SP Board Meeting, Monday July 20, 2015

The Second Pride bylaws require the organization to have the public Annual General Meeting (AGM) on the Saturday following the “Second Pride Festival”. Due to the fact that the said Saturday was the 4th of July the board was unable to hold the meeting because of the Independence Day Holiday.

The board promised to have a public meeting in the week following to set the date for the AGM.

The Board of Directors of Second Pride will now have a public board meeting at the Second Pride Headquarters Conference Hall (SLurl) on Monday July 20, 2015, at 6.30 PM SLT

The proposed agenda of the meeting is as follows:

1. Call To Order: 
2. Set the date for the Annual General Meeting
3. Motion to Adjourn

Nordic Wear Shows Blatant Homophobia

Qx.se, a Swedish LGBT News & Cruising website, today has the following report.

"The Swedish clothing chain Nordic Wear took a strong stance against LGBT people on Monday.

With a new campaign image on their Facebook page they showed how a family consisting of a mother, a father and two children protect themselves from a burst of rainbow colors with an umbrella. The subtitle reads: "Unfortunately, we do not sell umbrellas. But if we had, they would have worked like this!"

The reactions and the complaints about the campaign have been flooding in, and after one day Nordic Wear responded in the following way through their Facebook page: "Wow, what attention we received for our commitment to the nuclear family! Despite being reported almost 70 times for the image and several death threats we will of course not fold down for gay fascists, we believe in democracy and freedom."

Facebook has no plans to remove Nordic Wears picture. One of those who reported the picture for hate content received the following response: "We have examined the photo that you have reported for hate content or hateful symbols and have determined that it does not violate our community rules."

Nordic Wear was founded in 2013 and is a distributor of the German clothing brand Thor Steinar. Thor Steinar is primarily known for its association with right-wing movements in Germany."

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When I checked an hour ago today the picture had, however, been removed with the following statement from the company: "As those of us who work at Nordic Wear have been receiving repeated death threats, we out of respect for our families choose  to take down the high-profile post. All threats and harassment against us will naturally be reported to the police."

No more pink dollars for Nordic Wear or Thor Steinar! If they don't like us, we should spare them the embarrassment of doing business with us.

Read more about the controversy surrounding Thor Steinar here: Wikipedia: Thor Steinar.

I would like to know in what way the LGBT-community poses a threat to the nuclear family.

A Social Experiment

(via J.M.G.)

In a social experiment two guys pretend to be homosexuals in Russia and walk the streets of Moscow holding hands.

The reactions are scary and shows how successful the President of Russia, Vladimir "Little Father" Putin, and his cohorts have been in their "Gay Propaganda"-efforts at focusing the Russian society on homophobia instead of their real problems, such as lack of democracy and criminal activities by the ruling nomenclatura.

After reading some of the violently hateful responses to the video on YouTube, I believe there is valid reason to fear for the two guys safety.

Has There Been A Coup In the Gay Archipelago? (Corrected 2015-07-15) (Updated 2015-07-16)

The Gay Archipelago (GA) is an association of landowners of multiple diverse LGBT/LGBT-friendly sims in SecondLife. They conduct Archipelago-wide events, and welcome LGBT newcomers into SecondLife.

"G Dragon Coup d'etat" by Sui-Kunoichi

The GA is governed by The Owners Group, which consists of the sim owners themselves or their appointed representatives.

Hitherto - i.e. until yesterday - the leaders of the governing body (the GA Lead, the Vice Lead and the PR Lead) have historically always been vetted by and voted upon by the The Owners Group.

According to information from several well informed sources Weylin Vale, the current Lead of GA, announced a meeting on Saturday at 11 PM SLT set to take place only eight hours later on Sunday at 7 AM SLT. (Correction 2015-07-15: This information was incorrect, please see the my later post  Bock in SecondLife; Re:Coup Or Not In the GA?. My sincere apologies to all involved and to my readers.) Update 2015-07-16: Myles Capalini On "Suddenness" & More, where you will find that the date of the meeting was announced early, but not the time.

The purpose of the meeting was purportedly about the upcoming GA SummerFest 2015.

At the meeting yesterday Weylin Vale unexpectedly announced to the owners group that he had appointed the following positions
Vice Lead - Dextrum Boucher

PR Lead - Rico Bluestar,

Treasurer - Chade Dagger,

IT Director - Hiro Dagger-Clemenceau,

Membership Director - To Be Announced and

2015 Festival Director - Caeru Dubrovna.

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As I understand it, this sudden and unexpected deviation from previous procedure by the GA Lead has raised concerns among many sim owners in the GA on the future direction of the organization and whether or not they wish to remain a part of it. 

I will try to keep you updated on further developments as they unfold.

Hair Fair 2015 - July 11-26, 2015

Oh my, do I need another hair? Hell yeah!

Hair Fair 2015 opens today and fashionista/blogger Strawberry Singh can tell you all about it (with links and SLurls to all the place you need to know to target in where to go and what to look at).

Strawberry Singh.com: Siren's Call.

Picture of the Day - 373

"shine on and on.........." by Lara

If you wish to see more of Lara's photography, please visit her Flickr photostream here.

Mitzi's Dilemma

Sorry but this post turned out longer than I had wished, but I hope you will consider reading it and responding anyhow.

A moral dilemma is a situation where: 

1) You are presented with two or more actions, all of which you have the ability to perform.

2) There are moral reasons for you to choose each of the actions.

3) You cannot perform all of the actions and have to choose which action (or actions when there are three or more choices) to perform.

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The background
SecondLife is an immersive 3D virtual reality world that is owned and operated by Linden Lab. In this world people can create one - or more accounts. Once the accounts have been created they can be logged in-world as residents.

The residents can interact with each other in almost every conceivable way and through more than two but less than three of their five senses (the full exceptions being smelling and tasting, whereas "touching" can sort-of be achieved). 

However, apart from breaches of the Terms of Service (ToS) for SecondLife (which all residents have to accept on login) Linden Lab is not a party to and cannot resolve disputes between residents. There are no laws and no judicial system to solve disputes between residents, other than their own personal ethics and morals. 

Introduction of the participants

Mitzi and Barbie have both been residents in SecondLife for eight years. They are acquainted with each other, but have never really had much to do with one another except some friendly interaction at social events.

Mitzi has chosen a life on the sidelines which is mainly concerned with her lover, her family and her friends. Alongside that Mitzi has a passion for gardening and landscaping and is a member of an in-world garden society, "The SecondGarden". Mitzi has a blog where she gives an account of her life and experiences.

Barbie, on the other hand, is a high profiled business woman and entrepreneur and has been involved in a land owning company and many major events and business ventures. She is a well known and respected woman. Barbie also has a blog where she promotes her events and ventures and recounts her life and experiences,

The deal

SecondGarden annually hosts a huge inworld event for it's membership and everyone else who may be interested in participating. Due to the size of the event the society needs more than it's regular sim to organize the event.

At a late date Mitzi learns that the society is having problems acquiring support from it's previous supporters for the use of an additional sim and offers to step in. She starts looking into the problem, but as it all is a strange and new territory for her and time is short. Mitzi therefor comes to think of Barbie, whom she believes must be familiar with similar issues through her previous business and large scale events. 

Mitzi and Barbie have an amicable chat and Barbie agrees to help in renting a sim for the soon upcoming event. They agree on the following:

1. The sim is to be rented for six (6) weeks at L$19,000 per week (4 weeks before the event, 1 week for the event and 1 week for cleanup)

2. The cost of moving the sim prior to and after the event, L$37,500 (both ways).

3. The sim to be delivered as soon as possible. (Barbie assures Mitzi that this should only take a few days.)

Mitzi pays Barbie the full costs of the arrangement, L$151,500, and thanks her profusely for her kind assistance in the matter.

Ensuing events

The sim is not delivered to SecondGarden until some 10-12 days later. This doesn't bother Mitzi too much as she believes that it could be due to some mess up in communications and actions for which Barbie is not solely responsible.

On the last day of the event Mitzi wakes up to find a barrage of emails informing her that the sim she has rented through Barbies kind assistance has been closed and no one can get in. Mitzi tries to get in contact with Barbie to have the issue solved, both on social media and inworld without success. 

When nothing is heard from Barbie during several hours, Mitzi instead contacts the land owning company directly and asks for information about how she can solve the problem.

The company informs her that the rent for the last six days have not been paid (nor for the clean up week). When Mitzi asks if she can solve the issue by paying the arrears (the back rent) and for the coming week on behalf of Barbie, the company kindly acquiesced to let her do so. The sim was opened again immediately afterwards and the closing ceremonies could continue as planned.

When paying the arrears and for the coming week Mitzi sees that the cost is not L$19,000 a week, but L$17,777. This in itself doesn't bother Mitzi as she assumes that Barbie has gotten a better deal than the going rate due to her previous dealings with the company. 

However, Mitzi doesn't feel that it is fair that she should pay for the two weeks twice and asks Barbie to reimburse her for the additional costs of L$35,554.

No reimbursement has been made and Barbie no longer responds to messages from Mitzi on social media or inworld.

The dilemma

Mitzi feels she has two choices in the current situation.

1. To forget all about it and go on with her happy life and avoiding all future contact or dealings with Barbie, after all the amount is really not that substantial and it is mostly her own fault for not having protected her interests better.

2. To write about the incident on her blog and name Barbies name, show the proofs she has collected for her case (transaction records, chat logs etc.) and warn everyone from future business with Barbie, after all the amount is not insignificant and Barbies actions show poor business ethics. 

What do you think Mitzi should do and why?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments.