this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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You could actually solve the problem by washing your hands before using the computer and not eating at your desk.
Those balls don't care about your supposed clean hands. You could be using those mice with a robot arm and they would still gunk up.
Mostly it was stay dust, mousepad fluff, and similar ambient detritus getting in there. This is like saying if you wash your feet every day you’ll never need to vacuum the floor.
Household dust is a complex, heterogeneous mixture of organic and inorganic microscopic particles, typically consisting of 20–50% dead human skin cells.
The dust on your mousepad comes from your own hand shedding cells.
If you wash your hands, it knocks off those cells.
The oil that mixes with that dust to turn it into a rubbery plastic, comes from the oils on your hands.
bet you can't figure out what washing your hands does to that oil....
Bear in mind that the atmosphere back in those days was 5% carbon dioxide, 24% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 38% tar, 10% nicotine, 2% cocaine, and 1% trace gases.
Things got gunky fast. Also brown.
So 50 to 80% other particles. Agreed, you can cut down on the frequency of cleaning like this, but I don’t think you could eliminate it.
I used to do it at work and it seemed to work for me, YMMV