Interesting

Second Life at Flickr

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I’m in my ninth year of exploring and playing in Second Life™. There are some things I think are still difficult to accomplish within the Second Life framework. One of those is finding interesting and beautiful places to visit, very much like real life. Another is meeting interesting people and being able to see them… not just look at them or see their ‘hello’ face, but seeing them in moments of their life. iRL that is usually only possible with close friends.

There is the Lab’s Destination Guide, web and in-viewer, and now Places Pages. Plus, a number of ‘travel’ blogs. They show us various places in Second Life. But, they still don’t do Second Life justice and it can be tedious going through those sources.

smoke.
smoke

People… meeting interesting people is not really hard, there just isn’t any simple… fast… easy… ok, lazy way to do it. Well, like real life you can go to clubs and parties and join groups. Like iRL you can participate and meet participating people with similar interests. My point is you have to put out some energy and spend some time iRL or SL.

Flickr provides a bowl of vignettes of places and people. There the challenge is finding people that can see those places and moments and capture them. These are moments from SL. They are only clues to where you may find people or places in SL. But, Flickr is a rich source of people and places hidden by the nature of life and the virtual world 

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Second Life: Got Talent? Win Money

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Another photo contest! 1st prize L$1,000.00. Not bad. The theme for the contest is: H2O with at least 1 item from the Moustique Heartsdale Marketplace Shop worn. [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Rules”] Wear at least 1 item from the Moustique Heartsdale Marketplace Shop: marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/180802 Post in the group: www.flickr.com/groups/3619996@N25/ Name the picture: MH❤CONTEST_052017❤[your name] You can enter … Read more

Free Speech to get Really Complicated

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Every so often I get on the subject of free speech. Second Life™ is said to be inhabited by more Liberals and Progressives than Conservatives and Traditionalists. But, no one knows, at least I have yet to see an objective study or assessment. I can see that we have more demonstrations of liberalism in SL. But, Conservatives have historically been the silent majority. Thus, the problem figuring out the actual demographics.

Google can't tell about information requests from China
Google can’t tell about information requests from China

Second Life is not a free speech area. It is a private area owned by Linden Lab(R). Speech is governed by the ToS. We are free to say whatever within those limits. It is up to the Lindens to decide what speech exceeds those limits. Their decision is final, there is no appeal.

In RL free speech is suffering from fake news that is confusing some people and adding extraneous information some mistake for facts. Part of which is that awful thing ‘Hate Speech’, which is an interesting spin on “Hate” and the prime tool for anti-speech proponents.

I think the recent Berkley riot and threat of riot are examples of people not understanding the US Constitution and the principle of Free Speech nor its importance nor how to protect it nor why.

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Space the Final Frontier, or Not

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Do you know anything about the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, passed in 1967? Did you know it forbids the claiming of territory beyond Earth? Even if you get there, spending billions, you cannot own the land/asteroid. Cutting off any assurance you can recover your costs or gain any reward. That relegates space exploration to governments … Read more

NASA Refocused?

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You may not realize that US$1.9 billion of NASA’s 2016 budget (US19+ billion) was going to climate study. If my sources can be believed. The 2017 NASA Transition Authorization Act (S. 442 – link) supposedly reallocates the funding. Figuring out exactly how is unclear, at least to me. But, the words ‘climate’ and ‘weather’ do not appear in the text of the bill. Nor are all dollars assigned a place other than NASA.

Rays of Creusa

Following this bill gets bit confusing. Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a bill prepared in the Obama days: S.3346 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2016. It got tabled as the 114th session of Congress (2015-16) ran out of time.

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