Tolya Ugajin

Well sign me up! I totally and completely rely on unsolicited advice from anonymous people online with panicked advice on what to do with my life savings. I mean, who else am I going to listen to, a financial expert?

The US lost more soldiers than any other allied nation except the USSR. Granted we lost a good portion of those fighting Japan (which we did almost alone), but we were never attacked by Germany, and we could easily have ignored their declaration of war, as Germany was in no position to attack the US. So, it's a bit disingenuous to say the US didn't "save" Europe or claim we only did so because we were attacked. Had we not supplied the UK and especially the Soviets in 1940-1942, the Soviets almost certainly would have been forced to capitulate and the Brits would almost certainly have been forced to accept a Nazi-controlled mainland, as they could not have liberated France (even the parts not controlled by the Vichy regime) on their own. As far as "years of hard-won victories" - which years were those, exactly? The handing of Czechoslovakia to Hitler? The few weeks the Poles held out before being overrun? The 6 weeks it took Germany to conquer France and drive the Brits out of Dunkirk? The 23 months of almost continuously losing in North Africa, which stopped once the US entered that sector in May 1942? The only "victories" prior to US entry into the war were fighting off the Luftwaffe and holding the line at El Alamein. And that's just the war in the West. The European powers did nothing but retreat in Asia until the US stepped in. It wasn't "years" and the "hard-won victories" were very few and far between. As far as the loans go, France was more than happy to charge the US interest for loans during the Revolutionary War, which took us a couple decades to pay off, so, again, pretty disingenuous to whine about it when it's on the other foot. Oh, and we only charged 2% - not exactly usurious. Revisionist history is seldom accurate history. ETA: You may be thinking of WW1 - we certainly didn't "save Europe" in that one, we just decided we needed to get in on the dying for no particularly good reason other than to ensure France and England could repay our loans for that war.

Define "state of war". You could argue that our invasion of Grenada was a "state of war" although it took, what, 45 minutes? But, if you use that sort of definition, Britain has been in a state of war for a similar percentage of its existence, and certainly the EU portion of Europe (which is what should be considered since you're lumping it as "teach us") was continuously in a state of war for all recorded history up until the last violent revolution in its colonial empire, and France remains in such a state with its ongoing military involvements in its former empire in North Africa (they lost at least 13 soldiers in Mali just last month, for instance). Clearly the US has much to learn from Europe when it comes to maintaining a state of war, as we're still rookies at it by comparison.

By Holy Roman empire do you mean Byzantine Empire? The Holy Roman wasn't exactly stable - it just hung around for a long time as a convenient name - and I don't recall it having a giant bureaucracy (more a decentralized feudal arrangement), whereas we get the term for such a bureaucracy, "byzantine", from the Byzantine Empire's bureaucracy.

RL children: 2 minutes of pleasure 9 months of discomfort 9 hours of searing pain A lifetime of disappointment.

What's wrong with SL mail? Who are you doing today? What's the best way to keep on top of ballerina Victoria Linden Holmes? Deflated avatars (works with deflowered and deified as well) Our weird Nessy

Yes, especially those missing RL organs. Lord knows I could use a new liver.

I believe a better question is, why doesn't LL require the people operating avatars to have brains?

Is RHPS some sort of young people thing? Not sure what it means, but, then, I am older than dirt.

Well I do have a platform with my library/gallery and of course it's full of themed room

Rural and grunge? So like West Virginia?

A short while ago, I closed down a public club/hangout I was running on my sim. Now, my sim is mainly just housing for me and a few friends, and I have 7K+ prims paid for but unused, and I hate idle resources. So, being a man of little creativity or vision, I am coming to you, dear Forum dwellers, to ask for ideas, since my wife will just use it for more breedable teddy bears if I don't put it to better use. What would you do if you had an extra 7K prims lying around? Maybe I'll make a contest out of it.

Then either you typed it in wrong (which happens very easily with newer avatar names) or it's been deleted by LL.

It's really the same as comparing emailing a coworker to walking down the hall and talking to them in person. If you want to put a large amount of detailed information or convey a carefully crafted point, without interruption, then email (forums) is a more efficient and effective medium. If you want to convey more emotion and nuanced meaning in a fluid discussion, then in person (inworld, preferably on voice) is better. But, you also have to throw in that inworld you can control who is participating in the conversation, whereas here anyone can pile on.

Engineers drink beer because they are peasants. Real scientists drink wine 😛

"I drink and I know". For some reason Google translate can't do a decent job of "I drink and I know things". The implication with nothing following "I know" is I know everything or at least a whole lot. I am also the god of ***** and wine. George RR Martin must have been thinking of me when he wrote Tyrion's character.

I'm OCD about item placement Everything must be oriented to cardinal directions. If something must be at an angle (like chairs in a group) then they can't just be turned randomly, they must be at specific angles. Houses must be oriented so the back porch faces West. In my library and gallery, book cases and pictures must be spaced at as perfectly equal spacings as I can manage. Positions must be rounded to 0.1 or at most 0.01 meters...unless it ruins the symmetry. The rug must be exactly centered with the fireplace. Even landscaping tends towards this pattern. I once put those little seashells that make beach noises out, and equally spaced them along the shore - 6 meters apart because of the number of shells verses the North/South length of the beach. Beaches are also either on the West of East side of the sim, preferably East, oh and the land mass is almost always squarish. Placing trees makes my eyes hurt, because symmetrical trees look unnatural and asymmetrical trees never look right no matter how I rotate them. Fortunately, other than my library, my girl does it all now, because she embraces chaos and clutter, and I generally just cam on her boobs anyway Plus, she does a far better job.

Bibero et scio

Oooh whatever happened to Suspiria?

While reading a book a second, third or fourth time may be entertaining, one seldom learns much from it after the first reading. My deep thought of the night. /me raises his glass of red and salutes you. I probably enjoyed Pep because in a lot of ways he's quite a bit like me. I'm surprised he got banned, but towards the end of my time hanging in the forums he was getting more combative than argumentative. Did Chris pass away? I'd heard he was ill. He was a real gentleman.

"Literally" is literally a word I spank people for misusing

Yay! Roxy is still alive! Big hug!

My real name has no equivalent in Russian, so I took the name "Tolya" in Russian classes in college. Early on in SL I RP'd as a nasty Russian man, so it fit. Ugajin was just a name off the list (back when that's how you created your avatar) that I thought sounded cool. Turns out it's some sort of Japanese fertility deity, which is oddly appropriate, given my appreciation of Japanese rope bondage and of sex.

Yep, that's the look. Now, add a bad goatee and change the glasses to thin wire rims and you know EXACTLY how I looked at you

So, my post this morning about writing your own obituary seems to have squicked a few people out, so I'll try something a bit more positive. Share with everyone who in SL has had a major impact in your RL, changed you as a person, and how/why? I have 3 examples: 1: My SL partner, whom I shall be marrying in RL in a few months. The why should be self-explanatory 2: Scylla Rhiadra: This one is a little less obvious. Scylla and I are pretty far apart on most political and social issues (at least we were years ago) and one day she challenged my stance on abortion rights by arguing for them mostly from a conservative (ie. my) point of view. She made me realize that I had established positions on important issues without a sound foundation of values and beliefs from which to logically establish consistent and valid opinions. As a result I reexamined the fundamentals of my beliefs and drew some very different conclusions on positions on several subjects, and any time I come across some new controversial subject, I follow that process rather than taking a knee-jerk "well, good little conservatives take this position" stance. 3: I forget his name, actually - I think it was Pep or something like that, used hang in the old Forums a lot. Anyway, he was fun to argue with and taught me the value of googling anything you weren't 100% sure of, especially the meanings of words or proper grammar, a habit I now follow religiously in RL, calling out in a sportscaster voice, "Let's go to Google!". I now look a lot smarter than when I totally misused "penultimate".