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Scylla Rhiadra

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Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    Personally, I know better than to get into a religious argument with the Queen of the Dead. Sure, she LOOKS nice . . .
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    I photoshop the hell out of my pics. Well, ok, it varies from pic to pic, but still. My objections to AI are 1) ethical, and 2) if you aren't in control of every step of the process, then it's not really "yours." Also, most AI looks like crap. Although that will change, I'm sure.
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    EXCITING NEW DISCOVERY HAS THE ANTHROPOLOGY COMMUNITY ABUZZ! "This will redefine everything we thought we knew about cave paintings and their artists," gushes Dr. Neve Ersmart of Harvard.
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    I have a few valued friends who are doing mostly AI now -- and because they are valued friends, I am still following them. And I have one friend who has done some legitimately pretty cool things with AI, so I follow her, in part because she's a friend, but also because I'm interested to see what someone who is using it thoughtfully and intelligently can do with it. But yeah, mostly . . . AI gets a pass from me.
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    Caught the Duolingo thing. Do they seriously think that AI is going to be a selling point? Although, in that case I guess they didn't really intend to get caught out. LL. as you know, has indicated that they want jump on the AI bandwagon. I hope they are paying attention. There is a growing noise about adding a filter to Flickr that will catch -- and exclude from your feed -- AI-generated images. In theory, Flickr's target audience should be exactly those who stand to lose the most from the widespread adoption of AI -- photographers, many of whom are professionals. And the AI stuff is coming, a lot of it, from SL users and others working in "digital art." I can foresee a bit of a clash coming there.
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is sometimes pretty wild.
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    I get that, having received a few disquieting messages myself over the years -- although generally via in-world IMs rather than Forum PMs. On the other hand, if I didn't read forum PMs, I would never have known that I am a sad middle-aged Mean Girl!
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    The particular pic I was looking for in this instance was Edward Hopper's "Automat." This is an example, done in Stable Diffusion, of some of the stuff that came up. Really, it takes a super-powered computer to be this stupid.
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    I suppose that makes sense, but it hadn't occurred to me. What they won't do -- and shouldn't, obviously, because it would mean that PMs weren't private at all -- is proactively intercede. I'm not sure what the point of reporting a PM would be, unless it were toxic to the point of thinking this person needs to be bounced entirely from the Forums and maybe even SL? But I suppose that there are probably people who don't want mean PMs in their list. Me? I cherish them. A few of them I've had framed. 🙃
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh sure. I don't have objections at all to talking to someone in PMs. What I think is likely to become a toxic morass is taking a public argument private. I know that's sometimes what the mods suggest we do, but I'd rather eat nails. 😬
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    PEEVE. I've probably whined 😏 about this before, but it's getting hard to find art using Google search without it pulling up an increasingly large number of AI-generated knock-offs or, most hilarious of all, "improvements." And the AI stuff is sometimes not even labelled as such. We really are on the long slide down towards a place where "authentic" becomes a meaningless term. The ones that offer "improvements" on the original, though, really are a bit of a hoot. (In fairness, I think some of them are deliberately funny.) "This Picasso is far too dark, and the subject is off-centre! I've used AI to fix these faults! Look at how much nicer it is now!" 🙄
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah, this. If it's been a public conversation to that point, I see absolutely zero point in taking it to IMs, which is just as likely as not to free it to become even nastier, as there are no mods to officiate. It's highly unlikely to solve anything. Just walk away. Some conversations are just counterproductive.
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    I've tried both!!! Well, actually, covering the models with oils. It's not easy!
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    Thanks Lexxi! I'm so glad you and your friend enjoyed it!! ❤️
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    Thank you! That's pretty much the effect I was going for. Cinn generally presents, I think, as a plain-spoken woman. But I think there's a lot of intriguing ambiguity, and a gentle sense of humour, to be found there, and I enjoy it when it shows.
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
    Rehearsing for my cabaret performance tonight of Dietrich's "Nimm dich in acht vor blonden Frauen" -- "Beware of Blondes!" (from The Blue Angel). Got the props done, the dances queued, the song ready, and of course the costume. Doch denke immer: Achtung vor dem Raubtier!
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
    🙄
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    Really, Luna? "Whining?" And yes, I think that it would be nice if there were a more urban model of LH available -- there are a great many people, not just me and 20 others, who choose to live in urban settings. I know it's doable because it is being done, on private regions and the mainland right now. It's not of course for everyone. And California Mediterranean can be quite lovely, I'm sure. But it bears the same relationship to real Mediterranean that Taco Bell has to actual Mexican food. It's an Americanized interpretation that incorporates particular elements American buyers value. I refuse, despite the baiting, to get into a fight with you about the relative merits of American residential home designs. They are indeed diverse, and some are quite lovely. I am casting no aspersions upon them, or upon those who like them. Find someone else who cares to argue with about that: I don't. I am advocating for diversity and variety. And SoCal models that selectively incorporate decorative elements from other cultures into their design, however beautifully, are still SoCal models.
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    I'm holding off on getting a Linden Home until @Sid Nagy has finished the modest add-ons I need.
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
    Not in PBR viewers!!!!! FIGHT ME!
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    If you really wanted to stir up some excitement here, you'd put together a scripted security orb that bounces non-North Americans off ban lines.
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    Actually, Ceka, most of what you've said has tended to support or just being along the same lines of what I've said on this. You're very aware of the degree to which Belli often represents a kind of sanitized version of a particular North American middle class fantasy, and you've noted how diverse and very different the reality, even in North America, is. So I wasn't in any way implicitly arguing with you.
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    I'm pleased, because I tend to assume that the process is tedious and boring! And I am very pleased with the result: thank you so much for being such a perfect model! Well, I'm looking for models for nude watercolours . . . 🙃
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    There's an interesting premise in your language, Luna, which is embedded in the term "base structure," but even more so in your suggestion that one can achieve more diversity and character through add-ons and extensions. You're really implying that this "base structure" is "neutral" and without associated value assumptions, and that every other kind of diverse expression of what represents "home" to an international community can be achieved by building over top of what is, by implication, "foundational" -- rather than thinking of it as a very particularized articulation of a very specific culture as it exists or existed at one historical moment, in one geographical context. And I think that for many non-North Americans, the assumptions underlying that articulation are very evident. North American is "base-level" and foundational: everything else is decorative and foreign (perhaps appealingly so!). Would you similarly call an Italian villa or farmhouse, or a Japanese house a "base structure"? I don't think so -- although I'm open to correction on this -- because I suspect that those seem "different" and even "exotic." Could you reproduce a modern American middle class house by "adding on" or decorating this? Not very satisfactorily -- anymore than you can decorate a suburban bungalow so that it looks like a stilt house or a trailer. A North American suburban house is no less "ethnic" and with its own character than anything else. Calling it a "base structure" is misleading and a little parochial. I remain perplexed by the controversy stirred up by what I took to be a very simple and pretty unproblematic suggestion: that LL can diverse its LH offerings by creating some themes that reflect the residential styles of other places around the world. It would acknowledge the international character of SL, and offer something very different looking to everyone. Right now, however, elves are better represented in Bellisseria than Asians.
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh sure, of course. My mother grew up in Hounslow, a suburb of London. I've visited it (and many other parts of Britain): it's a pretty dreary warren of identically squat and ugly red and white brick housing, what passed for a middle class subdivision in Britain in the 30s and 40s. I am very well aware that most housing in the UK does not look like picturesque Cotswold villages. But all of this is sort of missing the point, which was emphatically not about which nation has the nicest houses. I said that Bellisseria felt arid and boring to me, not that I think US middle class residences all look the same, and all suck. What I was arguing is that more diverse and international themes would be good. I showed the Cotswold cottages not because I am under any illusions about the "superiority" of British middle class suburbs, but because they are examples of what might be attractively and appealing added to the offerings in Bellisseria. That's all.
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