March 9, 2022

Thank you everyone for sending in those much-needed jokes. We thought maybe someone would respond with "legacy news media" as their joke, but you're more mature than us. Now enjoy reading today's story about Uber. Read carefully, otherwise you may not have anything to chauffer it. 

Hope you enjoy Part 2 of Max Frost's "Live from Ukraine" series. Despite the dreary situation over there, he encountered many bright spots. 

― Key Stories

Disney Bets to Save ESPN
Overview

• Disney is targeting sports betting to revitalize ESPN, of which it owns 80%
• ESPN's subscriber base, including TV viewers, fell 23% between 2011 and 2021, from 100M to 77M. That figure is expected to fall to 72.5M in 2022
• Disney owns 6% of betting site DraftKings and has an exclusive deal with gambling giant Caesars for the rights to sports gambling odds for ESPN
• Analysts suspect ESPN will soon let viewers bet on specific plays or moments, incentivizing them to watch entire games live as opposed to highlights on social media

Gig Companies Fight Regulations

• Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Grubhub and others have launched a $1M+ ad and lobby campaign to stop efforts to reclassify their workers as employees
• President Biden wants congress to pass the PRO act, which would reclassify some part-time app-based workers as employees
• Labor unions say the companies are exploitative because gig workers don’t receive benefits like healthcare. The companies say they give their workers total flexibility
• The companies are now airing a series of ads that describe the benefits of the gig model. They say the average gig worker spends 8 hours weekly on the job

US Bans Russian Oil

• President Biden banned US imports of Russian oil and gas. “We will not be part of subsidizing Putin’s war,” he said
• Russia provides 7.9% of US oil imports, the most after neighbors Canada (51.3%) and Mexico (8.4%)
• The ban is expected to have a limited impact on the Russian economy, given that many US companies had stopped buying Russian oil in advance
• Some have called on Europe, which imports 40% of its gas and 25% of oil from Russia, to enact a similar ban. Doing so currently appears unlikely, given how dramatically it could affect European energy prices

Heart Transplant Fights Rejection
Overview

• A baby has successfully received a first-of-its-kind heart transplant designed to help prevent the body from rejecting a new organ
• The procedure involved transplanting donor thymus tissue that matches the heart to lower chances of rejection. The thymus houses T cells, which are critical to the adaptive immune system
• If the approach proves successful, it would mean transplant recipients may be able to survive without immunosuppressive anti-rejection medicines
• Immunosuppressive meds trick immune systems into accepting foreign organs, but are often toxic

See yesterday's results below the Wrap!

 Popcorn

Culture & Sports 

• Aaron Rodgers has agreed to a 4-year, $200M contract to return to Green Bay! The Packers QB will now have the highest salary in the NFL
• NFL musical chairs cont.: Russell Wilson is heading to Denver after the Broncos and Seahawks agreed on a blockbuster trade for the star QB
• Make that *Princess Pugh: Florence Pugh is in negotiations to play Princess Irulan in Dune: Part Two (sequel to, yep, Dune: Part One)

• Exodus of the A-listers: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Starbucks each announced that they're suspending business in Russia
• When the music stops: Spotify experienced widespread outages for over an hour on Tuesday. New York and LA were hit hardest
• At its first product event of the year, Apple announced its lineup of new tech goodies, including a new iPhone, iPad Air, & Mac Studio computer

• Central Park arson: 10 fires broke out in New York City's Central Park in an apparent act of arson, NYPD officials confirmed
• Robert Pattinson, the new Batman, revealed that he used the "sipping diet" to prepare for his big role, seriously restricting his water intake
• A college basketball conference championship game was delayed for 30 minutes after a massive fight broke out in stands
• Prime Toes: NFL legend Deion Sanders claims he had 2 toes amputated on his left foot after complications from a previous surgery

― Roca Wrap

A Newsletter Exclusive

Roca co-founder Max Frost has spent the last 10 days in eastern Europe, including 4 days in Ukraine. He's writing about it here this week. 

On my first night in Ukraine, Ivan, the father of the family I was staying with, woke me up at 3:30 AM. He was yelling in Russian and pointing at his phone: The Russians had bombed a nuclear plant and now it was on fire. “This could be the next Chernobyl!”

I thought he was telling me we needed to evacuate, but he was just telling me to share the news with Roca readers back home. The power plant was hundreds of miles away; the fire was put out within hours.

Other than that incident, my stay in the Ukrainian town of Khust was peaceful. The few evident signs of war included tank blockers near bridges (which had “Putin - fuck yourself” written on them) and militia members training with AKs outside a town building.

Ivan drove me around the Ukrainian province of Zakarpatia, pointing out the more subtle indicators. The town market was full of people who weren’t local, he said, and he pointed out empty kiosks that he said were normally used by people who had fled abroad. Most of the license plates were from other parts of Ukraine, particularly from the war zones of Kyiv and Kharkiv. Every few hours, the cost currency exchanges were charging for a dollar ticked up.

We stopped in one mountain town that Ivan said was normally empty this time of year and talked to people on the street. One woman was there with her kids and father. They had been lawyers in the city of Dnipro, but fled because of the bombing in nearby areas. “We grabbed all the children’s stuff – food, pillows, blankets – and filled the car and drove off. The kids now have nothing to do, we didn’t even bring them books. We lost our world practically.”

Anya, a retail saleswoman in Kyiv, had similarly fled with her husband and child. “We left 1 and a half days ago. On the road, there was shelling and we didn’t know where to go.” The attacks on their area have since gotten worse. “We were extremely lucky to leave when we did,” she told me. 

I asked if she had plans to go abroad.

“We will stay in Ukraine until the very end, because my husband can’t leave.”

I asked the same question to my host, Ivan, who has a daughter in the US and son in Canada. 

“In the Bible it says that if you have God, then no one is against you,” he told me. They would stay and put their lives in God’s hands.

**

I went to church with Ivan’s family – a packed, 3-hour service held on Saturday morning. Ivan told me their denomination is similar to the Church of God in the US.

The service was mainly in Ukrainian with parts delivered in Russian so I and the Russian-speaking refugees could more easily understand. The sermon focused on the war, with the preacher saying, “When bad things (like war) happen, ask not why, but what for.”

Toward the end, refugees came to the front to introduce themselves and tell their stories. 

First was Anya, from Irpin, a Kyiv suburb that is one of Ukraine’s hardest-hit cities.

“They were bombing the airport, so we got in our car and left. Then on the road to Lviv (a safer city in western Ukraine), our car broke down. We called some students who were evacuating from a seminary, and they picked us up and brought us here.”

The next man was from Kyiv, and had just sent his family abroad before taking shelter in Khust. “In this terrible situation, God is always with us and leads us.”

Then a man from Zaporizhia: “I’m not with my family or my kids. It’s hard, but peace is located in my heart.”

Then a woman from eastern Ukraine: “When the bombs were falling, when the planes were flying, when my brother said, ‘pack your bags, we are leaving,’ God was always with me. We didn’t know where we were going but we were given a telephone number and ended up here. Even to just sleep 3 or 4 hours, thank you, God. For everything, thank you God.”

Before issuing his final remarks, the pastor asked if he should speak in Russian or Ukrainian. “My wife speaks Russian, I speak Ukrainian. I see many of you speak Russian. Today I will speak Russian.” A narrative in Russia is that Ukraine is committing a genocide against the country’s Russian speakers. 

He then gave out a cell number for people to call to help their loved ones out of Kharkiv, which the Russians have been bombing since the war’s first day.

**

That day, someone from the US reached out to me mentioning that a boy they knew with connections to a US family was trapped in the city of Chernigiv. The Russians had just bombed 2 of the 3 school’s in the boy’s area; the US family was terrified. 

Then that evening, a refugee family arrived from a Kyiv suburb at Ivan’s home in Khust. There were 150 missile alerts a day, they said, and they were tired of the endless sounds of Russian planes exploding overhead and missile sirens. 

I mentioned the boy’s plight to the father of that family; it turned out his mom was in Chernigiv, too. “I’m going to pick her up, I’ll get the boy too.” Chernigiv is a days-long drive from Khust; the roads there are mined; bombs are literally falling from the sky. He said he would get the boy like he was going to pick up milk. He added: “I’m going back to Kyiv soon anyways. I need to feed my cat.”

As it stands, the roads to Chernigiv aren’t accessible, but that Ukrainian man is now in touch with the US family and working on an evacuation. 

***

And that’s how it was in the region of Ukraine I visited: People were putting their faith in God and doing all they could to help each other and complete strangers. My view was likely skewed by the fact that I was staying with a religious family, but others assured me this was how people were acting across the country. As parts of Ukraine are reduced to rubble, most people seem focused only on helping those in need. 

 Games

1. Bodhi
2. Arlo
3. Max
4. Milo

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