🌊 The Censorship Games

And they said upbeat original reporting wasn’t possible!

One thing we often hear from you is that you want more positive stories — not just little ones like “man saves cat from tree” but big ones. And while we don’t like to sugarcoat reality, we agree that there’s a criminal lack of positive news reporting in the country. For this reason, we’ve published two deep dives in the last week on cities/places in the country that are thriving: One on Miami, FL, and the other on the blue-collar town Jersey town of Linden. We also have a story coming out on Mississippi’s miraculous educational turnaround, which has continued and inspired other states. Not everything out there is bleak, Roca Nation!

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

YouTube Issues Mea Culpa on Covid

YouTube announced it would create a process to reinstate accounts that were banned for violating policies on Covid and 2020 election content

• During the pandemic and following the 2020 presidential election, YouTube implemented strict content moderation policies that resulted in thousands of channel terminations, banning discussions questioning mask effectiveness, certain Covid treatments, and claims about election fraud

• In a letter to Congress, YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, admitted its policies went too far and were influenced by government pressure. The letter claims that the Biden Administration had repeatedly pressured the platform to remove content, even if the content didn’t violate its policies, creating “a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms”

• YouTube admitted its reliance on health authorities was “well-intentioned” but acknowledged it “should never come at the expense of public debate on these important issues”

Dig Deeper

• The platform has already begun loosening its content moderation rules, retiring standalone Covid policies in December 2024, and allowing discussion of election integrity issues since June 2023

• Conservative content creators claimed the company had cost them millions in lost revenue through censorship. The policy reversal could allow several prominent figures to return, including current FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Health Secretary RFK Jr., and Senator Rand Paul, with over 8,000 channels terminated in December 2020 for election content alone

KEY STORY

Trump Says Ukraine Can Regain Land

President Trump declared that Ukraine could regain lost territory from Russia, marking a reversal from his previous position that the country would need to give up land for peace

• Trump had previously insisted that Ukraine would have to make territorial concessions to Russia to end the war and had supported “land swapping” between the two countries after meeting with Putin in Alaska last month

• After meeting with Zelensky at the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump posted on social media that Ukraine was “in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”

• Trump called Russia’s military performance “a paper tiger” and said the country was in “BIG economic trouble”

Dig Deeper 

• A Kremlin spokesman responded to Trump, saying, “Russia is in no way a tiger…Russia is more compared with a bear. And there are no paper bears”

• Zelensky welcomed Trump’s comments, calling the US president “a game changer,” though he admitted he was “a little bit” surprised by the strength of Trump’s statement

• Trump’s statement did not include commitments for new American military aid, saying only that the US would “continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them”

KEY STORY

Osteoporosis Breakthrough

Scientists discovered a switch in the body that controls bone strength, which could lead to new treatments for osteoporosis

• Osteoporosis is a bone-weakening disease that affects millions of people worldwide, particularly women after menopause. Current treatments can slow the disease's progression but cannot reverse or cure it

• This week, researchers from Germany and China published a study that identified a receptor in bone cells (GPR133) that acted like a master switch for bone building

• When they used a chemical compound (AP503) to activate the receptor in mice, the animals’ bones became significantly stronger

Dig Deeper

• When they bred mice without this bone-strengthening receptor, the animals grew up with weak, fragile bones that resembled human osteoporosis

• The treatment successfully strengthened bones in both healthy mice and those with osteoporosis-like symptoms, and researchers also discovered that the treatment worked even better when combined with exercise

• The researchers believe the discovery could lead to new medications that not only prevent bone loss in healthy people but also rebuild bone that has already been damaged by osteoporosis

QUOTE OF THE DAY

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KEY STORY

Amazon Prime on Trial

Amazon and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began a jury trial over whether the company deceived customers into signing up for Prime memberships

• The FTC filed its lawsuit in 2023, alleging that Amazon used “dark patterns” – deceptive website designs – to trick millions of consumers into unintentionally enrolling in Prime. The agency said Amazon displayed prominent buttons like “Get FREE Two-Day Shipping” that enrolled users without clearly disclosing recurring membership costs

• The FTC also claimed that canceling Prime required navigating what Amazon employees internally called the “Iliad Flow,” a long and difficult process that involved a series of offers and warnings before finally being able to cancel

• Amazon denied any wrongdoing and argued that its sign-up and cancellation processes were clear and consistent with industry standards

Dig Deeper

• The trial, expected to last about a month, will have a jury determine whether Amazon violated consumer protection laws. The judge already ruled that two senior Amazon executives would be personally liable if the jury finds the company broke the law

• The judge also criticized Amazon for withholding thousands of documents from the FTC. If Amazon loses, the judge will determine monetary penalties, though the FTC has not yet specified damage amounts

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🎬 President Trump threatened to sue ABC over its decision to reinstate Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show.

🚨 A gunman opened fire at a Dallas ICE field office on Wednesday morning, killing one immigration detainee and critically injuring two more before dying by suicide.

💰 The US plans to provide Argentina with a $20B financial assistance package and purchase the country’s foreign bonds to support President Javier Milei’s economic reforms.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 A 12-foot statue depicting President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands was removed from the National Mall after one day, despite having a valid permit through Sunday evening.

💼 Authorities arrested a man in his forties in West Sussex, England, in connection with a ransomware attack that disrupted baggage and check-in systems at multiple European airports.

What does Roca Nation think?

💃 Yesterday’s Question:  Who would you like to see on Dancing With the Stars?

🎶 Today’s Question: Would you rather see your favorite artist in concert live or attend a home playoff game of your favorite sports team? Who is the artist/team?

Reply to this email with your response!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🐿️ Furry Fury: A rogue squirrel in San Francisco has terrorized residents, sending at least two people to the emergency room after unprovoked attacks.

💪Pillar of Strength: Indian strongman and martial artist, Vispy Kharadi, has claimed his 17th Guinness World Record by holding 261 kg Hercules Pillars for over a minute.

🏌️‍♀️ Holy Birdie: Sister Rene Parman celebrated her 105th birthday this week at the golf course, a hobby she didn’t pick up until her 40s.

💨 Spray It Ain’t So!: A South Carolina teaching assistant was arrested for repeatedly spraying fart spray at West Florence High School, sending students to seek medical attention for respiratory issues.

🏃‍♂️ Going Quadrupedal: Japanese athlete Ryusei Yonee broke the world record for fastest 100-meter sprint on all fours, clocking 14.55 seconds to beat the previous mark by over a second.

ROCA WRAP
Electric Messiah

John Murray Spear

A 19th-century minister attempted to build an electrically powered mechanical Messiah to usher in a new utopian age.

John Murray Spear had spent decades as a respectable Universalist minister in Massachusetts. His activism included organizing the first Universalist antislavery convention and helping operate a crucial stretch of the Underground Railroad through Boston. But in 1852, everything changed when Spear abandoned traditional Christianity for Spiritualism, claiming he had made contact with “The Association of Electrizers” – a group of deceased luminaries, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams, who allegedly communicated with him from beyond the grave.

The spirits, according to Spear, had chosen him to construct a device that would transform humanity: The “New Motive Power,” a mechanical messiah designed to harness supernatural energies and power the world toward utopia. In 1853, Spear and his followers retreated to a wooden shed atop High Rock Hill in Lynn, Massachusetts, to begin their sacred work. The contraption they built was an amalgamation of copper, zinc, magnets, precision-machined components, and – somewhat inexplicably – a dining room table. Spear believed this mechanical creation was equivalent to Jesus Christ, destined to inaugurate a new era of spiritual and technological advancement.

After nine months of construction, Spear orchestrated an elaborate ritual intended to bring the machine to life. An unnamed woman, whom he designated as the “New Mary,” participated in a ceremony designed to spiritually “birth” the contraption and animate it with divine power. The ritual failed. The New Motive Power remained stubbornly inanimate, producing no supernatural energies or signs of consciousness. Eventually, hostile Spiritualists destroyed the machine.

Despite this crushing failure, Spear continued practicing Spiritualism for the remainder of his life, advertising his services as someone “guided and assisted by beneficent Spirit-Intelligences” who could examine diseases, predict futures, and delineate character traits. In 1872, he claimed the Association of Electrizers had instructed him to retire from active ministry.

When Spear died in Philadelphia in 1887, his mechanical messiah had long since been forgotten – but his attempt to merge faith with technology remains one of America’s most peculiar religious experiments.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

To give you a sense of the day-to-day of reporting trips, Max T called Max F at 1:30 AM UK time last night to hear how the day went. They had been driving all evening and had just pulled into a Days Inn in rural England after a day exploring migrant hubs across its Rust Belt, including in its most segregated city. They were now catching up on their regular Roca work and prepping for another jam-packed day of shooting tomorrow. Nevertheless, Max T thought it was a good time to complain about the loud motorcycles in New York and the need to tax decibels. Hard to read the room on the phone, folks!

For today’s RocaNews Show, check out the links on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. Have a great day.

–Max and Max