🌊 It's Not You, Babe, It's Covid

The Danelo Cavalcante manhunt was only a year ago?!

Roca Nation, today is the 1-year anniversary of the conclusion of the Danelo Cavalcante manhunt. Do you remember this one? The guy who reverse shimmied up a wall to escape from prison in Chester County, PA, and then eluded 500 police officers for two weeks in a statewide manhunt?

We definitely appreciated the whole saga because we’ve had multiple team members reverse shimmy up the Roca office walls to leave work early and used to think that was unusual.

Enjoy today’s “Rate This Dad Joke” edition of 20 Questions!

–Max, Max, and Owen

KEY STORY

Seal Team 6’s China Prep

Seal Team Six (ST6) has been training for a war between China and Taiwan

• ST6 is one of the US’ five publicly acknowledged “special missions units” used for the most sensitive operations. In recent years, it killed Bin Laden and freed “Captain Phillips” from Somali pirates

• This week, the Financial Times reported that for over a year, Seal Team Six has been secretly training for a potential conflict with China over Taiwan

• The news comes as US priorities shift from combating terrorism to China, which seeks to be able to retake Taiwan by 2027

Dig Deeper

• China says it will retake Taiwan with force, if necessary

• While obligated by law to help Taiwan defend itself, the US has a policy of “strategic ambiguity” that doesn’t specify whether that would entail defending Taiwan if attacked

KEY STORY

Kids Show Rules TV

Kids TV show Bluey has become 2024’s most-watched show in the US

• Bluey has exploded in the US since its 2018 launch: its 43.9B watch minutes in 2023 trailed only the legal drama Suits, which garnered 57.7B minutes

• Bluey has doubled its viewership since last year, per Nielsen data. The show – which follows the adventures of Bluey, an Australian cattle dog – is now 2024’s top show

• The Bluey brand – which accounted for 29% of all TV views on Disney+ in 2023 – is estimated to be worth more than $2B

Dig Deeper

• Viewers say the show manages to captivate children without torturing parents

KEY STORY

NYPD Commissioner Resigns

NYC Police Commissioner Edward Caban resigned Thursday, less than a week after federal agents raided his home and those of others in Mayor Eric Adam’s inner circle

• Last week, US attorneys seized cell phones from Caban and his twin brother, along with raids on top Adams officials. No charges have been filed, but sources claim Caban’s twin acted as a “fixer” for bars and nightclubs, resolving issues with the NYPD

• Caban didn’t directly address the investigation, saying he made the “difficult decision to resign” due to “recent developments.” Adams accepted the resignation, calling it “the best decision at this time”

Dig Deeper

• Caban’s resignation comes amid a federal corruption investigation reportedly centering on whether the Adams campaign conspired with the Turkish government for illegal foreign campaign contributions

• His attorneys said he is “not a target of any investigation being conducted by the Southern District of New York” and “expects to cooperate fully with the government”

KEY STORY

Single Because of Covid?

Covid made an extra 13M people in the US single, per a new study from Stanford University

• The number of people in casual relationships in the US plummeted in 2020 due to Covid. In 2022, despite the mass vaccine rollout, it was even lower

• The US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that adults spent far more time alone in 2023 than four years earlier and that the trend is not returning to normal. Rather, the trendline from 2021 to 2023 is flat

• The “dating recession” has accelerated trends of young Americans buying homes, having kids, and getting married later, if at all

Dig Deeper

• The consequences of the dating recession are economic as well, affecting the restaurant and housing sectors

• The share of drinking at restaurants, bars, and clubs has declined three points since 2017. Meanwhile, only 33% of American 30-year-olds own a home – down from 44% in 2003 – and the dating recession will likely drop that number further in the coming years

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

💼 JPMorgan announced it would limit junior bankers to 80 hours of work per week amid a recent uproar about investment bank working conditions

💥 Russia launched a counterattack to take back the territory it lost in Ukraine’s recent incursion

❌ Donald Trump said he would not debate Kamala Harris again

🔍 US officials told the Wall Street Journal that they are investigating 100+ cases involving Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua

🧠 OpenAI released a new model it says is capable of reasoning

COMMUNITY

🧐 Yesterday’s question: Who was your celebrity crush growing up?

ASK AND TELL
20 Questions

Ladies and gentlemen, the Weeknd.

Today is a special day. Not because it's Friday the 13th or national Fortune Cookie Day but because it's the first-ever "Rate this Dad Joke" edition of 20 Questions. We will give you 20 dad jokes, and you have to rate them on a scale of 1-10. 1 is the worst, 10 is the best. We apologize in advance because some are painful to read.

Here’s the link.

Last Week’s 20 Questions:

Highlights from your answers to last week’s football-themed edition of 20 Qs.

How excited are you to watch Taylor Swift every Sunday night this year?

• Looking forward to dads and daughters bonding over NFL yet again. But really, let's let it go - she's supporting her boyfriend and is in constant scrutiny. Just let her be happy.

• Dentist appointment excited

• minus 87%

Favorite football TV show? (Cameos count...)

• Friday Night Lights is the only correct answer and you know it

• Modern Family when Cam gets hired as the football coach

• Brady Bunch were Marcia has her nose broken by a football

Why does the south love college football so much?

• No professional sport teams in a lot of those cities and college football is better.

• Tailgate once in Oxford, Mississippi and you’ll know why. Nothing better literally anywhere

• It's something unifying. Even if you have rivalries and arguments over teams, it is a shared passion and something an entire community can get behind, from High School to the NFL

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🙏 Livin’ on a prayer: Rockstar Jon Bon Jovi helped save a woman’s life on Tuesday by persuading her not to jump off a Nashville bridge while he was recording a music video

🧀 I’m nacho friend: A Las Vegas gas station worker allegedly beat a customer with a baseball bat for taking too much nacho cheese. The worker faces charges of attempted murder and assault

🏈 Welcome to TrEverBank: The Jacksonville Jaguars will rebrand their home field as TrEverBank Stadium for Sunday’s home opener, named after quarterback Trevor Lawrence in collaboration with stadium sponsor EverBank

🏥 Oven death… definitely not suspicious: A UK hospital is treating the death of a patient found in a catering oven as “not suspicious.” The hospital staff are now working with the police

🛶 Dummy rescue mission: A British lifeboat crew responded to a report of a stranded person in the water, only to find it was a training dummy lost by another crew two weeks earlier

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

We are still not over the Mayor Diezel Depew story from yesterday. What an absolute legend.

We can’t wait to see your dad joke ratings. Here’s a bonus one for reaching the end of this: “Two goldfish are in a tank, one turns and says to the other, ‘I'll man the gun, you steer.’” Now hope you can shake that one off and enjoy your weekend.

–Max and Max