🌊 No Country for Narcos

Plus: Your responses to moon conspiracy, gruesome NC stabbing, & drunk raccoon

September 09, 2025

Do you know where the term computer “bug” comes from?

The answer would be a literal bug. On this day in 1947, Harvard engineers found a moth stuck in one of the components of a Mark 2 computer. They taped the insect in their logbook and labeled it "first actual case of bug being found.” They thus literally de-bugged their computer and gave a new meaning to the word overnight.

Does anyone else want to know the origin of the term “cookies” now?

📉 Venezuela takes on drug trafficking

🚨 Gruesome North Carolina attack

🌕 Your thoughts on the Moon landing conspiracies

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Venezuela vs. Drug Traffickers?

Amid US military pressure, Venezuela pledged to increase troop numbers in coastal states in an effort to tackle drug trafficking

  • Since January, the Trump Administration has deployed eight warships, one attack submarine, surveillance planes, and thousands of troops to Caribbean waters near Venezuela to combat drug cartels

  • The Pentagon conducted its first military strike against what it claimed was a cartel target last Tuesday, killing 11 people in a boat officials said had departed from Venezuela carrying drugs

  • The Venezuelan defense minister said Sunday that President NicolĂĄs Maduro had ordered 15,000+ additional troops deployed to the country’s border areas that are known for drug smuggling

Dig Deeper

  • Maduro has accused the US of “seeking a regime change through military threat" but left the door open for negotiations, saying, “Venezuela is always ready for dialogue, but we demand respect." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Maduro “effectively a kingpin of a drug narco state,” warning that “anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco-terrorist will face the same fate”

  • The White House said Friday that ten F-35 fighter jets are being sent to Puerto Rico after Venezuelan fighter jets flew close to a US warship last week

KEY STORY

TX and NY Face Off Over Abortion

New York Attorney General Letitia James intervened in a lawsuit that could determine whether states must honor each other’s abortion laws

  • Shield laws emerged in at least eight states after Roe v. Wade was overturned, protecting health care providers who prescribe abortion pills through telemedicine to patients in states with abortion bans

  • The case began when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor for mailing abortion pills to a Texas woman, resulting in a $113,000 penalty that Ulster County’s clerk refused to enforce, citing New York’s shield law

  • Paxton argues New York’s shield law violates the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, while James counters that “Texas has no authority in New York”

Dig Deeper 

  • Sixteen Republican attorneys general wrote to Congress in July, asking for federal action against shield laws, calling them “blatant attempts to interfere with states’ ability to enforce criminal laws within their borders”

  • Meanwhile, states with shield laws strengthened their protections. New York passed “Shield Law 2.0” in June, which prohibits hospitals and clinics from cooperating with out-of-state investigations

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Until the lion has its own historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

African Proverb

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KEY STORY

SpaceX Enters Phone Biz?

SpaceX struck a $17B deal to buy spectrum licenses from EchoStar, paving the way for the company to deliver internet directly to mobile phones

  • SpaceX provided home broadband through its Starlink satellite network. It’s also been moving into mobile service, including through a partnership with T-Mobile to deliver service to customers in remote areas

  • The deal will allow SpaceX to operate its direct-to-cell services on frequencies it owns rather than relying solely on leased spectrum from mobile carriers like T-Mobile

  • SpaceX’s president said the company would use the spectrum to “end mobile dead zones around the world” and develop next-generation satellites with improved performance

Dig Deeper

  • The acquisition will allow SpaceX to operate its direct-to-cell services on frequencies it owns rather than relying solely on leased spectrum from mobile carriers

  • EchoStar's stock surged approximately 17% following the announcement before falling slightly, while shares of major wireless carriers declined between 2–3%

KEY STORY

Gruesome NC Stabbing + Response

President Trump said the US must confront “evil” after the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee living in North Carolina

  • On August 22, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian woman, was fatally stabbed while riding the city's light rail system in what appeared to be a random attack. Surveillance footage showed the suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., pulling out a folding knife and stabbing Zarutska three times in the neck

  • Brown, a 34-year-old homeless man with a lengthy criminal history and mental health issues, including a schizophrenia diagnosis, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder

  • Conservative political figures shared footage of the attack and used it to criticize Democrats as being “soft on crime”

Dig Deeper 

  • The case sparked debate about media coverage, with conservative commentators and Elon Musk accusing major news outlets of ignoring the story. Musk shared posts contrasting the coverage with that of George Floyd's murder in 2020 and called for expedited death penalty sentences in cases with “unequivocal guilt”

  • Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles defended the limited sharing of footage, saying media partners and community members had chosen not to repost it “out of respect for Iryna's family”

  • Democratic officials responded by focusing on mental health and systemic issues, with Lyles emphasizing that Brown had “a long history of mental health problems”

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🇮🇱 Two Palestinian gunmen killed six Israelis and wounded twelve others in a shooting attack at a Jerusalem bus stop on Monday, marking the deadliest incident in the country in nearly a year

🇺🇸 Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily allowed President Trump to remove the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Democratic Commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter

⚖️ The Trump Administration unveiled plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an accused MS-13 member from El Salvador, to the African nation of Eswatini after he rejected a plea deal

🧑‍⚖️ The Supreme Court temporarily lifted a federal judge’s order that prohibited government agents from making immigration-related stops based on race, language, or work location in the Los Angeles area

🇫🇷 The French National Assembly passed a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister François Bayrou with 364 votes, forcing his resignation after less than nine months in office

What does Roca Nation think?

🌕 Yesterday’s Question: Do you believe the moon landing happened? Why or why not? We’re interviewing an expert this week.

Aside from just being a space fan since kidhood (I was 8 when Apollo 13 came out), two things stand out as pretty strong evidence to me that those moon landings did indeed happen, and are more practical than just "Are you stupid, science is real!" sort of arguments.

1) The cost of the Saturn V rocket (the big white rocket that you see in launch footage) was around $6.4 billion in the 60s/70s (about $52 billion in 2024), and every launch (and moon landing) was a massive massive world event. Television viewing records were met and broken. If you're going to fake the rest of it, why put on an expensive show of a launch that is A) tremendously expensive, and B) puts a massive magnifying glass on your "fake landing" plan, making it easier to analyze and expose? The cost and the theater of those launches is like yelling out loud about your secret coup.

2) During the Manhattan Project, the whole thing was lousy with Soviet spies. The USSR had a lot to gain by getting atomic secrets and had a lot of willing idealogue believers - most of whom were American/Western citizens. Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, and many others were caught sharing a lot of crucial information that gave the Soviets a 5-10 year jump on building a bomb. If, then, the Space Race was a part of the broader Cold War - a war of ideologies where every little win counted (even in the Olympics or basic public relations) - why did the Soviets never get close to the moon themselves, or even be seen developing the technology in the way they did (with a lot of internal American/Pro-Soviet help) with the atomic bomb? Or, if the moon landing was fake, why didn't the Soviets blow the secret and tell everyone how foolish "the Capitalists" looked trying to fool their people and the world? In 1917, during World War 1, the Soviets told everyone about the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement of the Western Allies to divide up the Middle East after the war. Thirty to forty years wouldn't make them any kinder about the West's real or imagined secrets.

The U.S. government does a lot of dodgy things (I'm starting to wonder more and more if Nixon was set up, for example). Personally, my confidence in them (BOTH parties) has never been lower. But it always acts in its own self-interest. It does not do to broadcast one's "secret" schemes nor leave the door open to possible Soviet subversion.

Plus, space is like cool and all.

Shawn from Utah

No, absolutely not.

1. Buzz Aldrin recently has made multiple claims that we never went.

2. The Van Allen radiation belts that astronauts cannot cross to get to the moon.

3. The rippling flag. What breeze in space is blowing the flag around?

4. Nixon spoke to them on a landline..? wtf?

And yes, I think it would be easier for a government cover up than it would be to actually send people to the moon.

Danny from Maine

The moon landings!? (and it's landings, not "landing") Seriously? You must have done this to tease out any ill-informed readers out there in the Roca-sphere 😳🤣🤣

Reflectors were left on the moon by Apollo missions 11, 14, and 15. Anyone with a reasonable strength laser (not the kind on your keychain that you get your cat to chase) can bounce a beam off them and capture the return with sophisticated equipment. They are regularly used to measure the distance from the moon to the earth with solid precision. It's done pretty frequently (some observatories do so several times a week).

Greg from Undisclosed

😳 Today’s Question: What’s a conspiracy theory you do believe?

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🦝 Trash Panda Gets Trashed: A Kentucky nurse performed CPR on a baby raccoon that nearly drowned after getting drunk on moonshine-soaked peaches in a dumpster

🛰️ The Little Probes That Could: NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially turned 48 years old, with both Voyager 1 and 2 continuing to defy expectations as they journey through interstellar space far beyond our solar system

🎞️ The Horror!: “The Conjuring: Last Rites” shattered horror box office records with a $194M global opening weekend, surpassing the previous benchmark set by 2017's “It”

🤑 Double Trouble: Two lucky Powerball players in Missouri and Texas will split the second-largest jackpot in lottery history, worth $1.79B after Saturday night's drawing

🌌 Air Apparent: Astronomers studying the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e announced they cannot rule out that it has a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, offering a glimmer of hope for habitability in a star system that has otherwise disappointed scientists

ROCA WRAP
The Dog Philosopher

Diogenes of Sinope

This notorious philosopher lived in a large ceramic jar and was known for his quick wit.

Diogenes of Sinope arrived in Athens around 350 BC as an exile, having fled his homeland after a currency debasement scandal that had destroyed his family's reputation. Whether he or his father was responsible for debasing the coins remains unclear, but the incident transformed a privileged young man into philosophy's greatest rebel.

Diogenes of Sinope earned his nickname “the Dog” for living like one – sleeping outdoors, begging for food, and showing no shame about bodily functions. He was the embodiment of ancient Greek cynicism, a philosophy that emphasizes living with nature and rejecting desires for wealth, power, and possessions. Diogenes wore the title proudly, arguing, “Other dogs bite their enemies, but I bite my friends to save them.” 

Embracing radical poverty, Diogenes made his home in a large ceramic storage jar in Athens, surviving on charity while openly mocking social norms. He urinated on people who annoyed him and famously wandered the marketplace with a lamp in daylight, claiming to search for “a wise man.” When he saw a child drinking from cupped hands, he threw away his own drinking cup, declaring nature had already provided one. Plato once dismissed him as “Socrates gone mad,” prompting Diogenes to call Plato's philosophical school “a waste of time.”

The philosopher's most famous encounter came when Alexander the Great sought him out. Finding Diogenes sunbathing, the young conqueror asked if he could do anything for him. “Yes,” Diogenes replied, “Stand out of my sunlight.” Alexander was so impressed by this indifference to power that he reportedly said, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.” For a man who owned nothing, Diogenes left behind everything: A philosophy that still challenges how we think about wealth, power, and what it means to be truly free.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Another “this day in history” fact for you: Today is also the anniversary of the first time a laugh track was used in a TV show. The Hank McCune Show deployed it on September 9, 1950, in an episode and changed the face of TV forever.

We’ve been trying to get one on this newsletter for a while. So far no luck… all we hear is… silence.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses to the Moon landing conspiracy question. We can’t wait for the interview!

–Max and Max