Scylla Rhiadra

No. Are you freakin' NUTS?

My friend @Aggie Rowlandsopened an exhibit of her portraits today. They're gorgeous and exciting, and exhibit a really diverse range of photographic styles, and interesting and beautiful avatars. Although there are some posed pics here, Aggie mostly takes "candid," unposed shots of people "in action," dancing or just talking -- there's often a sense of someone "caught in life" in these pics that makes them especially interesting! Definitely worth a visit (warning: there seem to be HUNDREDS of pics on revolving boards, so seeing them all can take some time!) Tango at Nottoo's http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hookton/226/86/57

Technology, taken as a generic "thing," is of course a boon. It's how it is to be deployed, and who will end up controlling it, that worries the hell out of me.

Well, I'm sure there will be some who disapprove. I, on the other hand, think it's cool and interesting and different to use SL this way. Satire is "art" too, whether or not we agree with its message.

No, Bernie is fine -- in fact, he visited my boathouse on Saturday. (And I think that Muniick is giving away a free cut-out version in-world.) I was curious rather about your own set up, which is a really interesting use of SL for political satire. But if it's not open to the public to visit, that's obviously fine.

Is it open to the public? (I can see Bernie got in!)

Wow. This is in SL??? Where is this, Manu?

That sounds like exactly the same trivia engine. The one at Sunflower was "Gogomodo Trivia" I think? Or something like that?

For a reasonable part of my first year in SL -- 2008-2009 -- I hung out at a trivia place I'd found. The parcel, which was owned by a cigar-chomping 6-year old juvenile delinquent I've mentioned here before, and was done up as a children's playground and park, gave L$2, I think, for each correct answer to a trivia question that was broadcast via local across the parcel. You were in competition with others there: first correct answer received the prize. I think there was about one question per minute. Sunflower Trivia allowed me to make enough money as a noob to buy better hair and clothing -- but more importantly, it helped me build up a small nest egg that I was able to use, after a few months, to start up my own very modest in-world business that itself became self-sustaining, and permitted me to buy still more nice hair and clothing. But what was really cool about the place is that it created around itself a smallish but still very coherent and inclusive little community. We chatted and goofed around there while playing, and it became far more of a "home" for many than merely a way to earn money. I don't think many of the people I met there are still in SL, but a few of them I connected with on FB. I don't use Facebook very much at all anymore, but some of them are still there. I don't know why Stormy had the parcel, nor why she offered money for trivia (she didn't have a business, and wouldn't have benefited from bloated traffic numbers) -- except that she liked people.

Welcome to the club!

Have you been censored here?

Yep, critical thinking is valuable, always, and not least in the instance of health and medicine. But applying that same kind of critical thinking to the sources that you choose to weigh against the views of scientists and established medical professionals is at least as important. Would you seek out, and follow, the opinion of an "alternate engineer" about the materials to be employed for load-bearing structures in something you wanted built? What are the qualifications of those critiquing the vaccines? Where are the scientific studies backing up their views? Are they being interpreted properly, or cherry-picked for "convenient" tidbits, decontextualized and represented in a misleading way? The latter has been a particularly prevalent strategy, in my experience: if you look at the actual abstracts or studies being quoted, the information has been either taken out of context, or distorted, through ignorance or deliberate malfeasance. Scientists don't trust scientists either -- that's why the scientific method demands that studies and experiments be reproducible and repeatable. It's also why we have a systems in place for scholarly publication -- double-blind peer review before something is published, and scholarly journals for the publication of opposing perspectives and counter-arguments. There is a wealth of information available to anyone (not all medical journals are firewalled -- check out the PLOS, for instance), and there are plenty of legitimate, accredited, and reliable resources that break down the science into layman's language. You don't need to be looking for specialized medical information on web sites devoted to politics -- nor should you be. Excellent plan. Why do you think sites like InfoWars publish pseudo-science? What do they gain from it? What's their motivation? Do you imagine that it's the advancement of science? I don't trust the information I get from pharmaceutical companies either. But we have systems in place -- such as tenure and peer-reviewed research grant procedures -- to ensure that the science, rather than public relations, can be relied upon not to be motivated by merely monetary considerations.

Arielle, one of the links was to an InfoWars article that literally asserted (without, need I say, a shred of evidence) that the Covid-19 vaccines were being used by unnamed malefactors to replace human rDNA with that of jellyfish. Because, jellyfish are a "hive mind" apparently -- ZOMG! We're all being turned into socialist jellyfish!! Most of the others I've looked at weren't a lot better. This isn't "information" -- it's a bad joke. And what's more, the links are posted almost entirely without commentary or discussion. It is spam, pure and simple.

Did half of your third kid fail to rez?

Please explain how? Unless you have some other reasonable explanation for the fact that black men and women are far more likely to die at the hands of the police than whites, I think my analogy to racism is entirely valid. And if it is because of racism (which can be manifested in many different ways, as for instance lower socio-economic status, which can also make one a more likely victim of police violence), then the solution needs to address . . . racism. Well, you have access to Google and the internet, I presume, so you should probably best do your own research. There are a great many highly reputable sites out there -- government agencies, scientific and health organizations, academic publications -- that repeat the same story with hard statistics. Here are two (and please note that neither of them is Vox or Buzzfeed): "Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex" -- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793/tab-figures-data Includes statistics that show that blacks are about 2 1/2 times more likely to die at the hands of the police. "Deaths Due to Use of Lethal Force by Law Enforcement" -- U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/ "Victims were majority white (52%) but disproportionately black (32%) with a fatality rate 2.8 times higher among blacks than whites. Most victims were reported to be armed (83%); however, black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims." There are literally hundreds of other reliable and accredited sources for this information.

lol. Ok then! So, rather than address my points, you're just going to shoot the messenger? Your perspective as a person of mixed race is interesting and not unimportant, but it does not, in itself, certify you as the ultimate authority. There are, need I say, quite a few people of colour who would seem to disagree with you? Their perspectives are no less valid than yours -- so employing identity politics as a way of dismissing BLM may be a bit problematic. It's possible to query the particular strategies employed by BLM without dismissing the statistically demonstrable fact that blacks suffer disproportionately at the hands of the legal and law enforcement systems. (I got that from the internet, btw -- it's full of interesting statistics and facts!) "All Lives Matter" isn't actually a targeted critique of BLM as an organization: it's an attempt to deny that there are specific causes, and hence specific solutions, to the problem of blacks being shot or beaten up by the police in disproportionately high numbers (and, far more likely to be given stiff jail sentences when they are brought before the law). If someone came to your door to ask you for a donation to help cancer research, would you shout "No! ALL DISEASES MATTER!" . . . ? Insisting that black lives matter is not, oddly enough, an assertion that other lives don't, or that black lives are "more important." It is 1) that blacks are killed or assaulted more often by law enforcement agents than most other ethnicities, and 2) an acknowledgement that violence against blacks is a particular and identifiably different problem than those causing other forms of violence, that requires particular solutions that are likewise going to be different than those we might apply to, say, domestic violence, or gang-related violence, or drug violence, etc., etc. Because that's the way you solve problems: not by throwing generic and unspecific "solutions" at them, but by researching them so you understand their root causes, and applying solutions that address those. Sort of the same way that we don't apply the same treatments to cancer and, say, heart disease.

Well, no one here has argued, that I've seen, that all lives don't matter. I'm pretty sure that Luna thinks so. I know that I do. Your use of that phrase is, as I'm sure you very well know, a dog whistle for denying that some demographics in our culture have historically, and in the present, been more subjected to systemic wrongs and violence, or that they should be remedied. So, I'm delighted to hear that you do recognize, apparently, that you recognize the existence of bias and bigotry. Although, if this is true, and you do see systemic bias at work against certain demographics, I'm left somewhat puzzled as to what your point was supposed to be.

That's excellent! Yay you! How are you at spotting the racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia that are the result of the actions of too many other people who don't share your wonderfully liberal perspective? Perhaps . . . not so good?

Well, speaking personally, I'd not say that it "triggered" me. But I'd affirm that it tells me an awful lot about you as a person.

My little boathouse has everything I could ever want or need.

Did you enjoy watching her get beaten up because she was female? No? Didn't think so. You're good, Gopi.

A false analogy and in any case utterly irrelevant. The OP can ignore the entire forum for all that I care. I certainly don't mind him having me on ignore. I don't feel "cancelled" -- in fact, as I learn more about him, it's coming to feel like a godsend. What I DO mind is seeing almost the entire community here needlessly insulted every time he gratuitously mentions his swelling ignore list.

He mentions it almost literally every time he posts. It's the equivalent to flipping the finger to 8 1/2 pages of people here, with impunity. It's obnoxious, and truly infantile. The only plus is that it reconfirms, every time he does it, how little I'd ever want to have anything to do with him.

Whatcha got against Gothenburg? My unimpeachable sources tell me that it features "Streets and squares covered in magical winter lights, vast nature areas and safe activities," and is, moreover, the world's most sustainable city.

How nice of you to keep us up to date.