If you're anything like me, and you have someone like
@xely_of_pnictogen@derg.social around, the answer might be "well, ten minutes ago!" A commendable and very very healing fondness for the simple pleasures of simple toys exists in the hearts of so many smoldergs like Xely and
@Endiverge@floofy.tech (I really hope you don't mind the reference, it's actually in a good cause this time) and it's brightened my life as well. Yes! one can play with blocks as an adult human being! one can make the blocks from scratch if one is handy. Human beings have been making little geometric toys for themselves for...how many millennia now?
But
#Caltech nerd culture happened. Lots of other universities did the same thing: in their prospectuses and their carefully managed little ways, these places spread the impression that applying to Caltech or
#MIT or wherever and getting accepted was like being invited to Bart Simpson's fantasies about MAD Magazine.
(cont'd)