Scylla Rhiadra

I'm peeved that we aren't seeing more Seicher here.

How did you manage to take such a lovely, cute pic in such a dreary place???? /me applauds

@manoji Yachvili's newest installation at the Onceagain Art Gallery is called "Secret Garden." The lovely title somewhat belies the content of the exhibition, which is a frequently dystopian and rather grim view of our future in a world of climate change. It's beautifully done, sobering, and a little shocking in places -- and it features some of her own photographic art as well. I dropped by today and did two shots, one of which I've already posted in the the "Tastefully Nude" thread of the Adult forum. This is the second one. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Peaceful Mountains/63/179/2506

Yeah . . . 🙄

A friend of mine here, @Josephine Carissa , noticed that I've been doing a number of shots recently with a vintage look, and recommended a couple of outfits -- including this rather lovely one, which is a free gift from The Annex. This is what real friends do -- find you cool stuff to wear! So off I went to 1930s-40s New York at the Time Portal.

Really wonderful pic, Sabrina!

I don't need to like her. She makes her own choices -- and I might agree or disagree with what she believes, does, or says, but the point is that she has that right. Which is different from a characterization of her coming from a third party that denigrates her and, by wider application, other women. No matter, Sandor. I am sure you did not intend anything sexist by your language. Whether your edit was conscious or deliberate or not, I appreciate the much more value-neutral phrasing you have chosen. So, again, thank you.

You substituted "experienced" for another word that meant something rather different, and was honestly a bit misogynist. I'm not going to repeat the word. Suffice it to say that losing it made a difference in how this older woman was characterized.

Thank you for rephrasing this, Sandor. I can now "like" it in good conscience.

🙄

While James distracts Le Chiffre, I look around to ensure no one is watching as I attach a listening device to SocialCasino Linden's water bowl. Note 1: @Katherine Heartsong already took the cigarette girl role, so I was left with being the "Bond Girl." Grrrrr! Note 2: The casino is a nightmare for pics. The texture thrashing is terrible, suggesting lots of 1024 textures, and the lighting is nuts, with a rotating spot that wiped out my own point lights every time it swooped around in my direction.

Dahling, you need to think BIG.

I don't know the answer to this, but you're right that the amounts are out of line with SL expectations. Most of us are used to spending something between about L$250 and L$400 for a single colour garment or hair style. My rent over the years (separate from my bumped-up tier) has generally come in at about L$500 to L$600 per week. There are of course people who have different spending habits -- Maddy, for instance, buys much less clothing than I do, but almost always gets fatpacks when she does. But the cost of chips for this casino is completely anomalous. And I can't tell you for sure that that's either because LL is out of touch with its own economy, or because they are confident that SL "gamblers" will readily drop such large sums. Again, though, they've incentivized really large purchases by making them a more efficient way of buying chips -- and that tells me that they are steering people into paying out the upper end of those options.

Is that why you get more bang for your buck when you spend larger sums, Arielle? That's assisting "impulse control"?

I think that this is my problem with the setup here. The amounts of money required to buy chips is not negligible: minimally, L$799, and up to a whopping L$9999. When was the last time you spent L$9999 on a single thing in SL? I generally don't go through that much in a month. It is absolutely clear that LL expects and wants people to drop pretty major sums to play here; the tiny free daily chip allowance is pretty much just enough to get you "hooked," and wanting to buy more. Note also that the number of chips that a single L$ will buy you increases as you spend more: they've very deliberately incentivized this so that people will make larger chip purchases. I'd have no problems with this at all if it truly were entirely free -- even if that meant you could only play a half dozen games a day. I'd have fewer problems if you could buy 50 chips for L$50. As it stands, it's really difficult not to conclude that LL isn't very consciously exploiting, if not "addictions," at least those who have a hard time walking away from a gaming table.

I'm not "asking for" anything -- please don't put words in my mouth. I haven't, and wouldn't, call for a ban on games in SL, including this kind of casino. But there are some people who believe that this kind of game feeds a very real RL social problem. I don't know if they are correct or not, but you're not addressing it with this kind of response.

And yet . . . people play such iPhone games. And spend real money on them, just as people will buy tokens at this casino. They are trying to "beat" something, even if they are not winning anything. I'm not going to push this, because, again, this is not an area of expertise, but the essential psychological mechanism seems to be the same, or close to, even if nothing of value is available to be won?

As at least one of them got a seven day suspension, I suspect that they're not laughing now. I am not sufficiently well-informed about gambling addictions to know if this casino constitutes a real threat or not. I DO know that LL itself seems to think it might, because they have a sign in the casino about how to get help for gambling addictions in the US.

Too easy to solve. Linden Lab done it.

You're pretty brilliant, you know. So, when will you have this finished? I can hardly WAIT to visit! 😀

Oh, definitely. The period touches are what it's all about. For that matter, I'd be attracted to a Mississippi Delta juke joint set in a shack with a corrugated metal roof if it looked right.

I don't know, Elise, how this might be interpreted. The "value" in an object doesn't just reside, surely, in the money that one might be able to make for it on resale? I spend real money on a ton of things in SL that are no-transfer: their value is intrinsic rather than potential.

This is kind of the annoying thing about this is that it comes so close to being just "fun," but instead misses the mark, and manages to be a bit gross and sleazy without possessing the kind of appeal that a nicely put-together place might have. I'd LOVE to dress up for a nicely rendered high-end casino of the sort @Qie Niangaodescribes. I don't really RP, but I could "play" a clever cigarette girl working her way through college, a swanky double agent, or even a bubble-brained blonde if need be for long enough to make it fun! (The bubble-brained blonde wouldn't even require effort!) What we need is a really great looking place where the games are free and the ambiance is conducive to just having FUN.

YES I won't actually play, but I'll gladly kiss someone's dice, if he's glamorous and cute enough.

Well, as I said, I've walked through a couple in my time. Those had made some attempt to look "ritzy," but in the same kind of way that a cheap club or restaurant will substitute "tacky" for expensive and tasteful. Certainly, again, the SociaCasino is generally well-made. It looked much nicer than one from 2007 must have looked, for instance. But it was still . . . very meh. In my view. And definitely not a place where you'd want to RP, say, a spy story, or a Prohibition-Era backroom at a Speak. They can do better.