Orwar

Seeing as Gacha re-sales adds a market value to the product, the gambling aspect is a real thing to some people; there's plenty of MP stores and in-world locations dedicated to re-selling Gacha items, and it's quite common that people gamble on the machine until they have a complete set of a certain colour and then try to sell it for profit (often at a very high price - popular Gacha sets can easily be found listed for L$5,000) - and it's not uncommon that Gacha addicts will spend more than that at a machine in a single session in an attempt to complete their set, hoping to offset their losses by re-selling unwanted items. I think that Gachas are problematic, especially when we've got the whole Lootbox discussion that's actually turning into law in several places around the world, and with LL's own rules on gambling. A game to roll dice even with L$5 per try and a L$10 reward for a double is gambling, but putting L$75 in a machine that spits out an item which's market value can range from L$10 to > L$1,000 isn't?

Sneaks up to Angelina and whispers 'Layering shots'.

I'm not opposed to an update to the profile layout, but you can do quite a lot with it as it is, and I wouldn't want LL to steer their developers towards it before they deliver some other features that we've been promised. ... ... Bakes on mesh.

As far as alphas go, it's easiest to simply wear one full-body alpha rather than layering a bunch of them. I can't recall off the top of my head whether either the Genus heads or Maitreya bodies come with a full alpha, I'm still wearing the one I got with my Catwa head - but finding a full body alpha shouldn't be too difficult. If you want to wear different alphas, you must add them, as wearing them will replace one another.

I don't know if women are 'overly concerned' with their appearance, some certainly are, but I think that it's an aspect of womanhood that's quite exaggerated, much like certain aspects of masculinity are. I do believe that society as a whole put more expectation of a woman's appearance, as in makeup and the like - but in no way do I think that a woman has any easier or harder time living up to the beauty ideals. Also, in RL there are several male fashion designers for female apparel - and plenty of female fashion designers for male apparel. Why would there be any hindrance for this in SL? Also also, I'd argue that because there are fewer male avatars than female avatars in most places in SL at any given time, a male avatar that has been well put together gets a lot of attention. If I just want to go to a club to listen to some music and relax whilst working on something, it's easier to bring my female avi there as it's quick enough to swat off the handful of IMs I get, whereas bringing Orwar to a club I have to bat people off left and right, both men and women.

Well, seeing as the topic itself is to stoop to such a low level of gross generalisation; men tend to be more successful in a competitive market than women due to the exact same reasons that even at the first level of employment they come home with a larger pay check at the end of the month - if you're looking to promote someone, would you pick the guy who've never said no to taking that shift that suddenly needed to be filled, the guy who in the same time frame of employment has distinctly more hours of experience on the job, the guy who doesn't as often call in sick - or the one who values free time more than anything, who never took an extra shift after dealing with the bare minimums required by the employment contract, and whose sick leave is the highest in the work force? It's not about some 'old boy network' or 'the patriarchy'. Again, this is a gross simplification and generalisation, and there are countless cases of women being given positions of power on their own merits. I see what you mean, but it's not always easy to determine and it might be in the interest of the employer to underestimate their employees performance to save money. As far as I understand it, it's illegal here to have an employee where you pay someone X per Y performed, you must give your employees an hourly wage to ensure that they have a stable (and thus, more easily taxable) income - a common 'solution' to this is to give them a terrible wage and then offer them bonuses, such as salespersons being given a cut of each transaction they secure, or even 'outsourcing' production so that instead of being given employment, you're given a contract to produce Z amounts of Y and that you'll receive X per delivery (the Cuban cigar industry comes to mind). Either way, I don't see how such a system would somehow make the market more approachable for women - I suspect that some men and some women would preform better under such a system, and that some men and some women would preform worse than currently (although I would speculate that it would work in many ways the same as the current statistics suggests); how much better or worse it would be, I haven't got any data to go on. The laws were made the way they were simply because when we did allow such systems, the work force was being utterly abused by factory and land owners to maximise profit. Basing one's salary on age (or at least years of experience in their field) and locking it into an hourly wage is a simple and effective way, and ensures that the worker has growth potential even at the same level of employment - in the end you've got to ask who the law should be protecting between the employer and the employee, here it's certainly been in favor of the employee (although to be blunt, the history of the unions and their politics in Sweden is something of a laughing matter).

Forum UI is, once again, being weird - so I can't quote you, @Monique Bellambi. Yes, the Human HUD costs, and I've heard some people say that they've bought it to get into Bloodlines - usually that's not how I do things. If I find someone who expresses an interest in Bloodlines, and I feel as if I care to take them into my family, I'll offer to bite them (or buy them a potion to restore their soul first, if necessary) and buy them the HUD. I'm the one who benefits from having more blood dolls around, after all. If they then want to progress into becoming a vampire later, I'll induct them to vampirism, but buying their own vampire HUD is the first step towards the economical responsibility of the game.

People care about the bottom line which is concluded to '7X cents to the dollar'. True as the bottom line might be, the 'median pay' doesn't say anything about any individual person, or in any way suggest discrimination. Again, I'm not saying that discrimination doesn't exist, it does - and it goes both ways - but to call it a structural problem in society is frankly short-sighted. Compare the median wage, to the median amount of hours worked, and compare in what sectors the work force is dominated by men and in which it's dominated by women. Men work more hours, men work in sectors where they are more likely to suffer injury or death - the last study that I saw stated that the 'wage gap' between men and women were that women were paid 19% less than men at the end of the month, but if you change that to wage per hour, the difference went down to 3.6%. Then look at the work force, how many men continue to work past the age of 65 against how many women do so? Again, men work a longer time, which means that they've accumulated a longer work-life experience, which is a huge factor of what salary an employer is ready to give you; and when they do retire, they've paid more tax and saved more in their retirement funds, which means that they have a larger income throughout their retirement (here, at least - I've got no clue how that works across the pond). Should we arbitrarily lower the hourly wages of men (or raise those of women), or even create 'man taxes', so that men have to work longer so that men and women receive the same end-of-month salary? That doesn't sound like equality to me. If still, somehow, that makes you like me any less, I'm very curious how that works. I'm an economical libertarian, I think that everyone should have equal rights to do their best (regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, or other shenanigans), and that the less government tampering with the market, the better - the whole redistribution of wealth ploy that the socialists here are on about just feels the same way the republicans (in Sweden, anti-monarchists) are simply driven by irrational jealousy (the monarchy is, strictly economically speaking, an income rather than an expense). Were it legal to employ a woman at a distinctly lower wage than a man, why would I ever employ a man? It just doesn't make any sense.

Purses his lips, pondering whether to pull the offended by cultural appropriation card. Not sure, Second Norway had a temple, it may still be there - it wasn't roleplay though, I'm uncertain whether it was just a virtual monument or if there were any pagans around.

I didn't know height was a privilege. In SL, everyone can fly, so, meh? I'm not sure what you're reaching for though, the 'wage gap' isn't a thing as much as 'people can't understand statistics or causality', in SL there are many talented creators of both genders, I don't see why either would be in any way better off than the other due to their genitalia. In societies where there's actual gender segregation, I'm not sure whether any of that bleeds through to SL; since most of them are comparatively underdeveloped they don't tend to have a whole lot of representation in SL. I could be wrong though, but I've never come across a whole lot of Yemenites at least.

Just another selfie. Well, new eyelashes, and I was playing around a little with the Genus HUD's skin materials. Raw shot though!

No. It makes no sense whatsoever in SL.

Apart from Catwa, I have a GA.EG head too. That I've never shown anyone. I didn't much care for how it turned out. T'was an expensive impulse... But you should demo them at least, they might suit your taste better.

When I do static shots, I frequently adjust jewelry to fit the pose, whether it's necklaces or earrings - especially when the head is tilted, it looks weird if earrings hang sideways along with the head rather than downward with gravity. Even so, when I purchase jewelry I (almost) always require a demo for reasons already mentioned; the balance between good draw distances and quality against complexity is quite difficult to get behind - no one wants earrings that collapse and derender from five meters away. I've also seen several necklaces that are 'rigged/designed for X body', then you buy it, and find that it contains a resize script - and isn't actually rigged by any means. It's Second Life, though, the majority of the creators are laymen and it's a competitive market where it's easy to try using fancy expressions to advertise your product, whether you understand what it means or not. Like 'materials enabled' - but they've never ran SL with advanced lighting on and don't understand what it does; even if the entire piece is metal, a blank white texture as a shadow map is going to look absolutely terrible. There's one creator, and I shan't name names on the forums, but they're pretty big - but I've tried to tell them several times that their materials are completely insane, and that it's impossible to use their products for photoshoots, or even wearing in public, due to how their black metal textures come off as completely light gray to white whenever there's a light source nearby.