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Tolya Ugajin

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Everything posted by Tolya Ugajin

  1. Too many of us got distracted by the hottie. I thought that was just a guy thing!
  2. Please, for the love of all that is Holy, do NOT let my girl see this! That is do freaking cute, I'd be doomed to a lifetime of having something like that as my wife in SL! Worse, the next time I log in, I'd have one of those avatars myself!
  3. Lol I'm a big fan of the Mongols - Chinggis is one of my heroes. Essentially an outcast from an early age, killed his own half brother over food to survive, survived adversity after adversity, ruthlessly killed all who stood against him while simultaneously showing far more charity and mercy than any similar ruler, united disparate warring tribes, and with his iron will led them to crush the most powerful empires of his day, all the while displaying uncommon religious and cultural tolerance (as long as you bent the knee, so to speak) and intellectual curiosity...and a voracious sexual appetite. What a role model! Nonetheless, unless you were one of a million or so Mongols, it was a horrible time to be alive. China lost roughly 100,000,000 to war, famine, and disease. The Iranian Plateau's population didn't recover until the 20th century. Russia's national psyche was forever marred (even today we feel the effects of the Mongol invasions in Russia's foreign policy, although certainly the scars left by Napoleon and Hitler are fresher), modern Iraq was devastated, and the rest of Europe and the Muslim world lived in fear of renewed invasion by the Mongols for decades. Oh, and even their biggest benefit to the West, a peaceful and open Silk Road, brought the Black Death to Europe just a couple generations later. Nobody living in Russia, Central or SW Asia, or Jin China at the time was saying, "well, at least we're better than 2000 years ago!"
  4. No - I assume it will end up on Netflix at some point, not going to start paying for every streaming service in the world. From the pics I've seen, it appears she's aged well.
  5. Don't piss off Seven! She's my favorite Star Trek character of all.
  6. Since 2 of 4 is too easy and limited, and I suspect many of us have too much time on our hands, how about 9 word sentences, change two, leaving 7 of 9 the same (but reordering is fine)? I'll go first: Nine beavers with seven chainsaws cut how much wood? Sorry if you were expecting... but, for added credit, toss in your favorite Seven of Nine pic!
  7. The best way to watch a video that is not free and publicly available (ie. anything from a premium streaming service) in SL is to get everyone together and individually watch it in RL while leaving chat open.
  8. As indicated in my "if one does not dismiss periods of generations in length as "localized in time"." I obviously did. Dismissing something as traumatic and global-spanning as the Little Ice Age (which effected pretty much the entire globe, lasted for a couple centuries, and which caused widespread hunger, disease, and warfare), as localized (in time and space) pockets of regression would be ill-advised, particularly when discussing something like "nostalgia". Yes, when looking at things from the perspective of 3000 years of recorded history the trend line is overall positive - for now - but only the well-fed and safe could view the world from that perspective when literally your entire civilization is in ruins and only your grandparents can remember a time that was peaceful and the masses were free from want. In situations like that, nostalgia is the only thing bringing hope. After all, we're only one nuclear winter from that trend line going from positive to flat or negative from the dawn of recorded history.
  9. The bold section is objectively untrue, at least if one sticks to "recorded history" instead of "modern history" and if one does not dismiss periods of generations in length as "localized in time". One can go back through recorded history and point out periods (the periods of the Mongol invasions, the Black Death., the "Little Ice Age") where globally and for a period of one or more generations, the bulk of humanity (at least those with recorded history) could point to only a generation or two prior to see a lower level of violence and higher levels of health and longevity. On a lower level (say, for instance, much of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, or the late 3rd century) you can find the same on a more localized level, but still impacting tens, of not hundreds, of millions. The danger of nostalgia is in only remembering the "good" that we experienced, especially if it came at the expense of others, and not learning the lessons taught by the "bad". Of course, sometimes we also ignore how good things are today because, well, it doesn't fit with what we want to believe about how much progress there has been.
  10. 1994? Heck, I started in the late 80's! The internet has always been for porn.
  11. I'm the only person in my department working in the office. My boss sent everyone else home and the I told him to beat it. By tomorrow we should have a dozen or less people here while everyone else works from home - I have to be here to babysit.
  12. First, mean is in the eye of the beholder. Some people are just whiny cupcakes who cry over every perceived slight, real or imagined. Perhaps there would be less "meanness" and "bullying" if people stopped being so darned fragile. Second, SL is an anonymous medium. People's worst tendencies are accentuated in such media. That's why Farcebook is such a morass of jassackery. That's why you see people (myself included) more open about their kinks and perversions here, among other things, while at the same time being extremely cautious of their RL information becoming public. Meanwhile, the mentality that precious little snowflakes are entitled to an existence where no poopoo heads are ever mean to them is also exaggerated, because, well, the Lab should make everyone be nice. It's like watching kindergartners cry sometimes. Third, unlike in RL, you have the absolute ability to restrict who you hear - simply mute and move on. Take control of your own SL experience rather than letting the jackinapes control you. When my club was open and running high traffic, it wasn't the griefers and trolls and lag and cost that got me, it was the constant barrage of complaining about "Johnny is being a jerk" by grown adults who should be able to handle interpersonal issues themselves that finally made me close it. I'm not sure what makes SL worse - the trolls and griefers, or the adult children who expect someone else to solve every little problem. The world is full of Richards - deal with it. I was raised on tough love
  13. Not sure about the rest of you, but sounds like a lot of big companies (including my own) are now on a "if you can work from home, you're working from home" basis. Gonna be lots of extra potential people on during times they're not used to being on!
  14. "So what do you figure the turn-off is? What is SL ALREADY associated with? Graphic furries. " Surely SL is widely associated with sex, but I think the image that generally comes up in people's minds is that of the acne-covered and hygiene-challenged incel fapping furiously to animated cartoon sex in their mom's basement, not graphic furries. Sorry I don't have a clip that gets right to the appropriate part
  15. Every bit as reflective of the "real" America as...a Rockwell painting. America is big and diverse, and so are people's perspectives of it, which are based largely on where they see it from.
  16. I call BS. You're intial post was hostile and dismissive. Frankly, it read like something off a PragerU parody of leftist critique of modern art, which is why I could not resist scolding you for it. Your response was also flat out wrong - Rockwell's work does indeed reflect (in a common, artistic, idealizing fashion) what America, in many places, looked like then and (adjusting for the clothing) looks like today in many places. Believe it or not, vast swathes of the Earth are NOT racially diverse like Toronto, most people self-segregate in their churches, and racially mixed families are still far from the norm. Furthermore, your follow up post was quite specific about the lack of diversity in those selected Rockwell works, so for you to now prattle about "reductive perspective on how to achieve a more diverse and open artistic vision" is ludicrous. The selection wasn't diverse enough for you, you offered zero alternative, so, by all means, be less "reductive" in your simplistic and crude (that's what "reductive" means for the members of our studio audience) response. Maybe a nuanced perspective, or helpful suggestions, rather than just repeatedly complaining there's not enough color. In addition, I don't know the OP or their level of artistic education, but it's highly possible they simply went to Google to find pictures and, hey, here we go, these are the kind of thing I'm looking for, peaceful pictures of people in social settings. Isn't blasting their post exclusively on their art selection just a wee bit...elitist? I thought we were supposed to avoid assuming that everyone is well educated on such topics as art criticism? Admit it, you saw Rockwell, you saw a series of paintings featuring only white people, and your knee jerk reaction was to, "Rockwell bad! No diversity bad!" rather than to put any thought whatsoever into the message the OP was trying to convey. Maybe accusing you of virtue signalling was a bit unfair (you hardly need to do that in the setting) but your response was indeed silly.
  17. America never really had a bunch of white people at church or in public meetings? Never had well-to-do families eating large Thanksgiving dinners? And people don’t do these things now? I mean, granted ours is in a log home, but other than that, Rockwell's painting kinda looks like Thanksgiving at mom's house every year, although I suppose nobody wears ties. What do you suppose a town hall or union meeting in Vermont (94% White) looks like these days? Or a service at a typical Lutheran church (97% White) - heck, even Catholic churches would be predominantly White, particularly if you're at a service outside the Southern border states. By your "not even America looks like this anymore" standard, it would be impossible to paint a group of humans these days. What, 1 in 50 of the people in those paintings are supposed to be Native American? One in eight has to be Black, and somewhere around 1 in 5,000 needs to be trans, to satisfy your artistic criteria? Or is it the fact that those paintings don’t reflect suffering and misery that offends you? Do you similarly slam Michelangelo's Pieta because not even Judaea looks like that any more and Mary's dress would never have been so voluminous? I’m sure the OP would be just fine if, say, the picture of people in church were from a Baptist service (in case you're not familiar, 40% of African Americans are Babtists), but instead of constructively suggesting alternatives, which, heck, even Prok managed to do, or going with the “appearing to be marketing off a crisis would be tacky” angle, you choose to go full SJW. The OP is pointing out that SL is a way for people, who are trying to withdraw from society to stay well right now, to fill the void, but, by all means, let's make an issue of the lack of diversity reflected in the paintings - by only one of America's most well-known artists.
  18. You might want to put away your Virtue Signal, because it's making you look silly in this case.
  19. You mean Homoiousianism, from the Nicene council? Patripassianism is the belief that "the Father" suffered along with "the Son". All of which, of course, caused untold strife as early Bishops ran around accusing each other of heresy (because, after all, the "real" Bishop" would control the very real money of the congregation and have real political power), Arians and Nicene's rioted against each other, and God probably just grabbed a beer and some popcorn and asked himself, "WTF stupid stuff are these people arguing over now".
  20. In certain circles they're called DSL's.
  21. Ever notice that uber-high complex avatars always look terrible?
  22. Election? I thought you said Erection Year, so I went to CostCo for Viagra!
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