Amanda Crisp

Were you referring to the heritage largely perpetrated by Hollywood and Washington DC, or the real ones? I was born and raised in Western America (cowgirl country), the ‘Murika I see so derided in the global media has very little to do with how I grew up. Neither did the pop culture depictions of our military match my experiences in Africa, Latin America and the Balkans. I earned my PTSD trying to identify which religious/political zealots filled various mass graves (in countries with histories much older than mine) and my objective now is to live quietly and pretend to be as sane as possible 🙂 Frequently, I fail. The globe seems to generally be a messed-up place. America is a mishmash and experiences will vary wildly from Urban to Rural. Thats about the best you can do with so many nationalities, belief systems and agendas under one roof. If you look at how rapidly the former Soviet Empire blew apart (also ethnically diverse and lacking a unifying identity that was *real* to its Non-Great-Russians) you see how fragile such things are. Its impossible to accurately generalize about “America” due to its size, just as it was erroneous to generalize about “Soviets” back then or “Europeans” now. But people on all sides will anyway 🙂 Othering seems to be universal. Still, I am an American by nationality and I have deep affection for my Home. Home = “the people I grew up around and know personally.” I am a child of Rural America; I do the best I can to understand City Folks - but at least I’m polite to them.

I have no issues letting the Market Decide. Personally, my hair color rarely varies so I don’t need the fatpack. My mouse-brown locks are considerably cheaper than 1K, so I keep a variety of styles 🙂 So, people will vote with their pocketbooks.

My thought is that if your landlord is unresponsive, you need a new landlord. There are plenty of rentals in Sl with active, engaged staff.

Lacking “objective” statistics, I can offer an opinion :-) I think SL has a huge population of people (like me); fifty-somethings presenting as 20-somethings...... I base that on several factors; (a) - I can go anywhere in SL and find people who “get” my “sometimes obscure” 70’s & 80’s pop culture references. (b) - I continually run into people who dress and behave in a manner that indicates how younger people are portrayed in Media and not so much hw they dress and act in RL (c) - I keep running into people whose approach to contemporary social issues is from a very non-contemporary direction Having said that; I have no problem with it whatsoever. I think its actually GOOD for people to mix and mingle intergenerationally, recapture their youth where possible, and be happy with their virtual selves. In RL, I deal with a brain injury that hampers me slightly. Speaking is sometimes chancy, I have days where walking is an adventure (mostly its not). Here in SL, I can communicate as well as I want (given my typing skills) and can not only WALK but I can Fly and/or Teleport. I don’t begrudge anyone “pixel youth”; I enjoy mine.

Like many others, I react to “all caps” as shouting in both SL and on text messengers. I try to not be obnoxious about it; some people get in the habit of using all-caps at RL work and just plain forget, others have visual disabilities and need that little bit of help to perceive whats typed. But yes, when someone IMs me in all-caps, my visceral response is; “Why are you yelling at me?”

I have a habit of muting and de-rendering people who bring 1st Life obnoxiousness into SL, so when I encounter it -it only bothers me for about 3 seconds.

Well, based on the human penchant for self-destruction; the odds may have gotten worse. Sadly.

Heh, well I have been on the Recieving end of some Voice users hilarity for not joining in when I was having a very bad “speech day” - so probably part of my dislike of voice-client-priority in some things stems from that. I can cope on the radio at work because I’m largely using phrases I have rehearsed a thousand times (and my co-workers can decipher my drunkspeak when I’m tired or stressed). I -know- that voice is considered a boon To the average user, but it can also be frustrating when someone inworld ignores your text for an hour (standing next to you) and their first response after that is “sorry, I was in skype with friends”. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like a social underclass if voice is not an option, so I remind myself that -I- am the one with a problem. I would not wish others to have to deal with that issue, so I find ways to cope 🙂

Formal group chat and Ad Hoc groups have both been dodgy lately. SL needs better built in chat tech. If we had that, I would use the SL client exclusively.

I think it might be good to remember that SL is experiencing a lot of returnees lately, so requests for assistance are likely peaking. Fewer staff, work-from-home, increase in support tickets = longer waits.

BTW, the “like being in an Apollo capsule with a pilot who has no filter” quote is a slightly cleaned up comment from one of my recent trainees. His version was more fun, but we have Forum Monitors I need to watch my language around 🙂

So where I work, I spend most of my time in a control room that looks like something from the Expanse or some sci-fi version of NASA. Actually, I’m “working there again” as we lost several key people before CV19 - so I’m doing my old job at my “promoted” rate and hoping accounting does not get any bright ideas. So, for almost a year, many of our semi-secure/frequently-accessed systems have been added to biometric keying - mostly facial recognition. Yesterday, the day those systems were “certified” as fully-implemented, none of them were working. Thats what happens when your facial-recognition encounters an environment where everyone is wearing a mask 🙂 ((My two acolytes sit at stations within 6’ of my left and right, mainly so they can keep track of how often I make rude gestures at my screens. For them, its a little bit like being in an Apollo space capsule with a pilot who has no Filter)) I enjoy seeing the Machine get that little poke-in-the-eye for some reason...... It gives me joy 🙂

If only in my own opinion, I’ll always be Keen 🙂

Ya know....if “Underground” became available as a last name..... “Velvet” would have a short life as an unclaimed first name. Heck, I’m not inworld right now due to worky, it might already be. If not....I’m just waiting for my chance to become Velvet Underground 🙂 ((You chronologically-early Residents - like me - probably get the reference))

I *was* Amandakeen Resident, now Amanda Crisp. My display name will remain Amanda Keen inworld. My internet domain and personal email are kinda based on “Keen” ”Crisp” is a good description of me after a day at the beach though.

Since I’m one with “questionable” ability to speak (I sound kinda drunk due to some drain brammage) and rely on text a lot - that skeers me 🙂

I tend to be People-Focused by nature and professionally as well, so a lot of what I’ve observed has related to the specifics of people under pressure at work. The upside is that several people who are not Formal leaders in our organization have stepped up and done remarkable things to keep Essential stuffs flowing Safely. Conversely, some highly educated “Formal” leaders have - in some cases - failed to lead and take care of their people. My hope is that the next round of compensation & promotion will (if I have any influence on the matter) reflect “reality” more so than “who games the Boss best”. Someone once said that “Adversity does not build character; it can only reveal it”. If this CV19 learning benefits the ones who have gone out there and made a difference for us; we might actually become a better organization. Not really SL related, but it might make some feel better that people pay attention to that stuff 🙂

Being someplace other than “work” or “sleep” or “commute”.

Lindal, as the result of my long-ago brain-injury I had to do some extensive retraining on “how to safely swallow liquids and soft foods”. I had to word that carefully so *some* of us could not easily have fun with it 🙂 I’m so sorry you lost your parents that way. For many who’ve had strokes or other brain-injuries, it’s something that has to be guarded against. My physical therapist told me (to encourage me) that “unless you do better, that Diet Sunkist might be the end of you”. I quite hated her right then, but she did her job well.

Tolya, I agree about automation radically increasing and there being consequences related to that. What I would gently add is that I only know of two people personally who have stopped working, rather than be a Mandatory Essential Worker. Both of them did it out of fear and not for the $$$. They were older people with underlying health conditions, but the company they work for was not giving them much option other than to “brave the Petri Dish” and come to work. I’m lucky; my employer offered our workforce the chance to work Overtime (a mixed blessing for me) in order to allow our few High Risk team members to shift to a work-from-home job. That means fewer hands physically present to do on-site operations & longer hours for some of us, but also that we retained some older and very-skilled friends. None of us have left the organization and I’m forced to admit that I am just a little bit pleased to work for people who saw us as Assets and not as just Expendables.

Molly, we’ve struggled with that where I work. The real choke-point has been getting the truckers here on time and part of that has been checkpoint-stops. Some of those folks have really put themselves out-there to meet schedule to supply Essential Industry. I will never disrespect a Trucker again as long as I live.

Gadget, I think cash is doomed. Locally in my little Southern US town its hard to find a business that WANTS cash right now. They want your credit/debit card and they want to sanitize it before scanning it 🙂 Where this will get sticky is the “I don’t trust banks” crowd, which is at least 50% economically-disadvantaged Urban in its makeup. There is a belief that The Man is watching your banking (who knows, he probably is?) and will use that information against you.

Gadget, I’m a working “Essential Worker”. We have many tasks that *could* be automated, but that would be either too costly or has been pushed back-against politically or by Organized Labor. Every job we automate is “one less for a Taxpayer/Voter or dues-paying Union member”, so such things get complicated. Personally, I work in a control room that looks like something from the Expanse - but I’m that “Human In The Loop” you keep hearing about 🙂

OK, this might be a long one as I and my co-workers were discussing this very thing earlier. I see CV19 as an event that will have similar impact to the Great Depression or the Second World War. I’m a little older in my years than some, so I had people who lived through the Depression involved in my (Early) daily life and the Grandparents who raised me lived through WW2 (my Grandfather was a Pacific veteran). My experience was that both events made indelible impressions on those who lived through them. Widespread food-scarcity, poverty and the lingering-but-intangible possibility of death *changed* people in ways that those who didn’t have those experiences found odd. I grew up with some SERIOUS lectures (and a few paddlings) related to not wasting food or money. I was indoctrinated from the cradle in two almost contradictory ideas; (1) its expected that we will help each other out because we have had to do-without ourselves and (2) If you have something valuable (Food stocks, kerosene, spare tires) - don’t advertise it because if things get short, other people or the government may try to take it. So I see these things changing; Mass Gatherings will Radically Decrease I fear that the movie theatre will become a thing of the past unless its structure and format change radically. They are too hard to clean (just remember what the sticky-floors looked like) and frankly, sitting in the dark people might feel free of peer pressure and engage in at-risk behavior. Concert and sporting venues will have to re-imagine how the seat people, as “six-foot-clearance” ingrains itself into the public psyche. That means fewer people in the venue unless they do something creative with “booth” seating to at least isolate people into smaller separate groups (and figure some way to get them in and out without mass exposure). I’m really seeing a large scale “fear of crowds” evolving that will change how we gather, consume entertainment, vote and do many things. Population Movement Will Get Slower I think globally, we’ll see a push towards more medical checks to cross borders out of a fear of disease. The jet aircraft is a transportation miracle, but it can also transport infected/undetected people into healthy populations rapidly. Maybe this will include “preflight isolation periods” and medical testing. Unfortunately, I also see “reversals” many places where borders are currently open. CV19 travels on foot just as easily as aboard a jet and densely populated countries (especially those with aging populations) would want to prevent another mass sickness. Also globally, I would almost expect to see an effort to reduce the human birth-rate so as to “distance” the global population and place less strain on available resources globing-forward if/when we have another outbreak. Social Safety Nets Will Be Forced To Improve The economic impact of CV19 and the idling of many businesses, coupled with the costs of medical care, will push towards structural changes in how we provide for our populations. We may see the advent of “Living Stipends” and a drive towards Universal Healthcare in places that might not have considered them a decade ago. This would probably be coupled with education initiatives to prepare more workers for the technological workplace, as manual-labor type jobs that concentrate workers will be increasingly automated and throw low-educated workforces onto social safety nets. We will also struggle with how to pay for it all. The Rise of the Machines Even more so than today, Automation will drive a reduction in concentrations of manufacturing workers. This in turn will drive both education and population mitigation initiatives as we will have a burning need to make sure that the next generation is better able to “work from home/work from safety” and that mass, manual labor groupings become scarcer. The Map May Change We may see new political alliances form and old ones fall apart. Fearful of a neighbor’s perceived “lack of preparedness” we may also see national power-grabs take place under the ruse of “making the world safer”. This may take the form of a New Colonialism or something darker unless we can step back from the old grudges and power-politics of the past. We Will Finally Get VR Driven by the need to entertain, meet and work at a distance - Virtual Reality will become a Thing. Amanda Keen will look very much younger and hotter in VR. We Will Remember Who Got Us Through This (Briefly) Nurses, Doctors, Farmers, Essential Factory Workers and all Other Essentials will have about 5 years of recognition coming to them (unfortunately human gratitude last about 5 years). My hope is that everyone who has done the risky (and often menial) tasks that keep civilization afloat will be treated well by everyone else as we move forward. I also hope that we never again allow ourselves to Look Down on people engaged in Service occupations (waitresses, nursing-home staff, Caretakers, janitors, cooks, truckers, pharmacists, storekeepers, factory workers, medical professionals, law enforcement, military, etc) because they will be the ones called upon to serve and make sacrifices during the next Outbreak. This Will Happen Again I just hope that when it does, we’ve prepared ourselves. This is the wake-up call, not the final curtain.