness of the crime” nor “erase a jury verdict”

• Trump replied by telling the court, “I am totally innocent, I did nothing wrong …I got indicted over calling a legal expense a legal expense…I think it is an embarrassment to New York”

• Despite the possible end of Trump's criminal cases, he must still pay millions in various civil penalties

KEY STORY

Mass Deportations in Germany?

Germany’s Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD) party is promising to conduct mass deportations if elected in next month’s elections

• Germany hasn’t had a non-left or center-right party lead the country since World War 2. The AFD is currently polling in second place at a record 20%, although other parties have vowed to oppose it

• On Saturday, the party’s co-chair called for “remigration” and “repatriations on a large scale” of immigrants who commit crimes or fail to assimilate

• The term “remigration” – coined by a right-wing Austrian political thinker – is controversial in Germany, where it’s been compared to ethnic cleansing

Dig Deeper

• The speech came as the AFD tries to position Weidel – a former Goldman Sachs analyst – as its acceptable face. She stands in contrast to other party officials, some of whom have been labeled extremists by the German government. Weidel’s co-chair, Bjorn Hocke, has been convicted and fined for using the Nazi slogan “Germany over everything”

• Last week, Weidel participated in an X Spaces with Elon Musk, who endorsed her. Among various questions, Musk asked Weidel to address comparisons between the AFD and the Nazis. Weidel responded, “The biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative. He was exactly the opposite. He wasn't a conservative. He wasn't a libertarian. He was a communist socialist guy. Full stop. No more comment on that. And we are exactly the opposite”

ROCA’S SPONSOR

Roca is sending you to Tahoe!

Together With Dollar Flight Club

We’re partnering with our travel partner, Dollar Flight Club, to give away a free trip to Lake Tahoe

• Dollar Flight Club provides alerts when flights you’re interested in dip in price. Their (free) service has helped us and many others save up to 90% on travel

• This winter, we’re partnering with them to give away a trip to Lake Tahoe

• It’s free to enter with no strings attached. Just sign up here for their free flight price tracking and you’ll be automatically entered to win 

KEY STORY

Quantum Computing Drop

Quantum stocks plummeted after Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, said such computers are 20 years away

• Quantum computers are super-powerful computers that can solve extremely complex problems quickly and have the potential to change how humans approach encryption, medicine, finance, and much more

• Last week, Huang said useful quantum computers are likely around two decades away. Quantum computing stocks – which have been on a tear since Google revealed Willow, a new quantum chip – such as Rigetti Computing and IonQ fell around 40% after the remarks, wiping away billions of dollars in value

Dig Deeper 

• Despite being just a tenth of a percent as strong as Google’s ultimate goal for quantum chips, Willow performed in under five minutes computations that would have taken the fastest currently-available supercomputers 10 septillion years

• Huang added that he believes Nvidia will play a “very significant” role in creating those computers and getting the industry “there as fast as possible”

KEY STORY

Reinforcements Arrive in LA

Several states and Mexico sent firefighters to help contain the LA County fires, which continue to rage

• Thanks to calmer winds and the arrival of more water tanks, firefighters are beginning to contain the major blazes. The largest – the Palisades and Eaton fires – are now 11% and 27% contained, respectively

• Cities in the Bay Area, Utah, Oregon, Arizona, Washington, and New Mexico have all sent firefighters to help the LAFD with the fight. Other reinforcements include 1,000 prison inmates and 70 firefighters from Mexico, who flew in on Saturday

Dig Deeper

• The death toll is now up to 16 with at least 16 more people missing, with the fires having burned an estimated 12,000 structures and on track to inflict up to $150B in damage, per AccuWeather

• In addition to countless working people, celebrities including Mel Gibson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Paris Hilton, John C. Reilly, Anthony Hopkins, James Woods, John Goodman, and Adam Brody have lost homes in the fires

• Hilton wrote, “Sitting with my family, watching the news, and seeing our home in Malibu burn to the ground on live TV is something no one should ever have to experience”

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🇵🇱 Poland endorsed Donald Trump’s proposal of increasing the NATO spending requirement to 5%

🇰🇵 Ukraine claimed to have captured North Korean troops for the first time since they entered the Ukraine-Russia war

📉 Data from payment terminal company Toast shows that Americans are tipping servers at the lowest rate in six years

🇺🇸 Vice president-elect JD Vance said violent January 6 rioters “obviously” would not receive a presidential pardon, an apparent split with the president-elect

🇬🇧 The UK government is announcing a plan that seeks to create a British rival to current AI leaders

COMMUNITY
What does Roca Nation think?

🧠 Today’s question: Who was your hero when you were a 12-year-old kid?

Reply to this email with your response!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🔥 Liar Liar…: An attempted arson at an Australian fast-food restaurant backfired when one of the suspects accidentally set their own pants on fire while trying to ignite flammable liquid

🇨🇦 Paw-Litical Problems: The Liberal Party of Canada has vowed to remove "fraudulent profiles" from its leadership election voter list after people reportedly registered their pets and used fake addresses like the Chinese Embassy to vote

👰 How to Unfollow Your Spouse?: A Melbourne, Australia marriage was annulled after the bride convinced a court she believed the wedding was just a "prank" for the groom's Instagram following, rather than a legal ceremony

🇮🇳 Marriage is Overrated Anyways: The chairman of Larsen & Toubro, a $56B Indian conglomerate, suggested his staff should work on Sundays, because “How long can you stare at your wife?”

💰 Decimal Point of No Return: Florida’s government sued after accidentally paying $5,057,850 instead of $50,578.50 to a healthcare company whose CEO later ran for Congress (and won)

ROCA WRAP
Last Week’s Biggest Story

One of the biggest stories we’ve ever encountered happened last week. Namely: That Meta will stop censoring creators.

Now this might not sound like a big deal to you, or it may sound like a bad thing. CBS News fact-checked the announcement itself – “Mark Zuckerberg says ending fact-checks will curb censorship. Fact-checkers say he's wrong” – while the New Yorker wrote that Meta was abandoning its “commitment to accuracy.” MSNBC opined that “Meta's fact-checking move has nothing to do with free speech.”

We can tell you first hand: It has everything to do with free speech.

Every successful social media creator we know has learned an important lesson: What they can and can’t say on various platforms. Each company has its own forbidden words. Post something containing the words and your post will be suppressed. Post those words enough and your whole page will be suppressed, i.e. “shadowbanned.”

Shadowbans can kill a company. At one point in 2022, before we understood the “rules,” we were shadowbanned on Instagram so aggressively that you couldn’t even find us with a search. One media executive told Roca this week that a TikTok shadow ban crushed their views and revenue so much that they had to lay off staff.

So what gets you shadowbanned? 

In our experience, it’s any post using the word “vaccine,” regardless of context; any post using words related to violence, drugs, or sex; phrases like “Big Tech,” pictures containing guns, drugs, or pharmaceuticals; and much more. If you want people to see your content, you must avoid these phrases. Try running a news company with those restrictions.

These harsh censorship policies were implemented at a time when established media outlets, nonprofits, and government officials were demanding Big Tech “do more” to combat misinformation and “hate.”  Despite being nominally well-meaning, they effectively crushed the little guy and cemented the power of the established players. For proof, consider the following:

To address misinformation concerns by the Biden Administration and others, Instagram announced last February that pages posting “political content” would not be eligible to have their content recommended on Reels, Explore, in-feed recommendations, or suggested users. Our posts were suppressed, growth stagnated, and business put at risk. 

Yet posts from the Washington Post and other outlets continued to be recommended to us, despite our not following the pages. Sources within Meta confirmed that certain Big News outlets were “whitelisted” to get around the limitation.

We aren’t naive: Meta’s press releases about “ending censorship” may well be about appeasing the incoming administration rather than a commitment to the principles of free speech. Yet we’ll take what we can get: After years of shadowbans and suppression, the guillotine of censorship no longer hangs over our head.

Back to free speech: Nowadays, social media is the public square. Ideas flow from there into politics, media, and everywhere else. Censor ideas there, and you censor them across society.

We – and many others – have been limited in the stories we can write and interviews we can run, and therefore the knowledge our readers get. Thankfully, those days – at least for now – seem to be behind us.

What do you think about this? Let us know by replying to this email.

ROCA VIDEO
Why Los Angeles Is Burning to the Ground

On Thursday, January 2nd, the National Weather Service station in Los Angeles issued a stark warning. They predicted “extreme fire weather conditions” from next Tuesday through Thursday. They were right, and Los Angeles County was wholly unprepared for it. This video investigates why.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Today is the apocryphal anniversary of Thomas Crapper’s invention of the portable toilet. It turns out that the 19th-century Brit was more myth than inventor. Although he made some small tweaks on lavatory technology, Mr. Crapper did not give us the crapper. In fact, he didn’t even give us that word; it preceded him but every “fun fact” website will tell you otherwise. So next time your uncle tries to tell you about Tommy Crapper, you can now hit him with an “umm, ackchyually…”

–Max and Max