Prayers are with the Panhandle.
As Hurricane Helene barrels toward the Florida panhandle, we want to extend our thoughts and prayers to all of our readers in the region. It’s looking like it’ll make landfall as a strong Category 3 or Category 4. As Max T is a native of Tallahassee and has family there, this one sure is close to home. All we know is the dumbest thing we could do is ask the Florida State defense to try to stop it. Stay strong, Florida!
🚨 Israel killed another top Hezbollah commander
📊 Obesity declines in US?
🥍 Lacrosse players hospitalized after Navy Seal workout
–Max, Max, and Owen
KEY STORY
The Sanctioned Empire
Yevgeny Prigozhin, long-time leader of Russia’s Wagner Group, subverted Western sanctions to repatriate more than $250M back to Russia
A Financial Times investigation found that Prigozhin and the group – which the US has accused of mass executions, kidnapping, and rape – subverted US, EU, and UK sanctions and used unwitting Western banks JPMorgan and HSBC to wire funds back to Russia
Prigozhin repatriated $250M+ from natural resources businesses in Africa and the Middle East in the four years leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. HSBC declined to comment; JPM denied the claims
Dig Deeper
One of Prigozhin’s companies, Evro Polis, brought in over $100M in one year
Syria’s president awarded Evro Polis major energy concessions after Wagner liberated several of the country’s oilfields from ISIS
KEY STORY
Israel-Lebanon Update
Israel killed another top Hezbollah commander as Hezbollah continues to launch rockets into Israel
On Monday, Israel bombed 3,000+ Hezbollah targets, killing 558+. Israeli strikes continued in Lebanon on Tuesday, including one that Israel says killed the head of Hezbollah’s missiles division. If true, it comes less than a week after over a dozen other Hezbollah commanders were killed in a single strike
One prominent analyst who authored a book on Hezbollah said Hezbollah now “has no options” and that “Israel disabled Hezbollah,” yet the group continues to launch rockets into Israel
Dig Deeper
Polls now show that Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party is again the country’s most popular party, having overcome a post-October 7 drop
According to a Financial Times report, Likud’s support plummeted after October 7, a colossal intelligence failure. A month post-attack, polls show the opposition led Likud 40%-18%
Now, though, Likud is leading, 23.4%-21.1%. The trend started to shift with the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July. Analysts say many Israelis now feel that Israel is rightly back on the offensive
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KEY STORY
Visa Monopoly?
The DOJ has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa, accusing the company of maintaining an illegal monopoly over debit network markets and attempting to crush competition
Visa processes over 60% of US debit transactions and earns more than $7B annually from payment processing. However, the DOJ claims Visa’s market power wasn’t obtained fairly and has faced scrutiny from regulators for years
The new lawsuit alleges that Visa has used exclusionary agreements with businesses and banks to block competition, preventing rivals like PayPal and Square from gaining ground
The DOJ claims these agreements have helped Visa control the debit network market and charge excessive fees passed on to consumers. It also claims Visa executives view Apple as an “existential threat” to their dominance and have paid potential competitors to keep them out of the industry
Dig Deeper
“Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing – but the price of nearly everything,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement
Visa denied the allegations: “Anyone who has bought something online, or checked out at a store, knows there is an ever-expanding universe of companies offering new ways to pay for goods and services”
KEY STORY
Ozempic Effect?
Obesity rates in the US have declined slightly for the first time in over a decade, per new data from the CDC
Based on survey data from 2021 to 2023, 40% of US adults are obese, marking a 1.9% decrease from the 2017 to 2020 data
The rate of severe obesity, however, ticked up .5% to 9.7%. A person is considered severely obese if their body mass index (BMI) is 40 or above. A 5’10” man who weighs 300 lbs (136 kg), for example, has a BMI of 43
Roughly 6% of US adults are currently taking a GLP-1 drug like Ozempic, per a recent survey
Dig Deeper
The states with the highest prevalence of obesity were West Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas
Only DC and Colorado recorded less than a quarter of residents as obese. That’s down from seven states and DC that had rates below 25% in 2013
RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office
🏈 NFL great Brett Favre revealed that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s
🔒 Caroline Ellison – ex-girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried and the key witness against him in his FTX fraud case – received a two-year prison sentence
🇨🇳 China’s government announced a set of policies intended to shake the country’s economy out of its stupor
👤 As China’s growth slows, a prominent Chinese economist who criticized Xi Jinping’s handling of the economy has disappeared
🗳️ Major polls released on Tuesday show the US presidential race remains neck-and-neck
COMMUNITY
🧐 Yesterday’s question: What’s the prettiest part of your state? For non-American readers, what’s the prettiest part of your country?
In Hawaii, every island has gorgeous areas. My favorite is the Nepali Coast of Kauai.
By far, the Smoky Mountains and surrounding areas are the prettiest parts of Tennessee! I got the chance to take a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, and it was, to this day, the most breathtaking scenery I’ve ever had the chance to immerse myself in. Lying on the ground in pure, unpolluted darkness as shooting stars streak across the sky and nature chirps and hoots around you is pretty unforgettable.
As a resident of Manhattan, KS (The Little Apple), I'd have to say that the Flint Hills of Kansas are the prettiest feature of the state.
🧠 Today’s question: Continuation of yesterday’s “Roca Votes”: Should news orgs fact check presidential debates live? Is it possible?
POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour
😬 Nightmare cell rotation: Sean “Diddy” Combs – arrested last week on sex trafficking and racketeering charges – is reportedly being housed in the same unit as former FTX crypto exec Sam Bankman-Fried in Brooklyn
💔 Catfished by Brad Pitt: Spanish authorities arrested five individuals involved in a scam that defrauded two women of €325,000 ($363,000) by posing as Brad Pitt on WhatsApp and other platforms
Fun fact: Beavers pause while chewing trees to listen for movements so the tree doesn’t fall on them.
🗿 Crash course: A 57-year-old Czech man smashed a sculpture by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei during the private opening of his exhibition in Bologna, Italy
🥍 Tuf(ts) workout: Three Tufts University men’s lacrosse players remain hospitalized after a voluntary 45-minute workout with a Navy SEAL last Monday
🐓 Fowl play: An Australian man who threw a beloved chicken named Betty White into an alligator pen, resulting in its death, “just wanted to feed an alligator,” according to his lawyer
ROCA WRAP
Mud Men
In the late 1800s, Bukiro Pote left his village in the mountainous jungles of Papua New Guinea.
At the time, many tribes of Papua New Guinea – a large island nation between Indonesia and Australia – were at war. They’d carry out raids on each other, then face revenge attacks from their victims.
Pote moved in with a new group of tribal warriors who practiced a technique to avoid the reprisals: They’d cover their faces in sap, then conduct the raid. The sap made it difficult for the victims to identify their attackers and, therefore, take revenge.
Pote found this technique effective and brought it back to his home village. There, he enhanced it: Rather than just using sap, he constructed a light wooden frame, placed it in a sack, cut out eye holes, and dipped it in mud. The mask – which proved scarier and potentially better for defense than the sap – caught on.
Violence continued in the following decades as tribes raided each other for pigs and women. Over the years, it became tradition for Pote’s tribe, the Asaro, to don the masks before heading into battle.
In 1957, locals organized an agricultural show in an attempt to bring the tribes together. When the Asaro debuted at the fair, 200 men showed up in mud masks. The crowd – locals and foreigners alike – reportedly burst into a terror. The Asaro masks were soon talked about widely, and they began gaining recognition across the country.
The tribal violence waned in the following years, but the Asaro kept the mud masks as a cultural symbol. Each man – and only men – would craft his own, equipping it with hair, tusks, horns, ears, or more. No two masks were the same. Eventually, foreigners coined a term for those who wore them: Mud Men.
While Papua New Guinea would remain among the world’s most isolated and undeveloped countries, the Mud Men soon spread around the world.
They were featured in a Pink Floyd song, an Australian soda commercial, and a European perfume ad. Toyota included them in a 4WD promotion; a 1995 ad for an OPEL Frontera SUV said, “Mudmen from Papua New Guinea get their first glimpse of a Frontera, thanks to its powerful new engine and anti-clog brakes.”
The Asaro still live in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, their battle masks having become a global icon for one of the world’s most remote countries.
ROCA VIDEO
Gen Z’s Insane Partisan Gender Gap
A historically large partisan gap exists among Gen Z voters. Male 18 to 29 year olds in swing states are 51 points more likely to vote for Trump than women between 18 and 29. 51 points!
Other polls suggest this trend has been underway for years. This video aims to explain it: What it means, why it exists, and more.
Make sure to subscribe to the channel!
EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts
Today is national One Hit Wonder Day. So shoutout to all the greatest one-hit wonders of all time: Gotye, Lou Bega, a-ha, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, Edison Lighthouse, and all the others who vanished into the sunset after gifting the world a gem. We know that’s how we’ll go down one day with Roca, and we are totally fine with that.
–Max and Max
