That place: The Mariana Trench, believe it or not!

The tech has evolved a lot. Especially in the FOSS area! And I am thankful for the progress. But along the way, the average culture is what I miss the most. Do I miss the very convoluted, fragile, non-standardized, and hard to configure hardware? Heehee naw.

This image is nostalgic because it recalls when personal computers were conceptually personal, even when they were public. New tech was fun and exciting.

Some of my fondest memories were easy LAN parties and collabing on XP-era machines in my 3D Studio MAX class. Also, computers didn't feel near-useless without an Internet connection.

It's been said before but bears repeating: "The Internet was a place." It didn't follow you everywhere, spy on you, sell you out. You weren't supposed to divulge your whole life to strangers, but somehow you still made new friends.

People logged in to hang out. Heck, know what I miss most? People seemed to have TIME to log in and hang out. Even busy people. These days I feel hurried to smash out a text message while in motion.

People made personal, expressive, whimsical websites for fun, and not just as a hopeful web-dev portfolio. The Internet was only about making money for tie-wearing squares; everyone else just did things for the fun of it.

I think that's what we miss. People were learning and using these miraculous machines that were capable of anything.

Now the machines are consumption-first appliances primarily aimed to drain your wallet and personal information, and the people have gotten so dumb. Computer literacy dropped with all the rest of kinds of literacy, and I long to find a way to push against that tide...

This is Good California. California should keep being Good California, and not Operating-System-age-gating California.

"Let's go visit Uncle Ted's Cabin." they said.

"It'll be a blast!" They said.

As was watching the submarine races

... This sounds like a euphemism uh... Beyond my depth.

Puns aside: ...Wat? Lol

The Internet was for anybody. I think it was a mistake to foist it on everybody.

Haha that's awesome. Thanks for the bit of local lore!

Sounds honestly like it'd be a bit of a spooky spot secluded in the middle of the night. Frisky teens do be pretty crazy brave. <_<

I love the hands-on-hips pose like "Well I'll be darned, Barbara, would you look at that!"

It's freaking telling, when I'm getting spam in Russian, telling me about "A $1439 reward from Trump." LMAO.

I think that's how we learned though. Just learning to do things with a computer was basically Montessori for geeks haha.

When knowledgeable people were present to ask questions to, especially. I find computing itself really isn't properly conveyed in a "lesson 1,2,3" format.

I love that silly new bus EV I'll never be able to afford, but hey I'd actually consider it if SUSE makes the OS. :)

"Sorry can't hear you, Pooty. Your munitions cooking off and your bridges crumbling deep within your borders are too loud!"

Weird possibility! I once tried to lubricate my machine and put a drip or two on the threaded Z axis rod. BAD IDEA.

This lead to VERY minor slippage once the gantry hit a certain height, and it would do exactly this. Lots of loud collision, very scary.

...So make sure your Z rod isn't slipping, or slippery?

See my brain OCR said "Tooth Fairy Spiders" and I was like "Oh THAT makes sense but I'm feeling brave." But ended up sort of confused. 😂

This perfectly explains where we got retail management hierarchy from.

[door shuts]

Continues: "Heh, imagine that, Billy. Just, bursting into flames because the stuff got within mere feet of you. Wow. What a way to go..."

"wHaT's ThE dEaAaAaAaAAL WiTh _____??"

...I don't understand how that guy apparently holds a ridiculous amount of power in the entertainment industry lol.

And that sort of thing totally DOES permeate throughout the industry. Whenever Pixar or Weta(RIP?) or Cameron or DreamWorks or whoever invent something REALLY COOL. . .

. . .At some point we eventually get it in Blender, and I think that's neat.

Whether or not that was the original intent I LOVE this interpretation. I like to be entertained and err on the side of "Maybe this is a deliberate choice these very smart and passionate people made to smooth out a story."

Sometimes I feel like people get mad that they aren't just dropped into a completely fleshed out imaginary world.

It's entertainment delivered to them as they relax in a chair, requiring zero effort on their part, and they make it a goal to nitpick whatever reminds them this slice of imagination was designed by humans, and isn't actually a fully functional parallel universe they can literally isekai into to escape the mundanity of modern existence.

Critic culture is overrated, and I wish people would exercise their suspension of disbelief, basically. Hahaha

Heehee I mix them up all the time, too. :P