🌊 Overdose Deaths Fall Again
Plus: Anthropic on top, Netanyahu's secret trip, & West Virginia's most remote holler
New mission statement for our YT just dropped.
Though maybe we could’ve tried Grammarly for this one @tuyikundegaba1508.
We genuinely believe our channel is a modern Alexis de Tocqueville portrait of America. And just like him we love croissants and hate monarchs. Now time for some news and 20 Questions.
Anthropic to top OpenAI?
Overdose deaths fall again
West Virginia’s most remote holler
-Max and Max
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Anthropic Pushing Ahead
Anthropic is pulling ahead of OpenAI in several key business metrics and could soon surpass its rival in valuation for the first time, according to a Wall Street Journal report published this week.
The turnaround traced back to late 2025 with the release of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5, which became a go-to tool among software developers. By April this year, the company’s revenue run-rate – which estimates yearly revenue based on short-term performance – reached $30B, up from $9B at the end of 2025. The company expects to hit $50B by June.
Investors have started to take notice, with Anthropic receiving offers valuing it at more than $900B, which would more than double its current valuation and top OpenAI’s $852B mark for the first time.
The company’s momentum got another boost from an unlikely source. Following the public fallout between Anthropic and the Department of Defense earlier this year, its popularity surged. Claude surpassed ChatGPT in weekly US downloads in March, while ChatGPT saw app uninstalls climb close to 300% after OpenAI struck a similar deal with the Pentagon. Business data firm Ramp found that, by April, 34.4% of its customers used Anthropic compared to 32.3% for OpenAI.
Still, OpenAI holds a commanding lead.
ChatGPT logged 900M active users in February, well ahead of Claude, even if short of the 1B target OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had hoped to reach by the end of last year. Anthropic has also been hampered by server capacity issues that caused outages and capped usage, while OpenAI’s new coding tool, Codex, is beginning to challenge markets that Anthropic has so far dominated.
Roca’s Lesson of the Week
A few months ago, a friend texted me to let me know that a friend of his was posting about Roca on his personal Instagram. The latter man had written on his story, “@RideTheNews is very clearly Peter Thiel funded and everyone should unfollow.”
Sitting in our 240 square-foot office with seven people looking through our one window into a brick wall, we found the allegation so silly that it didn’t merit a response. If we had Thiel money, we’d have a proper office.
But the allegations kept coming. And after seeing the Thiel claim come up once again this week, I decided to address it.
US Cancels Poland Deployment
The Pentagon canceled a planned deployment of more than 4,000 troops to Poland, the latest in a series of US military reductions in Europe.
The move follows an earlier decision to pull 5,000 troops from Germany, a drawdown that would return American troop levels in Europe to their pre-Ukraine-war numbers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered no public explanation for the Poland cancellation. President Trump has signaled the cuts will go further, threatening to reduce forces in Italy and Spain, as well.
Cuba Out of Oil
Cuba has completely run out of diesel and fuel oil, the country’s energy minister announced, describing the energy situation as “critical.”
The shortage has plunged parts of Havana into blackouts lasting up to 22 hours a day, forcing schools, government offices, and hospitals to suspend normal operations as scattered protests broke out in the capital this week.
On Thursday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Cuba, warning that the country must make economic changes and crack down on Russian and Chinese intelligence operations based in Cuba.
Senate Votes to Withhold Pay
The Senate unanimously approved a resolution to withhold senators’ pay during government shutdowns, a bipartisan effort to make legislative gridlock more personally costly for lawmakers.
Under the measure, the secretary of the Senate would hold senators’ salaries whenever a shutdown affects one or more agencies, releasing them only once funding is restored. The resolution’s sponsor, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), said shutting down the government “should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences.”
Netanyahu Visited UAE?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Wednesday that he secretly visited the United Arab Emirates during the US-Israeli war with Iran, a claim that the UAE denies.
Since the war broke out, the UAE has borne the brunt of Iranian missile and drone strikes. The attacks appear to have pushed the UAE and Israel closer, with Israel having deployed Iron Dome air defense batteries to the UAE to defend against Iranian strikes. But there are conflicting accounts of official meetings.
While Netanyahu’s office hailed the secret visit as a “historic breakthrough” in bilateral relations, the UAE denied the visit occurred. The UAE’s state news agency says relations with Israel are conducted publicly under the Abraham Accords and are “not based on non-transparent or unofficial agreements.”
The revelation comes after reports that the UAE had been secretly striking Iran at the beginning of the conflict, with one strike hitting Iran’s Lavan Island oil refinery.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned earlier this month that collusion with Israel was “unforgivable” and that those who do so will be “held to account” – a thinly veiled threat directed at the UAE, though he didn’t name the country.
Princeton Changes Honor Code
Faculty at Princeton University voted on Monday to require instructors to supervise all in-person exams effective July 1, ending a 133-year policy that banned proctoring.
Princeton’s honor code dates to 1893, when students petitioned to eliminate proctors in favor of individual accountability, which has been a foundational part of the honor code ever since. AI has put that foundation under strain.
A survey of over 500 graduating seniors found that 30% admitted to cheating on an assignment or exam, while nearly 45% said they witnessed a violation but didn’t report it. Less than 1% of students, on the other hand, had filed a report against a peer, citing fears of social media backlash as their reason for staying quiet. The Chair of Princeton’s student-run honor committee said most students support the change because it removes the burden of reporting classmates themselves.
Thus, the vote to bring back exam proctors ultimately passed, with only one faculty member opposed. Exam proctors won’t interfere during exams but will document suspected violations and report them to the honor committee.
Overdose Deaths Down
The CDC reported on Wednesday that drug overdose deaths in the US fell for the third year in a row to roughly 70,000 in 2025, a 14% drop from 2024 as deaths returned to near pre-pandemic levels.
The drop was largely driven by a decline in fentanyl-related deaths, which fell from about 49,000 in 2024 to around 38,000 in 2025, while deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine also fell. Though most states saw improvements, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico each reported increases of at least 10%.
Researchers credit a range of factors, including a wider availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, expanded addiction treatment, and billions in opioid lawsuit settlement funds. Some also point to a shrinking pool of at-risk users and reduced availability of fentanyl following regulatory changes in China.
But the gains may be fragile as the Trump Administration has cut funding for harm reduction programs, and new synthetic opioids are emerging, including cychlorphine, described as up to 10 times more potent than fentanyl.
What does Roca Nation think?
🏀 Yesterday’s Question: Have gas prices affected your life significantly in the last month? If so, how?
My wife and I are retired and travel at this time of year in our travel trailer, pulling it with a GMC pickup truck. Our journey began in February and we traveled to Florida, where we are now. When we left NH, we were filling up along the way for less than $3 a gallon. We are in Venice, Florida now and will start to make our trip back to NH on June 1st. Gas here is hovering around $4 a gallon at the moment and has fluctuated wildly over the last few weeks peaking at $4.59 just last week. If gas continues to rise, we may make a decision to stay here rather than pay $5 or $6 a gallon. The trip home will easily cost $1,000 compared to the $500 it cost us to get here.
Chuck from NH
Nope drive an electric car
Barry from Undisclosed
Just did a rough calculation of my cost per mile before the Iran war and again at today’s gas prices. The difference isn’t really that onerous. It costs me just over 2 cents per mile more, now. To eliminate the threat of a nuclear Iran, it seems worth it to me.
Dave from North Carolina
20 Questions
Happy Friday, Roca Nation. With anticipation for The Odyssey building, it’s time to bring back a “This or That” classic movie tournament. This one genuinely has us on the edge of our seats.
Last week, we asked a “10 Questions” for a piece we wrote on fertility, marriage, and family.
KITT and Run
A Chicago-area museum received a $50 NYC speeding ticket for a car that hasn’t left its exhibit in years.
The Volo Museum near Chicago owns a replica of KITT – the talking black Trans Am from the 1980s NBC series Knight Rider – complete with the show’s California vanity plate, KNIGHT. That plate is now linked to six unpaid NYC traffic violations dating back to late 2024, including a camera-caught 36 mph run through a 25 mph zone in Brooklyn on April 22.
Accidental Runway
A beachgoer in Sydney unwittingly stole the show at Australian Fashion Week after wandering into a live runway event at Tamarama Beach.
David Handley, apparently unaware that a COMMAS fashion show was underway on the sand around him, dropped his belongings beside the runway, stretched, stripped down, and went for a swim – periodically surfacing in the background of high-fashion shots.
Turn On, Clock In
Robotics company Figure AI livestreamed a team of humanoid robots completing a full 8-hour warehouse shift at human performance levels.
The robots, running the company’s Helix 02 system, autonomously sorted packages onto a conveyor belt and were designed to self-diagnose failures and swap themselves out without human intervention. The stunt was a direct response to a robotics expert who argued humanoids wouldn’t be useful until they could handle a full workday.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts
Oh my goodness…
This video has over 500,000 views in its first 18 hours. It turns out that when you go to interesting places and actually talk to people that the public will be interested. We really try to be the Encyclopedia of America.
Have a great weekend.
–Max and Max
Claiming "overdose Deaths Fall Again" comes across as rather hollow without mentioning the significant changes in the CDC during the Trump administration. Amongst the many policy shifts, cuts to funding and the 17 person team that was responsible for the survey tracking substance abuse being laid off, indicates to me that comparing the numbers from previous administrations to this administration may be comparing apples to oranges.