I love my mice tremendously much as individuals but still feel a far greater loyalty to guinea pigs as a species. Mice are cute and goofy but they're ultimately pretty normal animals, as animals go. They make sense.

Guinea pigs have a sort of lovable absurdity to them that really speaks to me, a feeling that they, too, have no idea why they are shaped the way they are and have the desires they do.

I like mouse. I am guinea pig. 🐹

watched a few episodes of Forged in Fire because I think crafty stuff is cool but it turns out to be like 1% about forging, 99% about masculinity

look at all those high protocol mascs and their beards calling each other "sir" and "gentlemen" so ostentatiously

the show medics even have this signature khaki bandage color so the guys' cuts and burns can be extra masculine

this is drag

thinking about this video and how the AlphaSmart was pretty well-known at the time that I was a youth, but also (anecdotally) there are so many stories these days of kids not really knowing how computers operate, having had most of their technological experiences on phones (which are cheaper, more accessible, and much more common).

and i don't want to be a complete anti-phone person here, but also it's definitely the case that technology (or at least, the common goal of a lot of computing and computer education) at the time that i was in elementary/middle school was designed primarily for people who had never used a computer before.

there's that theory about "digital natives vs digital immigrants"¹ by Marc Prensky that i found particularly mindblowing in about high school or whenever when I first read it, since it felt so fascinating and optimistic, since to me as a high schooler i felt like i was Cool and Unique and the First Of A New Generation.

but the past decade or so has given me some significant doubt there -- and it's not due to the Kids Being Stupid. it's due to technology shifting away from a Transparent Device Catered To Provide Maximum Information To A User into an Opaque Device Meant To Guess What The User Wants And Provide It. newer generations do not feel like "digital natives" in the way i assumed they would because the realm of the "digital" changed.

the problem, as always imo, is not with the users, it's with the design trends and the people in power who set them. of course a more opaque device appealed to those who already felt they'd "outgrown" the comparatively verbose operating systems of the late-90s and early-00s. This also, of course, benefited tech companies, who no longer had to deal with users attempting to do things on their own and could simply work within the walled gardens provided, etc etc etc.

I'm sounding a bit like a FOSS crank right now and I know that, but what I'm really getting at is the fact that modern computing does not feel like it is built for a user who intends to understand the computing device as a tool. The modern layperson's computer (or much more often, phone) is being designed as more of an "appliance" than a proper "tool", and that's disappointing!

I don't think they have a cohost presence, and I've only seen one post about this here, so I'd like to spread the word a bit. The developers behind Neos VR (Frooxius and some of the people that actually did good work) have started a new project, this time from the ground up with a full team including UI designers (and WITHOUT the guy that was pushing the crypto shit). Unformatted thoughts under the break.