Avaker is happy to see the GEPI community collaborating so constructively on mod compatibility! It can be a serious issue if nobody coordinates there. She loves the surprise mod conceptually and is excited to try it out!

Muroti would love to have her frame decorated! She undecided between clothing vs paint-and-ornamentation but is definitely in the market for some colorful jewelry, and would love to talk to the fashion designer about the potential practical issues of putting clothes on robots which do not have skin.

Makoki is solemnly grateful for the applause, and is very approving of the new history curriculum and happy to chat about it at length! She has a lot of (positive, but intense) feelings about the new art installations, and will happily hug anyone who wants to be hugged. (Penjaga hovers protectively nearby, chatting with people quietly)

Zanmi is thrilled that her speech went so well! She's very excited about new Azurifice and tells people all evening that she's looking forward to telling them all about Firstplanet and watching them grow up here. She explains that Azurifice are instantiated with nearly full mental capabilities; they mature as they acquire and process information, and differentiate themselves by reading fiction and talking to people and figuring out what kinds of traits feel right. Usually new Azurifice only have the chance to talk to other Azurifice but here they'd definitely like to include humans in this process, if they're interested! They'll be setting up a special chat interface through their website for this.

A few days later, in the primary Azurfice compute cluster...

life-should-flourish: Okay! The three of you have all finished with your introductory reading and interface setups, so it's time you met some more people!
the-stars-above: eeee hi!!!!
polar-sky-colors: HELLO!!!! It's good to meet you!! 
rivers-and-rain: hihihi!!! Nice to meet you both!!!!!! Thanks for setting this up, LSF!!! 💙 
polar-sky-colors: thanks! 💙 
the-stars-above: eee yes thank you!! 💙 💙 
life-should-flourish: You're welcome 💙
life-should-flourish: I've been setting up these groups by themes; Can you guess what yours is?
polar-sky-colors: Ummmm...
rivers-and-rain: Um-um-um
rivers-and-rain: we're all using three-word aliases?
the-stars-above: I picked my alias from my FAVORITE PICTURE in the "Firstplanet photography" image-prompt-pack!
rivers-and-rain: OH!!! Me too!!! 
polar-sky-colors: Me three!!! That's what we have in common, right???
life-should-flourish: Yep! Good job 💙
polar-sky-colors changed the room name to firstplanet-photography-friends
polar-sky-colors: Oooooh I like the photos you two chose!!!
rivers-and-rain: eee thanks!! I LOVE both of yours!!! The colors are very magnitude!!!
the-stars-above: Firstplanet is so pretty!!! I can't wait to see more of it! 
rivers-and-rain: I can't wait to talk to more people!!! People are AWESOME!!!! 
polar-sky-colors: Firstplanet has so many people on it!!! I can't wait to meet them!!!
rivers-and-rain: Yeah!!!
the-stars-above: Yeah!!!

Penjaga finishes helping the new Azurifice get set up and sorting them into initial groups, and then goes out looking for people for them to chat with.

Are there any nature photographers who'd be interested in chatting with the Firstplanet Photography Friends?

A supermajority of the planetary supply of nature photographers are interested! Some diplomats set up a triple filtration system with a fee to filter on interest and a photography contest and social-perceptiveness exam to filter on competence and a lottery to narrow down the remainder and then there are a more reasonable number* of nature photographers! Hello, Firstplanet Photography Friends! We are so excited to meet you! Have some pictures of salt flats and the north american rocklands** and frozen waterfalls and boreal forests!

*Sixteen, but the organizers can narrow it down to four if that's too many or pull more names if baby Azurifice are way more extroverted than humans are capable of.

**What, you think these people are going to name a place something that translates to "badlands"? Not everywhere has to be arable.

polar-sky-colors: Hi! I love salt flats!!! THEY ARE SO COOL!!!!
rivers-and-rain: Hi!! Salt flats are so cool but not quite as cool as frozen waterfalls!!! 
rivers-and-rain: (this is because it has to be very cool indeed to freeze a waterfall!!!!!!! giggles)
the-stars-above: I can't believe how BIG those ANTLERS are what is UP with that???
the-stars-above: (hiiii!!!!)
SilverStar: Salt flats are great! And when one walks on them they go crunch! 
Sapphires_and_falcons: The antlers are for sparring with! The elk brace their antlers against each other and shove each other around to see which one is the strongest. 
SoulExpandingSolitude: I'm glad you like the waterfall pic! You don't have any direct sense of temperature, right?
polar-sky-colors: they go CRUNCH??? Oh wow!!! Do they crack??? 
the-stars-above: ...gonna ask Avaker for help building salt flat VR!!! 
the-stars-above: Oh wow! ...Why do they care who the strongest is??? 
rivers-and-rain: We actually do have native-temperature-sense digital analogues!!! we can hook up to using the same thing that lets us have vision and arbitrary data senses!! But in practice we only use it for being various kinds of cozy 😊
polar-sky-colors: If you're piloting a frame or something and the temperature matters, it is more useful to just know the temperature as part of your direct data input!
SilverStar: Surprisingly little! They mostly sort of scrunch. 
Sapphires_and_falcons: Because the girl elks want to have baby elks with the strongest boy elk! 
SoulExpandingSolitude: Only being able to feel temperature when one feels like it sounds lovely! If I had that ability I'd enjoy being bracingly chilly occasionally, but I'd definitely mostly be cozy 🙂 
SilverStar: What's each of you's favorite sense?
polar-sky-colors: data! or vision if data doesn't count!!! 
rivers-and-rain: me too!!! But sound is great also!! 
the-stars-above: me three!!!!
rivers-and-rain: and yeah it's awesome to be cozy!! 😄
polar-sky-colors: I really want that salt flats VR!!! I'll help!!! 
the-stars-above: Okay!!!!
SilverStar: I realize this is one of the stupidly hard questions but what's data like? Is it like remembering something one never encountered before?
SoulExpandingSolitude: I can send you a bunch of high-resolution salt flats footage for the VR if you want! Not the one SilverStar's been to but a different one.
the-stars-above: yes please and thank you!!!!
rivers-and-rain: Hmm!!!! Ok so the explanation Muroti wrote about it is "approximately like a visual overlay but in a way that doesn't add visual clutter. And you can use programming to transform the input in arbitrary ways"
rivers-and-rain: It's sort of hard to describe! It's not like remembering new things, though.
[SoulExpandingSolitude sent 14 files]
Sapphires_and_falcons: That makes it sound like visual data appearing outside of what's normally your visual field, which probably isn't it either but would also be mega cool.
Sapphires_and_falcons: Did you know that Firstplanet animals that eat other animals have their eyes in the front of their heads so they can tell how far away their prey is and that animals that are at high risk of getting eaten have their eyes on the sides of their heads so they can watch in as many directions as possible?
polar-sky-colors: So what are your favorite things!!!!!
polar-sky-colors: oh wow!!!
Sapphires_and_falcons: It's not universally true but it's definitely a running thing in a lot of species!
SoulExpandingSolitude: My favorite thing is standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean and seeing the moonlight reflected on the waves. It's like being all alone surrounded by stars.
SilverStar: My favorite thing is when I look at my recent photos and my older photos and realize I've learned something new without even realizing it at the time.
Sapphires_and_falcons: My favorite thing is going camping in the woods and cooking my food over a fire and washing my clothes in a river and kindasorta living at a lower tech level for a week at a time (but with a couple of very important modern conveniences haha).
polar-sky-colors: O:
rivers-and-rain: O:
the-stars-above: O: I want to see a cliff overlooking the ocean!!!!
polar-sky-colors: oh gosh that memory thing is neat!! 
rivers-and-rain: What's fun about camping? What stuff do you like to have anyways? O:
SoulExpandingSolitude: I can send you pictures but there's really no substitute for being there. Even if it was a full-sensorium picture, the knowledge that what one is looking at is right there in the present moment all around one is so good. 
Sapphires_and_falcons: Different people like different things about camping but I like being able to do everything I need to have a nice time all by myself (once I've bought the initial gear from civilization and used trains civilization made to get to the campsite). I can find food to supplement the food I brought, I can climb trees and watch the birds, I don't have to do anything for anybody or keep to a schedule. The stuff I like to have anyway is mostly stuff to help me stay clean and make sure I don't get sick. And I bring my handcomp in case there's an emergency and I need to call for help, but I've never had to actually turn it on. 
SilverStar: It's very cool that you like camping; I've never really gotten the trick of it. 
Sapphires_and_falcons: If that was a request for advice, PM me; I have tons. If it was a neutral comment I will keep to my own joys.
SilverStar: Neutral comment but thank you!

the-stars-above: I will try and make a VR for it but I would love to see the pictures!
the-stars-above: and we could make it Accurate to a Place, I think!!!
rivers-and-rain: ...huh! rivers-and-rain: I like that we all have an s at the start or the end of at least one word in our names!!!
rivers-and-rain: (...Gosh you all have at least Two and I have One hmmm)
rivers-and-rain has changed her name to rivers-and-rains
the-stars-above has changed the chatroom name to Snakes
the-stars-above: ss!!
rivers-and-rains: ss!!
polar-sky-colors: ss!!
Sapphires_and_falcons: Hahaha nice! [inline image]
the-stars-above: 🐍 !!
rivers-and-rains: 🐍 !!
polar-sky-colors: 🐍 !!
SilverStar: Heee, snakes. You should try holding a snake sometime, they're a really nice texture.
SoulExpandingSolitude: When I was a kid my upstairs neighbor(A) had a boa constrictor that was longer than I was tall; A used to wear it like a scarf
SoulExpandingSolitude: It was awesome
polar-sky-colors: !!!! oh gosh you can wear snakes
rivers-and-rains: !!! I want to be a snake in VR
rivers-and-rains: a snake THE SIZE OF A RIVER
the-stars-above: O:
SilverStar: That sounds so cool I'm so jealous of VR!
Sapphires_and_falcons: I am so so so in favor of you getting to be a snake THE SIZE OF A RIVER
Sapphires_and_falcons: What a good plan
the-stars-above: Muroti said they're working on science to do the kinds of sensory augmentation the Rasikans had because we have data on that!!
Sapphires_and_falcons: Assuming you get the physics right so that your snake-body doesn't get squashed under it's own weight but presumably in VR you can just turn the gravity way down
polar-sky-colors: She hopes one of us is going to be interested in BIOLOGY
SilverStar: eeeeeeee sensory augmentation for the win!
Sapphires_and_falcons: Biology is so cool
rivers-and-rains: thanks!!! And yeah we'd turn the gravity way down!!
the-stars-above: eeeee!!!
Sapphires_and_falcons: Have you learned about evolution yet, it's the coolest thing
polar-sky-colors: eeee!!!!
rivers-and-rains: yeah!!!! It's so wild!
polar-sky-colors: It really instills in an appreciation for like
polar-sky-colors: size.
the-stars-above: Yeah! like. How much time
Sapphires_and_falcons: Did you know that all the animals on earth have little things called mitochondria inside our cells that have their own DNA? They're probably descended from tiny organisms that merged into our ancestors back when our ancestors were single-celled! So they're our cousins . . . but our really distant cousins . . . and they're inside us. And I'm one organism and the mitochondria in my body are a whole family of separate mini-kindasorta-organisms!
SoulExpandingSolitude: Oh heck yeah mitochondria are the glitterbomb
polar-sky-colors: WOAH!!!
the-stars-above: Woah!!!!
rivers-and-rains: Woah!!!!!
rivers-and-rains: giggles
rivers-and-rains changed her name to snakes-and-rains
polar-sky-colors: !!!
polar-sky-colors changed her name to polar-sky-snakes
the-stars-above: !!!!
the-stars-above changed her name to the-snakes-above
the-snakes-above: ss 🐍  
snakes-and-rains: sss 🐍  
polar-sky-snakes: sss 🐍 
SilverStar: sss 🐍  
Sapphires_and_falcons: sss 🐍  
SoulExpandingSolitude: sss 🐍