‘Beautifully chaotic headache hell’

 

I’ve named this piece ‘Beautifully chaotic headache hell’. Please enjoy. pic.twitter.com/DxwaJMzWVN

— Celeste barber (@celestebarber_) October 17, 2021

IF, Rudyard Kipling's poem, recited by Sir Michael Caine

 

wizardoz chrome present Machinima Land during SLEA Grand Opening

 
last night during SLEA grand opening
wizardoz chrome aka 
alba rocca  spoke about 
"Machinima land" in Second 
Life:

it is a service center 
for internal video shooting at 
video games and in particular 
virtual worlds - I believe that the 
services will be 
mainly free, or very low costs, and that will
include courses and advice.

this is the address of 
center where you can get
info:
http://maps.secondlife.com/s
econdlife/SLEA7/98/192/23

wizardoz speaks fluently 
English and Italian  -
 this is her profile on FB 
that she prefers to 
messages:
https://www.facebook.com/AlbaRoccaWizardozChrome

I did not make it to shot her a photo but I will...

REMOTE WORK AND EVENT SOLUTIONS

 https://www.connect.secondlife.com/

one can use Second Life for all sort of activities...

THE SURREAL CUBE by WIZARDOZ CHROME

you can see this video inside Second Life

at the MACHINIMA LAND 

by wizardoz chrome aka alba.rocca

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLEA7/94/207/23

https://www.facebook.com/AlbaRoccaWizardozChrome

 

☼A machinima by Wizardoz Chrome (aka Alba Rocca) for IMMERSIVIA at Santorini Biennale 2016 from: Installation "THE SURREAL CUBE" ☼ Key contributors at Installation "THE SURREAL CUBE" Gem Preiz, Molly Bloom, Hyde Hackl, Mistero Hifeng, Moewe Winkler, Art Eames ☼Contributors at Installation "THE SURREAL CUBE" Cherry Manga, Venus Adored, Nexuno Thespian, Renn Yifu ☼Funded by an AIR grant by Linden Endowment for the Arts arranged by Juliette Surrealdreaming ☼ Editing of machinima by Wizardoz Chrome ☼ Soundtrack of machinima Brando Lupi - Egg Shaped "This will be My Monument: A Cube, A Museum, An Egg, A Thank you for All the Fish" Art Blue ►http://imgur.com/a/Yu5sN ►https://www.facebook.com/biennale.san... ►http://santorinibiennale.gr/2016/part... ►https://www.facebook.com/events/74681...

What will we say - Luca Sofri - Wittgenstein - Ilpost.it

 Luca Sofri 

Wittgenstein 

Ilpost.it

What will we say

9 December 2020

In her passionate and admirable discourse today on the commitment to protect oneself from contagion, Angela Merkel used at some point an ancient rhetorical formulation to which we are no longer accustomed. It is interesting, because the problem with solemn rhetorical formulas is that over time they lose meaning and become empty, even not tolerable. Instead, this is so out of our way of thinking, that it now sounds with an extraordinary and very concrete meaning, as if it had resurfaced from a distant memory.

What will we say when we look back?

It’s a wonderful, moving question. It sounds familiar, a rhetorical expression often heard, and yet we realize that we no longer hear it: we have often heard it in certain documentaries, perhaps, or in certain biographical films. In some history books, who knows. But no political leader or speaker says it anymore.

Because no one thinks about looking forward anymore, when you look back.

No one judges any more the nonsense, the volatility, the laziness, the whims, the sterility of each of our days, with the ability to detach and look at them from a distance. As we said yesterday, imagine judging the energies and the commitment and the stress spent this year, last year, in the last five years, six years ago, in the things we spent them on. Imagine someone coming from that time and asking us "was it worth it? was it really important? what did we get, then?". And who remembers, with all the Facebook posts we have to be indignant about every day.

Of course, good things happen and each of us has his own, private or public: and some may even be proud of it. But how are the days going by - the weeks, the months, the years - our politics, our public debate, our commitment, the history of this country that we have been accustomed to think of as progress so far? What are we building, what have we built? How long will it remain, what will it have grown? Does it concern us?

What will we say when we look back?

Nice sentence. Mark it, speechwriters.

https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/12/09/cosa-diremo/

SunriseSam photos

 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ufeus/58/51/33

https://www.flickr.com/photos/157219304@N08/

Candid Portraiture

A Photographic Exhibit

August 7th - September 7th 2020

@ Art House KiiWik Sanctuary

"This is an exhibit of photography that is not posed. A few of the photos used a studio type setting. All used controlled lighting but even then ALL photos used an AV’s own AO to catch the motion and expression of the subject.

What is controlled in the initial photograph is...  

What is controlled in the initial photograph is lighting. I chose the windlight setting for each set-up. I also adjust the “time of day” encouraging the shadow and amount of light on each face or image. Most if not all the photos were exterior photos, as when indoors the effects of windlight and time of day will not work.

I then export the more interesting photos into GIMP to edit. Though i’m still learning to edit photos if the original is crap, more than likely the finished product will be crap. Just look at my flikr feed for proof.

All of the photos in this exhibit have been edited in GIMP (free PhotoShop) They are all basic edits, with few effects. Exposure, Contrast, Brightness, Shadow, Saturation. Then a final adjustment in “curves”. Anyone can do this.

The key to Candid Photography is to be patient. You have to wait until the movement and light find the perfect intersection before you click. As most of you know, animations will cycle. If you miss the perfect shot, no worries, you just have to wait until it happens again. It will, just be patient. 

I can’t tell you where or when the photos were taken. 

 have never charged for taking a photo. Each photo taken was immediately uploaded and GIVEN to the subject. I never accept payment for my work. There are so many great photographers in SL who make a living at it. I recommend them. I do this for myself and for my friends.

Every time I take a photo I make a note. if someone objects, I make a note to never shoot them again and delete the photos. I may also ban/block them, so i don’t make the mistake of shooting them again.

A year ago I did not have a clue how to do an SL photo. I was amazed at how easy it was. One person has helped me understand what is possible, FreeFlying Girl (Freja.) I owe what success I have achieved to her for teaching me the basics of GIMP. 

Without Freja, none of this would be possible. Thank you. I now have the obligation to pay it forward, by offering to teach anyone what I have learned. On my time, I will be happy to show you the basics, open the door to you to discover the fun of capturing and editing images.

I welcome your feed back and suggestions. If you ever wish to learn. I would love to point you in the right direction.  

Good Luck

SunriseSam 

-Sam-

99 Complex Things Explained as Briefly as Possible

99 Complex Things Explained as Briefly as Possible https://t.co/9heddyrECH pic.twitter.com/qTY5Amj1VB

— Interesting Engineering (@IntEngineering) June 26, 2020

Free the oppressed - Luca Sofri

WITTGENSTEIN

Luca Sofri

7 June 2020

People of good will, occasionally raise their heads to see where the overall result is of the work of improving cohabitation, of the effectiveness of the functioning of communities, of the quality of relationships and of the civil lives in which they feel they are committed, in one way or another; but those people are immediately tempted to go back to keeping it low on their space, their head, these days. I happen to speak with some who sincerely have at heart larger common goods, and even those who are not scorned and lazy have however almost always convinced that these are times, precisely, to build small good things, giving up on the greater ambitions that models can extend and prevail: it throws up a completely different, bad air, if you raise your head and look a little further, they say. And to do so is likely to suggest an impression of sterility of the things you do, for the disproportion of results.


Trying to improve the world can be a means or an end, and it’s actually both. There are those who do good things in their own small way, hoping that they will be a precious piece of common work that improves the world, and that is their ambition: a better world to look at and be happy and satisfied with. There are those who do good things that try to improve the world hoping that these have repercussions on the lives of many (and therefore of all), on the pieces, on their own child. The biggest disincentive of these times is the feeling that participation in this commitment is not extended enough, and that it is diminished and discouraged by those - leaders, representatives of relevant and authoritative institutions, Ruling classes - who should instead be inspirers and multipliers. They try to empty a lake with a bucket, and meanwhile the pumps remain stationary along the shore.


The absence from the Italian progressive political offer of any promising alternative proposal to the current swamp - I speak of support for a government led by opponents, and the absolute design silence - is an example of this, spectacular, but I will not reduce this reflection of Sunday to these little things. We should look beyond that.


Little can be seen beyond. We have all been absorbed by the spirit of the millennium, the limited horizons. We spend our days writing controversial handfuls of words about this or that social network, signing online petitions to watch the numbers grow, to claim declarations of belonging with what we read or watch, to exhibit "resistances" that sound failures, to please us with volatile stage victories, and so go the days. Of course, many do precious and useful things, but as I said at the beginning their result seems to apply to limited areas: Indian reserves of different scales of common good and awareness of the common good. The dominant thought is another, the cultural hegemony today is of a selfish, resentful and warlike culture.


Shall I give another example of local smallness? Among the twenty best-selling Italian newspapers only two are left-wing, and are respectively of Fiat and the bishops. Or take a look at the properties and proposals of television, then. Mass media.


Progressive thinking is minority and defeated, and in order to understand whether it will recover one would have to understand what progressive thinking is in 2020. I think it’s a bit the things I had written at a certain point here, but today above all it’s any search for a way to defeat - defeat, not "resist" - the dominant thought retrograde and divisive "populism", sovereignisms and various companies. Which is a thought essentially fueled by one thing: ignorance.


The winning "populism" is the thing that has eradicated the idea of "good of the people" of the leftists and has done another thing, easier and more fraudulent. The way in which the progressives have always thought about the good of the people is to give people kept away from education, culture, awareness, the same opportunities and opportunities to possess them that the privileged elites have. I will not be the thousandth who will say to go and reread Don Milani, although it is true that then no one ever goes there: The poverty of the poor is not measured on bread, at home, in heat. It measures the degree of culture and social function».
Or, in a summary by Michele Serra:

"Knowing is a privilege and the deepest discrimination is cultural. As Don Milani said, the master is master because he knows a thousand words, while the worker a hundred. Ignorance is subalternity, although unfortunately today the subalternity is almost claimed."

This idea is very up-to-date today, even if it must be adapted to a society in which the great part of ignorance is no longer produced by a lack of access to education, information, culture, but by a usurpation of their space by an informative and cultural offer of poor quality and inadequate education and with little means and ideas. Goffredo Fofi had said this well, instead, a few years ago, in a book that - this yes - I dare to tell anyone to read:

"But I believe - and I want to insist - that in Italy we must also think of other types of «poor», the oppressed of conscience, all people who live in a condition of moral anomy or material servitude […] It can be used as meat for slaughter not only for the conquest of a territory or the defense of a hypothetical frontier: it is treated as meat for slaughter, whether you like it or not, even in front of a trivial election booth."

Those who are today called "populists" and who seem to me only exploiters and cultivators of ignorance for their own interests of self-promotion and power, have cancelled the progressive ambitions to give everyone the opportunity to know and understand things, and thus to become part of the "power", with a preaching that told and tells those people a deceptive and bankrupt shortcut: you do not need tools nor opportunities, you go well so. You are right, as a people, as yourselves. And if you fail, it is someone else’s fault, and you must be angry: do not understand. Populism cultivates the ignorance of people and uses them just as the aristocracy of the past did. And the oppressed of today - the "oppressed of conscience" - are the victims of lying information and mediocre cultural models, promoted by newspapers, books, television programs, music, influencers, or so on.
Again Fofi, in an article on the Unity of 2010, criticizing the indolence of progressive intellectuals.

"The gray area should be awakened and recovered to a left culture. But if this culture is dead and buried? All that remains is to wait for her to wake up alone, or for there to be small minorities who know how to turn to the less addicted and anesthetized within her. For example, to the youngest, and the «pedagogical project» of these few refractory and non-acceptant should be to snatch from the majority sleepwalking at least a part of their children and grandchildren. Obviously, thinking and studying, to propose an adequate idea of the world and the future, which means reconstructing a body of ideas of the left, which will happen only if you give up to please the mass and you will even agree to displease it for a long time. Indicating the true and the right, especially in Italy after thirty years of yields and corruptions of all kinds, will not be easy, and will not bring much «consent» for a long time."

This, even today, is a progressive thought and project: to work on the long to create informed, curious, aware people, who improve the world and the world improves them. And to create a society where individual ignorance is not rewarded to the detriment of communities. Thank goodness there are many who work there, without representation. To love them, to people, and to want their good. And to thin the basin of ignorance and lies instrumentally nourished by the worst winning of these years. It will take some time.

https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/06/07/liberare-gli-oppressi/

football, dance and info IN MILANO - video in Second Life

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Miramare/124/137/26 

MUSIC BY LoveFine

 thanks to https://icons8.com/

There’s nothing to do with social networks - Luca Sofri - wittgenstein - ilpost.it

wittgenstein

Luca Sofri

ilpost.it

As several people have noted, the discussion as to whether Facebook and Twitter and Google should be considered ¿editori ¿. doesn’t make sense for a long time. The temptation of our heads to convert what is new to known models is normal and understandable, but it generates failures and contradictions: probably someone, when it came to regulating the traffic of the first cars, It was questioned whether they should be considered carriages or ships, before it was finally understood that they were neither carriages nor ships, and that they were also both.

"Platforms" are not publishers but they are not non-publishers either: they are very different from publishers as we are used to imagining them, but they are not neutral and intervene on the contents they host and their diffusion in many ways, just as publishers do . Censoring content for different reasons, encouraging others, and promoting with the notorious algorithms this compared to that, that is establishing in fact what we read and what we don't. The neutrality of social networks is a fake and Zuckerberg's phrase about "not being able to be arbiters of the truth" is a hypocrisy contradicted by the thousand Facebook announcements of recent years on this or that social network intervention against fake news (including enlist third-party “arbiters of truth”, chosen by Facebook, arbiter of truth arbiters).

Recognizing this power to Facebook or Twitter and its exercise in fact naturally generates a mountain of problems: of responsibility first of all, but above all of inconsistency, and weights and measures. The case of Twitter and Trump is interesting: the intervention on Trump wants to limit the spread of false information that generates a great danger for society in the course of its democratic mechanism. If we decide that Twitter doesn’t have to because it doesn’t decide what Twitter is fake, then why didn’t we protest when Twitter announced that it would report false news about the coronavirus? And if we decide that Twitter doesn’t have to because it doesn’t decide what’s dangerous on Twitter, then why don’t we protest when Twitter blocks or censors persecution and personal harassment?

I’m saying what’s right and what’s wrong in all this? Or is Twitter or Trump right? No, for one simple reason: that it is impossible to say. It has become impossible. The criteria of right and wrong, compared to the rules we were used to, have skipped, as far as the big online platforms are concerned. The simplest answer, for example, would be that Twitter and Facebook and Google are private enterprises and completely in their right ( except violations of the law, of course ( in making editorial or commercial choices: they are not a public service, we citizens do not pay taxes for a service of which we are defrauded, the choice whether to use or not to use them is free, the contractual conditions are known.

And yet.

And yet they have become an unavoidable service in fact, because they act in a monopoly regime, legal but blackmail. You can’t help it, in fact, because there are no alternatives. And, to make matters worse, they are monopolies that owe their success to their own monopoly condition. Many say that the problem would not exist if there were a hundred social networks to choose from: but there may not be a hundred social networks to choose from because the quality and effectiveness of a social network (or search engine) It is precisely because of its ability to be used by everyone and to collect the information of all: it is the nature of the social network, unlike an electricity supplier or I know that it can be competitive even only with the convenience and quality of supply. Even if I only use it.

The further nuances, the examples, the contradictions, the comparisons, can still be many, in a debate that is also compelling for the scenarios and questions that it poses, for a couple of decades. But the synthesis is only one: everything has been skipped, and these contradictions are no longer resolved with a thought and criteria of the twentieth century, and probably they are not resolved in any way, least of all with the ingenuous. No rule, precedent or comparison fits any more and they will always be all wrong and all right: and we hope that this does not extend to everything else.

https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/05/30/non-ce-niente-da-fare-coi-social-network/

hypergrid