đ California Dronin'
Plus: Robot arrested, the Oscars rundown, & Roca inside Hezbollah territory
The official tally for the 2026 Oscars:
One Battle After Another - 6
Sinners - 4
KPOP Demon Hunters - 2 (not a typo)
Hamnet - 1
F1 - 1
Marty Supreme - 0
Simply put, it was a tough night for Timothee Chalamet. He had to learn a sport, get spanked by Mr. Wonderful, and do a press tour for so long that he could no longer conceal his animus for ballet and opera â and didnât get the Oscar. Instead, heâs got the opera and ballet communities coming for his head.
Note to Timmy: If you see a man pirouetting toward you with a knife in his hand and Swan Lake blaring in the background, we suggest you run.
đł FBI warns of California drone strike
đ€ Robot arrested for scaring old lady
đ±đ§ Roca goes inside Hezbollah Land
â Max and Max
FBI Warns of California Drone Strike
The FBI warned California law enforcement that Iran may have been planning a drone attack on the West Coast.
The FBI distributed an alert to California agencies warning that Iran âallegedly aspiredâ to launch drones from a vessel off the US coast, targeting unspecified locations in California.
Last week, ABC News obtained and reported on the FBIâs bulletin to law enforcement, wherein the FBI said it obtained âunverified informationâ from a single source that Iran was planning to use drones to target locations in California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said there was âno imminent threat.â
US, Cuba Hold Talks
Cuban President Miguel DĂaz-Canel confirmed his government has been in direct talks with the Trump Administration as the island faces a deepening energy crisis.
Cuba has faced a growing energy crisis since the US cut off its oil shipments from Venezuela in January and then threatened tariffs on countries exporting oil to Cuba, effectively shutting down its suppliers.
On Friday, DĂaz-Canel said talks aimed at finding âsolutions through dialogueâ were in their early stages, and that agreements were still far off.
But Trump said a deal could come soon and floated the possibility of a âfriendly takeover,â saying Cuba was âdown to fumesâ with no money and no energy.
VA, MI Attackers Identified
Authorities identified suspects behind two attacks at a Michigan synagogue and a Virginia university.
Last Thursday, a gunman killed an ROTC instructor at Old Dominion University (ODU). Hours later, a man drove a vehicle into a synagogue in MI.
The VA gunman â Mohamed Bailor Jalloh â was a student at ODU who had pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to support ISIS and was released from federal prison in 2024.
The MI attacker â Ayman Mohamad Ghazali â was a Lebanese-born US citizen whose brother and relatives were just killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon. Israelâs military claimed his brother was a Hezbollah commander.
The FBI is investigating both incidents.
US Bombs Kharg Island
The US bombed Kharg Island, Iranâs primary oil export hub, targeting military infrastructure while leaving oil facilities intact. Kharg handles roughly 90% of Iranâs crude oil exports, making it the backbone of Iranâs economy.
President Trump announced US forces struck more than 90 military targets on the island, destroying naval mine storage facilities and missile bunkers, while sparing oil infrastructure out of âdecency,â but warned he would revisit that if Iran continued to impede shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
-Henry David Thoreau
Is the Private Credit Crisis Here?
As the world has been preoccupied with the war in Iran, things have been going south in private credit.
In fact, just last week, the co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs International was quoted on a call as saying that some of the bankâs private credit clients were âjust glad thereâs something to talk about that isnât software exposures and private credit.â
So whatâs so bad in private credit that war is a welcome distraction? Read our deep-dive on the topic here.
World
The Pentagon is deploying the USS Tripoli and up to 2,500 Marines and sailors to the Middle East as the US works to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
All six crew members aboard a US Air Force refueling tanker died after the aircraft crashed over western Iraq during a combat mission supporting operations against Iran.
The US and Mexico have begun a formal review of the USMCA â their trilateral trade deal with Canada.
Politics
A federal judge threw out two DoJ subpoenas targeting Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, ruling they were designed to pressure Powell rather than investigate criminal conduct.
A bill introduced into New York Cityâs city council proposes raising the minimum wage from $17 to $30 an hour.
What does Roca Nation think?
đ€ Todayâs Question: Did you watch the Oscars last night? If so, how was it? If not, why not?
Reply to this email with your response!
đ€ Bot Arrested: A humanoid robot in Macau, China, was arrested for startling a 70-year-old woman to the point of her needing to be hospitalized.
đŸ Atlantic Express: A 10-year-old boy in the Bahamas threw a message in a bottle into the ocean and was surprised to learn it washed ashore in Portugal one year later.
đ° Dash and Cash: A 78-year-old DoorDash driver in Tennessee received over $510,000 in donations after a woman spotted him struggling to climb her front steps on her Ring doorbell camera.
đïž Sequel Season: Netflix has greenlit a sequel to KPop Demon Hunters, the platformâs most-watched film ever, with over 480M views since its release last summer.
đŹ Whoâs There?: Two episodes of the original Doctor Who series, missing since their 1965 broadcast, were discovered inside a cardboard box in an amateur collectorâs estate.
Marilyn Monroe
She grew up unwanted in Los Angeles and died one of the most famous women in the world â but spent everything in between fighting to be taken seriously.
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926, Monroe never knew her father and spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage after her mother was committed to a psychiatric institution. At 16, she married a neighbor to avoid being sent back to the orphanage. The marriage lasted four years.
Monroeâs path to fame began at a Van Nuys munitions factory during World War II, where a military photographer spotted her on the assembly line. Within a year, she had signed with a modeling agency, appeared on dozens of magazine covers, and landed a screen test at Fox. By 1946, she had a contract â and a new name.
Monroe broke through in 1953 with three back-to-back hits: Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire. The roles made her a star and immediately typecast her. A Fox executive personally blocked her from more serious work, and her contract paid her a fraction of what comparable stars earned. Monroe took private acting classes, convinced she was capable of more.
In 1954, Monroe co-founded her own production company and declared her Fox contract void â a move historians credit with helping unravel the old Hollywood studio system. She moved to New York, studied method acting, and eventually forced Fox back to the table. She returned with four times the salary and the right to choose her own directors. Critics who had dismissed her were caught off guard by her performance in Bus Stop (1956), and her role in Some Like It Hot (1959) won her a Golden Globe.
Monroeâs personal life drew as much attention as her films. Her marriage to baseball star Joe DiMaggio lasted nine months and ended partly due to his physical abuse. Her subsequent marriage to playwright Arthur Miller was ridiculed by the press and ended in divorce as well. When Miller came under FBI investigation for alleged communist ties, Monroe refused to distance herself from him. The FBI opened a file on her too.
Monroeâs later years were marked by deteriorating health, a dependence on barbiturates, and a series of hospitalizations. Her final completed film was The Misfits in 1961. She was 36 when she died from a barbiturate overdose â which authorities ruled a âprobably suicideâ â at her Brentwood home on August 4, 1962, just miles from where she grew up.
The girl who grew up forgotten in LAâs foster system became the most recognizable face in the world, and spent the rest of her life trying to be taken seriously.
EDITORâS NOTE
Final Thoughts
Max F went inside Hezbollah territory in Lebanon and discovered massive Roman temples, abandoned neighborhoods, and an extremely complicated political dynamic. Watch our latest video here, and paid subscribers can hear his behind-the-scenes (30 mins!) analysis of whatâs happening in Lebanon right now and what he learned during his time there.
Hope you have a great day!
âMax and Max
This film about Lebanon was very well done, and without any slant, it showed the reality of the country and included true accounts from locals of how they were living. Thank you for the insightful view of a very pertinent crisis.
The Oscars are about as relevant to me as a pet bedbug would be. Anyone who spends more than 150 seconds on this jive is pitiful. I just spent 99 seconds. Bye.