Scylla Rhiadra

Ok, here's my peeve. I don't have many of 'em, but this one is kinda annoying. LL's "Photo of the Day" will highlight "Lick an Ice Cream Cone Day" and "Pet a Ferret Day" (ok, those are made up, but they're only slight exaggerations), but is there a featured photo marking International Women's Day? Um, no. Not important enough? Although . . . props for covering Black History Month. And OBR. Still. Grrrr.

Yep. All of this is entirely true. In fact, I sent out a notecard to my groups this morning with links to stories detailing the radical origins of the day. The main contribution of the Soviets was to fix it on 8 March (although they didn't actually initiate that). I'll agree entirely that the Soviet Union had a pretty mixed record on, well, pretty much everything, including women's rights. I'm not sure why any of this is particularly relevant to the modern commemoration of the day? (Luxemberg is a fascinating figure. I don't idolize her, and I'm not big on the way she was co-opted by the East Germans, but she is a really interesting figure, and one in whose ideas I do find much to admire.) Very cool! Thank you!

"Mais Joséphine, je vous en supplie! J'ai besoin de mes balles!" Works for me.

March 8 has been celebrated as a day recognizing both the achievements and particular challenges faced by women since the early decades of the 20th century. It was recognized by the United Nations in 1977. Personally, I've been celebrating IWD in Second Life in a variety of ways since I began here. This year, I made freebie tee shirts for two of my feminist groups, and sent these out with a notecard about the day. And I produced a photograph that celebrates the contributions of women during both world wars -- contributions that demonstrated conclusively that women were more than capable of taking on any task traditionally assigned to a man. The other way I want to celebrate today is to recognize and celebrate two of the women I met in Second Life who most inspired me. The first of these is Ledoof Constantineau, in RL a tough Scottish socialist with a wonderful sense of humour, and the guiding spirit for many years behind the SLLU Feminist Network. The second is Paty Amiot, a Mexican MD in RL who founded the very successful group "Stop Violence against Women." Neither are in SL anymore, sadly, but their legacy is still here. I miss them both: they were wonderful people. Second Life is full of incredibly powerful, talented, and enterprising women. Many of our best known artists, creators, and community leaders are women. What women in SL have inspired you? An artist? A creator? Even just a partner! Tell us!

I love the clarity and the lighting in this, Laurel, the missing head notwithstanding. It's a really great picture.

Here's my version of biking in Belli! From left to right, @Stranger Hoxley, me, @Eva Knoller, @BelindaN, @TatianaNikolay, @Saskia Rieko, and @Laurel Aurelia.

And in other news . . . tomorrow is International Women's Day, so I've spent some time over the last week creating freebie tee shirts for each of two of my groups, "Stop Violence against Women" and the "SLLU Feminist Network." Today I sent them out to the groups. This is the one I'm happiest with. It ain't Addamberry, but at least it gets the point across.

So, @manoji Yachvilihas a new exhibit! This one is quite modest in scope and size, but really interesting. Entitled "Change of Life," she's put it together partially in recognition of International Women's Day on Monday. It is intensely personal and, in some respects, a bit squirmy. It probably speaks more to women than to men, but I am positive anyone who goes will be glad they did. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunny Hills/223/26/1366

I wrote about this once. Well, technically, my alt Laskya wrote about it. And it was part of a larger discussion about appearance in SL. But here is the relevant excerpt from the blog post. (Note on context: this dates from early 2014, when fitted mesh was still largely on the horizon). It would be interesting (although I have neither the time nor inclination) to determine the reasons why the individuals belonging to a group such as this might make the conscious choice to employ “ugly” avatars. Are they Augmentationist Extremists? Are they protesting against gendered sexual stereotypes? Do they find “ugly” avatars amusing? All that I can say for certain is that looking unattractive, by RL standards, in Second Life requires effort and work. Like those who labour at communicating “sexiness,” ugly and aged avatars must work hard at achieving Greatness in aesthetic failure. And I think it is probably also true that “ugliness” in Second Life is most often also “hyperreal”: it is more ugly, and more self-consciously self-referential, than RL ugliness, an effect that it achieves through something like parody, grotesqueness, and the wearing of really crappy SL merchandise.

Well, said griefer and his behaviour certainly brings to my mind some form of bodily excrement.

UPDATE! The mysterious tower is gone, presumably removed by LL, or removed automatically when autoreturn was set to 5 mins. There's another building of the griefer nearby on another abandoned parcel (set down at the same time) still there. That land is still a free rez zone. But it doesn't have any scripts in it, so it doesn't appear to pose any kind of threat (even assuming the tower did), so I'm not going to worry about it.

I think I preferred the griefer.

Right behind you . . . and facepalming like mad. 😏

I am beginning to regret this thread . . .

The same thought had occurred to me. However, as all members of the group have already been implanted with microchips as part of the deal for the L$1,000,000 donation we received from Bill Gates, it seems silly to worry about it.

Might work. Or I could recite poetry at them next time they drop by.

Just a quick shout out and thank you to @Profaitchikenz Haikuand @Qie Niangao, who dropped by my land to check out the mysterious radio tower left by my griefer on an adjoining parcel. Thanks both! Childe Scylla to the Dark Tower Came . . . (Sorry. Lame Robert Browning joke . . .)

Ahhhhhhhhh . . .

There is no direct access to the parcels from the highway, and it's not really a vehicle-friendly place anyway (lots of stairs and steep hills), so that's not really an issue. At some point, I will probably reinstate rezzing rights on the smallest of these parcels, with autoreturn enabled. But not yet. I've now done both of these things.

This was definitely malicious. He's attacked at least three times over the course of 3 days, twice while I was present and both IMing him and responding in real time. On each occasion he was completely filling the land's LI capacity, at a pace that was literally almost faster than I could respond. He did not, I might note, respond to my IMs, and TPed to another part of the sim whenever I got close to him. Interesting to note: I've just realized that the name of the radio tower object, "hvguplink.Flagg," includes the initials of the only group that appears in his profile, which may, by its description, be a quasi-vigilante or maybe Woodbury U-style griefer group: "Human Volunteer Guard." And the tower has been set to that group. The founder of the group, whose profile says he is roughly the same age as that of my griefer, is like my griefer's largely blank, showing just the one group. And their first life pic is of a shelf loaded with cans of . . . spam. So, yeah, I'm increasingly convinced this was a deliberate griefing.

No, I didn't AR him. I should have of course, but I was exhausted, and this ended at around 3:30 am my time, sooooo . . . I'll AR him now. One of the interesting things is that this is not a throwaway noobie account. The griefer is over 10 years old.

Thanks. How do you suggest? Ticket?

Ok, so . . . I did a reasonably thorough inspection of the property this morning, and all seems to be ok. I did, however, see this, which belongs to him, on a nearby parcel of abandoned land. That's the property I administer in the background. Again, I'm not sure how he got it there: I'm standing at the nearest rez zone, which is quite distant. It was placed there 3 days ago. At the risk of sounding (increasingly) paranoid, there are two things about this object which worry me. The first is that the sim name has been appended to the object name: it's called "hvguplink.Flagg" The second is that it contains a script, which I can't examine, called "node.api." The fact that it is in the shape of a huge radio tower is not necessarily important, obviously, but it also seems suggestive. Any thoughts?

THIS I hadn't thought of. Object entry is indeed ticked. I'll fix that. As per my response to your Orwar, you're probably correct. He was spawning complicated stuff so quickly (I mean, dozens of objects every few seconds) that it's hardly surprising that I couldn't see it. That seems possible. He didn't scoot around, however, until I started chasing him. Thanks for the replies, Prof!

Thanks for the response, Orwar. I'd thought of something like this, but I suspect it would have involved more work than he was willing to undertake. The objects scattered over the no-rezz parcel were, with the exception of the American flag (which did seem deliberately placed), dumped kind of higgledy-piggledy. What is interesting is that during the active griefing attack -- which is to say, when he was dumping crap on the region while I was actually there, responding -- he didn't bother doing this: all of the objects were placed in two small parcels (one was 16x16 m) that I subsequently discovered had been left as open rez zones. So his initial attack -- when I wasn't there -- may have been more thoughtful. Certainly possible, although I rarely have much rez lag at this sim; it's not very full, there aren't a vast number of textures, and of course it's my "home," so it's well-cached. Yeah. He was certainly at a different elevation, according to the mini-map. And, as I said, I couldn't find him lower than about 1000 m. -- and believe me, I looked hard. Good tip. Thanks! Not that I'm sure what seeing or confronting him directly accomplishes. Except allowing me to hurl abuse at him in local rather than IM.