Serenity Now

Euthymia is a medical term, and a philosophical one. It refers to the normal state of mind, neither too up or too down, a perfectly balanced humor. Epicureans to refer to a state of cheerfulness, when you don't let things get to you but just keep calm and carry on.These days, when acquaintances bombard you with 'how I'm feeling right now' memes on social media, (remember when people used to keep that stuff in their super secret teenage diary?)  and where politics has everyone's blood pressure at max, not to mention the stresses and strains of health, finances, and family, what could be better than some nice reasonable calmness?

Dings Digital: is everyone there 

Thirza Ember: yes

Dings Digital: Welcome to „Ataraxia - Tranquility as happiness“. It started as a hobby project garden, and then grew beyond that. A smaller version was presented on OpenSim World Fair. We will have a kind of philosophical art walk. It is about the idea of tranquility and its connections to art, science  and the question of what it means to live well. You'll encounter a variety of things, but all are linked by this shared theme.

Dings Digital

Dings Digital: One link is the poem "On the Nature of Things" by the Roman poet Lucretius written around 50 BCE. It is a hymn on the natural world, life and ataraxia - the tranquility of mind. There are countless examples in art and science that were inspired by this poem. We’ve selected a few of them to share on this region. The region was designed by Uta Warbaum and me, and is not intended as instruction, but rather for exploration and enjoyment.

Dings Digital: this mosaic is an ancient source for the idea, somewhere there is the word Euthymia, which is to say: be well, be tranquil

Thirza Ember: history, philosophy, beauty and tranquility all in one place...

Dings Digital: yes, a kind of philosophical art walk...

Tosha's Timbuktu

Timbuktu is a thousand year old frontier town, the southern gateway to the Sahara. A slightly newer, slightly more accessible version of the city was our first destination on Safari this week, the sim of Timbuktu... HG address, as tradition demands, at the end of the post, where it belongs.

The name of the city has been synonymous with the utter limits of the world, an unknowable place in the middle of nowhere, and it's a reputation earned through the centuries, through the writings of people like Ibn Battuta in the 1300s and Leo Africanus two hundred years later. Timbuktu is protected by the port town of Kabara twelve miles to the south, on the Niger River, the chief communications route in this part of the world. Many a disappointed traveler in both ancient and modern times has been turned back at Kabara, adding to the mystique of the city of learning that few outsiders have ever had a chance to see firsthand.

Edinburgh born explorer, scholar, and soldier Alexander Laing is thought to have been the first European to see Timbuktu, hoping to win the 9,000 Franc prize offered by the Société de Géographie to the first non muslim to visit the city and come back with information about it. After a traumatic crossing of the Sahara, he arrived in town in the summer of 1826 and spent some time in the legendary libraries. Weeks later, as he departed the city, he was killed by the men he had paid to protect him, just a few months shy of his thirty-second birthday. 

Less than a year later, Frenchman René Caillié won the prize, bringing back a firsthand account of this almost mythical city of learning and culture. Today, travelers face very similar risks as those first journeyers did. The city has been on the edge of a war zone since about 2012, with the usual mix of tribal interests, global politics, poverty, historic resentment, opportunism, way too many weapons floating about, testosterone and religion all causing havoc to the fabric of the fragile treasures of the town.

For that reason, we're lucky to be able to visit the city virtually, on Craft Grid, thanks to builder Tosha Tyran's sim Timbuktu. It comes alive with NPCs and interpretive boards, making the experience one of the richest in opensim, if you like learning about exotic places. The biggest obstacle for anyone who hasn't teleported to Craft before, is a few clickies to authenticate your avatar. It can be a bit confusing, but no firearms are involved in the process! 

MdM - Rededicated!

 The ribbon was cut today at the rededication ceremony of an old friend, the Museo del Metaverso on Craft Grid, now sporting a brand new look!

In a dark sky, just above the black waters of the sim, the new structure floats like a glass cage, full of movement and color, history and innovation.

Safari Glows

 It's all a question of perspective. Prims have been somewhat overlooked of late so it was a treat to revisit the medium, a sort of historical trip. But with plenty of fantasy thrown in. You learn something every time on Safari, about what works and what doesn't and sometimes something literary. Case in point: Beth Ghostraven found some chandeliers all green and glowy, like cavorite. I didn't even know what that was, but our host Cyberglo Cyberstar was immediately on her wavelength. It's that kind of a place.

The place?   We were visiting LoveGlo castle, a sort of poetic throwback to the beauty of building with prims. Cyberglo constructed the whole place in a day and filled it with legal freebies, hidden passages, caves, and all kinds of surprises. The proper address of the region is at the end of the post, as always.