Prokofy Neva
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Posts posted by Prokofy Neva
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On 6/20/2020 at 3:36 PM, Bree Giffen said:
In a response to Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest aka CHOP. I propose a similar thing called the Second Life Occupied Protest aka SLOP. We can set up in a public sandbox and never log out. There will be barricades and living quarters.set up as well as music venues. Anyone can donate by rezzing things on the ground or setting up a prim vendor that sells thing for free. Our demands will be to turn off the auto return feature in the sandbox and to let Sloppers... Sloppies... live in SL without having to participate in virtual capitalism. This is a thread to plan out the occupation. All ideas are welcome.
For versimilitude, you'll need a Socialist Gun Club (anti-fa) commandos bearing arms in a no-gun zone (which would be most sandboxes) and you'd need to shoot people in safe areas and not let the police (Lindens) into the area. So -- I'll pass.
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On 4/28/2020 at 12:48 AM, anonymousrailwaybingo said:
I kinda hoped for real discussion about the matter, but of course some one has to immediately arrive and ruin the topic with an irrelevant comment. And I thought this was a real forum, not a stupid childish "facebook-like" chat.
The comments like the one above are exactly the things that make this world more complicated. Thanks for clowning on my discussion feed. Seems like a desperate try to confuse the topic into sh*tty irrelevant one liners.
It took me a while to put my thoughts into words and someone has to arrive and sh*t all over it.
I wonder if you can tie this to Viewer 1 and its demise. The search was much better for Viewer 1. I must have been the last avatar clinging to Viewer 1 when they deprecated it. I agree with you that many more things are complicated now. I try all kinds of ways of explaining things to new people and I have various notecards and tutorial areas such as the infohub in Ross called Memory Bazaar, but it's just never enough. It's an enormous amount of lore that you "just have to know". I don't know the way out from this thicket but one thing I do is just rarely buy clothes or avatars, I never add an "AO," and that way I keep my sanity.
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On 6/13/2020 at 2:58 PM, FairreLilette said:
Not in California though, we have these below and even more have been added in recent years, I just can't remember them all. But, it's more like what is shown below for California: Plus, I don't believe the USA has four main classifications. There are people here in California of all continents, and for the most part whites are defined as Caucasian and Blacks are defined as African Americans and have been for a long, long, long time as per their choice.
But, just take a minute and, I think, we need to ask ourselves, how was the order made up to list of the ethnicities shown below? As in California, Caucasian (white) is always first. Kind of makes one think, doesn't it?
California is a completely different country than the rest of the United States. I recently bought a microwave oven. Scientists have proven for decades that microwaves do not cause damage to your health unless you do something stupid like put metal in it. But a big label on it said "For residents of California only" and proceeded to provide a warning that microwaves may be damaging to your health. Hilarious!
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On 6/10/2020 at 2:39 PM, kali Wylder said:
Why it can feel hard to talk about racial inequality, and why you should do it anyway....
So, anyway, as i mentioned in a couple of other threads, the company I work for gave us a paid day off in response to the crazy whacked out state of the world these days, between the plague and the quarantine and 9 minute film of a black man killed by a white cop and the reaction it set off. I'm not black, and I do believe wholeheartedly that black lives matter.
Since I am white, I benefit by the racist status quo. This was not something I was aware of really, but I didn't have to be aware of it as I wasn't adversely affected by it. I'm not even sure how I even heard of the idea of wokeness. I did know that it was slang for an awareness of something that I didn't have, that it was a "black" thing. And I knew I should be woke. And I knew I was not.
So I did what I generally do about anything that troubles me, I went looking for answers on the internet and I found there were books tackling the issue and I started to read. I read one called "I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness" by Austin Channing Brown and now I'm reading "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism" by Robin DiAngelo. This white fragility is really difficult to read. Not that it's not well written or is too complex to digest, but because of the way it makes me feel.
And since I love SL and I'm an introverted recluse whose only social outlet is SL, I would love to talk about it here.
There are wildly different reading lists and suggested behaviours and thought patterns depending on different people's ideologies so I prefer to keep it less theoretical, on the Internet with anonymous strangers, and stay in real life, where there are many things that can be done to remedy the mass crime against humanity which was slavery in the United States, and to ensure that Black Lives Matter.
Meanwhile, all the "woke" activity of especially white leftists begins to be counter-productive and to incite backlash needlessly, and I'm reminded of a very good essay on this topic by Vaclav Havel, the Power of the Powerless, which along the way makes a good point about imposing slogans on people.
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On 6/11/2020 at 3:56 AM, Alwin Alcott said:
with so many rentals in SL, with evenso so many different landlords ( from hundreds to single plot) it'snearly impossible to make a master list, the work for that would be more than a weekjob in a day to keep track of available properties. The list in search is a help, but many rentals won't be posted there.
Most known landlords on the forums are @Prokofy Neva and @beethros Karas
For rentals it's not really easy to find all with flying, next to the two mentioned in the line above, you'll find a lot more in this thread
https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/290-parcels-for-rent-mainland/There is a site inworld called Rental Central which you can go to and see a wide variety of rental companies. A rental agency can rent a kiosk there and place signs. I personally do not bother with that "Land for Rent" list because it's incredibly stupid and clunky. You have to keep filling out the form carefully and keep refreshing it as it keeps losing what you put in, and you keep getting "island" first and have to deliberately put in "mainland" again. If you have marked any parcel as "rental" it will show up there, even some empty space with only a tree that is part of a rental community. This causes people to land in the water and ask me if the land is for rent.
Instead, I put a sampling of 100 rental properties in search/places which is a much cleaner, easier to use, and easier to maintain list for both me and for customers. They just search for "Ravenglass Rentals" and possibly another word like "$100" or "waterfront" and find the list and teleport to them. "Land for Rent" is just a confusing chore and I don't understand why it is there or if people really use it. -
On 6/14/2020 at 4:20 AM, Qie Niangao said:
I've been watching something like this play out recently near one of my Mainland locations, and it is indeed sorrowful. To be honest, the assets themselves aren't the hardest part of perpetuating that particular business, perhaps because it's an inherently social business, not based on products, and the venue was fairly well prepared for change of ownership. Still, I agree it's a problem that would benefit from addressing.
This specific problem could be reduced if accounts could be a better analogue of RL businesses, where some legal construct (perhaps a successor to the woefully over-stretched "Group") were able to own property in a way that officers could actually use them as normal products. There are huge hurdles to that, among them the "next owner" permissions apply to everything a group can own because there's no way to "Buy For Group" (except land, which doesn't have such permissions anyway). The underlying idea is that "business owned" objects would continue to be owned by the business regardless of who comes and goes as the business's operators.
Also, I can see that creators might want to will their IP to public domain when they die. That's certainly easy enough to do legally, in RL, and provision could be made for an agent of the estate to actually push the SL buttons to release those assets in SL. But there's nothing that makes it easy, and perhaps there's demand enough to justify it.
The thing I really don't care about, though, is the ability to will creations from one individual to another individual. Maybe there's some validity in wanting to transfer these assets from an individual to a business (perhaps a museum) upon death, but I don't see any benefit for therm to transfer to another individual. In fact, I think it would be better if that were impossible in RL, too.
You can deed an item to the group and then anyone can use that deeded item. People don't do this much because it's vulnerable to theft or griefing by moving around if you have an open group. And the permissions can still get messed up in this process. But that is the thing to do if you want to have "everybody" in a category you can still restrict by membership have access to an item.
I'm glad you're not in charge of RL. The things that parents leave their children -- books, trinkets, diaries, etc. -- are not going to be appreciated by a library as much as those children. The library won't take a lot of what seems like junk. Leave people to do what they wish with their private property and their families. What, the state has to intrude and confiscate their belongings and put them in the museum for "the people" or the trash heap of history?
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On 6/13/2020 at 1:51 AM, DeepBlueJoy said:
but I don't want to clothe my alt and steal anyone's money. my friend was out of town, never went to an event. I cannot give him or her the item, even if it's no copy.
It is not always POSSIBLE to buy the item you want to give away. Sellers leave SL. And you have a perfect item for SOMEONE ELSE that you cannot give them... something they can NEVER buy anywhere.
Sometimes I get something I have no use for -- I have been given things by people and I have a friend who wants the item and i don't care if i lose it completely... but I cannot transfer it at all... I either have to keep something that is useless or toss it, and watch my friend have to buy it. Or worse, my friend can never buy the item b/c the vendor is long gone from SL.
I seldom buy no copy items, but if i do, surely I should be able to give those away if I never intend to use it again? I don't understand people who sell things that are both no copy and no transfer.
A friend in SL is dying in real life. She has a lot of lovely things from being here for a long time. Most of them she cannot give away even though she will be dead soon and she cannot use them in the afterlife. So a real life person cannot pass on something when they will never be able to use it again in second life because they're dead. I'm sure her closest friends would have loved some one of a kind item of hers to remember her by. I really like the idea of a 'transfer all copies' permission. Or maybe a way to turn off use of any copies if you transfer the item.
If I were dying, I would like my entire inventory to go to my bff in SL. She would have my avi transferred to her anyway, so anything i have like houses would be hers to use, but sometimes it's easier to rez stuff in your own name and I have some killer clothing that I would love someone to be able to use. No matter how close we are, I seriously doubt she would want to wear my avatar if I were to die.
Bad cases make bad law. The Lindens in fact have a procedure that if you leave your SL assets in a will to someone, they will honour that. But you have to go to the trouble to spell this out and get a valid will made. It's something more than the Facebook Legacy program.
A person who has bought no-transfer items can elect to leave their account and its content to a friend, rather than intrude on copyright for everyone because of the sadness of some, and make them copyable to anyone. So that means yes, you would have to log on that dead friend's avatar, which you might not wish to "wear," but you could rez out their content.
In RL, certain things cannot be passed on because they become eroded or destroyed, like a land parcel worn away by the sea or a house that can no longer be repaired. Nothing is forever. There are certain things made in the historical past that I cannot readily buy, like a stereopticon. This is the nature of the human experience, and it is replicated in virtuality.
I have all kinds of things in SL that are on my land, particularly builds I commissioned and paid for, which the builder never bothered to turn over to me, although he gave me the textures full perm, and he left SL. And while I have been in touch with him, he doesn't want to bother to fix this. So the buildings suffer from prim drift and if they are returned by accident I am SOL. But such is life. New buildings could go up.
One thing to do is to deed land and content to the group so that anyone can use it. But then this leaves it vulnerable to griefing, so it has to be done carefully.
Copyright and permissions are the heart of SL. They are what made it work when so many other virtual worlds and games and platforms died. So it is worth preserving and using the same methods of RL in SL, such as making wills.
Inventory loss is a harsh reality of SL. I have lost 15,000 items in a go, never to return, including many gatcha rares, and I recently found that inexplicitly, this lovely ice coach called "En L'hiver" made by Margot Abattoir is missing from inventory. I used to put it out every winter. So I mourned its passing because she is gone from SL. And far more importantly, I mourn the passing of SL friends who died in RL, who were more important than any one item of clothing or furniture. This is life. Nothing in excess. There has to be a balance. Many things are sad; that doesn't mean you destroy people's livelihoods.-
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On 5/20/2020 at 3:24 AM, Jennifer Boyle said:
There are two areas in which it seems to me that the current system unnecessarily restricts and inconveniences users with no benefit to creators or anyone else.
One is my inability to rename no-mod items. This is particularly irksome with texture-change mesh clothing. As an example, I may have shoes that have many choices of colors. I want to put on black, ones or red ones, etc., and not have to attach and fiddle with a HUD every time I wear them. If they are no-mod, the only way I can record the color of a copy is to create a separate folder for it. It would be more convenient if I could add "red" or "black" or whatever was appropriate to the name. An alternative would be for creators to not make things no-mod. I don't want to mess with the design of the shoes; I just want the convenience of renaming them. Why not have a "sub-perm" under the next-owner permissions like "may rename only?" Why shouldn't I have that? What would be the harm?
The other is that no-transfer is absolute. Creators have a legitimate reason to want to prevent two accounts from using an item at the same time. They have no legitimate reason to want to prevent ownership from passing from one account to another. Imagine what RL would be like if no one could sell their house or car and no one could donate used clothing or books? Since the goods that we are considering are fragile digital files that can become unusable or even disappear for many reasons or for no apparent reason, backups are essential, so a user must be able to make copies. Creators are rightly unwilling for purchasers to be able to transfer something they bought while retaining a copy. But, why couldn't we have, instead of absolute no transfer, either "transfer and delete all copies" or, better, "transfer all copies" as the next-owner permission. This might require that a unique identifier field be added to properties; the unique identifier would never change, once assigned. A single copy of the item could always be transferred without restriction by the creator. What would be wrong with such a change?
No, the permissions shouldn't be changed.
Put the shoes in a folder, it's not that hard, just as easy to search for as a name.
If you need to clothe your alts, pay for their copies and support those creators.
There is no way to make something "copyable only for me" and have it stick without disrupting copyright and creating huge coding headaches for Lindens.
It's not like most creators earn a RL living from their hard work. Don't begrudge them the extra US $1.00 or $5.00 or $10.00 which is all we are talking about here for outfits and mesh bodies.
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I love all their outfits. They are all so individualized and cool. I wish you could convey that same sense of vibrant, authentic outfits on the Marketplace pages. The models there are so insipid.
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On 6/6/2020 at 4:29 PM, J4ckyJ7 said:
It is amazing to see real events such as the event that caused the passing of George Floyd, can cause such unity of not only black people standing up for what is right in real life, but Second Life too. From shirts and items being sold on the market place, that when people buy an item the money goes to a black organization. This quite touch and heart moving to see.
BLACK LIFE MATTER ✊
I think the Lindens did a great job with this.
They gave $10,000 to three groups and that is commensurate with their profits -- they put to shame other Silicon Valley businesses with far more profits who have neither said or done anything about BLM.
The suggested three groups are ACLU, NAACP, and SLPLC. Of the three, I'd go with NAACP as the longest-living civil rights organization still standing with the most credible record. I used to support the ACLU -- not after their atrocious apologia for Snowden which was way beyond their mandate. As for SLPLC, generally they do important work documenting hate groups. But it's ideologically tilted toward the left, and they slam some groups that are within the free speech norm and do not incite imminent violence -- which should be their definition. They leave out some leftist hate groups. They will have excellent documentation of things like Steven Miller's emails and the links in them and what that context is, but then they dismiss anti-fa as a nothing. They've also have leadership turmoils in recent years. But all three of these groups are chartered, they have high ranking from charity monitors, they are transparent, they are established, and so safer than something made yesterday which may not be as accountable.
They also provided links for petitions and such, and that's ok, although I personally don't want to give to large, amorphous bail funds run by Moveon or some other leftist group which will end up springing some violent types like the two lefty lawyers, graduates of prestigious universities, who threw the Molotov cocktails into the police cars in NYC. I personally would rather give to legal defense funds as the more urgent need given massive numbers of cases, many of whom have been arrested for nothing, or for minor offenses. The bail system is broken thoroughly, to be sure, but it's just my choice to focus on defense rather than bail.
I think a lot of SL merchants and stores have stepped up to respond to this urgent new movement.To be sure, when you donate through SL, you are passing funds through a sieve several times, losing value on the way with fees, and it's better just to donate directly on the Internet. But not everyone can do that or is moved to do that and putting $100 or $500 in a tip jar is easier, so why not? If they get content for that, it's a motivation.
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On 6/1/2020 at 2:06 PM, Sorciaa said:
Might be a general trend. I have been looking on and off at homesteads and when I looked last yearish, one popular land lord had them for 6,999L/week. Looking today. they are 8,999L/Week. Thats quite a hike.
This suggests to me that they either have some inside knowledge of some Linden policy about to come, or more likely, they read the recent notices that Linden isn't going to add to their stock and has a shortage of regions, and they think this is the smart thing to do.
Just looking at my piece of it, which is mainly Mainland, demand is definitely higher due to the pandemic, there are more big spenders due to people who still have jobs being able to spend time online, and there are even RL groups such as churches or non-profits who want to rent virtual space now. Linden Homes seems to be dropping off just because people chafe at the lag and the prim limits.
This situation will not last as some cities are opening up again and getting people back to work, unemployment is running out for people, and there are further losses from mass disorders. The Linden is at an all-time high at 246 today. Again, this won't last. The Lindens may hold their stock down to lower levels in fact to drive up prices as they know it won't last, either.
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On 6/8/2020 at 2:21 PM, Tastee Puddles said:
Nope, not Ravenglass. It seems like the R in question is having a mass exodus. I have been keeping an eye on their full sim listings and competitors. They went from 1 or 2 to currently having about 20 full regions available. Other landlords with fair practices have little to none available. Goes to show what the greedy 1000L per week increase did for their business.
I have about two weeks left on the tier box and I'll be moving on after that.
Well it's too bad you don't have a refund button. But island agencies tend not to have refunds or they would have to deal with the same thin margins we do on Mainland.
I'm just not getting the reasoning of this fellow charging $1000 hikes and emptying out his stock obviously. Does he know something we don't know? He thinks he's going to get a surge of deep-pocketed renters? Maybe RL businesses? Seems crazy.
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On 6/7/2020 at 3:56 AM, CoffeeDujour said:
The bog box stores have destroyed all the local business everywhere they have moved. There is a reason you can buy everything at Walmart.
We actually have few big box stores in New York City, especially Manhattan. They aren't given permits to build and there's no space for them. There are still a lot of little and medium stores. In my neighbourhood, I have seen small cafes, hardware stores, book stores, video stores, gift shops, stationery stores destroyed BY THE INTERNET and by higher rents. Not by big chains. First *the Internet* destroyed them; then the rent was too damn high. Today, I live in a hollowed out, once thriving area of three giant government subsidized housing projects with virtually no stores, many stores vacated because they can't pay the rent, but not rented yet, and owners waiting to drive up prices further; large apartment buildings that built on the ashes of small stores, a temple, a school -- and aren't even 30% full because no one can afford those luxury apartments; and more 7/11s and Taco Bells per city block than anyone could possibly use them -- and they sit empty, much of the time, their owners able to write off losses and wait for the area to gentrify, I guess. Where are all the people in these giant housing complexes going to go? Well, one place they will go when there is enough incitement and opportunity by mass marches is to loot and trash the few stores -- and chains, like Verizon -- that remain.
So yes, any little mom and pop stores still owned by established Koreans, aging Holocaust survivors, and new Indian immigrants who managed to survive first the rent hikes, then the pandemic, have remained to see their businesses looted and trashed during recent demonstrations.Here's a video made by one of my children's classmates of the Best Buy. Best Buy will survive, but now the jobs are gone from that particular store (my daughter's boyfriend worked there), and in general Best Buy has cut back during the pandemic and laid off people.
All the stores by Fordham in the Bronx are trashed. How will they be rebuilt? Small business loans were already spent coping with the pandemic. Now what? They won't be rebuilt, and in their place will be a giant K-mart or if they are in Chapter 11, a Wal-mart.
AOC couldn't see her way clear to allowing Amazon to come in and provide jobs, she kept falsely claiming that apartment complexes were going to push out existing residents when the already-existing co-op owners already were selling to Amazon without displacement. It's not like there were more executives than the locals who were going to be hired.
So easy to say "oh, big box stores" which I don't particularly like either, but they are cheaper than ordering from Amazon. But now it's not big box stores causing the havoc. -
19 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:
The bog box stores have destroyed all the local business everywhere they have moved. There is a reason you can buy everything at Walmart.
We have some box stores in NYC but mainly a lot of smaller stores because they simply can't fit here or get permits here.
In some cases Ace Hardware drives out little independent hardwares; in some cases Ace fails as people won't go away from the independents. It's a mixed bag and your blanket statements as usual doesn't apply to reality. Most of those harmed are small businesses, many minority owned.
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On 6/5/2020 at 11:46 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:
Dano, a few things.
"Defunding the police" essentially means making new priorities for civic services. It means, in practice, fewer expensive "toys" for police departments (you know, the military hardware, like armoured vehicles, helicopters, and so forth), and more money directed towards social services, healthcare, and education -- the kinds of things that ultimately will reduce crime, and make police departments with ever-expanding budgets and enough ordnance to launch an invasion of a neighbouring country unnecessary. You can read more here:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/defund-the-police-1007254/
There is NO evidence that George Floyd resisted arrest. On the contrary, witnesses have asserted the contrary. Even if he had, he was clearly in no position to continue doing so once cuffed and prone on the ground. He posed no threat. This was murder, pure and simple.
Your final point seems to be more or less that American blacks should just kind of suck it up if they are being harassed by the police. That in itself is a repulsive and reprehensible suggestion, but it also ignores the fact that, way too often, blacks arrested by the police don't get the opportunity to "sort it all out" in a nice civilized way at the police station.
George Floyd, and many, many other black men never made it that far.
That's entirely not true, and you have only to go on twitter and watch all the videos and read the statements to grasp this.
It means NO ARMED POLICE. It means funding "civil services" in vague ways and not just removing excessive militarization from police, it means NO ARMED POLICE. Rolling Stone whitewashes this. There are plenty of reform groups all over with many good ideas for how to reform people -- taking all the funding away from armed, uniformed police maintaining law and order is not a solution, it's a recipe for disaster and that is indeed what they are calling for.
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On 6/2/2020 at 10:36 AM, Pixieplumb Flanagan said:
I have noticed a few people concerned about the possible illegality of some of the protesters' actions. It made me think. And I'm afraid I'm about to commit something of an internet faux pas. Sorry not sorry.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Germans removing gay, Jewish, differently abled, Roma, Jehovah s witnesses et al along to the ghettos and camps, were all operating strictly within the law. Defying these orders was criminal.
When Richard and Mildred Loving got married in 1958 they were breaking the law, criminals.
When slaves escaped to Canada they were breaking the law, criminals.
When you dumped our tea into the harbour you were, yeah, you get it.
The real story of progress is littered with people who broke the law, and many of whom paid the highest price.
There's a reason for that famous Chinese curse, and interesting times are uncomfortable for the lucky and deadly for the rest.
Drumpf says he's all about law and order. He isn't, but even if he were, that's not always a good thing.
This is an absurd way to look at it.
On Kristallnacht, Nazi thugs roamed through Jewish neighbourhoods, breaking store windows, throwing Torahs out of synagogues into the mud, beating and killing people. This was the start of the Holocaust.
Had German society been able to halt that pogrom at that stage, history may have turned out different. But it didn't. The rest is history.
To claim that breaking store windows, stealing, and beating people is somehow a form of civil disobedience on the way to a greater glory of social justice is absurd. Authoritarian societies can decide that it's "the law" to kill Jews or censor newspapers, and those challenging those measures for the greater cause of social justice then can be understood and supported.
But no society cleanses the breaking of store windows and torching of businesses as some kind of necessary stage along the way to a better world. That is, when they do, they get fascism in Portugal or communism in Cuba or Russia. Then everybody has to work 50 years to undo that.
The Boston Tea Partiers, then Mildred and Richard Loving didn't go beating up people and torching businesses to make their point. There is a concept of *just* law that often proves elusive to socialists. I guess it's pretty hopeless to get this across. -
On 6/1/2020 at 6:27 PM, Orwar said:
Not as such, no. We don't really have that kind of thing here as, well, our law enforcement seldom gun down people - and whilst I obviously do not condone of it, I'm hesitant to give my 'official' (i.e. 'personal') support to any movement which I don't fully grasp. No one should have to live in fear of violence or prejudice from one's own nations law enforcement, and that this is happening in a supposedly modern nation appears rather absurd.
I do however, for once, agree with Trump's sentiment of calling Antifa a terrorist organisation. Whilst I understand that they aren't really a very organized organization, anyone who willingly join a group which through violence seek to disturb the democratic process should be viewed as a potential threat, especially as they often recruit very young teens who don't understand what they are getting themselves into. Here, they've been responsible from everything from invading the homes of right-wing politicians, attacking their families, stalking their spouses and children, even putting out 'bounties' on people promising cash and knuckledusters (illegal weapons, by our laws) to anyone who 'teach them a lesson'.
Protesting is one thing, and one thing that I can fully get behind. But the rioting and looting, attacking random police officers in retribution? That's simply not constructive, it's opportunistic and destructive, greedy and disrespectful of the real issue and its victims.
I could say a lot about anti-fa from my years of working on the war in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia -- and the anti-fa from Europe and Russia taking the side of the Kremlin, and often lying about their true nature.
But Trump is completely loony on this idea that he can get anti-fa designated as terrorists. And that's not because they are a "loose network" -- they are only partly that, but they have very organized, trained, ideological cadres who steal credit cards and all the rest and whose nature is well known to the FBI who has indeed tracked them and arrested them and declared them a domestic terrorism concern -- but not the primary one, which is from white supremacists.
There isn't a procedure to do this designation at a federal level as he imagines -- it only exists for *foreign* terrorist groups, and there it is a contentious political process where all the branches of government are involved, and even hobbled as they are under Trump, you wouldn't get a *foreign* designation out of anti-fa for this.
Could you get an executive order mandating the FBI to pursue them more hotly? I'm not a lawyer but I think not. I think the whole thing will collapse. But meanwhile along the way to arguiing stupidly against this without even the most basic facts, too many liberals have sanitized anti-fa, pretending they are not organized, violent anarchists. Just watch Portland videos2 on YouTube and the NBC interview of masked anti-fa -- masked, before COVID. They themselves do not hide their violent ideas and methods.
Not every act of looting and smashing comes from anti-fa; it's a mixture of right, left, and clueless kids. Children of 10 and 12, even.
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2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:
I don't give a damn if they burn down a Target; I do care, as you obviously do, if a local ma and pa convenience store gets torched. .
There it is, the socialist ethos in a nutshell. Death to capitalism and big box stores; well, we'll let a few little cooperatives survive to get people fed since state distribution is so poor. Except, the poor people buy their cheaper clothes at Target.
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On 6/1/2020 at 6:36 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:
Thanks, Orwar. For what it's worth, I am in general agreement with nearly everything you say here, barring some nuance around the issue of Antifa, which, as you say, isn't really an "organization" so much as a collective noun for "Hot Headed Idiots Who Engage in Counter-Productive and Unjustifiable Violence in the Service of a Cause that Deserves Better."
I'm actually -- believe it or not -- hoping that this thread does not, however, become a debate about the protests, riots, and so forth. I'm not trying to be "incendiary" here: I am quite seriously most interested in the ways that people are expressing their support in-world.
That said, it's also pretty clear, I'm sure, that my own interest isn't merely "academic." One of the reasons I'm interested in hearing about how BLM is being articulated in SL is that I hope to get some good hints and ideas from it.
It's not that the socialist cause "deserves better"; it's that it attracts violent criminals because it is itself an ideology of crime.
I'm generally in favour of the protests by BLM and others which are largely peaceful, and which highlight real issues of horrifying proportions.
But I'm not for anti-fa which is a form of Bolshevism with the same kind of history and tactics; see the Soviet infiltration of the anti-fa of the 1930s.
The energy that people expend in justifying this violent group and claiming's a loose network, or it means well is the same kind of energy they put into white-washing the Soviets or for that matter the Woodbury griefers, and for the same ideological reasons. But the protesters are mainly BLM and related groups which has had 4 years to organize since the police murders of the Obama Administration; they will decide how it goes, not anti-fa or white supremacists who may be over-represented at central bookings, but do not make up the face of the crowds, which is black not white.
Let's not get bogged down in the BLM charter of 2016 which was ridiculous and they themselves then suppressed it. At this point, I invite you just to look at this video.
It shows the most liberal mayor in America from the Democratic and Farm Parties who has just eliminated the chokehold as a police method and has done many other things in Minneopolis, where George Floyd was murdered by a police officer who put a knee to his neck.
Demonstrators march to the mayor's home and call him out. Unlike our own NYC socialist mayor who would hide inside, he does come out, wearing a mask due to COVID.
They ask him whether he supports defunding of police, the latest dramatic call of the BLM marches.
He said no, he can't do that.
Which is eminently reasonable. For one, you'd lose a lot of jobs for people of colour -- not to mention the mayhem that would result with no police. What's the plan, Cuban-style neighbourhood patrols? Soviet-style druzhinniki? I can't imagine.
But they ran him out of the meeting with boos and cries of "Shame, Shame".
So you see where it is headed, not to a good place. Frankly, I'd rather have Mayor Frey and whatever improved police and city council he can muster. Some of the BLM demands for greater transparency, greater inclusiveness, more funding of communities make sense and I'd vote for them. But not abolition of the police. That's extreme, like "Medicare for All". The extremism we always get from the Squad and the rest.
This brings us not better worlds, but Trump, and locally, more people like the mayor of Portland texting with the Proud Boys or whatever the supremacists are. A colleague of mine has been brutally beaten by NYPD during the protests. A friend of my daughter's filmed the most outrageous looting and smashing of the Best Buy store. it's just chaos out there, and COVID to come again.I can't support either police beatings or trashing of stores.
As for activity in SL, raising money in SL is a problem because you have to pay fees to get it out. I would steer people to bail funds and such in RL. -
On 6/5/2020 at 10:03 AM, LittleMe Jewell said:
I cracked up laughing at this. It made me think of a RL apartment building manager knocking on everyone's door just to say "Hi" as they walked along the hallways - which of course nobody would do, nor would anyone want them to.
On 6/5/2020 at 2:18 PM, Drakonadrgora Darkfold said:actually you might be surprised that some people might have actually liked this in their community. not everyone is how you think they are.
Well, my RL landlord is not going to go knock on every door in a complex of 4000 people, and I'm not going to go say hi on every sim with some 2000 customers. I have a newsletter to reach them, as my RL does. They can socialize among themselves, you know? If you mean a small town, population 3000, which I have lived in, yes, going down the street, not only do you say hi, you stop and visit with people on their front porches, and set a spell. But not all of us live in such places now.
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On 5/27/2020 at 4:19 PM, steeljane42 said:
There are some landlords who lock tier to what it was when you buy it, it can be good or bad, depending on when you got it. And some who have floating "market price" or so they call it. One of the latter is well known for prices hiking for all kinds of reasons, even when they make no sense. For example back in 2016 when LL added prims for everyone, so full regions went from 15 to 20k and homesteads from 3.75 to 5k, they increased prices because of "extra work to manage more prims".
They are also known to have below the market prices (way below one, enough to make it look like it's too good to be true) for full regions and homesteads, then when somebody buys into that, they increase the price in a few weeks. Right about time when most people are done with some building and might want to avoid to move again, even if it's at the expense of paying some extra. Very shady company to say the least. Not posting their name to not break forum rules for name calling, but it starts with an "R".
Not "Ravenglass" FYI because I haven't raised my prices, except if I also raised prim allocations in a few places. If anything, due to COVID, I've lowered my prices in some places. The Lindens doubled the cashout fee, which really bites into profits, but I didn't raise my prices then -- I just became more activist in getting people to pay, added a "grace period" mode for the rental box and made it clear they would be returned if not paid after that period expired. I can't run a charity if LL doesn't.
I can't believe there is a practice of raising in *thousand Linden increments*. That is just plain crazy. No one does that. I've never heard of it. It isn't justified. So leave ASAP. PS I allow refunds on any of my rentals at any time, for a small fee of about 20% of one week's rent. Many island owners lock you in for a least a month. Mainland tends not to do that, but look around. No one should pay those prices or increases in this market with a zillion choices.-
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On 5/25/2020 at 3:48 PM, melanatedaquarian said:
Hi all,
I'm in the very early stages of planning my own community and had a few questions. I'd like to create a mixed use rp city sim with residential (apartments and houses) public spaces (restaurants, parks, public services), and small-mid sized businesses. Though, I'd like the option to expand those in the future if business goes well and perhaps include a nightclub(s). However, lag is real! Is it possible to expand to regions and/or divide one up so that businesses or clubs don't negatively impact those living on the sim?
Most people attempting what you are planning have to put the club or events space on its own separate sim in a cluster of sims. You simply cannot combine clubs with residential rentals because the clubs, even if they only meet at certain hours, or the events, fill up the sim and then people renting homes can't get home to their home they are paying for. People coming to clubs and events generally aren't paying for anything except maybe dropping a dime in a tip jar. So take care of the residential people first, they pay your tier.
I stopped renting to clubs 14 years ago as they are nothing but trouble, up and down. A club on a sim ruins its use often. I have suffered through this many times to the point where I simply won't buy any land where there is anything like a club, and will move out and sell the land rather than stay where there is one. But I wait 30-60 days, as most clubs fail in that time.
Many landlords make the mistake that they need to provide clubs, events, parks for their tenants. They don't. The tenants don't need or want this. They make their own lives. Unless you have a theme or RP or category like "furries" or "LGBT", don't expect the club to be relevant. Focus on residential first, add the others later.
Don't expect that stores will pay for your club. They won't. Shoppers won't come to a laggy sim and store owners may not rent from you for that reason. Stalls with vendors are a different story if you think people will buy as they are going to the club as distinct from coming into the sim from outside not for the club, but the store. You can't go wrong by putting in the club last in my view. But most people planning these things really love the idea of a club. So do that if your heart is in it, you have a group of people who want to be there, but then expect to pay the tier yourself. -
I don't have any bots at all nor would I need them as they are a needless expense gathering information that seems useless unless you are a large corporation with the resources to gather and manipulate it and make use of it. I don't see the point.
I do know land barons have bots to watch the market and various other entities gather information for God knows what purpose, and make use of 16m microparcels sometimes to place scripted devices or to run the bots.
I wish that all bots had to designate themselves as such not just to the Lindens, who require them to be registered in the premium account, but to the whole world, with some kind of visible marking, a color tag to their name -- something. So that they could be banned globally.
The Lindens probably find that bots are useful to their largest customers so they don't move against them.
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On 5/29/2020 at 9:52 AM, kittenlolli said:
can two private islands share the exact same region name?
If the Lindens wanted to, they could do this, since all things are numbers anyway.
This is how they let another group have the same name "Free Tibet," even though I had taken that name 15 years ago, because they felt I was somehow "not entitled" or they didn't like me, or whatever. And they could do this because it's a system with numbers that resolve to names. So they just made different numbers.
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Posted
Before I learn Blender, which I'm likely not going to be good at, I'm personally waiting for something like a global pandemic where I'm forced to stay at home and never -- oh.