diamond Marchant

So happy to hear it. It's wonderful to see people taking pleasure in contributing to our community.

As you have discovered, unless your parcel borders on Linden protected water, you can be blocked. There are many residents who make a point of keeping there water open to the public and some landlords set aside public water channels, but of course, this situation can change at any time (for example, after a land sale). Most in the boating and flying community support the creation and enforcement of protected waters. Protected waters and airspace are of value to all residents.

I would call this an "unforced error". Linden Lab does not need to make videos about creator products because those can be made by the creators themselves or vbloggers, as they see the need. Recently I switched to LeLutka and easily found videos that explained what I needed to know. Second Life University should cover things unrelated to specific creators. Sample titles might be "Land Costs How Much?", "What Did You Call Me?", and "Why Do I Get Catapulted Every 256 Meters?"

I feel your pain. Figuring out how to pay the recurring costs of mainland is not simple . My Parable of the Potato Patch satirizes this. Perhaps you can do what Lucia suggest and reduce your land use fees. The general rule for tier (for which I use a spreadsheet) is [sum of donated tier] times 1.1 equals [amount of group owned land] The 1.1 is the "group bonus". Donated tier comes from the included tier you get from Premium or Premium Plus membership AND additional land use fees. The hard part is that you can only purchase tier in increasingly larger units... 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, and 16384. This create a "tier packing" problem, which is that sometimes you only need a little bit more tier but you are forced into owning the next bigger size... which is more than you need. Hopefully, you can reduce your tier from 4096 to 2048, depending on what others donated. If you think this system is whack, I agree.

Yet More Speculation (ya think PP residents will select houseboats with proximity to Satori and the Blake?)

Belle Cloud has a rug gift at SL19B http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLB Impressive/145/144/25 that works well in my Sakura Linden home (which is a Bellisseria Open House http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Airashii Mogura/139/17/33 ) Rug pictured here

I know. The trademark thing is a joke.

set your windlight/EEP to CalWL and look again.... your windlight may be giving you false colors

Yet Another Map of What 4lice said, showing remaining regions needed to connect to Satori

I saw the ad for a Summer Shop & Hub on Seraphim and thought Linden Lab had two going at once. Then I visited... oh no, ersatz Shop & Hop. I was genuinely confused. (didn't check the small print... just saw the Shop & Hop brand). (The use of the name "Patch" in the title was for purposes of hilarity. IP issues belong to legal.)

Me too. I spend it all eventually. However, for an apple-to-apples comparison of plans, it is necessary to account for the stipend. My theory about why the stipend even exists is that LL wants to stimulate the inworld economy by automatically converting your fiat currency into Lindens. There is a benefit to residents in that a transaction fee is not charged. Both LL and residents are subject to a "change in exchange rate" risk. There is a benefit to LL in that you are loaning them the future stipend amounts interest free.

The reason I make these little financial posts its to point out that you do have payment options that are not obvious to some. I absolutely understand that many people do not care what things cost and/or do not make these decisions as Homo economicus. How we pay LL is not simple and much depends on predicting the future. For example, assuming I plan to stay at least a year, should I pay annually or monthly for Premium. That would be either $99 once or $11.99 twelve times ($143.88). I could put the $99 on a credit card and pay it back over the year. Only an incredibly high interest rate would result in me paying more than $143.88. Linden Lab charges ALOT for the option of quitting. On textures... I use local textures in Firestorm and only upload final ones. Once you learn the "how to get a UUID of a local texture trick", this always works. For clothing, I take a snapshot of every outfit, but save the image on my laptop. These are viewed with a thumbnail program. These methods keep my texture uploads minimized and my inventory less bloated. On premium stacking... It is the ONLY way to get multiple Linden Homes so it appears to be a common practice. It is also required to address the "tier packing problem". (I satirized our strange tier system in The Parable of the Potato Patch)

Of course, if one's objective is to get 2048 tier without additional tier fees, the best deal (annualized net stipend) is two Premium accounts for $78. The Premium Plus would cost $118. People have been calling this "Premium Stacking".

Take the case of a creator happy with Premium who pays annually $39 (net stipend). Premium Plus would be $118 (net stipend). The difference is $79 or approx L$19,750. At L$10 per upload, a creator would need to be uploading 1,975 items per year to break even. This is a worse case analysis and does not account for any other benefits. I believe the primary driver for upgrade to PP will be the 2048 Linden Home, as that will be a unique perk. (Note that those getting a 2048 Linden Home could get THREE 1024 Linden Homes for the same money so they must really want the big house).

Could it be? Yes, it could Somethin's comin', somethin' good, if I can wait Somethin's comin', I don't know what it is But it is gonna be great

If I made a new mainland continent, every region would have protected water access 🙂

Yes. And Fantasseria looks best at night to me anyways.

Confirming your assessment, here is a comparison of what the world map shows vs. the map tile that is on the map server, as shown by my BelliFind HUD. It appears that the only difference is the terrain texture.

The world map has ghosts, so perhaps this is some prior image. The map image below is the east coast of the Newbrookes, with ghosts. In one of the Meet the Lindens sessions, someone mentioned fixing the world map to eliminate ghosts and rez mesh, which would allow us to see roads. In some regions (logs, campers) roads are not visible at all. Don't recall any timeline for fixing the world map.

Don't let Gaston see or listen to these... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/upshot/college-admissions-men.html https://freakonomics.com/podcast/what-is-the-future-of-college-and-does-it-have-room-for-men/

Short of moving Zindra on the grid, the probability of a such a channel seems infinitesimal. Notice that even though Bellisseria is a mere 14 regions from a protected water connection to the Blake and points beyond, even this has not happened. Linden Lab management (TOOSL) is a mystery. We have been told that Moles operate under a budgetary constraint, yet they continue to build regions that have no income value, spend time on builds and activities that residents should be doing, neglect to shut down zombie regions, and fail to pick the low hanging fruit (definition varies).

Yes, what's not to like? As a rule though, I observe what people actually do rather than what they suggest with words. So the jury is still out. Recall that Linden Research is owned by an investment group headed by Brad and Randy (so Brandy?). The SL mission could change overnight should they exit. <digression>Westworld Season 4 started. The man in the black hat said "In America everything is for sale". The Valley Beyond appears to be in a data center at Hoover Dam. </digression>

On the Change Membership page, in the part where it tells me my current plan (Premium of course), there is a Change to Basic Account link.

I checked an alt who has premium (and a lovely Linden Home). My screen looks the same as Alwin's... it allows me to Choose Basic Plan.

Only 16 moles were onstage, along with Patch and Saffia. Dyna, Missy, Strawberry, and others were working the event in various capacities.