đ RFK's Pyramid Scheme
Plus: Iran protests heat up, trade deficit falls, & the life of Freddie Mercury
Too much news for nine days.
Itâs only January 9th, and weâre about ready for our annual âgood news recapâ piece. If youâre already feeling tired, weâre right there with you. I guess the good news is that Shark Week is on again in six months? And Cook Out is expanding? @Grok, help us.
I guess one good thing is that 20 Questions is back! Check out this weekâs âthis or thatâ music edition, and have a great weekend.
đźđ· Iran protests intensify
đ New food pyramid
đ€ Life of Freddie Mercury
âMax and Max
KEY STORY
New Food Pyramid Unveiled
The Trump Administration released updated federal dietary guidelines for Americans
Every five years, the federal government updates its guidelines that shape federal nutrition programs, school lunches, and military meals
Health Secretary RFK Jr. described the new guidelines as âthe most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in history.â The recommendations suggest eating between 1.2â1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily â an increase from the previous 0.8 g/kg
The guidelines urge Americans to consume âno amountâ of added sugars, avoid processed foods, and endorse full-fat dairy products and red meat
Dig Deeper
The guidelines drop specific limits on daily alcohol consumption, which previously capped intake at one to two drinks per day for adults
The American Medical Association said the new dietary guidelines offer âclear direction,â while the American Heart Association expressed concern about recommending red meat and full-fat dairy products
KEY STORY
Iran Protests Intensify
The Iranian government shut off internet nationwide amid the most intense day of anti-government protests yet
The protests began on December 28 as a response to rampant inflation and the plummeting value of Iranâs currency. Theyâve since morphed into the largest anti-regime demonstrations since 2022, with protesters calling for the death of the ayatollah (Iranâs âsupreme leaderâ) and the return of the pre-revolution shah
Footage from Thursday showed protesters chasing away security forces, entering government buildings, and burning cars. Rumors are now spreading that the ayatollah is considering plans to flea the country
Dig Deeper
Axios reported on Friday that the CIA had initially concluded the protests were too weak to bring down the regime but updated that assessment after Thursday. The ongoing internet blockade â intended to quell the protests and prevent the documentation of violence from getting out of the country â may decrease visibility into whatâs happening in Iran
KEY STORY
Colombia Tensions Eased?
A phone call between President Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro eased tensions after Trump threatened military action against Colombia, per the NYT
Following the US military operation in Venezuela, Trump threatened military action against Colombia and called Petro a "sick man" who makes cocaine to send to the US
On Wednesday night, Trump spoke with Petro in a 55-minute phone call reportedly brokered by Senator Rand Paul (KY). Afterward, Trump posted that it had been a "Great Honor" to speak with Petro and that he appreciated "his call and tone"
Dig Deeper
Before the phone call, Petro told The New York Times that he feared Trump would try to extract him like Venezuelan President NicolĂĄs Maduro and believed Trump's threats stemmed from a lack of communication between the two leaders
Petro's presidential term ends later this year, and he cannot run for a second term under Colombia's constitution. Some analysts said Trump's threats could affect Colombia's May elections
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
KEY STORY
Trump Calls for $1.5T Defense Budget
President Trump proposed a $1.5T defense budget for 2027, a 50% increase from current spending
Trump has continued to advocate for higher defense budgets from both the US and its allies
On Wednesday, he announced his proposal to increase the 2027 military budget to $1.5T to allow the US to build a "Dream Military"
Trump said he also plans to impose restrictions on defense contractors, threatening to cut off companies that fail to speed up production or invest in new manufacturing facilities. He called Raytheon âthe least responsive to the needsâ of America's defense
Dig Deeper
Trump proposed capping executive compensation at defense companies at $5M per year, criticizing what he says are excessive pay packages
The president said tariff revenue could cover the spending boost, but economists have said that current tariff revenues are far below what would be needed to cover the new budget
WE THE 66
How Wall Street Took Over American Housing
You hear all the time that âBlackrock is buying up all the homes.â So common has this critique become that President Trump announced this week that heâd work to get Congress to pass a law banning large investors from purchasing single-family homes
But what are the numbers? How many homes are these big companies really buying? What impact is it having? Thatâs the subject of todayâs WeThe66 deep-dive, available here
RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office
đą Russia's foreign ministry warned that the US seizure of a Russian-flagged tanker near Iceland on Wednesday risked creating "further military and political tension in the Euro-Atlantic" and could lower the threshold for using force against maritime vessels.
đ The US trade deficit fell to $29.4B in October, the Commerce Department announced on Thursday, marking its lowest level since 2009 and far below analyst expectations of $58.4B.
đłïž The Senate voted 52-47 on Thursday to advance a war powers resolution that would require President Trump to seek congressional authorization for continued military operations in Venezuela, with five Republicans joining Democrats in support.
đ« Minnesota authorities said on Thursday that the FBI is preventing the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from accessing evidence or conducting interviews related to the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
đ©đ»âđ NASA is considering an early return for the four-person SpaceX Crew-11 team aboard the International Space Station due to a medical issue involving one unnamed crew member, who is described as stable. The incident led to the cancellation of a spacewalk scheduled for Thursday.
What does Roca Nation think?
đż Yesterdayâs Question: Should schools be giving out iPads to kids?
NO! I taught from 2010-2014 during which we had one classroom computer and a school computer lab. Due to low pay I changed careers until I returned in 2021 to every student having a personal iPad and itâs a nightmare! The district has paid for all these different programs so itâs mandatory they use them for about two hours a day. The iPads glitch out constantly- during standardized testing for example the kids listen to a word and then spell the word but about 20% of the time the iPads cuts out part of the word so naturally they then spell the word wrong. They crash or log the kids out and I have to spend time fixing them. As a single teacher with a class of 27 itâs impossible to monitor all of them at once so they click between the working app and games as I walk around, and even when I see them in the working app I canât know how far along they are just looking at their screen without pulling up a separate teacher app and going into their individual profile.
The students are creepily obsessed with them- I have one student who cries every. single. time. that itâs time to put them away and I banned them during recess time after I noticed students were 100% of the time choosing iPad over outdoor recess and/playtime. And none of this even covers the dip in attention span Iâve seen! Back in the early 2010s most kids read on grade level and could hold a conversation with me. Now, when it comes time to do pencil and paper work their eyes glaze over and they canât remember information told to them fifteen seconds ago (I wish I were kidding but I can literally tell them âthe blue dog jumped over the fence. What color is the dog?â And they cannot recall.) I could honestly go on about this topic for hours, but TLDR; I hate the iPads with a passion and wish to God we would ditch them and go back to paper and pencil only, with an occasional trip to the lab as a treat! Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, this was cathartic.
Angelica from Michigan
Since COVID, our school district has been a 1:1 Apple district. K-8 students are provided with a school issued iPad, 9-12 graders receive MacBooks. At the elementary level iPads donât go home at the end of the day. We have a robust internet filter that uses AI to limit student access and flags inappropriate use. There is no access to socials, only school issued apps. Weâve recently taken Chat GPT off all school devices and teachers use Apple Classroom regularly to monitor student devices in real time and as a classroom management tool. Students K-8 are taught digital citizenship lessons throughout the year. Lessons cover everything from learning about online privacy to recognizing fake accounts.
Thankfully, we live in a community with resources, and also a social awareness about how technology impacts our children. Two years ago our Superintendentâs community book club read was Haidtâs, The Anxious Generation.
As a parent who has signed the Wait âTill 8th pledge and never provided devices to my 3 children, yet is an Instructional Technology educator, I think dialogue with our children and within our community is key. Technology isnât going anywhere and is an essential learning tool, but we need to shift the use case for ALL devices from consumption tool to creation tool. And social media sucks.
Emily from New York
20 Questions!
Itâs been a long time since weâve done a âThis or Thatâ music edition, and we think that we need a little musical matchup distraction from 2026âs rough start to the news cycle. Most of these songs/artists are on Rolling Stoneâs Top 500 Songs of All Time, and we want you to choose the better one.
Last weekâs responses:
Candy Canes - 6.1
NBA on Christmas Day - 2.7
Marshmallows in hot chocolate - 7.4
Eggnog - 5.8
Starbucks holiday drinks - 3.9
Christmas trees with colorful lights - 8.4
Christmas trees with white/yellow lights - 8.2
Gift buying - 6.1
Gift giving - 8.7
Those circular sleeves of raw cookie dough holiday symbols pressed on them - 4.8
Grocery store holiday sugar cookies - 4.3
Shopping online - 7.4
Shopping in a mall - 5.0
âLast Christmasâ by Wham - 6.0
âRockinâ Around the Christmas Treeâ by Brenda Lee - 7.5
Christmas pajamas - 6.7
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire - 5.8
People who think âBaby Itâs Cold Outsideâ is not politically correct and should be taken off air - 2.2
Elf - 7.3
When Harry Met Sally - 6.8
POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour
đș Stranger Bets: Netflix fans wagered over $7M on the betting platform Polymarket that Stranger Things would release a secret ninth episode by midnight on Wednesday.
đș Sound and Fury: Archaeologists in Norfolk, England, have unearthed Europeâs most complete Iron Age battle trumpet alongside Britainâs first-ever boarâs head war standard in the same excavation.
âčđ»ââïž Forfeit Under Pressure: Italian basketball team Trapani Shark was eliminated from the FIBA Champions League after being reduced to a single player on court during a playoff game in Bulgaria.
𩮠Bone to Pick: A thief stole an antique walrus penis bone from behind the bar at Donkeyâs Place, a cheesesteak restaurant in Camden, New Jersey.
đïž Home Economics: An 18-year-old engineering student in Ontario has designed a modular tiny home system using fiberglass panels to help address homelessness in London, Ontario, where roughly 1,800 residents lack shelter.
ROCA WRAP
The Champion
Freddie Mercury
This rock singer was born with four extra incisors, which he credited for his extraordinary vocal range.
Born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town, Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania, on September 5, 1946, Mercury came from a Parsi family originally from Gujarat, India. His father worked as a cashier at the British Colonial Office. At the age of eight, he was sent to study at St. Peterâs School, a British boarding school in Panchgani, near Bombay. At twelve, he formed a school band called the Hectics and covered Elvis Presley and Little Richard. A friend recalled he had âan uncanny ability to listen to the radio and replay what he heard on piano.â It was at St. Peterâs where he began calling himself âFreddie.â
In spring 1964, when Mercury was seventeen, he and his family fled Zanzibar to escape the revolution against the Sultan, in which thousands of ethnic Arabs and Indians were killed. They moved to Feltham, Middlesex, west of London. Mercury studied graphic art and design at Ealing Art College, graduating with a diploma in 1969. He later used these skills to design the heraldic âQueen crestâ logo, combining the zodiac signs of all four band members with lions, a crab, fairies, and an enormous phoenix.
In April 1970, Mercury teamed up with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor to become lead singer of their band Smile, joined by bassist John Deacon in 1971. Mercury chose the name âQueen,â later saying, âItâs very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid. Itâs a strong name, very universal and immediate. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it.â He legally changed his surname from Bulsara to Mercury around the same time. Mercury wrote numerous hits, including âKiller Queen,â âBohemian Rhapsody,â âSomebody to Love,â âWe Are the Champions,â and âDonât Stop Me Now.â His charismatic stage performances saw him interact with audiences using a broken microphone stand as his main prop. Queenâs performance at Live Aid in 1985 was later voted the greatest live performance in rock history.
Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, but continued recording with Queen. On November 23, 1991, he publicly announced his diagnosis. He died the next day at age 45 from bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. The remaining Queen members founded the Mercury Phoenix Trust and organized a tribute concert at Wembley Stadium that was broadcast to 76 countries with an estimated audience of 1B people.
A boy who fled the revolution in Zanzibar became the frontman who sang âWe Are the Championsâ to stadiums worldwide.
EDITORâS NOTE
Final Thoughts
Yet another thrilling Ole Miss game last night. We were hoping that Roca would be its good luck charm after we made our first college football video there earlier this year, but alas⊠Miami wins.
Itâll be a huge weekend for football. Get the buffalo chicken dip going asap. Or, if you have depth and have found real meaning in life, enjoy nature â or whatever.
âMax and Max
January 9th and weâre already juggling Iran in flames, RFK rewriting the food pyramid like itâs a CrossFit blog, and Freddie Mercury reminding us what actual greatness looks like. Feels less like a news cycle and more like the universe stress-testing our attention span. Honestly, respect to anyone still standing after this week.