Bitcoin News Australia

The Masters, golf’s premier annual tournament (teeing off today), is a shared societal illusion designed to give dads something to talk about. We all know this.

But there’s one more reason it grabs our attention: It’s the highest-profile cellphone-free environment still in existence.

No phones? No problem

Banning portable electronics at Augusta National Country Club is a conscious decision the hosts vow to maintain.

• And to enforce. (Just ask the Atlanta man banned for life after his dad accidentally brought a phone to a practice round.)

Why should they do things any differently? The draconian phone policy has done nothing to slow fan interest.

• Tickets are so in demand that, per Golf Digest, the odds of winning the Masters ticket lottery — 0.55% — aren’t far off from the actual lottery.

If anything, the ban adds to the appeal. For the 40k attendees and 10m+ TV viewers, the Masters is visually striking theater —the stripped-down presentation, not far from the sights and sounds of the inaugural 1934 Masters, provides much of its mystique.

Which is fully on brand for an event known as “A Tradition Unlike Any Other” — where many of the traditions are worth forgetting.

• It must be noted that Augusta National, an invite-only, mostly-white-male club for the obscenely wealthy, is historically known for regressive policies — it only just marked a decade of women being considered for membership.

A true novelty

It’s only speaking technologically when we say the Masters is worthy of attention. It makes the unimaginable — a weekend sans phone — feel possible.

Most spaces can only request phone etiquette; few have the ability to enforce outright bans without bite-back from patrons. To wit:

• Jack White caught expletives for his phone-free concert policy.
• An internet brouhaha followed when Texas restaurant Caterina’s nixed the cellulars.
• And phone bans in schools… That’s a lot of mess.

Golf fans, meanwhile, continue to sit in silence. Which, we guess, is their default position, but still.

Nuns have been entrepreneurs since long before Mark Cuban ever said “I’m out.”

They started hospitals and schools in the 19th century, engaging in the labor market when most women were barred from working outside the home. In recent years, nuns have done everything from breed horses to sling pizzas.

They also played an integral role in developing Communion wafers, a product that they, along with the rest of the Roman Catholic Church, believe is turned into the literal body of Christ during Mass.

The wafers used to be almost entirely produced by nuns running small-scale operations.

• The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration started producing them in 1910. Eventually, some weeks, nuns there churned out 2m+ wafers, shipping them to clients ranging from parishes to prisons to Princess Cruise Lines.

But today it’s a different story.

Now, almost every communion wafer comes from the for-profit Cavanagh Company, America’s altar-bread monopoly.

Have you ever typed “I’m literally dying rn” in the group chat, but worried the words just weren’t enough?

Enter voice notes: Bite-sized audio messages that let you feel like you’re literally dying in the same room as your besties. And, per Vox, they’re more popular than ever.

Perhaps in search of a cure for the loneliness epidemic, Americans are opting to spill their tea verbally:

• 62% of Americans say they’ve sent a voice note at least once.
• 30% say they use voice notes to communicate weekly, daily, or multiple times a day.
• Those ages 18-29 use voice messaging more, with 43% using it at least weekly.

Last year…

… WhatsApp reported that users sent a whopping 7B voice messages per day. The app introduced voice messaging in 2013, and while it’s recently picked up speed in the US, it’s long been popular internationally.

Many find that voice messaging helps them overcome language barriers, with 13% reporting they use it for exactly that reason.

WhatsApp recently added a feature that lets users post voice notes as statuses for their contacts to hear — the recordings can be up to 30 seconds long and disappear after 24 hours.

But these little audio intrusions can be polarizing: People either love ’em, or want ’em gone.

The biggest downside? Typing “LOL” won’t cut it anymore — you really gotta laugh out loud.