Since the advent of digital music, the onus of music selection has been taken from the driver and handed, nearly solely, to the whims of the passenger.
Prior to this, especially when tapes (but also CD's) were in play, the driver of the car had all the power when it came to music selection. The first thing you'd do, as a driver, was choose the tunes. I knew that when I rode with Sam Beals, I'd have to listen to U2. When it was Aaron Konopka, it'd be Zeppelin, L. Cohen, or Bob Dylan. With Jason Courter, it was a toss up; it could be something I liked (often Tom Petty), but could be U2. I'd know as soon as they'd pick me up, and it was then either a great ride or a tolerable one, musically speaking.
In these situations, the driver could - and would occasionally - allow the passenger to select the next CD (or tape), but it was always accompanied with permission, something along the lines of: "Go ahead and choose the next disc."
Phones and MP3 players have completely taken this away. Now, as the driver, it's almost dangerous to change tunes.
Fouls and officiating are essentially wrecking NCAA basketball. When the season used to begin, many people I knew were excited to watch. We'd tune in to big games, talk about outcomes. This year I haven't heard a single person mention college basketball. No one seems excited about it, and the games are awful, nearly unbearable to watch.
Case in point: 12/27/16's MSU v. Minnesota game. This was the big ten opener for both teams: a major game. I used to get quite geared up for the Big Ten Opener, and would adjust my schedule accordingly.
But...
Minnesota shot 45 free throws. The game went into overtime, making the total game-time 45 minutes, which means they shot one free throw for every minute of play. The final nine minutes of the game (4:21 of regulation and 5:00 of OT) took almost an hour. There was a whistle, or other stoppage of play, nearly every possession. As I listened to it on the radio, there wasn't a single time that the game flowed continuously for three consecutive possessions.
College basketball has to fix this, or they'll lose the audience.
I think of it like this: written into the flow of the game, each team is allowed 6 fouls per half. If one team acquires a seventh foul in a half, the other team shoots a bonus. After ten, they get a double bonus. Often in games, one team is at the double bonus for half of a half. Either the best players playing don't follow the rules, or the refs suck.
I'll go with the refs.
Elon Musk has been credited saying something along the lines that there's less than a one percent chance we're not all living in a computer simulation. The theory suggests we are living in a world we have no control over, and do not know we are inside a simulation, being controlled by some gamer, some where.
If this is the case, whoever is running that program must have had one hell of a time fucking with the U.S. political system. So, Gamer, well done. You spent whatever your time equivalent of 40 years is creating a guy to be successful, turning him into a joke into a candidate that ran for president and won.
Well done.
The theory that E. Musk is credited with is called simulation theory, (I believe).
That theory, and others, I've heard on some podcasts this year. But one that's been blowing my mind was the theory put forth by Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson on The Joe Rogan Experience. They set forth this theory that the earth was hit by a large comet, sometime between 12,800-10,600 years ago (roughly). This comet made contact around the Washington / B.C. border, and sparked the end of the ice age. They show a lot of compelling evidence that this (probably) happened. Carlson is a geologist, and Hancock is a self-defined 'alternative historian'.
One of his alternative histories is that there was a lost civilization of technologically advanced people. They were killed off by the impact. He proposes that these ancient people were sound astronomers, architects, mathematicians, and the like. He purports that their wisdom was passed down through generations, though most of it was lost with the burning of major libraries.
I'll admit that I like conspiracy theory more than most, but this one hit home differently. Every Christmas, I listen to a sermon series Rob Bell did at Marsh Hill in 2004 called A Revolutionary Christmas. In it, he lists the accomplishments of King Herod, 2000 years ago. Many things Herod did we can barely do today. In the sermons, he labelled Herod and people at that time as 'ancient'. But, after hearing the Joe Rogan thing, I was like: what if they weren't primitive at all? What if moving big stones and all that was something quite common back in the day, but the knowledge was lost with the burning of the libraries? Throughout time, and seen today when groups like Isis, and other religious groups, take over a place, the first thing they do is burn and break the old stuff.
This sucks.
What have we lost? Maybe it was a lot of sciences and the like.