#SecondLife is not a game. It's a canvas. 🎨

A screenshot of the "Happy Rez Day" email that I received from Linden Lab a couple days ago, on March 23, commemorating my twenty-one years in Second Life: "Erik, it's your 21st Rez Day! Second Life is fun, weird, and always evolving, but the magic ingredient is YOU. The vibrant worlds you build and the sense of community you provide for others is simply priceless. Here's to another year of imagination and experiencing the impossible. -The Second Life Team" The email then lists a few "milestones" to let me know that I visited 662 different regions over the course of the past year, teleported 640 times, and at one point logged in (and out) every day for nine days in a row. The email also mentions that the average Resident visited 87 different regions, with 220 teleports, and had a daily log-in streak of three days in a row.

I can't believe it's actually been 21 years (and a couple days) since I first joined #SecondLife, way back on March 23, 2005. 🦊 This virtual world is not without its challenges, of course, but it's still an amazing place (with amazing people) that keeps me coming back over two decades later. #RezDay

Can you tell me who I might cry for, when tomorrow becomes today? Who will I miss, when the sunrise casts a shadow on a world with one life less to light my way? #poetry #micropoetry

Thank you! 🦊🧡 It's been fun to experiment and try different ways to combine images (and play with various filters too). So many possibilities! I definitely need to get back into video and maybe attempt to incorporate some of this into that medium as well.

An image from Second Life that shows a partially obscured night sky, stars competing with clouds that seem like they were painted on, in all the colors of the rainbow. The clouds' colors form different areas, a gradient that shifts from one part of the sky to the next. Some of the clouds in the lower half of the image (in purple, red, orange, yellow, and green) have a rougher and grainier appearance, as though they could almost represent an aerial view of a world's terrain instead of just its sky, clouds becoming multicolored mountains from a distance.

Sometimes, when you look up at the sky, you might see your dreams looking back.

(Shot in #SecondLife as four separate photos, each with a different EEP Sky setting, then layered together and edited with @gimpofficial.bsky.social)

Thank you! 🙏 Opening paragraph of the Wired story is... something else. 😬🤨 Will be interesting to see if the magazine issues a statement/apology.

Still wondering about that Vox piece (if only to ascertain whether the writer has a history of questionable journalism). I might have to do some digging.

Silicon Valley’s very masculine year Ravenous, carnivorous, and totally yoked: How men in tech have evolved.

I can (un)fortunately read neither article, since I don't have subscriptions to the respective websites, but I looked up the writer of the piece you linked and found this, also by them: www.vox.com/technology/2... Kinda curious (in spite of myself) to know if and how it relates, based on the titles.

An image from Second Life, composed of three snapshots taken from the same angle (but using different lighting settings and capture modes) that I then layered together and edited in GIMP. The image shows a set of train tracks cutting through a forest, with rocks and hilly terrain on either side. The tracks lead straight up the middle, going from the bottom of the frame until they curve out of sight in the distance. The entire scene has an ethereal, dreamlike quality: The forest is gently veiled by a bluish fog that makes the trees in the foreground seem to glow, and across part of the train tracks is also a large patch of luminescent grass. Above the horizon, the sky is almost completely white, with the world appearing to end at the forest's edges.

All I can do is to try to move forward. I might not know where I'm going, but I'll know who I am when I get there.

(Shot in #SecondLife and edited with @gimpofficial.bsky.social)

Thinking a lot lately about all the things in #SecondLife that we as longtime Residents overlook and "forgive" mainly because we're so used to them, forgetting how off-putting they might be to people who aren't as familiar with SL and its idiosyncrasies. It's no wonder so few new users stick around.

Haute & Freddy - Dance The Pain Away YouTube video by Haute & Freddy

Just discovered the phenomenal #Haute&Freddy this afternoon, thanks to @lokieliot.bsky.social playing the group's new song "Dance The Pain Away" during his DJ set at The Vortex club in #SecondLife. Officially obsessed with the music video too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BhJ...

I strongly suspect that the (cis) people who complain the loudest about being asked to use a trans person's preferred pronouns are also the same people who would be the most personally offended at being misgendered themselves. #transphobia #LGBTQ

10 Things Euphoria's Hunter Schafer Can't Live Without | GQ YouTube video by GQ

Apparently I've been living under a rock, because even though I'd heard of #HunterSchafer before, I knew almost nothing about her or her career until today. 🏳️‍⚧️ I love this interview with her: youtu.be/NmlKeMyXpCU Just sad to see so many trolls in the comment replies, "correcting" her pronouns. #LGBTQ

Another example is the broken default environment setting on mainland regions, leaving us in what feels like a years-long solar eclipse: feedback.secondlife.com/bug-reports/... It's been this way since EEP first rolled out in 2020. How is this still not fixed? @philiprosedale.bsky.social #SecondLife

A browser screenshot showing part of the "Linden Lab Official:New Linden Homes 2019" page on the official Second Life wiki: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:New_Linden_Homes_2019 Throughout the page are error messages instead of images, stating: "Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination"

A browser screenshot showing part of the "Good Building Practices" page on the official Second Life wiki: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Good_Building_Practices Throughout the page are error messages instead of images, stating: "Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination"

It sometimes feels like @lindenlab.bsky.social is asleep at the wheel lately. 😕 Case in point: Images on the official #SecondLife wiki have been broken for a month and a half. No fix yet, and no acknowledgment of this ongoing issue: feedback.secondlife.com/web-bugs/p/e... @philiprosedale.bsky.social

I am invisible / Hiding distress in plain sight / Tormented in secret, within mind / But play at peace before the crowd. #poetry #micropoetry

This is not a slight against allies. We wouldn't survive without them. 🧡 Still: I think it's extremely difficult (maybe impossible) for straight, cisgender people to truly understand what it feels like to live in a world where your gender identity or sexuality (or both) do not match the norm. #LGBTQ

The Naked And Famous - The Runners (Lyric Video) YouTube video by NakedFamousVEVO

Still one of my favorite songs ever: "The Runners" by #TheNakedandFamous

music.youtube.com/watch?v=jLuv... #music

First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition Ninety-four percent of participants in a new study stood firm in their trans identity after five years, and "detransitioning" is rare.

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality.

And trans lives are grounded in reality.

We see y'all. No matter what.

www.popsci.com/science/tran...

A heavily edited shot from Second Life, composed of several superimposed layers showing the same scene and from the same angle: My humanoid, suit-wearing fox avatar standing in the foreground, my back to the camera, as I look down a dark forest path toward a number of tall trees in the distance. On either side of the path, the ground becomes hilly, gently rising (higher on the left) toward the edges of the frame. Above the trees, at the top of the image, is a small patch of night sky, densely dotted with stars, with a larger red glow in the center. The entire image feels somewhat "unreal" and dreamlike, with parallel streaks of green following the contours of the terrain horizontally across the image; the ground is also flecked with subtle shades of purple and blue, contrasting with the sharpness of the grass, and the trees in the distance are capped by an unnatural blue glow. Around my avatar is a ghostly outline, the result of my stance shifting slightly in between each shot, so that there is a faint suggestion of me looking in multiple directions at once.

Do I know who I am? I know where I've been, but that's not the same thing. Or is it?

What have I been searching for? What if it's not there to find? What if, in all my wandering, I've learned nothing more than that I'll always feel lost?

(Shot in #SecondLife and edited with @gimp.org.web.brid.gy)

A video I recorded for @reversebutcher.bsky.social ’s art show taking place currently in Ballarat, Australia.

#art #vr #secondlife #immersivism #vrchat

I’m finding everything very difficult at the moment. I’m sure loads of us are. I don’t think we’re designed to take so much stress and existential anxiety piled upon us every day.

From the AskReddit community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the AskReddit community

Some really interesting comments here: www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/... We often forget that so many things have changed, and changed radically, in just the span of a few decades. We have the world at our fingertips, but at the price of losing what it felt like to be unplugged. #life

A transgender pride flag at night, being illuminated by a nearby light source. This is the flag pole near Castro Street in San Francisco.

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is a day set aside on the 20th of November every year to honor those lost due to anti-transgender violence.

This is a day for mourning our loses, and a day to rededicate ourselves to the fight against anti-trans hatred. #TDoR2025 🧵

Yesterday I watched, horrified, as a Computer Science grad student proceeded to repeatedly copy + paste a fairly short script into ChatGPT, asking the LLM what the code was doing and how to modify it for an assignment. Not once did the student try to examine or figure out the code themself. 🤨🫠😑

A screenshot of an extremely enthusiastic and emoji-filled text from Chipotle, received by me at 11:13 am on October 30, 2025, the day before Halloween: 🚨👻 ATTENTION ALL CREATURES OF THE NIGHT 🌑 THE BOORITO PROPHECY is UPON US 🔮 🎃🔥On Halloween 10/31 🌯 CHIPOTLE 🌯 is summoning ALL burrito-loving ghouls 🧛‍♂️🧟‍♀️ & Rewards Members 👁️‍🗨️💀 to HAUNT their local restaurant 💃 from 3️⃣PM to CLOSE 🌙🪩 bc… 🥁🥁🥁 🌯💸💀 $6 BURRITOS 💀💸🌯 YES U HEARD THAT RIGHT 😱😱 Show up IN COSTUME 🧛‍♂️🧞‍♀️🕵️🧑‍🎤🧑‍🚀🤖 (aka ur most unholy drip 😈), summon ur coven lol 🧙‍♀️, and get ur BOORITO 🌯👻🎃 before it VANISHES 🌫️ into the night 🌚✨ PS our lawyers 🥱 said to tell u text STOP2quit HELP4help

I haven't been to Chipotle in ages, but apparently they still have my number. 📲 ⬇️

I feel like their #marketing team just wanted to see how many emojis they could fit in a single message. 😯🤯 Either that, or someone ate all of the #Halloween candy before hitting send.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

I miss Radio Shack (and Fry's Electronics too). I also just miss that era of tech, before enshittification and before AI, when computers and the Internet felt a lot more empowering, a new frontier to explore, not a corporate minefield of privacy nightmares to contend with.

Thank goodness for Linux.

I wonder which way the world goes when the wild whispers weaken, wondrous wishes left wanting and withdrawn, wasted in worries that warn and wound and wither, as the wise wear winter on their minds.

#poetry #micropoetry

New Furry Cinema Showcase (18+) BLFC 2025 Furry film from within. :3 Curated by Auryn (director of _Rukus_, 2018 SXSW selection and one organizer of _Room Party: Furry Art at the Beginning of the World_) and moderated by Pory (director of _F...

If you're at BLFC, come check out this screening curated by @poryout.bsky.social and I, with films by @flausch.bsky.social @sparklecats2009.bsky.social @mayabendavid.bsky.social @averycutedog.bsky.social @rainstormsky.com @dozzy.bsky.social @sournoodl.bsky.social @emowolf.bsky.social - Q+A after!