🌊 One Small Step for Mining

Final day at the DNC.

Now that we’re leaving Chicago, we have to tell you something: We booked our Airbnb in Chicago’s single most dangerous neighborhood. Not second, not third, but first. So yesterday — while Big News sipped Chardonnay at their five-star hideouts — we were hanging in East Garfield Park (video forthcoming). So mom and dad, if you were wondering why I sent so many “I love you and please make sure my estate is in order” texts this week, now you know why.

Note: I learned that my estate consists mainly of Fortnite v-bucks and expired iTunes gift cards.

Today’s history-themed “Would You Rather” edition of 20 Questions.

–Max, Max, and Owen

KEY STORY

The Kids Aren’t Driving

Significantly fewer teenagers are driving than 40 years ago

• According to recent data from the Federal Highway Administration, just under 69% of US 19-year-olds had driver’s licenses in 2022, down from 88% in 1983

• Breanne Armstrong, a director at research firm JD Power, says the costs associated with car ownership are driving the trend: Car prices are up 32% since 2019, while in the last year alone, full-coverage car insurance jumped 12% to $2,278 per year, on average

• Today’s teens rely on family members, public transport, and, to a lesser extent, ridesharing apps

Dig Deeper

• Gen Z’s share of car sales has fallen 0.1% since 2022

• Car sales for this group (ages 12-27) normally jump 1%+ per year; “It’s extraordinarily rare, demographically, for this to be going backwards,” said another JD Power executive

KEY STORY

Mining the Moon?

Venture capitalists committed $40M to an asteroid mining company

• The company – California-based AstroForge – is developing a spacecraft that can fly by a celestial body and capture images and data that reveal whether the body contains valuable resources. It then intends to develop a spacecraft that will dock on resource-rich asteroids, whose contents it will sample and analyze

• Calculations suggest there are ~10M near-Earth asteroids, 3-5% of which may be rich in metals, but no private company has ever landed on a celestial body that is not the Moon

Dig Deeper

• While significant amounts of space resources have never been brought to Earth, the US Congress passed a “Space Competitiveness Act” in 2005, which says that any American person or company involved in the “commercial recovery of an asteroid resource” would be entitled to own the resources obtained from it

• That counters the UN’s 1966 Outer Space Treaty, which says celestial bodies are “not subject to national appropriation”

KEY STORY

7/11: Monopoly in the Making?

A potential acquisition of 7-Eleven is prompting concerns about a convenience store monopoly

• 7-Eleven – founded in Texas but now owned by a Japanese company – is the world’s largest convenience store chain

• This week, the second-largest convenience store company – Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard, which owns Circle K – offered to buy Seven & I holdings for $38B. The deal would constitute the biggest merger in convenience store history, but analysts expect it to draw antitrust scrutiny, given concerns it could create a monopoly

Dig Deeper

• The deal would follow one in 2018, in which Seven & I acquired 1,000 Sunoco convenience stores, and a 2021 one, in which it acquired the gas station chain Speedway

• Vice President Harris has already vowed to investigate food and grocery company mergers if elected president

KEY STORY

Big Day for Big Diamond

The second-largest diamond in recorded history was unearthed

• The diamond – discovered in Botswana by a Canadian mining company – weighs 2,492 carats and is two-thirds the size of a soda can. It’s the largest known gem-quality diamond find since one in South Africa in 1905, later incorporated into the UK’s Crown Jewels

• The diamond was found using X-ray technology and presented to the president of Botswana, ~25% of whose GDP comes from diamond mining

• Given the diamond’s size and uniqueness, it’s unclear for how much or to whom it will sell

Dig Deeper

• The history-making discovery comes as the diamond mining industry struggles: Lab-grown diamonds – which are chemically identical to natural diamonds but created in a laboratory – have surged in popularity

• Lab-grown diamonds cost significantly less and come without the environmental baggage of Earth-mined diamonds

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🎤 Kamala Harris delivered her presidential nomination acceptance speech

🍔 Hackers appeared to have broken into McDonald’s official Instagram account and made off with $700,000 in a crypto scam

🌳 A six-year-old boy was found in a Vietnamese forest five days after he went missing

🇬🇧 A Conservative UK parliamentarian vowed to terminate the UK-US extradition treaty

🍉 US border agents seized $5M+ worth of methamphetamine hidden among watermelons

COMMUNITY

🧐 Yesterday’s question: What’s the best concert you’ve ever seen in person?

ASK AND TELL
20 Questions

Ladies and gentlemen, the Weeknd.

Once again we're back with an old-school edition of 20 Questions: Would You Rather. But this time we're making history and doing our first-ever history-themed Would You Rather edition of 20 Questions. Folks, it doesn't get more exciting than this.

If you have some good would you rathers from history, send them our way and MAYBE we'll compile them into another one next week. Either way, excited to see your answers. Have a great weekend!

Here’s the link.

Last Week’s 20 Questions:

Highlights from your answers to last week’s Summer 2024 edition of 20 Qs.

Q: Saddest part of your summer?
A: I think my roommate hates me, which sucks cause he was my best friend before.

Q: Your biggest accomplishment of the summer?
A: My business was accepted to be featured as a demonstrator at Canada’s largest farm show. You guys know the feeling of growing a small business :)

Q: Did you get into the Olympics? If so, which sports?
A: YES. We watched the gold zone nighttime recap every night... soooo into gymnastics + track/field.

Q: What's something you drink only in the summers?
A: Pool water......not by choice

Q: How would you describe the news cycle from this summer?
A: great because I've only followed it from Roca!

Q: What are you looking forward to the most this fall?
A: The birth of my son. I'm close to sending him an eviction notice

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

📈 SiuTube: Soccer legend Cristiano Ronaldo, 39, amassed a record-breaking 30M+ subscribers on YouTube within a day of launching his channel

🐛 Bug buffet: Authorities are investigating who placed bugs in a breakfast buffet prepared for DNC delegates at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago

🐅 Caged curiosity: Police are searching for a woman who climbed over a barrier at a New Jersey zoo, approached the tigers, and put her hand through a metal fence, narrowly avoiding a bite

✈️ Took the scenic route: A passenger at Melbourne Airport exited a stationary plane through an emergency door, walked along the wing, and climbed down a jet engine to the tarmac, leading to his arrest

🪦 Death, taxes, and rent? A San Antonio apartment complex billed a dead woman over $15,000 for breaking her lease

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

And just like that, the DNC is in the books! Thank you to all of you for feeding us questions to ask the protesters, delegates, and attendees. It was a fascinating week, and we can’t wait to share more video content with you. It was amazing to run into multiple Roca Readers on this trip who recognized us by our hats — or perhaps they heard us drop really bad puns in the coffee line and figured “oh, those must be the Roca guys.” Have a great weekend, Roca Nation!

–Max and Max