The Male Hysteric

Among other things, today I got my Tamagotchi Uni, which is a color, wifi-enabled tamagotchi which is going to likely become defunct next year (though there are plenty of non-wifi features that will still be useable, some of the stuff will no longer be).

Part of my reason for getting this is because there's a new Tamagotchi thing being released in like a week, so the Unis are on sale (if you want one, you should get one now), and also considering the tariffs I am unsure if the hot new things is even going to be available in the US at all, or if it is for a non-ridiculous markup, so I figured, if I really wanted one, why wait? Anyway I haven't figured out all the features yet but my tama has already matured into the "child" stage from the "baby." They grow up so fast...



Between this and the mp3 player and my Kobo purchased last year I feel like I am getting more into "small" electronics, or maybe non-smart electronics, or well... I still like electronics, but I want things that do not resemble a phone (I was very dismayed to find my tama playing on a phone already!). I have been looking at the subreddit r/dumbphone and some others and while I don't think I would get a dumbphone any time soon, I'm always so interested in the "every day carry" lays, and how these people often have multiple electronic devices that are not phones. Often e-readers, or mp3 players, or cameras, or hand-held game consoles, or, yes, tamagotchis, which are having a comeback. It's probably the opposite of an environmentally friendly mindset and also going to be increasingly difficult as a hobby in the US if the tariffs keep happening, but electronics used to be... kinda fun before everything was all-in-one? When the device is less all-encompassing you can kind of more appreciate it for what it is. And like, a couple weeks ago me and my partner were having to wait around forever at a T-Mobile, and I noted how every time you had to step into a cell carrier store it always took forever. And I wonder how much of it is because they haven't really updated their customer interface sales model since before your entire life was on your phone, so people always have an insane amount of data to transfer between them, or every phone that's lost is an emergency, so the chronically understaffed stores have to serve every problem.

I don't know. I just know it's a bad time for me to get into this hobby.

A significant portion of modern life nowadays seems to be just making sure that all one's devices are adequately charged.

My new phone has no headphone jack, so I have some bluetooth earbuds to go alone with them so I don't need to use the headphone adapter that goes into the charging port. However, using bluetooth wears down the battery very quickly and makes the phone extremely slow to charge while using the earbuds. What was the point of this, again?

Anyway, I resubmitted a piece after it was rejected. Slowly getting back onto this horse.