🌊 Good News from North Carolina

“My Amazon man was like, ‘What’s going on?’”

We received this message from Katie, a member of the Roca community and a nurse in western North Carolina. On Friday, we plugged Katie’s gift registry for the victims’ greatest needs (checkout address “Rossy’s Gift Registry Address”). Your incredible generosity put hundreds of boxes on Katie’s front porch over the weekend. She and her friends are running these items to the communities in the mountains — including Spruce Pine (the quartz mining town we covered last week) — who need them most. Katie has passed along her deepest, humblest gratitude and wrote, “True blue Appalachian people are the toughest, most God-fearing people I’ve ever met. If anyone will get through this, they will.”

–Max, Max, and Owen

KEY STORY

Hollywood’s Dueling Flops

Two of the most highly-anticipated movies of the year, Megalopolis and Joker: Folie à Deux, have flopped at the box office

• Megalopolis is an epic science fiction drama directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the director of The Godfather movies; Joker: Folie à Deux is the musical sequel to Todd Phillips' 2019 hit Joker

• Megalopolis scored a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes' "Tomatometer," which compiles critics' scores, while Joker 2 earned a 33%

• Megalopolis grossed just $4M in its opening weekend — a fraction of the $140M it cost to make — while Joker 2 grossed $40M, short of its expectations and Joker's $96M 2019 debut

Dig Deeper

• So far the top five movies this year are Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Despicable Me 4, Dune: Part Two, and Twisters

• Movies have grossed ~$6B in US theaters so far this year, on track to slightly underperform the 2023 total of $8.9B

KEY STORY

Israel’s Nuclear Option

Israel may be considering a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities

• Iran could potentially produce a nuclear weapon within weeks. Israel considers this an existential threat and has vowed not to let Iran do so

• Iran has long used Hezbollah to deter an Israeli attack on its nuclear sites: If Israel attacked Iran, Hezbollah would unleash its arsenal of rockets on Israel

• Yet with Hezbollah weak and that arsenal heavily damaged, Israel could seize the opportunity to attack the nuclear sites. On the other hand, a vulnerable Iran may sprint to finish a nuclear weapon

Dig Deeper

• Today's Wrap is a deep-dive into this situation. You can read it at the bottom of this newsletter

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• They’ve earned 14 government grants, commercial deals to supply water in Oman and Kuwait, and a projected $8.7M in revenue this year. Trevi also has ambitious plans to 30x their revenue by 2028

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Disclaimer: This is a paid advertisement for Trevi’s Regulation CF Offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.trevi.com 

KEY STORY

2020 Election Report

A new filing by government prosecutors detailed Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result

• The filing lays out how Trump began warning his supporters of mass fraud in July 2020. Three days before the election, Trump adviser Steve Bannon said, “What Trump’s going to do is just declare victory… That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner”

• Per the report: Repeated legal challenges mounted by Trump’s campaign failed, so he pressured state officials to reject their results. When that failed, he pressured VP Pence, culminating in January 6

Dig Deeper

• Trump blasted the release of the filing a month before the vote as election interference.

• We're going to send out a deep-dive story about this tomorrow. Please stay tuned for that

KEY STORY

EU Court: FIFA Contract Rules Illegal

The EU’s top court issued a landmark ruling that declared some of FIFA’s contract rules illegal

• The case dates to 2014, when former Arsenal and Real Madrid player Lassana Diarra was dismissed from his club, Lokomotiv Moscow, but his contract didn’t end. Diarra then attempted to sign with a Belgian club, but Lokomotiv complained to FIFA, which ordered him and his new club to pay €10M to Lokomotiv for breaching a FIFA rule that says a player can’t end his contract without “just cause”

• Diarra sued FIFA for blocking his transfer and fining him. The case reached the top EU court, which on Friday ruled that “[FIFA’s] rules hinder the free movement of players and competition between clubs”

• The ruling will likely spark a change in how FIFA transfer rules

Dig Deeper

• Diarra’s lawyers called the ruling a “total victory” while FIFPro, the union representing global footballers, said the ruling “will change the landscape of professional football”

• While the court said the ruling doesn’t mean the entire transfer system needs to be overhauled, it will lead some rules to be modified, likely making it easier for players to switch teams. One implication is that it will likely become easier for wealthy clubs to sign players from smaller ones

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🇺🇸 Donald Trump held a rally in Butler, PA, the site of the July assassination attempt this weekend. Elon Musk joined him on stage

📉 The Biden administration announced the end of legal protections for 500,000 migrants who had received “temporary legal protection”

💣 Israel ordered evacuations of northern Gaza while conducting what appears to have been the largest day of bombing yet in Lebanon

🦠 Rwanda began vaccinations to stem the spread of Marburg virus disease, an ebola-like hemorrhagic fever that has killed 11 people in the country

🗳 A former Colorado county clerk was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting machines

COMMUNITY

🧠 Today’s question: What’s a time your community has come together in an inspiring way?

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🏈 No longer a Doremat: Vanderbilt University students carried their stadium’s goalposts nearly three miles (below) and threw them in the river that runs through Nashville after their football team beat #1 Alabama

🖼 Vincent Van Nogh! A mechanic at a Dutch art museum accidentally threw away an artwork after mistaking it for trash. The artwork features intricate paintings on two used beer cans

🛩 Fun for the whole family! A glitch on a Qantas Airlines flight from Sydney to Tokyo forced every screen to broadcast the R-rated movie “Daddio”

🇯🇵 Nothing to fear but age itself: The last living Pearl Harbor attacker died at age 106. Masamitsu Yoshioka rarely spoke publicly but did say last year, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life”

📕 Revenge is a dish best served dead: In a new memoir titled “A Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards,” a Canadian woman recounts eating her late husband’s ashes after learning of his affairs

ROCA WRAP

Israel’s Nuclear Option

High Stakes 

Israel may be considering a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Iran could potentially produce a nuclear weapon within weeks. Israel considers this an existential threat and has vowed not to let Iran do so. Iran has long used Hezbollah to deter an Israeli attack on its nuclear sites: If Israel attacked Iran, Hezbollah would unleash its arsenal of rockets on Israel.

With Hezbollah weak and that arsenal heavily damaged, some suspect Israel will seize the opportunity to attack the nuclear sites. On the other hand, a vulnerable Iran now has an incentive to sprint to finish a nuclear weapon.

Iran has 21 known nuclear facilities scattered across the country. Some of these facilities are more critical than others. They are generally heavily fortified, with some built up to 100 meters underground and others built into mountain sides.

An Israeli attack on the facilities would be incredibly complicated, potentially requiring dozens or hundreds of fighter jets to stealthily penetrate Iranian airspace and deliver crippling blows to the Iranian facilities. They may have to be modified to carry extra-heavy weaponry and would need to evade Iran’s Russia-provided anti-aircraft missile systems.

The aircraft would have to fly over 1,000 kilometers, potentially through Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Turkey. They could also conceivably fly from Azerbaijan, an Israeli military ally that borders Iran, although that could invite an Iranian counterattack.

It’s unclear if Israeli missiles would be strong enough to destroy the secure facilities. It’s also unknown what other types of sabotage or attacks Israel would be able to conduct. Some have theorized that Israel could also use drone swarms or ballistic missiles.

If Israel conducted such a strike, it would likely spark a war between it and Iran that could draw in the United States. It’s impossible to predict the scale of such a conflict, what each side’s exact goals would be, and to what extent the US would get involved.

Then there’s the question of how Iran would proceed: If enough of its nuclear scientists and infrastructure remain, the country may simply restart a nuclear program in more secure locations.

Yet many Israelis see a now-or-never moment to knock out the nuclear threat for the foreseeable future. Others fear an attack could fail, cementing Iran’s path to getting the bomb.

Last week, President Biden said he opposes an Israeli strike on the nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, Trump endorsed one: “Hit the nuclear first, worry about the rest later,” he said.

The stakes in the Middle East could hardly be higher.

ROCA VIDEO
How Wisconsin Became America’s Drunkest State

Wisconsin is the drunkest state in the country. We visited to figure out why. In towns across the state — Appleton, Wausau, Sturgeon Bay, Madison, and Milwaukee — we asked Wisconsinites why they think Wisconsin drinks so much.

Make sure to subscribe to the channel!

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Still overwhelmed with gratitude for your support of Katie and her community. If you missed the chance on Friday, she’s still making deliveries to the communities in need. Here’s the link. If you want to support, make sure to hit “Rossy’s Gift Registry Address” as the address at checkout. And for those wondering, we have verified Katie’s identity to ensure this is not a scam and are wary of such schemes during crises. Have a great Monday!

–Max and Max