🌊 It's Luigi (Jail) Time

Plus: Daniel Penny acquitted, anarchy in Syria, and a Tennessee governmental orgy...

December 10, 2024

 

The hilarious reason the Nobel Prizes came to be.

123 years ago today, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded. Alfred Nobel — the inventor of dynamite and a therefore fitting judge for the peace prize — decided to create the awards in 1888 due to a French newspaper prematurely publishing his obituary. The obituary was titled, “The Merchant of Death is Dead.”

If that isn’t a wakeup call to leave behind an eponymous peace prize, I don’t know what is…

🚔 New shooter details emerge

👨🏻‍⚖️ Daniel Penny acquitted

😳 Tennessee's Veterans Affairs orgy

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Healthcare Killer Arrested?

Police arrested Luigi Mangione, 26, as the suspect in the United Healthcare CEO killing

  • A tip led police to Mangione at a McDonald’s in western PA. Upon detaining him, police recovered a self-assembled ghost gun, silencer, bullets, and four fake IDs, including that which was used by the apparent assassin to check into a hostel in Manhattan before the killing

  • Mangione graduated from the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania in 2020. While he left a public review on the Unabomber’s manifesto and reportedly wrote his own railing against Big Pharma, his social profiles looked relatively normal

Dig Deeper

  • Mangione’s X profile didn’t blatantly indicate political extremism. He followed and interacted with the accounts of mainstream intellectuals, including Ryan Holliday, Andrew Huberman, Jonathan Haidt, and Yuval Noah Harari, as well as accounts related to psychedelics. On X and Instagram, Mangione posed shirtless, on tropical vacations, and with his friends

  • One person who knew Mangione at Penn told Roca, “He had serious back issues and was like semi paralyzed from the bottom down and kinda went on a crazy spiral for the past couple years so that might've sorta triggered it”

  • One of his high school classmates told Roca, “He didn’t seem like some loner dude, he was fairly popular”

KEY STORY

Tokyo’s 4-Day Work Week

To address Japan's record-low fertility rate, Tokyo will implement a four-day work week for its 160k employees starting next year

  • Japan's birthrate hit a record low in 2023 with only 759k births. Japan’s fertility rate is now 1.2, far below the fertility rate of 2.1 that is needed for a stable population

  • This is the latest measure taken by the Tokyo government to try to boost its dwindling birthrate

  • Earlier this year, Tokyo launched a dating app

  • In 2021, Japan encouraged firms to adopt optional 4-day work weeks to improve work-life balance for employees

Dig Deeper

  • Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike explained the latest move in a speech at the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly: “We’ll keep reviewing our work styles flexibly so that nobody has to give up their careers due to life events such as childbirth and childcare”

  • Seoul, South Korea, is also battling low fertility rates. As part of its “birth encouragement” program, Seoul is paying new parents $750 per month until their babies turn one

  • South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world with just 0.72 children per woman

KEY STORY

Daniel Penny Acquitted

Daniel Penny was acquitted of all charges in the death of Jordan Neely

  • On Monday, a Manhattan jury found Daniel Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide, the second and final criminal charge against him

  • This past Friday, the judge overseeing the case dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge against Penny after the jury deadlocked on the charge twice

  • In May 2023, Jordan Neely – a homeless 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator – entered a New York City subway car high on drugs and threatened to kill passengers: “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life,” he yelled

  • Neely died after Daniel Penny, a 26-year-old former marine, put Neely in a restraining chokehold as he threatened other passengers

Dig Deeper

  • In a separate suit filed last week, Neely’s father accused Penny of assault, battery, and causing Neely’s death. The suit doesn’t specify the amount of money Neely’s estate seeks

ROCA’S SPONSOR

10 Amazon Prime Perks You Need To Be Using

Are you taking advantage of your Amazon Prime perks?

  • Whether you’re already a Prime member or considering signing up, here are 10 Prime member benefits you should be using!

  • Once upon a time, we had to make lists with paper and pen and physically go to stores when we needed things. Sometimes we’d have to go to several stores or even shopping malls for what we needed. Then one day, out of the heavens, came Amazon!

  • For many of us, the free shipping perk and access to exclusive shows and movies is enough reason to fork over the $14.99 per month to get Prime

  • But if those reasons haven't been enough to entice you to join, maybe some of these lesser-known incentives will tempt you to sign up

  • Here are 10 of those perks

KEY STORY

Anarchy in Syria

Anarchy descended upon Syria

  • Throughout the country, celebrations were reported on Monday, as people pulled down statues and posters of Bashar al-Assad. The rebels, meanwhile, took over policing and government offices. They enacted curfews, sought to punish looters, and ordered government staff to return to work

  • The rebels also declared “a general amnesty for all conscripted soldiers.” The amnesty doesn’t apply to anyone who volunteered to serve in Assad’s army

  • Meanwhile, the US continued to bomb IS targets, while Israel bombed advanced weapons facilities and EU countries announced that Syrians would no longer be eligible for asylum

Dig Deeper

  • Elsewhere, people stormed prisons in search of their loved ones. Syria’s regime detained tens or hundreds of thousands of Syrians who opposed the regime; many have had no contact with the outside world for over a decade and it’s unknown if they are alive or dead

  • Israel announced on Monday that it would continue to conduct airstrikes on Syrian advanced weaponry and manufacturing facilities, claiming the right to pre-empt the risk of such weaponry falling into jihadist hands

  • Despite the continued unrest in Syria, numerous countries – including Germany, France, and Greece – suspended asylum claims for people originating in Syria. In each of those countries, the influx of millions of Syrian refugees is attributed with fueling support for right-wing parties

  • The US defense secretary, meanwhile, warned that ISIS may try to “take advantage” of the anarchy, although he said that US airstrikes – which have hit 75+ targets in Syria since Saturday – have been effective

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

📈 Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ended Sunday in Vancouver, Canada, cementing its record as the highest-grossing concert tour in history

🖥️ Google unveiled an experimental quantum computing chip that can reportedly solve in five minutes a problem that would take existing super computers 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years

🇺🇸 TikTok asked the US Supreme Court to issue an emergency block on its forced sale. The move comes after a federal judge ruled last week that the forced sale – which must be completed by January 19, 2025, one day before Trump takes office – is legal

⚾ Baseball star Juan Soto is signing a 15-year, $765M contract with the MLB’s New York Mets. The deal – which will see Soto relocate from the Yankees to their cross-town rivals – is the largest in American sports history

⚖️ A civil suit accused Jay-Z of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000. The suit says Jay-Z committed the act at a party alongside P. Diddy; Jay-Z called it “blackmail”

COMMUNITY

🧐 Yesterday’s question: Sorry to do a negative one but… what was the biggest media lie of 2024?

The biggest lie had to be the Biden administration, the DNC and several of the media outlets insisting that Joe Biden was fully capable of fulfilling his duties as President through the balance of his term, along with running for a second term. The end results have been the DNC bypassing the democratic process of a primary for a candidate from their party, as opposed to an assignee. The other results have been a weakened appearance of the U.S. on the World stage. The media propped up Biden throughout and created more controversy and division for the American public. Hopefully we can all get beyond the finger pointing sooner rather than later and get our country back onto a path of normalcy.

Chris from Franklin, OH

The biggest media lie of 2024 is that Trump is going to take away people's rights if elected president. People have been woefully misinformed of the stances of the president-elect, to the point that they are in deep distress and leaving the country. It is such a shame that the media allowed such lies to be spewed as these are affecting the mental health and wellbeing of people who trusted the media. It is very painful to see people in such deep distress over the results of the election and big media should be ashamed of themselves.

Erica from Coronado, CA

The biggest media lie in 2024 was the assertion that killing thousands and thousands of children is acceptable for self-defense. It's sad that I don't even need to say a specific country or organization (could literally be any number of countries in 2024), yet people will already agree or disagree.. because in isolation, that assertion is never acceptable!! It's depressing and horrific that the media can take such an assertion and spin it as either a) necessary military intervention, or b) international war crime - depending on who is the victim/aggressor and who is paying them to spin it.

Djordje from NYC (via Serbia)

🧠 Today’s question: What was your favorite part about 2024? Could be a personal highlight or news related.

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🇺🇸 Department of Orgy Affairs: Several officials at a Veterans Affairs facility in Tennessee resigned after an investigation found that at least 12 officials who worked there participated in an orgy

🛩️ I Plead the Flight: The 72-year-old Florida man who shot a Walmart delivery drone with his handgun reached a plea deal that could dismiss the felony and misdemeanor charges against him

🐦 Age is Only a Number: The world’s oldest-known wild bird laid an egg at age 74

📃 That is Not My Job: A Long Island woman has been receiving dozens of tickets and legal notices despite having given up her car and license plate years ago

🏈 Sports’ Biggest Loser: The New York Jets will not make the NFL playoffs for the 14th consecutive year, the longest playoff drought among Big 4 American sports teams

ROCA WRAP

Target Practice

Kherson, Ukraine

Ukraine’s military says Russia is using killer drones to drive civilians from this Ukrainian city.

A southern Ukrainian city of strategic importance, Kherson was the first regional capital captured by Russia in 2022, before being liberated by Ukrainian forces. Its population has plummeted from 250,000 to 60,000 as Russia intensifies attacks from across the Dnipro River, which serves as the front line.

According to Ukraine’s military, the city is currently the subject of a cruel experiment in which Russia is allegedly using drone attacks on civilians to depopulate the city. Since mid-July, Russian forces have launched over 9,500 drone attacks on civilians, the military says, killing at least 37 people and injuring hundreds. Using various types of drones, operators target everyday locations like markets, gas stations, and humanitarian aid centers, with vehicles being their primary focus.

Residents describe drones hunting them "like birds," sometimes in swarms of five, waiting to spot movement before attacking. Many residents carry drone detectors and only venture out in bad weather when the machines can't fly. The campaign appears designed to empty the city through terror rather than achieve military objectives, analysts say.

Ukrainian officials believe the drone campaign is part of Russia's preparation for a potential river crossing, with 300 boats reportedly assembled opposite the city. The assault has intensified as Moscow makes its fastest territorial gains since early 2022, possibly aiming to pressure Kyiv before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Hey, we’re not as much of losers as you thought we were! Max Frost (below, looking suave with his new glasses) appeared on a panel at Hearst Tower in New York. It’s always good to sneak behind enemy lines and promote our nonpartisan mission.

The more we get to know legacy media, the more we’re fired up to bring our mission to life. Also, thoughts on him wearing Crocs next time?

–Max and Max