🌊 Not So Fast, Netflix!

Yesterday will truly live in infamy…

We pride ourselves on being unbiased at Roca, but we will temporarily suspend that label to say that the college football playoff committee absolutely railroaded Notre Dame yesterday. This has nothing to do with the fact that one of the Maxes — and Roca’s third founder, Billy — went to Notre Dame and suffer from SEC derangement syndrome. But when the computers, Vegas, the AP poll, coaches poll, and every prediction market has your side — and even the committee’s own ranking until, inexplicably, yesterday! — it feels odd that the 13 people in the room that matters go against you. And it must have nothing to do with the financial relationship between SEC, the committee, and ESP-… wait, officer, why are you dragging me away? Help!

Enjoy today’s news.

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros… or Not?

Netflix agreed to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery's film studio, television production, and streaming operations for $72B

• In June, WB Discovery announced plans to split into two companies, separating cable networks like CNN and Discovery from its more valuable studio and streaming assets. It later put the latter assets up for sale, sparking a months-long bidding war

• On Friday, Netflix won the auction, offering $72B+ to takeover WB’s most valuable assets, including HBO and HBO Max, Warner Bros. studios, and franchises incl. Harry Potter and the DC universe. It’s Netflix’s biggest acquisition ever by over 100x, and is due to close in ~18 months, pending federal approval

Dig Deeper 

• On Monday, Paramount Skydance crashed the deal with a $108B offer for all of WB Discovery’s assets, including its cable networks. That came as President Trump warned the Netflix deal may not pass antitrust scrutiny

KEY STORY

Panel Ends Newborn Hep-B Recommendation

A federal vaccine panel voted to eliminate a recommendation that all newborns receive hepatitis B shots

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended hepatitis B vaccines for newborns since 1991. Health Secretary RFK Jr. fired all previous panel members from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June and replaced them with people who share his skepticism about the long-term effects of some vaccinations

• The panel voted 8-3 on Friday to end the recommendation that all babies receive hepatitis B shots within 24 hours of birth. Under the new guidance, parents of babies born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B should consult with doctors about whether and when to vaccinate their children

Dig Deeper 

• The American Medical Association called the decision "reckless" and said it "undermines decades of public confidence in a proven, lifesaving vaccine." Several panel members also objected to the change

• Panel members who voted for the change said the universal recommendation was too broad and undermined parental choice. One member, a professor at MIT, said the intention was to push parents to consider whether they want to give another vaccine to their child

• The panel recommended that babies born to mothers who are infected or whose status is unknown should still receive the shot at birth

KEY STORY

Four Countries Boycott Eurovision

Four European countries announced they would boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest after organizers allowed Israel to continue competing

• Israel has competed in Eurovision since 1973 because its public broadcaster is a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)

• The EBU held a meeting last Thursday where several member countries called for Israel to be excluded from the competition due to the war in Gaza. Instead of voting on Israel's participation, members voted on new rules designed to prevent governments from influencing the contest's voting system, allowing Israel to continue competing

• Following the vote, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia announced that they would withdraw from next year's contest

Dig Deeper 

• Germany, which had warned it would pull out if Israel was banned, supported the decision. Nordic broadcasters from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland issued a joint statement supporting the voting system changes

• Israel's President Isaac Herzog praised the decision, calling it a gesture of "solidarity" and "cooperation." The CEO of Israel's broadcaster said attempts to exclude the country amounted to a cultural boycott

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

KEY STORY

Trump Admin Releases National Security Strategy

The Trump Administration released on Friday its National Security Strategy (NSS), outlining the administration's foreign policy priorities

• Presidents typically release an NSS in the first year of their term. Biden’s was notable for naming China as the US’ primary challenge and emphasizing close ties with EU allies

• Trump’s strategy, by contrast, urged EU nations to take charge for their own defense instead of relying on US guarantees. It also suggested the US should support "the growing influence of patriotic European parties," while watering down language around Russia and removing language about the ideological gap between China and the US

Dig Deeper 

• The document mentioned China only a few times, almost exclusively regarding trade relationships, focusing primarily on economic and trade issues rather than military competition

• The document said that some NATO members could become "majority non-European" due to immigration, and questioned whether they would maintain the same alliance commitments as the nations that originally signed the NATO charter

WE THE 66

Should Netflix Be Allowed to Own HBO?

Netflix is already the world’s most valuable media company, with a market cap more than double that of Disney. Not, it’s looking to acquire one of its biggest rivals and remove HBO Max as a streaming competitor

• In our newest We the 66 deep-dive, we dive into the antitrust arguments and the role of the FTC, which was created to prevent monopolies. Will it intervene? Read it here to find out why it may or may not

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

💰 Reports that emerged on Friday indicated that SpaceX was preparing to sell shares at a valuation of $800B – an amount that would make it the world’s most valuable private company, ahead of OpenAI.

🫸 Bipartisan senators introduced legislation last Thursday that would block Nvidia from selling advanced chips to China for 30 months, requiring the Commerce Secretary to deny export licenses for chips like the H200 and Blackwell.

👶🏻 The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether President Trump can end birthright citizenship for children born in the US to non-citizen parents.

🛬 Japan accused China of directing military radar at Japanese fighter jets near Okinawa on Saturday, calling it a "dangerous act."

✈️ The Trump Administration waived an $11M fine against Southwest Airlines that was part of a $140M settlement over the carrier's December 2022 meltdown.

What does Roca Nation think?

🇺🇸 Today’s Question: Do you want Netflix to own HBO? Why or why not?

Reply to this email with your response!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

📿 Egg-xit Strategy: New Zealand police recovered a $19,000 James Bond-inspired Fabergé egg pendant after monitoring for six days the suspect who allegedly swallowed it.

🗿 Part Man, Part Machine, All Monument: An 11-foot-tall bronze statue of RoboCop has been installed in Detroit after nearly 15 years of planning and delays.

♟️ Cradle to Checkmate: India's Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha has shattered the record for the youngest chess player to earn a FIDE rating – a score that measures a player’s skill – achieving the feat at three years, seven months, and 20 days old.

💲 Bagging Millions: An 88-year-old Michigan grocery worker received $1.7M after a 22-year-old Australian social media influencer launched a fundraising campaign to help him retire.

🚍 Suds and Service: A former Maryland police officer launched a mobile laundromat for homeless individuals.

ROCA WRAP
The New Journalist

Joan Didion

This writer typed out Ernest Hemingway's works as a teenager to understand how sentences worked.

Born in Sacramento in 1934, Joan Didion became one of the defining voices of American journalism and helped pioneer New Journalism. Growing up as a finance officer's daughter during World War II, her family relocated constantly, leaving her feeling like a perpetual outsider. She identified as painfully shy but pushed herself into acting and public speaking to overcome anxiety. As a teenager, she would type out Ernest Hemingway's entire works to decode his sentence structure.

Didion's career launched after she won Vogue's essay contest during her senior year at UC Berkeley in 1956. The prize was a job at the magazine, where she spent seven years climbing from promotional copywriter to associate feature editor. Homesick for California while working in New York, she wrote her first novel about a Sacramento family falling apart. A young Time magazine writer named John Gregory Dunne helped her edit it. They married in 1964.

The couple moved to Los Angeles that year, planning a temporary stay that lasted two decades. They adopted a daughter, Quintana Roo, in 1966 and supported themselves by writing magazine assignments. In 1968, Didion published "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," documenting California's hippie counterculture. The book used novelistic techniques to cover nonfiction subjects, adding invented details and personal feelings to create vivid stories. Didion and Dunne collaborated on numerous screenplays, including adaptations of "A Star Is Born" and "Up Close & Personal."

In December 2003, their daughter Quintana fell into a coma from septic shock. While she lay unconscious, Dunne died suddenly of a heart attack. Didion postponed his funeral for three months until Quintana recovered enough to attend. At the Los Angeles airport afterward, Quintana fell and hit her head, requiring brain surgery. Didion began writing "The Year of Magical Thinking" in October 2004, finishing on New Year's Eve. During Didion’s book tour for it in August 2005, Quintana died of acute pancreatitis at 39.

Didion's writing was defined by her obsession with sentence structure. She believed shifting a sentence's structure altered meaning as definitively as moving a camera changes what's photographed. She would work all day, then cut and edit prose each evening, sleeping in the same room as her manuscript. She returned to Sacramento to finish projects, finding the familiar setting helped her complete work. Didion died from Parkinson's complications at her Manhattan home in December 2021 at 87.

For someone who spent her teenage years copying Hemingway's sentences, she ended up teaching generations how to write their own.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Miami’s turnaround over the last 40 years has been nothing short of remarkable. We went to its most notorious neighborhood of Liberty City in Miami to see what it’s like today. We heard a lot of wisdom in this video — red car guy was amazing — and think you might enjoy it.

–Max and Max