Nika Talaj

I agree. "I feel... Love! All around here!" Marvels Aziraphale as he and Crowley drive around Tadfield. Adam's love for his life, as well as the angel and demons' love of theirs, defeats an apocalypse. SL has been providing escape for many, many years for many, many people whose real lives are stressful. And as the climate rages around us and the politics get more extreme, RL stress will continue to build. There are a whole lot of people who love their SL, even if they don't bother to make it as shiny as it could possibly be. How many of them are necessary to sustain SL for a full 5 years, or maybe even longer? How long can the platforms' technology be held together with Band-Aids and an occasional Herculean effort? I guess we'll see.

True. " ....pending regulatory approval..." https://fintech.global/2024/04/24/thunes-expands-us-footprint-with-strategic-tilia-acquisition/

By what agency? Both companies are private, so there are no shareholders, only investors who are represented by the boards of both companies. You may be right. You could even say that the Tilia acquisition is part 2, with part one being the departure of LL's VP engineering and VP marketing in January. You could further project that LL expects the exit to be complete within 5 years, given that that's the stated duration of the Thune partnership. [I doubt that LL would sell user data and content to an AI company, even if technically they have the right to do so. They would be begging for a class action suit.] BUT .. 5 years is a long time, and a lot could happen. Sl's user base could dry up and blow away naturally. Or, a large, dedicated contingent could simply continue nearly indefinitely, and some weird employee buyback scenario could unfold, if Patch, Grumpity and possibly Oberwager were interested. Or Thune could dry up and blow away, and LL might then be unable to find a payment partner (seems unlikely to me, but stranger things have happened). Or the Thune partnership could simply be extended. Again, you could be right. Personally, I find this all very, very interesting, and I'm willing to wait and see. Oh, and I want to commend everyone on this thread for a really Thought-Provoking discussion.

Personally, that sort of takedown seems to me less likely with thune, being based in Singapore, than with tilia, based in San Francisco. But that's speculation. And, "we're dead"? Maybe you have more access to SL statistics than I do. Personally, in my SL, I couldn't care less about adult content. But even if you're looking for adult gratifications, don't you think most moderate land users find imaginative ways to get their jollies without requiring adult land and explicit content? So forgive me if I seem a little tired of the threats of imminent SL Doom if adult ratings are threatened.

I'm on the road, so don't have time to look into this news. But here's a few obvious things. 1. Tilia was a FINTECH startup that created very cool blockchain-based infrastructure that ALWAYS seemed to have a lot of potential for B2B transaction processing. Remember, At the time that LL was acquired, there was a lot of discussion of The relative value of SL versus Tilia to the acquirers? Remember the speculation that Randy Waterfield was interested in LL to facilitate bank-bank money movement for small to medium-sized Banks? This is actually a bigger play than that would have been. 2. Tilia did not attract a whole lot of customers. That may have been by design, by which I mean, Tilia's Management may always have hoped for a technology acquisition like this as a successful endgame for the company. 3. From the little I've read about Thune, tillia seems like an ideal fit . Seriously, people, read their website. This doesn't look to me like some sort of Goliath doing a leveraged buyout. While Thune's attracted healthy venture funding, they are not yet a dominant player in the payment processing industry. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zinnialee/2023/08/04/edbi-backed-singapore-fintech-startup-thunes-wants-to-take-on-swift/?sh=16cbad6c4837 4. I don't get why the term crypto is coming into this. Not everything that uses blockchain is at all related to cryptocurrencies. I don't see any particular tie between thune and crypto.if anyone can cite a source for that, I'd love to read it And no, the fact that thune is Singapore based is not an automatic tie to crypto. 5. I also don't get why an earlier poster said the article was 2 years old. Looks to me like it was written this month, am I missing something? 6. The panic about adult content seems to me to be a real reach. 7. As private companies, Tilia and Thune are not obligated to disclose much of anything about the terms of this deal. So we'll just have to wait for LL to say what, if anything, this means for sL fees. I noticed a couple of different forms of canned partnerships on thune's website, but my guess is that Tilia's "partnership" is custom.

My biggest takeaway is that evidently LL has decided to flatten their organization. Their VPS of engineering and marketing departed in January, there is no sign that they intend to replace them. The engineering news at this lab gab was given by the director of engineering, and the product news by a product manager. My personal read on this is that LLs employee base is dwindling in size, although of course, it's possible that there are other reasons. I'd be surprised to see LL begin any large engineering endeavors in the near future, or perhaps ever again YMMV. My other takeaway is that there may be new policies for LL employees as well as for residents. Perhaps this new user group meeting is actually a way of making direct LL contact with users more formalized, and one-on-one contact between LL employees and residents will be less common than it has been since Belli's inception. Of course, it's unlikely that we would ever KNOW if LL changes its internal policies for resident contact.

The Mediterraneans are such a tremendous continent in which to wander. The seemingly endless variety of entranceways, the sparse and open landscapes, the uniquely shaped homes ... it's both stimulating and peaceful. And, too, it's always nice to come home and just stretch out for a nap on the hillside below your own home. With one's sheep, of course. Of course.

Well, the region Gyazo indeed does not exist, but are you sure you have the name right? It's kinda hard for me to believe they named a region after a company that does screen captures ...

What a special evening, Hanami at Shobu! To see the graceful traditional dances, with the music so exotic to western ears, while the blossoms gently wafted from the trees ... it made a fascinating and beautifully serene evening. They waved branches laden with blossoms in the first dance. They made a special dance for Bellisseria's Anniversary! The song was punctuated with the gold rattles that they shook during the dance. Their last piece was an archetypal dance from Kyoto, celebrating the beauty of the city during Hanami. It referred particularly to the beauty of the kimonos worn during the holiday, and as you see the dancers showed their lovely ones off! I stopped while walking home to admire the gently falling petals.

I just wanted to add that, although the vision and scale of this event might lead a casual attendee to believe that it was put together by LL, AFAIK the Bellisseria birthdays have ALWAYS been resident-led events held at the Fairgrounds. This year's celebration is just really, really well done.

Yes, I have to admit that I was saddened that there was no opportunity to even volunteer to contribute a build. Perhaps they wanted to just go with folks who repeatedly contribute to the Parade of Homes, or other decorating blogs. Or maybe the organizers just don't like my decorating style, which if true makes me embarrassed that I post pics of some of my homes ... I mean, I'm no Matthieu, but I like to think I have some interesting ideas! But I'd rather think that not having an opportunity to even volunteer was more of a procedural thing.

We are SO looking forward to attending Hanami this year! Had to miss it last year. We're on our way to get the PERFECT seats I don't think Nika has figured out the sitting menu in the ferry, tho ....

I have a parcel with 1171 LI that I'm almost done decorating, so nothing is linked. I was overjoyed when I got about 80 (yes, EIGHTY!) LI overnight! Ooooh! I always added sound to my trad parcel and was fine with that, but it would be GLORIOUS to have a sound environment in all those quirky and lovely public places in Olde Belli! I hadn't thought of this, my condolences. If you do this work, tho, you will have the advantage over all the marketplace merchants who simply removed LI from their listings. I don't buy any decor unless I know the LI ahead of time, too many times I've been lured to do so and deleted the item as soon as I rezzed it.

Yes, it's nice. I haven't done any reading to figure out how many probes the typical Belli home will need, tho, so planning to allocate 10 or so LI for those in the future??? Any ideas of how many one would typically use?

Bellisseria Lighthouse!! I assume that's a small model, like the train in the Swaginator hunt?

Are all the flower hunt prizes collectibles?

And, Abnor, the "special male gift"? I think a lot of residents would be interested in a special male. 😜

I haven't yet toured the build. But I have enjoyed the resident-supplied pictures! Abnor has placed a slideshow kiosk at every community center (don't know if there are any elsewhere), and each one is stocked with about 15 different pictures. If you zoom in on the "screen" so it fills your window, you can see the pics the way the photographers did when they took them. There are of course gorgeous shots, and some lovely serene scenes with beautiful lighting, but also a sprinkling of clever fun shots, as well as colorful party pics. Some relate to the theme of that particular community center.

If you are moving to a home that is the exact same style as the home you now have, you can make it faster to furnish your new home by taking up parts of your decor as "coalesced objects". I generally do that room-by-room and put all the coalesced objects in a single folder titled something like "FURNISH Belli Trad Winchester <region name>". You don't really want to take ALL of your stuff as a single coalesced object, because when you go to rez it again, it probably will go over the border of your parcel, and either not rez at all or only some of the items will rez. Another approach is to put it all in a rezzer (if it's all copiable), but that involves putting a script in each linkset, so unless you've linked most of the stuff already to each other, that's time consuming. But if you're going to get a different style home, no, you just pick it all up, or delete it, piece by piece, AFAIK. ------ Basically to get a new home, you just first abandon your current one. If you don't pick up your stuff first, it will be returned to whoever owns it as a single coalesced object, which is messy to sort out, and risky if you have nocopy items. Then, as a premium plus member, you have two options to get a new home. 1. Select a new home that you really like and submit a ticket to support to get it allocated to you. It must be in a region that is released (region name does not start with SSP), and must not belong to someone else (check the land menu!). OR 2. Log into the land page on the website, choose the theme you're most interested in, and the land page will give you a random parcel in that theme. NOTE: if you don't see the theme you're interested in, check the last page - themes that currently have no open parcels are listed last. You can do this 5 times within 24 hours. I'm skipping a lot of details, but those are the basics.

Since you often rattle on ... er .... help us out with Britishisms, my association with "Salty Dawg" is from Appalachia bluegrass. You might be sitting on an older gentleman's porch, both of you pickin' (maybe banjo and guitar), and his younger wife might come out of the house and kiss him on his head. Then she might smile at you, ruffle what's left of his hair, and say affectionately, "My salty dawg!". The phrase comes from the old-timey practice of rubbing salt into the coat of your favorite hunting hound to get ticks and other little critters to leave him alone Ergo, the song below is exhorting the "honey" in question to take good care of (and pet often!) her "salty dawg". Take it away, Foggy Mountain Boys!

I didn't notice before, so I'm not sure this is new, but the very recently added SSPFull Deck is now indeed full - of Stilts! And Clearwater Shoals actually has shoals

OK, but be aware that the inworld map does not update uniformly across the user base. Perhaps it's some trick of AWS servers, but the system map generally updates up to a day later for my avatars than for you, for example.

Really? I don't remember seeing that. I know that we need to wait before offering suggestions or critiques, but we shouldn't share that regions have appeared?

6 regions have been added to the southern coastline of the meds! Typhoon has been altered to push the coastline further south, as indicated. The new regions have terraformed coast up through SSP Deerpath. SSPTorre del Falco, SSP Deerpath, Pelican River, Cape Finagle, SSPCampos Verdes, and SSPSchmidts Forge. My beloved Reine de Mer lighthouse appears to be a thing of the past I have a furtive hope that the pond near me will be enlarged to be a small waterway out to the sea, but (sigh) probably not. ETA: OH HURRAY! I returned to my parcel and LO! now there's a little river to the sea! Calloo! Callay! THANK YOU MOLES! The lighthouse may go, but I can still jump boats to the water and explore!

Well. WIth the departure of Syfy and Mojo, ONE thing that's happened is that LL's 7-member executive staff is now down to precisely TWO (2) members who have anything to do with SL (you remember, LL's actual product?), Grumpity and Patch. I'll put the pic here just in case it shrinks further in the coming weeks. There is precisely one open personnel req, for a senior engineer. Recruiting new execs is likely impossible in the current climate, so presumably both of them will just keep their heads down and work on prioritization, delegating, and holding onto current employees until the corporate weather improves. [Patch is keeping his head so far down that he no longer has any public flickr, X/twitter or Bluesky presence]. Patch and Grumpity have both been promoted from VP's to "Senior" VP"s. Did that happen after the departures, or a while ago? Curiouser and Curiouser. I hope that doesn't mean that this stripped-down exec team will be permanent - it just seems like too fragile a corporate structure. Best luck, team! Oh, and Mr. Kim, please accept this box of amphetamines. I imagine you are one busy dude right now.