'I can't feel my fingers': 13-year-old Tetris winner dumfounded after ...

Tetris is an old-school video game, released nearly 40 years ago. But a 13-year-old from Oklahoma just pulled off a new trick on the classic, being the first player to truly beat the game.

Willis Gibson, 13, of Stillwater, Okla., recently earned the ultimate achievement in the game, developed by Russian scientist Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. He successfully manipulated the waves of falling shapes for more than 38 minutes until the game crashed, as can be seen in a video posted on his YouTube page, and reached the "kill screen."

“It’s never been done by a human before,” said Vince Clemente, the president of the Classic Tetris World Championship, told The New York Times. “It’s basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago.”Tetris arrived on the video game world first as a PC game, but it exploded in 1989 when it was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System and bundled with the Nintendo Game Boy handheld. In the past, when players hit the 29th level of the game, pieces fell so fast players weren't able to catch up – only an artificial intelligence program had beaten the game, video game news site Polygon reported.

How did an Oklahoma teenager beat Tetris?

Younger players have learned how to keep up with the game – and go to previously unforeseen levels – by using innovative technique such as "hypertapping," where the player uses the directional arrows, not just the left and right buttons, so the controller moves faster, and "rolling," engaging the buttons by drumming the underside of the controller, according to Polygon.

“There’s a little D-pad on the controller that you can press down, and it will go left or right,” Willis told the Stillwater (Okla.) News Press. “Instead of manually just tapping each piece every single time, what you do is you hover your finger over the button just barely so it doesn’t cause an input left or right, and then you roll your fingers on the back of the controller. So each finger causes an input.”

Gibson wasn't just lucky. A gamer who competes using the moniker Blue Scuti (in honor of the universe's largest known star UY Scuti), he took third place at the recent 2023 Classic Tetris World Championship in October. But he made history on Dec. 21, playing long enough to get the game to crash.

"Please crash," he says just after passing the 38-minute mark on the video. At this point, Willis is at Level 157, but the displays "Level 18" because it was not developed to go that high.

When the game crashes and locks up seconds later, Willis exclaims, "Oh, oh, oh," and raises his hands to his head. "Omigod. Yes. I can't feel my fingers."

Teen Tetris player had some 'nerves' but kept his cool

During an interview later with streamer ITZsharky on the Classic Tetris YouTube channel, Gibson said, "my biggest struggle was when the nerves started kicking in after 30 minutes of play."

His mother, Karin Cox, posted on Facebook, "It's crazy to think he is a professional Tetris player and one of the best in the world. He makes more money every month from this than I ever did as a teenager."

Willis, who began playing Tetris at the age of 11, and other competitive gamers will now keep trying to reach the kill screen with more efficient, higher score, he said.

He dedicated his win to his dad, Adam Gibson, who passed away Dec. 14, at age 39, reported The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network.

When asked by ITZSharky what message he might have for other young gamers, Gibson said, "If you set your mind to something and you put work into it, most likely you will get it if you try hard enough."

Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads: @mikesnider & mikegsnider.

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Trump's profits from overseas, Iowa school shooting: Thursday's news

A report from House Democrats alleges Donald Trump made millions from foreign governments spending at his businesses while he was president. And a gunman shot six people, one fatally, at a high school in Iowa.

Hey, it's Spencer, filling in for Laura today. Let’s get to Thursday's news.

🎮 But first, after nearly 40 years, someone finally beat Tetris.How a 13-year-old from Oklahoma made video game history.

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Trump got millions from foreign governments, Dems allege

Former President Donald Trump unconstitutionally profited from the presidency during his tenure in the White House, reaping millions of dollars for his business empire from foreign governments, House Democrats alleged in an extensive report released Thursday. Trump’s businesses, according to the report, received at least $7.8 million from corrupt and authoritarian governments including China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The report notes that its findings document "only a fraction of Trump’s harvest of unlawful foreign state money" after Republicans took control of the House Oversight Committee last year and halted the investigation.

1 dead, 5 injured in shooting at Iowa high school

A sixth-grader was killed and five other people were injured when a gunman opened fire at a high school in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday. Officials said the gunman was also dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said the shooting was first reported shortly before classes at Perry High School were set to begin. The five people injured included four students and an administrator, according to Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Assistant Director Mitch Mortvedt. Four were stable, and one was in critical condition but was expected to survive, Mortvedt said.

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Epstein documents highlight his sprawling connections

Newly released court documents tied to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein reveal not just the names of high-power figures, they also highlight the way the accused sex trafficker’s influence reached across multiple states. The hundreds of pages released Wednesday are from a lawsuit brought by one of Epstein’s alleged victims and include the names of some of his associates, witnesses and victims for the first time. Many of the names have only a tangential connection to Epstein. As the nation learns more about the vast network of people associated with Epstein, the USA TODAY Network has documented a web of alleged associates, victims and local connections. Here's what we know.

A break from the news

Millennials like me turned 40 this year. And everything you think you ...

CNN —

For years I believed a lot of what I heard about millennials – those avocado-toast eating, latte-guzzling, selfie-taking narcissists who still live in their parents’ basements and can’t get their lives together.

Then I realized something that surprised me: I’m a millennial, as are many of the people I know and love.

I’d long assumed my friends and classmates were older and wiser than this much-maligned group. But when I started covering demographics for CNN, I learned that 1981 is the birth year many researchers identify as the beginning of the millennial generation.

I was born in 1982. And this year, I turned 40. So did millions of other millennials in the United States.

That’s right: The generation long portrayed as young and naïve is entering middle age.

It’s a notable milestone, and a good opportunity to point out something important: the Myth of the Millennial is very different from the reality many of us are living.

Myth 1: We only think about ourselves

Back in May, my husband went out of town on a trip, and I was solo parenting our infant daughter for the first time. “I can do this,” I thought, trying to reassure myself. “It won’t be that hard.” Then one night, my daughter’s first two teeth started to poke through her gums. After watching on the baby monitor as she thrashed in her crib for what probably was only a few minutes, but seemed like an eternity, I ended up holding her in my arms for the rest of the night to comfort her.

Millennials like me are too busy juggling our responsibilities at work and caring for others at home to be as self-obsessed as we’ve been portrayed all these years.

In the scheme of tough things new parents can go through, this was nothing major. But I was exhausted. And so was she.

As the sun rose, we sat bleary-eyed on the floor of her room together. Her pajamas were covered with the cherry-flavored Children’s Tylenol she’d spit out when I tried to give it to her the night before. But for a few minutes that morning, we were playing and she was smiling and it seemed like we’d made it through a marathon and finally could relax.

Then my phone rang with devastating, unexpected news.

My mom had died that morning.

I was shaken, stunned and sobbing. I looked at my daughter playing beside me. There were so many questions I wish I’d asked my mom about how to take care of her. Instead of calling my mom that day to ask for advice, I would race to Michigan to help plan her funeral.

Suddenly, the same year I became a mother had become the year when I lost a mother, too.

It was less than two months before my 40th birthday.

Millennials famously appeared on the cover of TIME magazine nearly a decade ago beneath the headline, “THE ME ME ME GENERATION,” cementing our self-obsessed image.

This Time cover from 2013 reinforced stereotypes about millennials as entitled and self-absorbed. From TIME

But for me and many others, what it really means to be a millennial these days is something quite different. We are the newest sandwich generation, feeling growing pressure between raising young children and caring for aging family members – or at least wanting to care for them, given all they’ve done to care for us, but struggling to know what to do.

Millennials like me are too busy juggling our responsibilities at work and caring for others at home to be as self-obsessed as we’ve been portrayed all these years.

Like every generation before us, we’re growing up. But the Myth of the Millennial has long been off the mark.

For years, for example, headlines have blared that millennials aren’t having kids. The reality, though, is more complicated, according to Kim Parker, director of social trends research at the Pew Research Center.

“Women are having children later. But when we look at completed fertility, we haven’t seen that they’re necessarily having fewer children, just starting later,” Parker says. “It represents a lag, not necessarily a completely different way in approaching family life.”

Jason Dorsey, who’s written several books about millennials and made a career out of helping Corporate America better understand them, says the memes about selfish millennials simply don’t match up with reality.

“The oldest millennials tell us they’re being pulled in three different directions,” says Dorsey, president of the Center for Generational Kinetics. “They’re often taking care of a child or children. They’re frequently taking care of a parent or parents. And they’re trying to navigate their jobs. And so that pull, there’s a lot going on there, and it’s a very stressful time.”

My husband captured this moment on my 40th birthday this year, as I fed my daughter while we watched July 4 fireworks. Caring for her has changed the way I look at my life. Catherine Shoichet/CNN

Past generations have entered this life stage, too, Dorsey says. But this time around, one thing is different.

“What’s new is to do it at 40 years old,” he says, “with so many people having very young children.”

Many middle-aged millennials like me are feeling this pressure even in our most joyous moments. And Dorsey says there’s plenty of research to be done still about how this shift is changing our society.

How will this shape the kind of parents we become, or the way we approach our jobs, or the choices we make in other parts of our lives?

Myth 2: We all share the same experiences

It’s not necessarily surprising that for years I didn’t realize I was one of the more than 72 million millennials in the United States.

Some experts argue that analyzing our society using generation labels is just about as reliable and scientific as using your horoscope.

They contend that many more factors can shape someone’s life than the year they were born – race and socioeconomic status, for example. And when you label and analyze a whole group of people without digging much into those details, important nuances about social change end up getting lost.

“Drawing arbitrary lines between birth years and slapping names on them isn’t helping,” Philip N. Cohen wrote last year in a Washington Post opinion piece. The professor of sociology at the University of Maryland has been leading a group of academics pushing for the Pew Research Center and others to stop promoting generational labels altogether.

Avocado toast has become an increasingly popular restaurant offering and a symbol of millennial culture. Adobe Stock

I can see their point.

Some of my younger millennial friends, who are in their late 20s, have looked at me wide-eyed when I talk about the videotapes I watched growing up, or what it was like hearing that delightful, high-pitched, staticky tone that meant your home computer was oh-so-slowly connecting to the internet via dial-up. Major events that shaped our world happened at very different points in our lives. I was in college on 9/11; they were in elementary school. I was in grad school and looking for work during the Great Recession; they were still living with their parents.

Some argue that the split between us is so big that older millennials like me should actually get our own category (sometimes combined with younger members of Generation X). Our so-called micro-generation has been dubbed the Xennials, the Oregon Trail Generation, and – most recently, and controversially – Geriatric Millennials.

“It’s important not to label those within a 20-year span as being the same,” says Erica Dhawan, a researcher, author and consultant who coined the “Geriatric Millennial” term in a piece for Medium last year. Like me, she says she just never felt like the millennial label suited her.

All the criticism of the millennials – we said it about every generation, but it was just amplified by the internet and social media. Lindsey Pollak, author and consultant

To make things even more confusing, there’s no concrete definition of when the millennial generation begins and ends. The 1991 book credited with introducing the term states that millennials were born in 1982. Widely cited definitions on the Pew Research Center’s website describe millennials as those born between 1981 and 1996. Other researchers have floated theories that millennials were born in the late 1970s and even up to the early 2000s.

The way we talk about groups of people born in any given period – and the names we use to describe them – can change over time. “Gen Y” used to be a more common way to label our generation, before “millennials” gained momentum.

No matter what name or definition you use, there’s a sizable age gap between the older and younger members of our generation, and a wide range of life experiences we’ve all had.

Can there still be value in looking at things this way?

“It’s a useful lens, but it’s not the only one,” says Parker of the Pew Research Center, “and it’s important to take into account all the other factors that are causing these differences rather than just being part of a generation.”

Now that I know I’m a millennial, I’m not ready to give up the label just yet. But I do want to help set the record straight and shed these persistent stereotypes about our generation (full disclosure: I do love avocado toast).

Myth 3: We don’t want to own homes

The question haunts my husband and I – popping up in conversations with friends, loved ones and even strangers.

“Are you thinking of buying a house?”

For years that milestone didn’t matter much to either of us. We’ve house-sat, and rented, and focused our energy and finances on doing things we enjoy together in our free time.

But now that we have a daughter, buying a house feels like something we should have done already. It also feels like something that’s increasingly out of reach, as housing costs remain high and mortgage rates skyrocket.

A real estate sign outside a home in Morgan Hill, California, on October 4, 2022. Housing prices in the US soared during the pandemic, making it harder for millennials to buy homes. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

We’re not alone in feeling like we’re behind in taking this big step, according to Kevin Mahoney, a financial advisor in Washington who specializes in helping millennials.

“People are really stressed about not being homeowners,” he says. “One thing I try to communicate to them is, it’s OK to rent. You’re buying yourself flexibility. You’re buying yourself time to figure out what you want your next 20 years or next 10 years to look like.”

Despite frequent handwringing over millennials not buying homes, Mahoney also points out that plenty are. One reason for America’s housing crunch, he says, is that more millennials are now entering the housing market.

It’s gotten harder to buy a house if you don’t already own one, which makes it really hard to buy a house if you’re in your 20s or 30s and have rented for years. Gray Kimbrough, economist and professor

Older millennials aged 32-41 made up a quarter of homebuyers this year, according to a National Association of Realtors report, and millennials have been the largest share of homebuyers since 2014.

But as CNN has reported, many millennials are worse off than their parents.

And millennials are less likely to own homes at this point in their lives than previous generations. There’s a good reason for that, says Gray Kimbrough, an economist and adjunct professor at American University who’s repeatedly taken to Twitter to dispel myths about millennials.

Hasbro in 2018 issued a cheeky Millennials edition of its classic Monopoly board game. Its game tokens included emojis and a hashtag. Courtesy Hasbro

“It’s gotten harder to buy a house if you don’t already own one,” he says, “which makes it really hard to buy a house if you’re in your 20s or 30s and have rented for years.”

Not to mention that millennials have faced a far bleaker financial picture than older generations, Kimbrough says.

“It’s really hard to think about getting married, having kids, moving out with roommates, and making any of these transitions with the housing market like we have now,” Kimbrough says.

My husband and I are trying not to be too overwhelmed by this daunting reality.

We’re visiting open houses on most weekends and planning to meet with mortgage brokers soon.

By this time next year, we hope we’ll be living in a home that we own.

Myth 4: We don’t take our jobs seriously and don’t stay in them very long

Jason Dorsey tells me he often asks a question when he’s invited to visit companies and speak with their employees: “How many of you are millennials?”

Generally, he says, just a few hands timidly go up.

“They’re expecting it to be negative, because that’s unfortunately what we’ve been framed as for the last 15 years,” Dorsey says.

That’s around when Dorsey says he saw anti-millennial hype intensifying. Back in 2007, he appeared on a “60 Minutes” segment ominously titled, “The Millennials Are Coming.”

Reporter Morley Safer didn’t pull any punches in the piece’s introduction: “A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred: from giving orders, to your starched white shirt and tie.”

He went on to warn that “the workplace has become a psychological battlefield and the millennials have the upper hand,” describing a generation that can “multitask, talk, walk, listen and type, and text.”

“They talked about us like we were space aliens,” Dorsey recalls.

This 2007 "60 Minutes" segment described millennials as "a new breed of American worker (that) is about to attack everything you hold sacred." CBS

I missed that segment when it came out; I was a newspaper reporter at the time, likely scrambling to cover breaking news on the weekend night shift that started my much-longer-than-40-hour work week.

I think I would have found the premise problematic even then, but now, with the clarity of hindsight, the “60 Minutes” story seems almost cartoonish – another chapter in a tale as old as time. “Anxious Older Generation Worries Naïve Younger Generation Is Destroying Everything” could have been an equally fitting title.

Consultant and author Lindsey Pollak, who advises companies on how to navigate multigenerational workplaces, thinks the rise of social media is partly to blame for millennials’ longstanding bad rap. Pollak says our generation came of age under a microscope unlike any generation before us.

“All the criticism of the millennials – we said it about every generation, but it was just amplified by the internet and social media,” she told me.

Millennials have not been uniquely more likely to job-hop earlier in their careers. Actually, they’re switching jobs less. Gray Kimbrough, economist and professor

Dorsey says that during his presentations, details about millennials often surface that surprise many people in the room.

“It turns out they’re the largest generation in that company’s workforce,” he says.

He finds that many employees had bought into the stereotype and assumed millennials were slackers or flakes. But actually, he says, millennials are often among a company’s most successful workers and managers. And by the end of his presentation, all of them are raising their hands.

Kimbrough tells me millennials have been staying in jobs for just as long as previous generations.

Young professionals navigate Manhattan streets on March 31, 2022, in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

“Obviously people earlier in their careers shift jobs at a higher rate than people later in their careers,” he says. “Millennials have not been uniquely more likely to job-hop earlier in their careers. Actually, they’re switching jobs less. There’s actually been a big decline in job-switching since about 2000.”

It’s been more than 12 years since I’ve switched jobs. And I’m hoping to stay in this one for many more.

Like me, many of my friends have been working for their employers for more than a decade. Others would have stayed, but found themselves the victims of corporate restructuring.

Repeatedly weathering economic crises is an important piece of millennials’ story, too.

“So many times, millennials tell me they finally feel like they’re on the right track,” Dorsey says, “and then something happens that’s beyond their control.”

Myth 5: We’re forever young

I remember when my dad turned 40. The mere idea of it seemed ANCIENT to me. His coworkers taped black crepe paper around his photo and hung it around the office. I was 9, and gave him a framed poem I’d written about how he shouldn’t feel bad about getting old.

“The gears in your head are still turning around,” I wrote, “and your brain still works, as far as I’ve found.”

So, yes, the idea that now somehow I’m 40 is something I’m still trying to wrap my head around. On most days, I still see myself as a young adult finding my way in this crazy, confusing world.

But when I commiserate with my husband about our ever-growing list of weird aches and pains, about how we don’t really like going to loud restaurants anymore, and about The Way Things Used To Be, I realize I’m not quite ancient, but I’m definitely more middle-aged than I’d care to admit.

Yes, the youngest millennials are in their mid-20s. But the oldest are approaching middle age. Shutterstock

Still, when I first read last year that the oldest millennials were starting to turn 40, that detail jumped out at me. The concept seemed so surprising. For so long, we’ve seen the same picture painted of millennials over and over.

“People talk about millennials as though it’s this universal term for young people…which it’s not,” Pollak says.

Sometimes, when I look at my daughter, this idea really sharpens into focus as I feel my age hurtling toward me like a ton of bricks.

She’s so much younger than I was at this point in my parents’ lives. Or, put another way, I’m already so much older than my parents were when they were raising me. I was nearly 39 years old when my daughter was born. My husband had just turned 41. When she graduates from high school and heads to college, we’ll both be nearly 60. And if she waits as long as we did to have kids – if she decides that’s right for her – we could be 80 when we become grandparents.

Thinking about things this way fills me with anxiety and a tinge of sadness.

We’ve grown up seeing ourselves … as the young upstarts, as the disruptors, as the people around whom culture, and especially youth culture, are shaped. Of course we’re going to feel fed up about the fact that we’re now middle aged. Amil Niazi, writer

Writer Amil Niazi, who turned 40 this year and has two young children, describes it perfectly – talking about how she finds herself constantly doing this kind of math and “getting hung up on the numbers.”

“Now that I have these tiny, sweet, loving kids, all I want is more time with them, to hit pause, not on their growing and changing, but on me and the version of myself as a parent that I am right now,” she wrote in a recent piece for The Cut, where she’s also explored how hard and confusing it is to be middle-aged. “To pause the back and knee pain that grows a little more sharply every year, to halt the gray hairs and the high cholesterol, skip over the inevitable medical scares and exhaustion that seem to envelop more and more of my days.”

As I struggle to come to terms with entering my 40s and think lofty thoughts about being an aging millennial, my daughter brings me back to earth by pointing to the woman on the cover of "Look Great Over 50" and shouting, "Mommy!" Catherine Shoichet/CNN

Niazi, like me and so many other middle-aged millennials, has been coming to terms with what it means not to be young anymore.

“My entire life … the cultural story has always been about our youth. And it’s always been about us as this sort of young disruptive generation that was too spoiled, that had arrested development, that was upending family life, retirement, housing, employment,” Niazi told me. “We’ve grown up seeing ourselves that way, as the young upstarts, as the disruptors, as the people around whom culture, and especially youth culture, are shaped. Of course we’re going to feel fed up about the fact that we’re now middle aged.”

Recently, I stopped by a bookstore with my daughter to pick up a few gifts.

She’s almost 18 months old and walking now, and as soon as I put her down she bounded over to the magazine section, where there were plenty of things to explore right at her eye level.

“Mommy!” she exclaimed as she gleefully pointed at the cover of a magazine and plucked it off the rack.

A beaming brunette looked out at me from beneath the title, “Look Great Over 50.”

“She does look pretty great,” I thought to myself, “but OVER 50?!”

Maybe my daughter was just sharing her joy at browsing in the bookstore? Surely, she couldn’t think I was more than a decade older than I am already.

But as she wandered around the magazine section for the next 20 minutes, she kept coming back to that one, saying “Mommy” every time.

I almost corrected her. “Oh, that isn’t Mommy,” was on the tip of my tongue when I realized it doesn’t matter if somehow she does see me on that magazine cover.

There is so much I’m still trying to figure out, so much all of us – millennials and non-millennials alike – are struggling with as we make our way through life.

As Niazi notes, the math is truly daunting. And as this year so painfully reminded me, we never know how much time we’ll have with the ones we love.

With all this uncertainty, there is one thing I know: My daughter and I are so lucky to be together right now, sharing an evening in a bookstore – something I did with my parents, and something I’d always dreamed of doing if I ever had a child of my own.

As I watch her toddle down the aisles of the store, I feel so proud of how happy and curious she seems to be.

Her generation doesn’t even have a name yet – or at least not one we know will stick. No matter what we call them someday, I can’t wait to see what they do.

This is the worst inflation in nearly 40 years. But it was so much ...

New York CNN Business —

US prices for just about everything – from cars and gasoline to food and clothing – are rising at the fastest pace in decades.

Overall, consumer prices rose in 2021 at the fastest pace in 39 years, meaning this is the worst inflation experienced by anyone not on the cusp of retirement or older.

But, as those older Americans can tell you, as unwelcome as it is for consumers, today’s price increases are nowhere near as bad as they were in the 1970s and early 1980s. And most importantly for policymakers trying to deal with today’s price hikes, what fed the double-digit prices increases in those days are not a factor today – nor are they likely to be ever again.

“We learned our lessons from that experience,” said Louis Johnston, economics professor at College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota.

Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, both tried and failed to bring prices under control. Ford’s efforts included a “Whip Inflation Now” or WIN campaign, complete with shiny red buttons, that did little to help with prices. Inflation hit 12.2% in late 1974, soon after he took office, nearly twice the annual pace of increase through November of last year.

The inflation rate hit a record high of 14.6% in March and April of 1980. It helped to lead to Carter’s defeat in that fall’s election. It also led to some significant changes in the US economy.

Today the annual inflation rate stands at an unadjusted 7.1%, the highest 12-month change since June of 1982.

Here’s some of the key factors different from today’s US economy and the economy of the 1980s:

Wages tied to prices

One of the major differences between inflation then and now is that a much greater percentage of the US population were unionized workers, and many of those workers had what was known as Cost of Living Adjustments, or COLAs, built into their contracts. That raised their wages automatically as prices increased. So higher prices led to higher wages, which put more money in the hands of consumers and raised costs for businesses. It created what was known as the “wage-price spiral” that fed higher prices.

Even non-union employers would raise wages to keep pace with inflation or risk losing the workers to unionized employers – or risk giving an argument to union organizing campaigns at their companies.

A close-up of a WIN (Whip Inflation Now) button, President Ford's symbol of the fight against inflation in 1974. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Today, only about 12% of workers are represented by unions, about half the rate of 1983, the earliest year for which the government recorded that data. Today’s unionized workers are primarily government workers, such as teachers, police and firefighters. Only 7% of workers in the private sector are union members. And most of those don’t have COLA clauses in their contracts. During the extended period of low inflation over the past couple decades, unions were willing to give up COLAs in return for other improvements in wage and benefit.

About the only widespread COLA now in effect is for Social Security recipients, and employers don’t feel a need set wages to compete with those benefits.

Wages are rising because of a record number of unfilled job openings and a shortage of workers. But even those wage increases are less than the rate of inflation, so it’s not likely to feed into higher prices.

A global check on prices

In the 1970s and 1980s, higher costs could be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices more readily than now because competition from overseas imports wasn’t as great then as it is today.

Competition from overseas certainly existed then, but in many sectors of the economy, businesses only had to worry about domestic competitors. That’s not the case any longer.

A surge in global trade has kept inflation in check in recent decades. Part of today’s inflation is being attributed to problems with the global supply chain, which has led to a worldwide increase shipping costs. So that has limited the supply of low-cost competition, which in turn has allowed even leading domestic companies to raise their prices as well.

Oil shocks hurt worse back then

One common factor between the record inflation of the 1970s and 1980s and today is rapidly surging energy prices.

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War prompted Arab members of OPEC to impose an embargo on oil shipments to the United States that lasted into 1974. And the Iran-Iraq war of 1979 choked off supply as well.

President Jimmy Carter giving a speech on the economy and inflation in March 1980. Chuck Fishman/Archive Photos/Getty Images

The limited supply sent prices soaring. Drivers were hit with a 69% increase in gas prices in early 1980 compared to a year earlier, which was even worse than the 58% annual increase through November of this year.

This time, large percentage increases in oil and gas prices are partly due to comparisons to the very low prices of 2020, when stay-at-home orders and widespread temporary job losses created a glut of oil, and temporarily resulted in negative oil prices.

Those lower prices prompted producers to cut oil output, and some refineries to close. When demand returned this year, the tighter supply and strong demand combined to drive up prices.

Although oil and gas prices could very possibly stay or climb even higher in the months ahead, the good news is that the US economy is much less dependent on oil today than it was 40 or 50 years ago.

Moving from an economy built around energy-intensive industries such as manufacturing to one driven by service industries has reduced the relative dependence on oil.

“One of the most overlooked changes is the reduced energy intensity of the American economy,” said Johnston.

Comparing total energy consumption to gross domestic product, the broadest measure of a nation’s economic activity, shows the US economy uses about a third of the energy per inflation-adjusted dollar of economic activity that it did in 1970, and about 44% of what it used when inflation peaked in 1980.

The 1970s and 1980s oil shocks significantly reduced oil as a source of fuel for electricity generation to the point where it is well less than 1% today. And more importantly, much more fuel-efficient cars also limited oil consumption despite many more miles being driven. That means Americans are spending far less on oil compared to other items.

Deregulation

Another significant change in the US economy is that the government is much less involved in setting prices than it was then.

Deregulation of industries such as telecommunications, airlines and trucking all started partly as a response to the high prices of the 1970s and 1980s, said Johnston. Government-controlled prices generally limited competition and kept prices and services offered to consumers artificially high.

Although the actual changes in the law didn’t take effect until after the inflation dragon had been slayed, the deregulation has worked to keep prices for many of those goods and services lower than they likely would have been otherwise.

Inflation finally did come under control, thanks largely to the Federal Reserve under chairman Paul Volcker jacking up the federal funds rate to a record 18.9%, sparking recessions in both 1980 and another in 1981-82. By the time the second recession ended, the inflation rate was down to 4.5% and it wouldn’t hit 5% again until 1990.

LeBron James is NBA career points king. Who could pass scoring ...

Who could pass LeBron James someday as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer?

James passed Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, who held the record for nearly 40 years, and now has 38,390 after Tuesday's loss to Oklahoma City. James is going to keep adding points, putting himself in position to blow by 40,000 points.

Will that be an unbreakable record – like Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game or Chamberlain’s 50.4 points per game in 1961-62 or even Scott Skiles’ single-game assists record of 30?

James benefitted from not spending at least one season in college whereas every player since the 2006 draft has needed to be one year removed from his high school graduating class to become draft eligible. That’s a season’s worth of points that James accumulated while players such as Kevin Durant and Luka Doncic had to wait.

Let’s take a look at who could make a run at the all-time scoring record:

Kevin Durant, 26,684 career points

Durant’s chances to become the all-time scoring leader have been thwarted by injuries. He played just 27 games in 2014-15, missed 2019-20 with an Achilles injury and played just 35 games the following season. Durant entered the league four years after James and trails him by nearly 12,000 points. At 34 years old and with just a handful of seasons left, it will be difficult for Durant to hit 40,000 points (which is where James will end up). Had he not missed all that time to injuries, he would likely be over 30,000 points with a better chance at passing James. Still, Durant – if healthy – will move into the top 10 in scoring next season and possibly pass Michael Jordan for a spot in the top five by the time his career is over.

James Harden, 24,233 points

Harden has scored at least 20 points per game for 11 consecutive seasons, including an MVP-caliber stretch in which he averaged 30.4, 36.1 and 34.3 points in 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. At 33, even if he were to score 2,000 points a season for the next seven seasons (highly unlikely given his scoring trajectory is on the downswing), he’d still be short of James. Harden is also hurt by low scoring totals his first two seasons.

Steph Curry, 21,183 points

No one can question Curry’s skill as a scorer. But the occasional injury has hurt his chances to make a run at the all-time scoring record. He played in just 23 games in 2011-12 and five in 2019-20. At just over 21,000 points now, he will need another 19,000 to reach 40,000 – another unlikely scenario given Curry’s age (34). Don’t forget he was a three-year college player whereas James didn’t attend college and Durant spent just one season at Texas. Small guards (6-2 and under) are not represented in the top 25 in all-time scoring and cracking that would be a major accomplishment.

Luka Doncic, 8,531 points

Doncic is the most compelling case study. He entered the league as a scorer, posting 21.2 points per game in 2019-20 and hovered around 28 points per game for the next three seasons and is at 34 points per game this season. With 8,531 career points before the halfway mark of his fifth season, Doncic is on a great pace to become one of the game’s all-time leading scorers. But the all-time leading scorer? That’s more difficult. If Doncic played 70 games and averaged 28.1 points a season, he wouldn’t reach 40,000 points until his 20th season – in 2037-38. Plus, can Doncic manage his heavy workload for that long without impacting his scoring or health?

Unknown player

James was not born yet when Abdul-Jabbar passed Chamberlain as the league’s all-time leading scorer in 1984. Abdul-Jabbar played another five seasons, padding his lead. Since then, five other players soared by Chamberlain. It’s quite possible and even likely that the person who breaks James’ scoring record – and don’t forget James probably will bust through 40,000 – isn’t in the league right now and might not even be alive. One thing is for certain. For a player to make a run at James’ record, he will benefit from the league eventually ending the one-and-done rule so that players can enter the league at 18 years old without spending a year in college – and start off averaging at least 20 points and have a career average of 27 points for 20 seasons. In other words, another once-in-a-generation player.

Follow NBA reporter Jeff Zillgitt on Twitter @JeffZillgitt

What we know about the death of 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey

Staff

The Florida Times-Union

The body of Tristyn Bailey, 13, a seventh-grader at Patriot Oaks Academy in Saint Johns, was discovered Sunday, May 9, 2021, hours after the teenager was reported missing by her family.

Aiden Fucci, 14, has been arrested on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Tristyn. His trial is expected to begin in November.

LATEST NEWS

Days before the first anniversary of Tristyn Bailey's death, the St. Johns County teen accused of killing the 13-year-old girl appeared in court for a pre-trial hearing.

Charged with first-degree murder, Aiden Fucci, 15, will stand trial in November, Judge Lee Smith said at Thursday's hearing. Fucci is set appear in court again on June 7 and Oct. 26 before his trial that is expected to begin on Nov. 7 and last for as long as two weeks.

More: To stay up to date on the case, download the Times-Union app today

One year later: How a community knitted together by tragedy supported a family in grief

THE CASE

How did Tristyn Bailey die?

According to Chief Medical Examiner Predrag Bulic, the cause of Tristyn's death is "sharp force trauma by stabbing." An autopsy revealed Tristyn had 114 "stab or cutting wounds about her head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, and back," according to an unredacted warrant affidavit released by the State Attorney on May 27.

Where was Tristyn Bailey found?

Tristyn's body was found Sunday evening, May 9, near a retention pond at the end of the cul-de-sac on Saddlestone Drive in the neighborhood in which she lived.

What happened to Tristyn Bailey? Court records detail what happened the night she was killed

Looking back:Before Aiden Fucci, these juveniles were charged as adults in high-profile Jacksonville-area cases

Who is the suspect charged in Tristyn Bailey's death?

Aiden Fucci, 14, is an eighth-grader at Patriot Oaks Academy, the same school where Tristyn attended seventh grade.

What is Aiden Fucci charged with?

Fucci was arrested on a second-degree murder charge. The charge later was upgraded to first-degree murder due to the severity of the crime — namely, the 114 stabbing wounds to the victim's body, said R.J. Larizza, state attorney for the circuit.

Coping with loss:St. Johns County communities deal with killing of Tristyn Bailey

'Our worst nightmare':Sheriff: Tristyn Bailey's death was the 'horrific, brutal murder of a 13-year-old child'

What led to Fucci's arrest?

Interrogation and surveillance video led to the 14-year-old boy's arrest, according to a redacted version of the arrest report released by the sheriff's office. "The defendant's story changed several times but [he] ultimately made several admissions," according to the report.

What about that Snapchat selfie?

The sheriff's office confirmed that a Snapchat selfie depicting the suspect in the back of a law enforcement vehicle on May 9 was, in fact, posted by the teen charged in Bailey's death. In the image, the suspect appears to be holding up a peace sign, with the caption: "Hey guys, has inbody [sic] seen Tristyn lately."

When the Snapchat was posted, the suspect was a witness being questioned in what was still a missing person case, according to the sheriff's office.

People responded on Snapchat. One message read, "You were with her Aiden u know what happened to her."

What Sheriff Rob Hardwick said about the death of Tristyn Bailey

St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick called the crime a "horrific, brutal murder."

"This is one of those cases — I hate to use the words, but — it's our worst nightmare," Hardwick said in an interview with The St. Augustine Record. "These kids both went to school together. ... It's going to be a long process to heal for our community."

Tristyn Bailey remembered as someone who brought 'light to everyone around her'

Thousands of friends, neighbors and classmates gathered for a "Celebration of Life" public memorial service to honor Tristyn Bailey Tuesday, May 18, at Celebration Church Arena in Jacksonville. Attendees were asked to wear white or aqua, the latter of which was Tristyn's favorite color. You can watch the service here:

Why was Aiden Fucci's mother arrested?

Crystal Lane Smith, 35, was arrested Saturday, June 5, 2021, and charged with tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony charge. According to the felony warrant, video surveillance from Smith’s home shows her retrieving “what appeared to be a pair of blue jeans, taking the jeans to the adjacent bathroom, and appeared to be scrubbing the jeans in the bathroom sink,” according to the warrant. The video then showed Smith taking the jeans to her master bedroom “for a period of time,” the warrant said.

Who are the witnesses in the case against Aiden Fucci?

The 7th Judicial State Attorney's Office has listed well over 200 witnesses for its case against Aiden Fucci, according to court documents. The list includes both of Fucci's parents; the county medical examiner; dozens of law enforcement officials and witnesses; residents in the Durbin Crossing neighborhood; staff from Patriot Oaks Academy, where Fucci and Bailey attended school; and others.

Witnesses say Aiden Fucci talked about stabbing someone to death

A student who said she was close with Aiden Fucci said he talked about killing people frequently, and she said that within a month before Tristyn Bailey's killing, he said he planned to murder someone by dragging a random person into the woods and stabbing them, according to a just-released St. Johns County Sheriff's Office report.

The friend also said that on occasion, Fucci "would take his knife out and pretend to stab her with it."

GoFundMe account will support memorial foundation

A GoFundMe account has been set up for Bailey's family, which they say will be used to establish a memorial foundation in Tristyn's name. In the first week, the crowdfunding fundraising platform campaign had raised more than $52,000 from more than 1,400 donors. As of May 4, 2022, the campaign had raised more than $63,000.

Timeline: Events in the disappearance, death of Tristyn Bailey

Saturday, May 8

11:45 p.m.: Bailey family returns home after an evening out.

Around midnight: Tristyn Bailey last seen by a sibling and was supposed to be sleeping in her bedroom.

Sunday, May 9

12:30 a.m.: Video shows Tristyn walking in the neighborhood

1:14 a.m.: Two people, believed to be Tristyn and Aiden, were seen walking together

1:45 a.m.: Video evidence from a home shows Tristyn and Aiden walking east on Saddlestone Drive

3:30 a.m.: Video from the same home shows a person believed to be Aiden heading in opposite direction alone, carrying white Nike shoes. Moments, later, video shows Aiden entering his home carrying white Nike shoes

10 a.m.: Tristyn's mother calls 911 to report the teen missing. Florida Department of Law Enforcement joins search

4:49 p.m.: Florida Missing Child Alert issued for Tristyn

6:06 p.m.: A resident who had been on a run called to report a dead body in the woods east of the cul-de-sac on Saddlestone Drive. After identifying the body as Bailey's, St. Johns County Sheriff's Office calls off their search

8 p.m.: Sheriff's Office announces body found and preliminarily identified as Tristyn Bailey

8:49 p.m.: Aiden and his parents are placed in a St. Johns County Sheriff's Office interview room

Monday, May 10

12:44 a.m.: Investigators search Fucci home, finding a Buck brand knife sheath; a pair of wet, white Nike shoes with blood on them; a T-shirt with blood on it; a white piece of paper with handwriting with possible blood on it; and a pair of wet blue denim jeans in a laundry basket. They also find blood and dirt on the drain in the bathroom sink next to Aiden's bedroom.

3:30 a.m.: Aiden arrested on charge of second-degree murder

11:30 a.m.: Sheriff's Office confirms identity of body found as that of Tristyn Bailey and announces arrest of Aiden Fucci, a 14-year-old classmate, on charges of second-degree murder

8:30 p.m.: Candlelight vigil honors Tristyn at South Durbin Crossing Amenities Center

Tuesday, May 11

8:30 a.m.: Fucci charged with second-degree murder in the death of Tristyn Bailey remanded to detention for at least 21 days in his first court appearance

1:30 p.m.: Sheriff's Office reports that Chief Medical Examiner Predrag Bulic determined that the cause of Tristyn's death is sharp force trauma by stabbing and that video placed the pair walking near the scene in that time frame.

Monday, May 17

Anway "Andy" Snober, hired to represent the 14-year-old suspect by his family, files to withdraw from the case. A judge granted the motion.

Tuesday, May 18

5 p.m.: The Bailey family holds a public memorial service for Tristyn at Celebration Church in Jacksonville.

Thursday, May 20

Judge approves indigency motions filed on behalf of the parents of the 14-year-old suspect and announces the suspect will be represented by the public defender's office, led by St. Augustine-based attorney Joshua Mosley.

Thursday, May 27

According to St. Johns County court documents, Fuc will face a first-degree murder charge and will also be charged as an adult.

Friday, May 28

During a first court appearance hearing, Judge Henry Maltz rules that Aiden Fucci be held without bail at an adult facility in St. Johns County.

Thursday, June 3

Aiden Fucci enters a plea of not guilty on the first-degree murder charge.

Saturday, June 5

Crystal Lane Smith, the mother of 14-year-old Aiden Fucci, is arrested on a warrant charging her with tampering with evidence following the killing of Tristyn Bailey.

Wednesday, July 14

In newly released documents, one of Fucci's friends said he talked about killing people frequently, and that weeks before Bailey's killing, Fucci said he planned to murder someone by dragging a random person into the woods and stabbing them.

Monday, July 26

Crystal Lane Smith pleads not guilty to a charge of tampering with evidence

Thursday, Oct. 28

Aiden appears in court. Judge Lee Smith grants a continuance filed by Aiden's attorney, Joshua Mosely, until Feb. 2

2022

Wednesday, Feb. 2

Aiden Fucci appears in St. Johns County court for a pretrial hearing. Trial set for November.

WHAT'S NEXT

Aiden Fucci is expected in court on Friday, May 5, 2022 for a pre-trial hearing.

Other notable Jacksonville-area child abductions, murders

Nov. 6, 2019: Taylor Rose Williams, 5, is reported missing around 7:20 a.m. by her mother, Brianna Williams, at their Brentwood home. Days later, her remains were discovered in a wooded area between Demopolis and Linden, Ala., and her mother was arrested on charges of child neglect and giving false information to investigators.

July 24, 2015: Lonzie Barton, 21 months, is reported missing at 2:20 a.m. by William Ruben Ebron Jr., the boyfriend of his mother, Lonna Lauramore Barton. Ebron said his car, with Lonzie inside, had been stolen from his apartment building’s parking lot and he was unable to chase it down. But residential security video later surfaced showing him staging the car theft, police said. Ebron lead police to the toddler’s body on Jan. 11, 2016. Ebron is in prison until 2040; Lonna Lauramore Barton was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in Lonzie’s death and another seven years on a drug charge.

June 22, 2013: Cherish Perrywinkle, 8, is abducted from a Jacksonville Walmart, raped and murdered. Perrywinkle’s body was found hours later and Donald James Smith, 56, a sexual offender with a history of crimes against children, was arrested. Smith was found guilty on Valentine’s Day 2018 and sentenced to death in December 2018.

Feb. 10, 2010: Makia Ann Coney, 17, a student at University Christian School, is shot and killed by classmates Charles Roy Southern, 17, and Connor Julian Pridgen, 16, after school.

Oct. 19, 2009: Somer Thompson, 7, is last seen at 2:45 p.m. walking home from Grove Park Elementary School on Gano Avenue in Orange Park. Two days later, her body was found in a Georgia landfill. In March 2010, Jarred Harrell was arrested and charged with her murder. In February 2012, Harrell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six life sentences.

Feb. 10, 2009: Haleigh Cummings, 5, is reported missing at 3:17 a.m. from her parents’ home in Satsuma in Putnam County. After more than a decade, she is still missing.

July 29, 2007: Tony Youmans, 12, is last seen at 4:30 p.m. on Hyde Park Road. He was found two days later in a nearby park dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Authorities said he died “while playing around with the firearm.” Derrick Glover, 24, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for selling the gun that killed Youmans to him.

Nov. 3, 1998: Maddie Clifton, 8, is reported missing at 7 p.m. A week after disappearing, her body was found under the waterbed of her 14-year-old neighbor, Josh Phillips, by the boy’s mother. Phillips was arrested and charged with murder after telling police he accidentally hit Maddie with a baseball, then panicked because he feared getting in trouble. He said he then hit her with a bat and stabbed her to stop her screaming. Tried as an adult, Phillips was found guilty of murder in the first degree in July 1999 and sentenced to life in prison without parole a month later.

July 10, 1998: Kamiyah Mobley is abducted hours after her birth at University Medical Center by a woman posing as a nurse. Nearly 19 years later, on Jan. 13, 2017, Kamiyah was found alive and well, living in South Carolina with her abductor, Gloria Williams. Williams pleaded guilty in May 2018 and later sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Run-D.M.C.'s hip-hop take of 'Walk This Way' is the ultimate crossover

As the story goes, one day nearly 40 years ago, a precocious 22-year-old New York record producer named Rick Rubin heard one of his bands, the hip-hop trio Run-D.M.C., messing with a catchy riff on a turntable.

Bom-bah, bah-bom-bom bah.

“You know what that is?” Rubin asked the group, who replied that it was just known in the hip-hop community as The Beat.

“No, that’s Aerosmith’s song, ‘Walk This Way,’” Rubin said. Which generated a look that best translates to: What’s an Aerosmith?

But the song was destined to be a once and future hit, going from a radio staple for the Boston-based rock band in 1975 to a revamped crossover for Run-D.M.C. in 1986.

That summer, the culturally ascendant Run-D.M.C. – Joseph "Run" Simmons, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels and Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell (who passed away in 2002) – released their rap-meets-rock collaboration of “Walk This Way" on their hot third album, "Raising Hell."

The mash-up forever changed the lily-white nature of MTV and helped introduce a large swath of white America to hip-hop, a vibe, style and flavor that in the 50 years since its acknowledged debut has embraced and enveloped other genres with inimitable skill.

“Walk This Way” also served as a demarcation point for both groups. It led to a fallow period for the rappers (who headline the 50th anniversary of hip-hop concert at Yankee Stadium Aug. 11) and a soaring rebirth for the rockers (who perform their final concerts this fall).

Rap version of 'Walk This Way' was a favorite on rock radio, ushering new fans to hip-hop

“The reason this song is so important is not because it was Run-D.M.C.’s best song, because it’s not, but because it was played on white rock radio stations all over the country and introduced that sound to a new crowd,” says Geoff Edgers, author of “Walk This Way: Run-D.M.C., Aerosmith, and the Song that Changed American Music Forever.”

Edgers says after “Walk This Way,” Run-D.M.C. stalled a bit, waiting two years to put out their next record, “an eternity in the hip-hop world.” Meanwhile, the revamped song convinced Aerosmith to work with outside writers, which led to their pop metal renaissance with 1987’s “Permanent Vacation.”

“That song also deified Rick Rubin, opening up the door for him to do everything from metal to rap to Johnny Cash,” says Edgers, music writer for the Washington Post. “He’s now seen as a guy who can get the best out of any musician, and the root of that Rick Rubin mythology is his vision for ‘Walk This Way.’”

To watch the video of that version on YouTube is to see a perfect visual metaphor for its impact.

Both bands are rehearsing in adjoining studios, with Run-D.M.C. pounding on a shared wall to get Aerosmith to turn their amps down. When they resist, the rappers decide to play their rapped version of “Walk This Way” even louder.

Eventually, the wall between the two camps is literally broken down and they wind up on a stage together trading verses and riffs.

For Black youths who felt MTV 'wasn't watching me,' the video's popularity was a cultural breakthrough

“I was 12 when it came out on MTV, which I was watching even though the channel wasn’t really watching me as a young Black kid,” says Dion Summers, vice president of programming for SiriusXM radio. “So that was a game changer.”

He says the song also presaged the sort of cross-genre collaboration “you see all the time now, whether it’s Jay-Z and Linkin Park, Nelly and Tim McGraw or Travis Scott and Bad Bunny.”

Summers credits Rubin “for having the foresight to see where rap could go as a genre,” noting the song eventually led to a larger Black and hip-hop presence on the overwhelmingly white MTV. “I remember how fresh it all sounded,” he says.

There was indeed something mesmerizingly seamless in the way the totally distinct vocal performances blended into one sonic sandwich that instantly defined the changing times.

The revamping of 'Walk This Way' seemed unique in 1986, but hip-hop artists had been sampling its riff for years

But the mash-up was, in fact, not novel, says Dave “Davey D” Cook, a hip-hop scholar and professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University.

“The dance with white folks had been going for a while before Aerosmith, and it seemed more genuine,” he says. “Before, there was the relationship between hip-hop and new wave and punk, with Blondie, the Clash, the Tom Tom Club. Those acts often asked rappers to come perform at their shows, and if the audience didn’t like them, they’d step to them and say, ‘These are our guys.’”

Cook particularly sites Blondie’s Debbie Harry rapping on the 1980 single “Rapture” as a watershed moment. But, he allows, “that Run-D.M.C. song was a swift kick. People who didn’t know about rap before then started to check it out.”

Edgers says “Walk This Way” had long been a staple of the vinyl-scratching masters before the 1986 Run-D.M.C. effort, with none other than seminal rapper Grandmaster Flash sampling the infectious Perry two-bar opening riff during house parties.

“I’m not even sure Run-D.M.C. knew that ‘Walk This Way’ had lyrics, because hip-hop only cared about that opening,” he says.

Now iconic, the Run-D.M.C./Aerosmith collaboration could easily never have happened

Not that either band had great interest in the collaboration, says Edgers.

“Run-D.M.C. were more concerned with a rental car they had, which they worried had been stolen, and (Aerosmith singer) Steven Tyler and (guitarist) Joe Perry were so drugged out back then I’m not sure they were thinking straight and at most saw it as just a way to get a few bucks,” he says.

In Edgers' oral biography of the song's history, McDaniel says that Rubin gave the group a yellow pad to start writing out the hormonally driven lyrics to "Walk This Way." That almost ended the affair.

"We go down to my basement and put on the record and then you hear 'Backstroke lover always hidin’ ’neath the covers' and immediately me and Joe (Simmons) get on the phone and say: “Hell no, this ain’t going to happen. This is hillbilly gibberish, country-bumpkin bulls---.”

But Rubin persisted and persevered. As unlikely as the musical meet-up between the disparate musicians was, the result was a moment that helped not only Aerosmith’s foundering career but pushed rap into a spotlight that only grew hotter with the decades to come.

“Thank heavens they worked with a good song,” Edgers says with a laugh. “If they’d recorded a lesser song, or if Aerosmith had collaborated with lesser rappers, it would have never been as popular as it was. But it was one of those cosmic organic things that just came together beautifully.”

What could have been: Chronicling the Warriors near-perfect 2015 ...

AJ Neuharth-Keusch

USA TODAY Sports

So close, yet so far.

Just one win away from capturing the NBA's most coveted crown for the second year in a row, the Golden State Warriors — the team that put together the winningest regular season in league history — have come up short.

With one of the most monumental losses in Finals history in the books, and nothing left but the sour smell of the champagne-soaked floors of the visiting locker rooms at Oracle Arena, we take a look back to where it all started, from the opening tip of the Warriors' 2015-16 season to the utter disappointment of the Finals.

The celebration

Date: October 27, 2015

Recap: The championship banner was raised, players were given their rings, and the Warriors — just four months removed from the franchise's first NBA title in 40 years — took the floor on opening night with something to prove. They beat the New Orleans Pelicans 111-95 behind 40 points from MVP Stephen Curry and sent a message to the league's 29 other teams in the process: They weren't going anywhere.

The 16-0 start

Date: November 24, 2015

Recap: After matching the previous record set by the 1948-49 Washington Capitols and the 1993-94 Houston Rockets for the best start in NBA history at 15-0, the Warriors trounced the Los Angeles Lakers 111-77 of to set their own record of 16-0. But it was only the beginning ...

The end of a run

Date: December 12, 2015

Recap: The most dominant start in league history had to come to an end at some point, didn't it? After extending their 16-0 start to 24-0, the Warriors — playing the final game of a brutal seven-game road stretch — were finally handed a loss. With the 108-95 win, the Milwaukee Bucks became the first team in 186 days to beat the NBA champions.

The rematch

Date: December 25, 2015

Recap: The highly-anticipated 2015 Finals rematch finally happened on Christmas Day, and the Warriors — who entered the game with the best record in league history through 28 games (27-1) — had no plans of letting LeBron James and the Cavaliers exact their revenge. The defending champs snuck by with an 89-83 win in a knock-down drag-out defensive battle, led by Draymond Green's 22 points and 15 rebounds.

The return

Date: January 22, 2016

Recap: As if the Warriors winning 39 of their first 43 games wasn't impressive enough, they did it without head coach Steve Kerr on the sidelines as a result of complications from two offseason back surgeries. When he made his return and interim head coach Luke Walton slid back to assistant, the team didn't lose a step, and it all started with a 122-110 victory over the Indiana Pacers.

The visit

Date: February 4, 2016

Recap: A day after Curry manhandled the Washington Wizards (51 points, 11-of-15 from three) in the nation's capital, the Warriors took a trip to the White House for an honorary championship ceremony with President Barack Obama, who shed light on just how important the NBA's golden boys are to the game of basketball.

“The point is, this is a great basketball team, but it’s a great organization, it’s a great culture,” he said. “And these are outstanding young men. They’re the kind of people you want representing a city, representing the NBA, and the kind of people that you want our kids to be rooting for.”

Of course, they had a little fun, too.

The shot heard 'round the NBA

Date: February 27, 2016

Recap: If there was a single definitive moment from the regular season that represented just how absurd Curry's reign of terror from beyond the arc has been — this was it. With just a few seconds left in the first overtime of a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and with the score tied at 118, Curry took three dribbles to just beyond mid-court, fired up a prayer from 30-plus feet and watched his shot splash home with 0.6 seconds to go. The shot gave him 46 points on the night, tied the individual NBA record for three-pointers in a single game with 12, and gave the Warriors a thrilling come-from-behind victory. Did we mention that, with 24 games still left on the schedule, the three-point prayer broke his own record for three-pointers made in a season (288), too?

The NBA Twitter-verse responded accordingly.

The three-point record

Date: March 26, 2016

Recap: Not only did the Warriors become just the second team in NBA history to win 65 games in two consecutive seasons with their 128-120 win over the Dallas Mavericks, but they brought their three-point total to 938 makes on the season, passing the previous mark of 933 set by the Houston Rockets the year before.

The 73rd win

Date: April 13, 2016

Recap: With their 125-104 win over the Memphis Grizzlies on the final night of the season, the Warriors reached what was once thought to be unreachable: 73 wins, passing the previous record of 72 set by the Michael Jordan-led 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls. Curry knocked down 10 three-pointers on the night to finish the season with 402 makes, a whopping 116 more than the previous record.

The injury

Date: April 24, 2016

Recap: After returning from a two-game absence with an ankle injury, Curry suffered a Grade 1 MCL sprain in Game 4 of the Western Conference first-round series against the Rockets. Dub Nation watched nervously as he limped to the locker room, and although the Warriors went on to win the game to take a 3-1 series lead, the status of their almighty point guard still hung in the balance.

The second MVP

Date: May 10, 2016

Recap: After returning from his first-round injury in top form in the second round against the Portland Trail Blazers, Curry was once again given the NBA's highest individual honor for the second consecutive year. He finished the the regular season with averages of:

30.1 points (1st in NBA)

6.7 assists (10th in NBA)

5.4 rebounds (3rd amongst point guards)

2.1 steals (1st in NBA)

50.4% shooting (1st amongst point guards)

45.4% three-point shooting (3rd in NBA)

90.8% free throw shooting (1st in NBA)

Not only did he join the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Steve Nash as just the fourth guard in league history to win the award in back-to-back years, Curry became the first player to ever to win the award by unanimous decision.

The comeback

Date: May 30, 2016

Recap: Down 3-1 in the Western Conference semifinals, the Warriors were one game away from watching their historic journey come to an end in heartbreaking fashion at the hands of the Thunder. Only nine of 232 teams down 3-1 in NBA history were able to come back and win the series, but the Warriors did just that. First was a 120-111 win at home in Game 5, then a 108-101 win led by Klay Thompson's 41-point outburst, and finally, back on the hallowed grounds of Oracle Arena, a 96-88 win to put the lid on what had the potential to be one of the greatest postseason runs in NBA history by the Thunder.

The slip up

Date: June 16, 2016

Recap: Up 3-1 in the series with a close-out Game 5 at Oracle Arena, the Warriors had the NBA championship at their fingertips. Then James and Kyrie Irving happened. Behind the high-powered dynamic duo, the Cavs won back-to-back games to tie up the series at three games apiece and force a do-or-die Game 7.

The imperfect ending

Date: June 19, 2016

Recap: The stage was set, the stakes couldn't have been higher, and the Warriors couldn't have asked for a more perfect way to end one of the most storied seasons in league history. All they had to do was outplay the Cavaliers for 48 minutes and the Larry O'Brien Trophy was theirs. That was a task that proved too tough, and when the final buzzer echoed through the silent confines of Oracle Arena, the Warriors' near-perfect season came to an imperfect end.

Follow AJ Neuharth-Keusch on Twitter @tweetAJNK

Michigan football's beatdown of Michigan State could be historic

When I was 12 years old, I watched my best friend get beat up.

He and another boy in our class had some kind of beef that I didn’t understand. Sometimes the heart just hates. I tried to talk him out of fighting, but he was fearless despite being overmatched.

So he met the boy in a park after school and asked me to come along to make sure it was a fair fight. It was. After a few swings, my friend was down. The other boy was on top of him. I gave my friend a few moments to see if he could rally and get back to his feet. He couldn’t, so I stopped the fight.

Cincinnati Basketball: Bearcats beat Tulane for AAC win

The grind of league play has arrived for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats along with the reality that no lead is ever safe.

Thursday night at Fifth Third Arena, coach Wes Miller's Bearcats led by as many as 17, only to see Tulane cut the deficit repeatedly in the second half. Many of the 9,484 comfortable in their seats early were squirming when the Green Wave cut UC's lead to a bucket with just over seven minutes left.

Landers Nolley II's 3-pointer as the shot clock was expiring at 3:56 put the Bearcats up 9 points and they were able to fend off all late challenges from there, eventually beating Tulane 88-77. The Bearcats led for nearly 39 of the game's 40 minutes.

"Any league win is a good win," Coach Miller said. "That's a really good basketball team, a terrific offensive basketball team. Finishing games out needs to be a bit better, but you did see some stops down the stretch, that's how you finish it."

UC had five scorers in double figures led by redshirt senior Nolley with 23, senior Mika Adams-Woods with 18, grad senior David DeJulius with 13, redshirt sophomore Viktor Lakhin with 13 and senior Jeremiah Davenport with 10.

Nolley's old-school shot fakes were effective most of the night. His 23-point effort was second only to his 33-point outing in Maui against Arizona. Afterward, he admitted to working on his pump fakes in practice even when he's not guarded.

"Everyone on the team tells me to shoot more," Nolley said.

Said Miller, "He does what good offensive players do. They have a weapon and they have a way to play off of it. He's such an elite shooter. There's sometimes he shot fakes and I want him to shoot it because every time he shoots it, I think it's going in."

Nolley canned five treys on the night, while Lakhin achieved a double-double for the fifth time this season, all Bearcat victories. He had 13 boards and the Bearcats outrebounded the Green Wave 38-31.

"I still think he's just scratching the surface of who he is as a player," Miller said of Lakhin. "You're not seeing anyone close to their ceiling. He's going to keep coming and coming and coming."

Tulane was topped by juniors Kevin Cross with 22 points and Jaylen Forbes with 20. Coach Ron Hunter's Green Wave falls to 7-5. Preseason First Team All-League pick Jalen Cook was held to 15 points, with just two of those coming in the second half. He came in averaging 20.2. Credit DeJulius on the defense.

"I thought him fouling out had a huge outcome on their possessions down the stretch," Miller said. "There were a couple offensive fouls that David drew beating him to the position. Those are humongous plays for our team."

Unlike last year's meeting when the Bearcats dug a 26-point hole in the first half before trying to rally back, UC came out on target. In their lone game last season, Tulane hit 9-of-14 of their treys in the first half. On this night, they went 0-for-10.

UC's biggest lead of the half was 17, but Tulane was able to cut it to 10 by the break, largely on free throws. Lakhin sat the final five-plus minutes of the first stanza with two fouls but was active on the boards with seven by the break. As hot as they were to start, the second half began ice cold as UC's double-digit lead was whittled to four by Tulane at the 15:39 mark. They would eventually make it a two-point game before the Bearcats found the accelerator, prevailing by 11 in the end.

Nolley II was 5-for-9 from the arc while Adams-Woods was 7-of-8 from the floor. The hard-driving lefty also dished out six assists.

"I know I need to step up and do whatever my team needs me to do," Adams-Woods said. "Whatever it takes. Whether it's assists, scoring, guarding, that's my mindset going into conference play."

The 10-4 Bearcats ring in the new year in Philadelphia on Sunday when they take on 7-7 Temple at the Liacouras Center at 3 p.m. The Owls won their AAC opener Wednesday night at East Carolina, 59-57.

SEEN IN THE GYM: Point guard recruit Jasper Johnson from Woodford County (Kentucky) shot some video courtside before the UC/Tulane game. He is a class of 2025 prospect.

Also, former Bearcat Mamoudou Diarra was in the front row for Thursday's action. Diarra finished his college career at Tennessee Tech.

HUNTER NEAR HOME: Tulane coach Ron Hunter is from Dayton and played his college ball for Miami University. Before the game, he blew kisses to well-wishers behind the Green Wave bench. Prior to Tulane, he coached against UC for Georgia State in the NCAA tournament in 2018. The Bearcats won 68-53. Then-coach Mick Cronin's 31-win season would end two days later in the second round vs. Nevada. UC had won 18 of 20 against Tulane before the Green Wave outshot the Bearcats on Jan. 1 of last season.

GOODBYE JOE, ME GOTTA GO: After being charter members of the old Metro Conference, Conference USA and the American Athletic Conference, the Bearcats will part ways with Tulane after this year's AAC tournament to join the Big 12. Trivia buffs may know Tulane was once a member of a Power Five conference as a charter member of the Southeastern Conference until 1966.

CINCINNATI 45 43 88

TULANE 35 42 77

T -Holloway 1 0 2 Cross 7 6 22 James 3 5 12 Cook 6 3 15 Forbes 4 11 20 Pope 3 0 6]

UC -Lakhin 4 5 13 Nolley 7 4 23 Adams-Woods 7 3 18 DeJulius 5 2 13 Davenport 3 3 10 Skillings 3 1 7 Oguama 2 0 4