Prokofy Neva

I remember once I made 12 alts because they were needed to hold land groups together. By that I mean not the required 3 avatars (which used to be the rule; now it is just 2) but that awful problem of "officer recall," whereby the members of your own land group where you paid the tier could throw you out of the group as a form of griefing. This was the Lindens' early experiments with "democracy". So the workaround for that was to have enough alts in groups so that if one officer was recalled you could still act to expel the griefer. I remember at a Linden town hall where I protested about this, and Blue Linden lecturing me about how I had to campaign with "my people" and hope to be "elected"again -- this, in a land group, where I paid all the tier and the members were tenants. This was back in the day when we tried to take the silly hippie groups that distributed everything equally and re-cast them for business. You may recall my blog on this topic which was actually read by Cory and eventually they did reform the groups. While "officer recall" was ridiculous and destructive, the proposition function that you could also vote on was a great idea but they removed that. I remember in that giant Concierge group with like 8000 people in it, I put a proposition about whether people opposed the VAT. But the Lindens closed it somehow. I remember the Lindens closing all but 5 of my 12 accounts, and I wrote an appeal on every single closure, saying I did this because of their silly officer recall nonsense which had paralyzed my groups . What would happen is that once someone triggered a recall on you, and your alt, you were paralyzed. You couldn't exercise any of the group functions. It was sheer insanity. I believe 7 days had to pass before you could function in the group again and only if the recall failed. Imagine, you could be expelled from the group where you paid for the land. It took forever to get this across to the Lindens. Then when all that nonsense was over, there was still a need to have multiple groups because land groups start to really lag after about 500 members. As it is, you cannot search on names directly, you can only type in a few letters and hope to find a person. At the first SL meet-up, Philip came up to me genuinely puzzled. He had personally read my appeals (SL was a lot smaller then). I didn't know what I was talking about. I sat down at a computer and showed him. That and other things about the groups. It was the most uncanny feeling. These people make these worlds, but they don't know that half of what goes on in them....

Of course! And Psaltery was one of the names of the Royals.

I was just thinking of what historically, the last names meant. They were at one time a marker for the time in which you entered Second Life. So some people had very old names that were like the Mayflower, like the very first resident, Stellar Sunshine. The names came and went from the list, so if you had the name Midnight or Terra or Weber or Leviathan you were sure to be SL Royalty. Just contemplate the list of what I called FIC 1.0 (Feted Inner Core, those with special relationships with the Lindens in the early days, some of whom *became* Lindens): Aimee WeberSiobhan TaylorTeeny LeviathanJeska LindenFlipperPA PeregrineJennyfur PeregrineTaco RubioNeph ProtagonistNeil ProtagonistMoopf MurraySiggy Romulus+Cory OndrejkaTimeless PrototypeEloise PasteurCatherine OmegaFrans CharmingFrancis ChungHiro Pendragon How many of them are even in SL any more? Hiro Pendragon's "dojo" (the first I ever saw) is no more; Siggy Romulus sadly died in RL, leaving behind his wife Neph Protagonist, who became his RL wife, and their twin children. Neph had at one time been the partner of Neil (people used to take the same last names when they were partners). Aimee Weber used to be the most popular women's fashion designer ("She makes Lindens feel pretty," someone once quipped acidly. Taco Rubio was infamous for creating something called the "Upskirt Museum" for which he was banned. Cory Ondrejka was actually Cory Linden who famously broke with Philip Linden (Philip Rosedale) over the issue of open-sourcing not just the viewer but all of SL, and other unknown matters. Timeless Prototype made one of those seats that keeps adding one, and permanently blocked me because I criticized him. Eloise Pasteur is as elegant as her name and made interesting scripts and I believe is still in SL. Francis Chung, "the other Chung," was a scripter, and had the famous last name made famous by none other than Anshe Chung, SL's first "millionaire" who is long gone from SL but whose rentals empire survives in some form apparently. FlipperPA and Jennyfur Peregrine ran the SL RL meet-ups and caused many a scandal around that; Jeska Linden was their best friend whom they used to feature in their billboard ads for their online SL fashion and shopping service -- which caused a group of us to complain about residents that used Lindens to advance their business, and eventually, an ethics manual was created by Linden Lab that barred such practices. That shopping site -- was it called "SLEX?" with little boxes you had to put stuff in to transfer it to the web was bought out by the Lindens and turned into the Marketplace. Jeska who was famous for telling people to take their differences off the forums and have them in world -- long ago left the Lab, married, and has kids even by now I think. Moopf Murray made some free iceskates you can still find. And so on. Where are they now? All the great names of SL, mainly gone, left entirely, gone from the People List, with only their created objects to remember them by. I suppose Oz Linden might know -- how many avatars are left in SL who have the original last names? I bet it's actually not more than 10,000, likely less, because I never see the old last names in my rentals, except those who have been in them for 10 or more years (last names went away in 2010 I believe). Then there's the next generations after the original "founding fathers and mothers" -- names like Neva, which might be associated with a low-cost rentals agency and whom you don't like, but is also the name of a very fancy sim rentals company. It's the name of a river in Russia, of course, which is where my university dormitory stood 40 years ago, looking out on the Winter Palace, where the sun never rose before 10:00 am in the morning and immediately sunk at about 2 pm before it was time to go on the "Leninskiye mesta" tour, scraping the ice from the windows...So dark and cold, and no food! Kind of like now, in some ways. There was the famous Pituca Fairchild and Garth Fairlight -- they married in SL and then later in RL and the Lindens made them a combined last name -- Fairchang. I remember when I saw them holding hands at the SL meet-up in Chicago, I thought I was in some kind of Renaissance world, some world of higher beings and greater culture...Pituca is still very active inworld with a rentals company and you can find memorials of Garth -- who used to have a store near Ravenglass that I would shop at -- I got all their newbie freebies including their Greek House which I wish I still had, sadly lost in inventory. Garth also became a Linden for a time. I will find his Linden name -- he did work on the SLRR and is remembered for that among many things; you can get the free train he made at my Aztecha community in Columbia. There was a time when a last name associated with an "epoch" of SL. Oh, that name was when Philip welcome real estate sales (Neva); that name is when VAT was imposed; that name is when sculpties were made; the businesses started during these "epochs" with those last names would be forever associated with that "epoch" -- until they weren't, when history was forgotten, like now.

There is a scripted device that calls up keys. You can get it on the MP. Not sure it has all avatars in it but most of them. It is not a secret as it is displayed if you make a payment on a rental box, for example, or do other things. I use it to ensure that the copyright of creators is protected with a customized script.

My bet is that we will see Iwanderedlonelyasa Cloud and not Jacobo Timmerman -- but surprise me. I thought about whether I would make use of this service, which seems well worth the $40, given that there was a huge demand for it and that apparently it was hard to do. And I couldn't immediately find a use for it, but I'm glad it's there and I might turn to it. I wouldn't want to change this name because it's almost like a brand name. I already was lucky enough to get my real first and last name for free years ago because it's a common name and the Lindens put it in the list long ago. I even asked my son if he wanted to change his name to the actual family name of his great grandfather -- the system name was only close. But somehow it seemed too strange. The Lindens are always better at making up last names that I would, and perhaps I could consider making a new one with these interesting last names -- but then I'd have to kill off an alt. Don't they still have the rule of five premium accounts only? or do they? Well, 5 is plenty anyway because they are a lot of mouths to feed and keep dressed, i.e. pay for. My alts are all known and I use them to hold together groups. I think the best thing about this is that now people who wish to use Second Life for RL purposes -- and there are such people and hopefully there will be more of them -- can make their actual name in RL and link it to their social media. And if it is taken because it's a common name, perhaps they could put in an initial or something. The display names are heavily used and as a rentals agent I find it difficult sometimes to get to the actual name that you need to put in things like locked doors or teleporters. I have yet to see a "new last name person" but I wonder now if inventory will be lost as a glitch associated with people changing their names so that their created objects have a new name now, too.

You can park boats at the yacht club in Carlisle and Wetheral for a dollar a prim, but if it is so gigantic that it takes up all the prims and all the space, it won't work. Also some possibilities in Hite. This is not Blake Sea but the Hidden Lakes area of Sansara. So I'd have to know the size and prims.

No idea what your point is, but anyone who wants to find my blog can just Google, and I don't think the forums are a place necessarily to promote one's blog. And what is this "horrible thing" you think I did that somehow I am supposedly "reluctant" to link to or describe? The horror! Oh! I know! Simply reprinting the exchanges on this forum. Just reprinting them. They stand alone, really. Others who may not come to the forums or who don't feel they can express themselves freely on the forums then have an opportunity to respond appropriately.

Um, I'm not asking for any information. I'm asking for people who ALREADY PUBLICLY link their SL avatar and RL identity to come to a discussion group. Pretty simple concept, unless you are an anonymous vicious sniper filled with ill will. I don't need anyone's real-life information. It's also not "easy to fake". You know, if you are an educator, writer, journalist, actor, etc. etc. you are often already linked in RL and SL. Even if you're not anyone prominent, you might have a long-time blog you have run, or you simply have a university page or a Facebook page that is easily determined to be real -- often because you are in business in SL and are responsible to your customers. I guess all these concepts are alien to you, but you're not the one being invited to this group since you're anonymous and don't link your RL identity, hello. I am a person of fairly high morals. Meanwhile, you are showing yourself to be a prevaricator. I think naming and shaming bad actors like griefers and scammers and people who attempt to rip off others or threaten them for no valid reason are good things and beneficial to SL and I'll go right on doing it, thank you very much. You're not required to read my posts or my blog and you can block me if they upset you so much. The degree to which people in this thread such as Kweopi are engaging in "whataboutism" is illustrative of the ill will they bring to a simple exercise. Most people who are either public figures, or not shy about publicly stating their opinion on social media, or who are educators or journalists or some other kind of professional, or who are in business in RL and speak to the media don't need to engage in all these fakes. There's always someone like that Hero Sun who tries to make a fake blog with a common name to see if he can "sneak by" when a requirement, say, on a blog comments system, is that you must link to a RL identity. People like that are easily seen through and you just block them. Good will is usually pretty easy to tell; bad will shines through as it does in spades in this thread : ) It's not true that identity forces people to be nicer; they can be just as nasty especially if they are nobodies and no boss or any kind of restraint governs them on social media. If doesn't matter if someone puts down that they are Sarah Smith of Golders Green, age 63, retired housewife, and that "doesn't tell you anything". If she has a presence on SL or a blog or some kind of professional connection, perhaps she's in a hiking club, then you are that much ahead in trying to debate the issues of the day with her. I imagine none of you know who Sarah Smith of Golders Green is, and never will, but be assured you are not her.

I've never "doxed" anyone in my life. Meanwhile, I have been harassed and bullied for the entire 16 years I've been in SL by others who not only dox me, they think nothing of harassing my elderly mother-in-law or children. Because I simply documented and criticized their griefing and bad behaviour on world -- which is really the only recourse we have in a world without the rule of law or independent press or judiciary. Why would I use the forums to trawl for people to "dox"?! That's absurd on the face it. To what end? I have no need to find strangers who aren't interested in connecting their RL personas and "outing" them. The call here is for people who *already* link their RL and SL identities publicly for professional or personal reasons and don't care about this need for privacy, which is of course to be respected, and has never been respected for me since the earliest days in SL when I did *not* link my identities, but *Lindens* and their alts and friends outed them -- Lindens who no longer work at LL now, and not only for that reason. I don't expect much from the forums. I have many contacts in SL inworld of people who never, ever go on the toxic forums and just aren't interested in them. There are some I have met in RL and we know each others' identities -- and PS that's because they are *already linked publicly*. So those are the people I have discussions with *already*. I'm just happy to open it up to anyone else, and for the simple reason that I really, really am tired of trying to debate people in SL whose level of education, political affiliations in RL, location, experience are all black boxes. This does not afford you the ideal, pristine world of ideas that you imagine.

If you don't behave badly, you won't be called out on my blog. Example of behaving badly: going into a thread started by someone who is black and gay and looking for black and gay hangouts and friends and picking a fight with them.

I started a little discussion group -- little, because of the one simple reason I want this group to have: you must link your real-life name and SL avatar to be in the group and come to the discussions. While there is a certain set of people who make this linkage in SL with RL -- mainly scholars or educators or game devs or something "meta" to SL, it's certainly not the norm. There are a zillion groups in SL; there are a zillion events; everybody can do what they want. As I make this request, I'm sure there will be those who will respond and complain -- as if they were somehow asked to do this themselves, which of course, they are not. But what I would like to do is to talk to people whose RL location, background, education, profession etc. is open and established. It's very hard to debate people especially on the forums who are anonymous, and about whom you cannot understand anything. It gets really tedious. I truly get the advantage of having the "equalizing" effect of SL (it really isn't that) and the "freedom" of anonymity (which more often than not leads to abuse). Even so, I would like to try this search. And by RL connection, I don't mean that you link to a virtually blank blogspot that supposedly links to your RL name, like someone who's name is like the sun here. You have to be unabashedly connected because it doesn't bother you to be connected.

Alvin, are you black or gay? If not, why are you in this thread? I'm neither black nor gay, but I have tenants who are black or LGBTQ, and especially when new, it takes them awhile to find their way. You can try search on topics; it can just produce a lot of adult clubs that aren't for everybody. I can only tell people to try different events, try to find a topic you like, a book club, music, whatever, then you may find friends. But it is not easy. it's hard. And to come at people in the disruptive way you do just drives them away.

No, of course states' rights should not be changed, are you kidding? Especially with Trump as president. But even if it were Obama or some more likeable president that outsiders want, like Sanders (who would be a disaster in my view), you don't take a system that is set up from the ground up and suddenly make it top down. It doesn't work. When FDR was forced to put national programs in place before the Depression and WWII, he did so very cunningly and politically with getting allies in key states and so on and simply not doing things that maybe Easterners or Westerners thought were prudent because Southerners rebelled, and so on. The US is a big country now of huge territory and very diverse groups of people: Area: 3.797 million mi² Population: 327.2 million It's not your little country with a homogenous ethnic group, if you are in one, or even your little country that used to be a world colonialist and has many diverse races and ethnicities but still has a predominant culture maintained by various institutions, even the Queen. I think you mean to say "martial law" as in military law although George Marshall was a very important historical figure to study both in terms of improving readiness of the US for WWII and for the famous Marshall Plan from which you benefited. When countries declare states of emergency or martial law they have to notify the UN that they are derogating from certain human rights -- and may not of course if they hold the UN in disdain as the US does. But there are still checks and balances and a roster of conditions to be met and we are not there yet. You have to weigh the problem Take my large housing complex of 4000 people across from hospital row, with many hospital workers and UN people living in it. Already has 3 confirmed cases. As it is run by the same people who built the NYC subway, they are people who know how to run large systems effectively. Way before anyone else they closed unnecessary shops built into this community, they made elder hours for the supermarket and laundry room, they began washing all the elevator buttons and door handles daily, etc. They urged people to stop ordering packages they didn't need as the doormen were overwhelmed. First they allowed children to play on the large open plaza but urged them to keep the social distancing of 6 feet. Children could not do this, especially those 9-12 unsupervised by parents. So they closed the plaza completely, because parents and children would not self-govern. NYC parks are closed -- but the mayor has also ordered all the basketball hoops to be unscrewed and removed because they cannot stop people from going there and this way might work. My housing complex can likely succeed with a draconian measure as they are mainly middle/lower worker class, medical and UN people largely who are educated and will largely comply even if they grumble. But a big park with no hoops in it may now spark a revolt that in fact makes things worse. You probably never heard of a "BMX hood swarm" or the Hasidim but these are two groups in NYC defying the Governor's and Mayor's orders and themselves getting sick and making other sicks -- and their actions constitute rebellion against rules that is the effect you can expect when you have not Germans as your population but Americans, who are from every country in the world. Some of the states with no "shelter in place" have huge open spaces and sparse populations and don't need the drastic measures of NYC (and even technically NYS has not risen to that drastic state but has something else called "Matilda's Law" named for Cuomo's grandma which is basically "stay home" or even "stay at work if you can't get home") . Yet some states that thought they had wide open spaces and sparse populations like Idaho forgot that when the all-black Brotherhood of Skiers flew into their country, they got sick in Idaho that wasn't as scrupulous about disinfecting, and then took that back to their states and got sick or died in large numbers, in part because they were in a vulnerable group that had less access to health care. The lack of access to both health care and justice is something I have personally witnessed with large numbers of experiences in NYC waiting in the same waiting rooms as they are waiting in, often one of the few white people, simply because of my rare disease and its expense, etc. It's easy to say every country should make their own PPE -- hey, for that matter they should make their own iphones and gadgets and then not have them so cheap so that people like you or me can have them. The global economy is not so easily dismantled. When China needed less of these as their pandemic ebbed, they sent some to NYC and NYC was glad to have them. Of course China is taking a political star turn as Russia was doing the same but any port in a storm. I am not surprised that you are obsessed with wet markets and I don't expect you to grasp that a typical mediocrity with an MBA running a hospital in NYC and making decisions based on ideology or insanity rather than medical facts in dispersing PPE is as bad a problem as a "wet market". Wet markets exist in Africa and Eurasia and Latin America, yet they did not prove sources of the virus in the past or present. Why? Because other factors like an authoritarian communist government that suppressed facts and lied to the public were important, too, and the population's resistance and lack of resistance at the same time, and other things. It seems common knowledge that the virus started in a wet market -- or perhaps a lab studying viruses that did not deliberately release it, but accidentally did so, but it doesn't matter after that because other countries have a chance to do better or worse to stop it -- Germany and South Korea did better, Spain and the US did a lot worse. One thing I can say, it is more complex than you seem to grasp. This is a good article to read: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-science-experts.html

Generally, I don't find it useful to complain about this very dire situation with strangers because of wildly different levels of education, experience and knowledge not to mention geographical location. But since you used the word "vent," short for "ventilator," AKA "respirator", today is the day Gov. Cuomo said the respirators are likely to run out in New York City. Millennials *are* stupid but possibly no more stupid than other groups -- I know old grannies and grandpas who should know better who are making multiple runs daily to the Costcos and Walmarts and not even wearing masks and thinking they are the lone salvation of civilization even as they infect their family. But I do see millenials outside still congregating in groups like idiots. They are walking a dog and this ends up being occasion to socialize with 4-6 other people not keeping the distance -- which is something of a fiction anyway. My daughter's boyfriend's sister tested positive for the virus and is quite sick. She is 27. She had shortness of breath, went to a hospital, and because she did not have a fever, she was sent home while she waited for the test. Some people with those characteristics have died waiting for the test; she apparently is getting better. For weeks her brother has been yelling at her to stop going out at night and partying. It's hardly the case that people of this age are married with kids already. They're not. But of course the next generation down is even worse. These idiot bmx bikers doing "hood swarms" are in their teens and early 20s. Do they think by riding a bike fast through an empty street you won't catch a virus? Many people casting around for blame can't see the larger issues. If you are ranting and raging about people who eat bats and now force you to stay inside or who killed your mother, you seem to have forgotten that one solace is that you have your cheap cell phone from those very people (most of whom don't eat bats) because of globalization -- and you never complained about that all these decades nor did you care what kind of working conditions the people who make your gadgets had to work in. Many people ranting and raging about Trump seem not to grasp that health, education and welfare are the responsibility of states -- and for good reason. This is the "states' rights" that Eurocrats at the UN and third-world Soviet A pupils get so exercised about and rage that the US is the only country that hasn't signed the childrens' rights' convention besides Somalia. But that's because federal standards can't be imposed such as to enable the US to comply with some of the features of a convention like that. If Obama were telling you he had to protect federal reserves for the core of government that must survive a national disaster so that a core group of top elected and appointed leaders can keep the country running, you might respect that because you liked Obama. It's especially galling when Trump's un-elected son-in-law uses the phrase "that's for us" about these reserves as if he means "our family" -- and he probably does. Even while you can't respect Trump and he's a monster, there are a number of people who keep the lights on who deserve to have reserves for themselves -- and again, it is indeed states' responsibility to ensure the welfare and health of their people. Today I see masses of people raging about Trump supposedly making money off this "wonder drug" and that supposedly is the reason why he is touting it. It's the kind of knee-jerk socialism and idiocy you see all the time on Twitter. The Times, which breathlessly reported this, can't seem to tell us the *value* of this investment -- which was made by a company hired by Trump's three trust funds in the drug company involved. That this attenuated relationship means that Trump -- who is generally out of it on most things -- is unlikely to be aware of how much his investment is and what it is in (such as to wish to chose this drug to make cash) -- simply escapes most people. Most trust funds invest in pharmaceuticals. Many of you could have college funds or pension funds that are invested in the exact same drug company and you have no idea. The amount is not likely to be significant. It is hardly the motivation for Trump's idiocy on this question. This idiotic take on things -- that Trump does X or Y because it makes his business money -- actually prevents you from seeing the far worse problem here, that Trump touts a medicine merely because some underqualified loon has told him so, and he is merely grasping at straws to try to provide hope to people to keep his ratings up. It's not true that "people died" following Trump's touting of this medicine -- because the one man who died ate fish tank cleaner clearly marked as a deadly poison because it had the same ingredient. That's different even than the hordes making a run on pharmacies asking for it -- but they can't get it without a prescription. Yes the drug has helped some small number of people in tightly defined situations that are beyond Trump and most social media users to grasp. This drug is relied on by lupus sufferers and now there is apparently a shortage but even that is mainly about *fear* of a shortage due to the popularity and panic than actual cases of anyone dying because of this. There is a worse reality people are not grasping -- that 80% of the people who wind up on a respirator because of this disease when their lungs becoming completely ravaged are not going to live, miracle drug or no. They are not going to make it. So that's why it be good to know how many vents are left in NYC. And while Trump can be helpful in cracking lose respirators, Rhode Island or Maryland could do this as well -- and yet they won't. It's also hard for the socialist DeBlasio to go to any companies now and ask for help when he's been trashing them his whole life.

You wouldn't necessarily have to take Oz Linden's word for it simply because he's a Linden working for the company, and they might be reluctant to tell you the bad news and lose value at least on their internal shareholder's market. After all, they didn't tell you six months prior to Sansar's closing that it was closing. Even so, the markers you're invoking aren't what I would look for. I never understood why they dumped last names, I thought originally it was because they got tired of thinking new ones up, but it's obviously something with data base tables; it creates two pieces of data instead of one...or something. And putting it back is expensive and time-consuming apparently so they will charge for it -- and they're right to charge for what people actually want, as they don't actually want land very much or there'd be people buying more of the abandoned land. Raising fees is what every business does everywhere, always, since the beginning of time, so that's not a marker. 16 years ago when the Lindens blocked the open Linden markets like GOM (GOM'd even became a verb), we thought that was a very bad sign. In a way, it was, because the Linden never recovered the value it had on the open market, which was $4.00/1000, not $3.75 as it is today. Still, they have lasted a long time since then, longer than most Silicon Valley things including Google's own enthusiasms (see the Google graveyard, especially for really hyped things like G+). I'm not sure what it means to "outsource" the transactions when they own the company Tilia, or what it means that it is separate, but I don't think that's a marker any more than it is for Google to have various company names under which it does business. SL remains free, and is not behind a paywall if that's what you mean. My sense is that there is less abandoned land than there was; that more of it is being bought; that the Lindens now move it faster. I think Tyche Shepherd who regularly monitors sim production can tell us that. SL is shrinking but it's not tanking and Mainland is actually improved. Markers I would look for are really bad performance issues that the Lindens don't try to fix anymore because they are in a death spiral. Refusing to fix the ability to post easily to social media is one bad sign to me because virtually every web page in the universe has that ability, but a virtual world is obviously something more complicated than a web page. I realize it's a hassle but I think it cuts down their presence online. Firestorm did not remove this ability. The Linden getting worse -- which has been a factor for some time. Yesterday I saw 260 behind a huge line of something like $19 million Lindens. Today, that's gone, so perhaps it means that Supply Linden has been joined by Buy Linden -- they are not likely to tell us. Or somebody got a huge packet of cheaper Lindens. But it has been stuck at 260 or 259 for a year now, and as I have records going back for years, I know this is not a good value. It has been 258 or less for years. This happened because with the huge influx of premium accounts, a lot of "printed money" (the stipends) entered the economy and the sinks were not enough to remove it (texture fees, group formation fees, etc.). There's a lot we don't know about the sinks and courses. Are the taxes on the MP sinks or sources? If a sink, it's not enough to keep the value of the Linden up higher. Is it really a source of revenue for the Lindens? If so, what rate do *they* cash it out as? Since the Lindens' dream is to escape land and servers as a revenue generator (folly, in my view) and taxation of purchases and fees on the currency market are envisioned as a core revenue generator, what exactly is this revenue, a sink or a source? Anecdotally, I've seen people come back to SL that have been away from years, some have re-rented from me that I haven't seen in a decade because they are stuck at home now during the pandemic. Others have to downsize or end rentals as they need every dollar now for RL. SL has weathered a lot of storms internally and externally and I think it will last for awhile longer. But I remember a company called "Zoom" with the tag line, "Free Photos for Life!". They were big in the 1990s. The business plan was to allow endlessly storage of free photos but then try to sell photo books and mugs with photos and such. It didn't live (one of many that didn't survive the original dot.com boom), and took my free photos with them if I didn't manage to copy them. That Zoom is long, long forgotten, so much forgotten that another company has the exact same name now since 2011, with a video conferencing service that is challenging Skype. The operative thing about SL that gives it staying power is that unlike any other platform of its type, it enables users to make money from the platform and continues to make a profit itself (and these two functions are connected). That is, there are platforms that enable you to make money, say, E-bay or Etsy or Shutterstock. That is their main purporse and they take a hefty percentage of your profits. SL ostensibly does not have making money as a mission, as most of the people in it use it for entertainment or socializing or education without making money from it; they only spend money. And part of the reason that companies like Facebook and Instagram won't let users make a profit with their platforms (unless they are app engineers in FB's case or arguably those placing ads on FB) is that they will not grant you intellectual property rights. LL does that more thoroughly than anything of its kind, game or virtual world.

You could always try the Linden home first, see if it does all the things you want, and if it doesn't, find some mainland, look for an area that is settled already because one with abandoned land might change and be bought up by, say, a club that would take up all the avatar space on that sim so that you can't even fly home. Don't be the club that occupies 4096 or even 512 and puts 40 avatars on that tiny space preventing every one else on the sim from even coming home -- or living in terrible lag if they do. If you want a club, rent a homestead so that your crowding like that is not spilled over on to other people.

Here, this one's for Solar Legion and Klytyna and other face-makers. And to any Moles who may care about remedying the Coastal Waterways debacle. Name your horse, for crying out loud!

GM began making more respirators even before the president ordered them to, however. He had forgotten that he had once applauded the sale of this one GM plant that made them.

Yes, FDR was late in entering the war, and history has judged him for that -- and PS, for not saving the Jews of Germany which he could have done a lot more of as well. And Lend Lease was vital, and vital for the Soviets as well, although they used some of it to build the bomb. There are some great books on this topic and I think this biography of George Marshall is good because it shows you the advisors clamouring to get FDR into the war, struggling to get him to act, and he doesn't act, because he is afraid of not getting re-elected, and afraid of the captains of industry who were slow in getting resolve about this. If you want to blame someone for getting into the war late, blame the American people. FDR might have gotten in earlier, given his constant communication with Churchill, but the American people, especially the south, who recalled the civil war and had taken the brunt of it, did not want any war. There was also the problem of the woefully small US army at the time and its pitiful supplies, something that Harry Hopkins worked very hard to reverse, in part through first organizing the civilian corps. But there's also other points where you have to ask why the UK was slow to act. Churchill refused to launch Operation Overlord (which ultimately took place and is known as the Battle of Normandy in June 1944). Years before that, the US was urging the UK to invade France, and already was willing to send the troops and ships. They had countless meetings sometimes on ships in Canada or in Asia, where supposedly the UK was going to get on board finally -- but it kept dragging its feet. They wanted to detour off to Asia to try to stop Japan there, and that wasn't a bad idea, given Pearl Harbor and then the Korean War, but historians still argue over whether they really could have stopped Hitler sooner had they launched Operation Overlord faster. Why was Churchill reluctant? Because he didn't want to risk losing masses of young British men, as the UK had lost in World War I: nearly a million. There were some battles, like the Battle of the Somme, where the Britain lost 400,000, and I believe more than 19,000 just on the first day. In order to understand history, you need to know more history -- it's endless. Churchill also had to think of politics -- and the British people who didn't want their sons to die in such huge numbers again. So it is what it is. The US largely sat out WWI, and lost "only" 116,000, which was low compared to other countries. But it is helpful to remember that before *that*, they had the civil war, in which 620,000 lost their lives and the economy was ruined in many places. Governments -- and people -- are always fighting the last war.

A lab worker in my daughter's hospital who is never in contact with the public or even the blood runners (who have spread it) now has tested positive. How did he get it? It must be airborne. Management did not think he and other lower-paid personnel should have been wearing masks all this time -- like, for the last two months. Some of them finally have masks now - one, for re-use. The workers in the hospital who are sick with COVID now are all the lowest paid personnel, not the doctors. But doctors and nurses are getting it too. It doesn't discriminate.

As I have told my doctors for years, with wounds that won't heal, and they won't listen, if they could just get me a bottle of Mercurochrome, I'm pretty sure I could get this immune disease of mine licked. In fact, I'm positive I could. Oh, it was banned? Oh, because it has mercury in it, apparently? Oh. Is that one of the reasons I have an immune disease? Oh, I really don't think so. I think it was growing up 4 blocks from Love Canal that might have done that. OK, but that's fine, I have another thing that my 94-year-old mother-in-law has told me will cure COVID, like it has cured a lot of things, and she should know, she survived the Revolution, the collectivization, the dekulakification, World War II, the stagnation, Chernobyl, and her father and sons winding up in the GULAG. And what is that thing? It is known as "Sea Buckthorn" in the US.

I thought we had that already? PS anxiety has a sale now where you can get ALL OF THEIR NEON STUFF, like tons of it, for just $77. I'm not kidding. It is so glowy.

Here's another data point: When my infant daughter was born prematurely and put in an NICU, the pediatricians, who happened to be African American, told me the following: a) African American premature baby girls have the best chance of surviving b) Caucasian premature baby girls have the next best chance of surviving c) African American premature baby boys have the next best change of surviving d) Caucasian premature baby boys have the worst chance of surviving They may have told me the chances for Hispanic premature babies but I just don't recall them -- I think they were worse than blacks as I recall. So the hardiest little tiny babies are black females who have had generations to develop hardy genes. The white boys have the worst chance. Even so, my daughter, the smallest baby born alive who survived for more than 48 hours in the hospital's history (she had Russian and Irish genes) died at one month's of age because it's hard to get out of the NICU alive and unharmed. Today, they do a lot more for such babies but it's still a lottery.

The Lindens probably saw the pandemic coming earlier than most; hence, the sale of Sansara. Good! And they are making Bellissaria a priority because those people sign up for recurring subscriptions. Good! Can't beat that with a stick. As for the "something must be done" stuff -- Are you just logging in after many years away? It's been like this for years. It's actually better now as more people are buying abandoned land, and the Lindens are processing requests for it faster and more fully -- before they would deny you for various reasons on some kind of grid they consulted, but now they don't. The one person owning all the land and asking a high price for it is sustaining Linden Lab's bottom line now in tier. So I wouldn't wish that person ill will if I were you. I've actually noticed the prices coming down even in Zindra -- which has the most high prices in SL generally because people want that security of adult land where no idiot or ex-friend can abuse report them for mature activity. PS a lot of us have been revitalizing the Mainland since 2004 -- as long as it has been required. And we go on doing so. It doesn't need Lindens or anything. Just good will and attention.