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07/03/2006

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Schwartz G

Yeah, SL sucks with all its prefabs. It needs those plain building blocks you're talking about, maybe some nice wooden ones, made of plywood--

oh wait

eggy lippmann

Heh, small world... you post a pic of my RL face, and then mention Rudolf Steiner... little do you know that he was actually my gf's great great uncle :)

Prokofy Neva

Your picture was put up in public at your birthday party, so I thought it was something you must not mind using, but I didn't label it as such -- now you have : )

Well, no, I didn't know that about Rudolf Steiner. Steiner also had this idea that until children had lost all their first set of baby teeth, they couldn't be taught to read. There was some kind of connection between...ability to take out discrete teeth from the set of teeth and the ability to sound out words in a sentence and parse meaning? Just kidding lol. He can get wacky at times. He was an important figure, though.

Oh, and yes...everything's connected. It's all One. :P

eggy lippmann

Oh I don't mind at all. I'm a camwhore, or so they call me... I have hundreds of pictures. There's one up on the history wiki too and a couple more in the forums.

Brace

WOOT!

Thot that was yoo Eggstah ;)

*smooches shell*

Aldo Stern

"In fact, one of the reasons the Lindens allow the licentiousness they do is because they can't think of any other way to create the sensation of the unexpected."

When you start looking at some of LL's apparently odd decisions to act--or more often to not act--and the continual seemingly counter-productive changes to the platform in this sort of way, it begins to seem less irrational.

Prok, I'll be honest, I have to struggle and work had in trying to grasp a lot of what you have been exploring lately, but that's my problem--I simply don't comprehend complex things as easily as I used to. Yet I have been very engaged by many of the ideas you are working over, such as the one quoted above.

There are times when we find our flawed Utopia very frustrating, but it is somehow also a rewarding frustration when you realize that the flaws are there not becuase the people who design and maintain the structure are chin-drooling idiots who couldn't code their way out of a wet wad of toilet paper, but becuase there is some kind of vision guiding them that seeks to elevate the flaws to soemthing else, largely through the way that we choose to respond to them.

In a way it makes me think of that great bit in "Time Bandits":

boy: "But God, why does there have to be evil in the world?"

God: "oh, something to do with free will..."

In the days before I really got a lightbulb (note that I say "a" rather than "the" because we all know there is no actual "the") regarding SL, I was one of those who used the pharse "visually stunning, but socially barren" to describe it. I have since come to accept that yes, parts of it are, but that I simply hadn't explored enough with my eyes actually open to see the other posiblities, as well as the social realities...

"what a work is avatar...how like a god..." and all that.

One of the most interesting things to me that you're asking is where do we find that sense of inner satisfaction that makes particiaption in this flawed Utopia rewarding. And I increasingly feel it is the combination of perceived (and real)randomness with our ability to choose to respond in many vaired ways, that makes this an intriguing personal and collective experiment, rather than just a great way of killing time, in the same way as say...oh...brewing your own beer (which has its own elements of randomness when some of the bottles explode inthe basment, while others turn out to be better than you could have hoped).

For example, the other day, a new character in the form of a little arm chair with feet wandered into my pub. (I think it was kind of swedish modern....plain, but not unattractive).

As my pub customers regularly include everything from cultured furred folk, vampyric socialites and other miscellaneous representatives of the undead, standard dragons, mecha-dragons, a dragon wearing top hat and pince nez, tinies, visiting Goreans, steampunk and victorian humans, pirates, faeries, to the occasional adventerous (or lost) new resident oru tourist...well, an anthropormorphized arm chair didn't seem all that odd.

I greeted him, pleasantly while it explored the poub..I asked if he wanted anything (I think it was male) and though it didn't reply, I gave him a mug of ale anyway, which he accepted. He hopped into a chair with his ale, while I continued chatting with some other guests, evey now and then asking the wee chair if he was doing ok or needed anything, and tomake himslef at home. Same kind of treatment I give all my guests.

He seemed to be listening in on our conversation, which was a mixture of catching up with an old friend and meditations on the nature of life and society among various Gorean comunities, and Dragon-related stuff, when the curious little visitor poofed.

Later, we all received a general announcment from someone that they had a griefer situation and had banned the perp--the name listed by the announcment's author was my little wandering armchair guest.

I'm not sure if he was just looking for the right person to grief, or had simply rubbed the other property owner the wrong way with his curious actions and persistent silence.

I looked up the little fellow's profile and noted that he was new and did belong to some grief-oriented groups...but perhaps the choice I made...being polite and giving him a beer anda welcome...made some kind of difference. It did, I must confess, give me some inner satisfaction...free will is a wonderful thing, and how we exercise it in SL is what makes a world rather than an eratically functioning game.

Amanda Dallin

What's the deal with random posting comments on 4 year old entries?

Darien Caldwell

Click the link in their name and all will be revealed. :D

Amanda Dallin

I figured. Hard to believe this is an effective form of advertising but they must think so.

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