Yes, I had the opportunity to buy any mouse in the world, but I picked a weird apple one with one physical button acting as two separate buttons, a trackball for scroll wheel (it's neat to scroll horizontally though, not gonna lie), virtual middle button, virtual squeeze sensor and a tiny internal speaker. Yes, I'm an idiot.

But hear me out. When I was a child, I accidentally wandered into an apple store. I was blown away by what their UIs looked like (it was a Leopard era, maybe Tiger, I'm not sure). I still remember how I approached a desk where an iMac stood, and this was the mouse it came with. This. This very mouse was my first experience with apple. and oh boy, how memorable it was, and how much I wanted a macbook of my own.

Apple still means a lot to me. It's so unfortunate that their privacy approach went real bad real fast. Somehow when people say that nintendo, which is a shitty anti-consumer company, means a lot to them, it's suddenly okay, because that shitty anti-consumer company is based in japan. mark my words, if apple was a japanese company, it would've been much worse, but it wouldn't have been hated as much.

I now possess my childhood dream, or at least its fragment: the best mouse that apple ever made. it feels comfy and substantial. modern flat magic mouse is a disgrace. if you're still an apple user (my condolences), buy a mighty mouse on ebay. wireless ones do exist, they take regular batteries.

Oh, and this mouse works perfectly with Debian out of the box. If you pair it with a Mac, you can see probably the oldest bit of UI that's still in modern os --- the mighty mouse settings panel. It's there, unchanged since the 2000s.

so yea, ive been emailing japanese professors to take me in as their grad student. but theyre not accepting new international students for 2021 AY maybe because of covid.

this is sad, i need to be there next year. but things arent going well.

my plan B is to become a research fellow at my current uni after i graduate next year, get some research published and fortify my arsenal for 2022 academic year.