Nika Talaj

I agree. "I feel... Love! All around here!" Marvels Aziraphale as he and Crowley drive around Tadfield. Adam's love for his life, as well as the angel and demons' love of theirs, defeats an apocalypse. SL has been providing escape for many, many years for many, many people whose real lives are stressful. And as the climate rages around us and the politics get more extreme, RL stress will continue to build. There are a whole lot of people who love their SL, even if they don't bother to make it as shiny as it could possibly be. How many of them are necessary to sustain SL for a full 5 years, or maybe even longer? How long can the platforms' technology be held together with Band-Aids and an occasional Herculean effort? I guess we'll see.

True. " ....pending regulatory approval..." https://fintech.global/2024/04/24/thunes-expands-us-footprint-with-strategic-tilia-acquisition/

By what agency? Both companies are private, so there are no shareholders, only investors who are represented by the boards of both companies. You may be right. You could even say that the Tilia acquisition is part 2, with part one being the departure of LL's VP engineering and VP marketing in January. You could further project that LL expects the exit to be complete within 5 years, given that that's the stated duration of the Thune partnership. [I doubt that LL would sell user data and content to an AI company, even if technically they have the right to do so. They would be begging for a class action suit.] BUT .. 5 years is a long time, and a lot could happen. Sl's user base could dry up and blow away naturally. Or, a large, dedicated contingent could simply continue nearly indefinitely, and some weird employee buyback scenario could unfold, if Patch, Grumpity and possibly Oberwager were interested. Or Thune could dry up and blow away, and LL might then be unable to find a payment partner (seems unlikely to me, but stranger things have happened). Or the Thune partnership could simply be extended. Again, you could be right. Personally, I find this all very, very interesting, and I'm willing to wait and see. Oh, and I want to commend everyone on this thread for a really Thought-Provoking discussion.

Personally, that sort of takedown seems to me less likely with thune, being based in Singapore, than with tilia, based in San Francisco. But that's speculation. And, "we're dead"? Maybe you have more access to SL statistics than I do. Personally, in my SL, I couldn't care less about adult content. But even if you're looking for adult gratifications, don't you think most moderate land users find imaginative ways to get their jollies without requiring adult land and explicit content? So forgive me if I seem a little tired of the threats of imminent SL Doom if adult ratings are threatened.

I'm on the road, so don't have time to look into this news. But here's a few obvious things. 1. Tilia was a FINTECH startup that created very cool blockchain-based infrastructure that ALWAYS seemed to have a lot of potential for B2B transaction processing. Remember, At the time that LL was acquired, there was a lot of discussion of The relative value of SL versus Tilia to the acquirers? Remember the speculation that Randy Waterfield was interested in LL to facilitate bank-bank money movement for small to medium-sized Banks? This is actually a bigger play than that would have been. 2. Tilia did not attract a whole lot of customers. That may have been by design, by which I mean, Tilia's Management may always have hoped for a technology acquisition like this as a successful endgame for the company. 3. From the little I've read about Thune, tillia seems like an ideal fit . Seriously, people, read their website. This doesn't look to me like some sort of Goliath doing a leveraged buyout. While Thune's attracted healthy venture funding, they are not yet a dominant player in the payment processing industry. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zinnialee/2023/08/04/edbi-backed-singapore-fintech-startup-thunes-wants-to-take-on-swift/?sh=16cbad6c4837 4. I don't get why the term crypto is coming into this. Not everything that uses blockchain is at all related to cryptocurrencies. I don't see any particular tie between thune and crypto.if anyone can cite a source for that, I'd love to read it And no, the fact that thune is Singapore based is not an automatic tie to crypto. 5. I also don't get why an earlier poster said the article was 2 years old. Looks to me like it was written this month, am I missing something? 6. The panic about adult content seems to me to be a real reach. 7. As private companies, Tilia and Thune are not obligated to disclose much of anything about the terms of this deal. So we'll just have to wait for LL to say what, if anything, this means for sL fees. I noticed a couple of different forms of canned partnerships on thune's website, but my guess is that Tilia's "partnership" is custom.

My biggest takeaway is that evidently LL has decided to flatten their organization. Their VPS of engineering and marketing departed in January, there is no sign that they intend to replace them. The engineering news at this lab gab was given by the director of engineering, and the product news by a product manager. My personal read on this is that LLs employee base is dwindling in size, although of course, it's possible that there are other reasons. I'd be surprised to see LL begin any large engineering endeavors in the near future, or perhaps ever again YMMV. My other takeaway is that there may be new policies for LL employees as well as for residents. Perhaps this new user group meeting is actually a way of making direct LL contact with users more formalized, and one-on-one contact between LL employees and residents will be less common than it has been since Belli's inception. Of course, it's unlikely that we would ever KNOW if LL changes its internal policies for resident contact.

The Mediterraneans are such a tremendous continent in which to wander. The seemingly endless variety of entranceways, the sparse and open landscapes, the uniquely shaped homes ... it's both stimulating and peaceful. And, too, it's always nice to come home and just stretch out for a nap on the hillside below your own home. With one's sheep, of course. Of course.

Well, the region Gyazo indeed does not exist, but are you sure you have the name right? It's kinda hard for me to believe they named a region after a company that does screen captures ...

What a special evening, Hanami at Shobu! To see the graceful traditional dances, with the music so exotic to western ears, while the blossoms gently wafted from the trees ... it made a fascinating and beautifully serene evening. They waved branches laden with blossoms in the first dance. They made a special dance for Bellisseria's Anniversary! The song was punctuated with the gold rattles that they shook during the dance. Their last piece was an archetypal dance from Kyoto, celebrating the beauty of the city during Hanami. It referred particularly to the beauty of the kimonos worn during the holiday, and as you see the dancers showed their lovely ones off! I stopped while walking home to admire the gently falling petals.

I just wanted to add that, although the vision and scale of this event might lead a casual attendee to believe that it was put together by LL, AFAIK the Bellisseria birthdays have ALWAYS been resident-led events held at the Fairgrounds. This year's celebration is just really, really well done.

Yes, I have to admit that I was saddened that there was no opportunity to even volunteer to contribute a build. Perhaps they wanted to just go with folks who repeatedly contribute to the Parade of Homes, or other decorating blogs. Or maybe the organizers just don't like my decorating style, which if true makes me embarrassed that I post pics of some of my homes ... I mean, I'm no Matthieu, but I like to think I have some interesting ideas! But I'd rather think that not having an opportunity to even volunteer was more of a procedural thing.

We are SO looking forward to attending Hanami this year! Had to miss it last year. We're on our way to get the PERFECT seats I don't think Nika has figured out the sitting menu in the ferry, tho ....

I have a parcel with 1171 LI that I'm almost done decorating, so nothing is linked. I was overjoyed when I got about 80 (yes, EIGHTY!) LI overnight! Ooooh! I always added sound to my trad parcel and was fine with that, but it would be GLORIOUS to have a sound environment in all those quirky and lovely public places in Olde Belli! I hadn't thought of this, my condolences. If you do this work, tho, you will have the advantage over all the marketplace merchants who simply removed LI from their listings. I don't buy any decor unless I know the LI ahead of time, too many times I've been lured to do so and deleted the item as soon as I rezzed it.

Yes, it's nice. I haven't done any reading to figure out how many probes the typical Belli home will need, tho, so planning to allocate 10 or so LI for those in the future??? Any ideas of how many one would typically use?

Bellisseria Lighthouse!! I assume that's a small model, like the train in the Swaginator hunt?