Prokofy Neva

The news article implies "instant cashout". Even if it were shortened from currently 5-7 days to 3 days or 24 hours that would be a vast improvement. Another improvement would be to enable any account that cashes out to dollars to pay the tier of any other account owned by that legal person. Currently the solid 5-day wait to get a transfer of Lindens you already turned into dollars is a real burden. I find it is never shorter, and sometimes longer, even. One good thing currently is that if you cash out with Tillia to PayPal to a business account, you do not have to pay a fee to PayPal *again* (to keep it on PayPal; you still have to pay to transfer it to your bank instantly). I hope that persists. Just last night a tenant drilled me on whether I thought Tillia was safe with customer data. And I explained at length that I thought it was, because it really seems an annex or spin-off closely tied to Linden Lab via the same board members. Now I'm not so sure.

I just went and listened to parts of this again. I'm hearing that yes, they will have this range of prices for uploading the 2048 texture -- 50L for free accounts, 40L for Premium and 10L for Premium Plus. So it's a shame to lose the free uploads, which for me is the only point of the PP account. BUT it's not clear to me IF 2048 will become the ONLY type of texture and "mandatory" (with a hardstop when you atttempt to upload? or how?) or whether there will still be the range of 512 and 1024, with the same old prices for those sizes, i.e. free for PP. I'm just not getting why they would make 2048 mandatory, when it won't load for many people.

OMG I'm glad I read this. I was just about to get a second PP account so I didn't have to keep relogging alts to do rentals pictures. MANDATORY 2048??? I can't help thinking that will cause visibility to take a hit. The only reason I have PP is for the uploads. If 2048 is mandatory and costs 10L per, I will cancel it. But is this really confirmed?

This goes back to the founding of Zindra, and the determination of some child avatars to push the envelope and insist that they had the right to enter Zindra and hang out in bars and clubs if they liked, or make a home, without being banned, as long as they did not engage in adult behaviour. Which kind of loses the plot, but it was a symbolic protest -- and it won. I think if you are sincere and serious about being a child avatar properly, you should NOT be fighting to get into Zindra. So I support a ban on child avatars and child content in adult areas. It works the other way around -- you can't have adult activity in "General". So in "Adult" you should have child avatars and child content. That goes to the crux of the recent scandal: child content on an adult-rated sim, even if you can't prove "indecent" or "*****" activity. As my mother always used to tell us, in the Catholic tradition, "Avoid the near occasion of sin." Don't go to those roadhouses of ill repute where young girls will lose their virtue. It's not about Apple Falls and having you walk in a store as a child avatar in an M region and a bed is on sale with both "M" and "A" animations. That's edge-casing and hair-splitting. There's all too much of that around this issue that denies common sense. Most merchants if they want sanity in their store do not put out the adult version of furniture so they don't get loads of day-trippers and looky-loos and kids "trying out the animations". Having it on sale is not having it in action. Meanwhile, a child bed on an adult sim with a mixture of children and adults means that you have the setting where unlawful behaviour will take place. So you eliminate that climate. I think it's more than reasonable. Every time someone attempts to deal with the ***** problem they encounter a welter of edge-casers saying "But mah anime waifu short avatar who isn't really a child." Please, let's not be children here, literally. The anime and cute cubs industries are built on this blurring of the distinctions deliberately and we shouldn't be forced to endure that game in SL. If you want to do adult things, don't be in a child avatar; if you want to be a child avatar, don't demand a presence on adult sims. The question here is not about "M" but "A"

This is me watching the eclipse. I'm not supposed to go out in crowds but I double-masked up. Also with my draw distance down and "no comment" mode in SL.

During the early days of the pandemic before the vaccine when I couldn't go out of doors at all, I made my way through all the Central Asian greats that I never found time to read before -- I used to have a job writing about Central Asia daily and I would often say "I only know what I write in the newspaper" to stress my ignorance, as I had never gone to those countries as it happens. So John Buchan's "Greenmantle" (whose scenes I've re-created in SL in both egg and full-size form) is really the UR-novel of all of these types of works, and a lot of spy stories for the next 100 years like 007 and Smiley's People and such. And it is filled with the Orientalism and geocentrism and racism and antisemitism which you'd expect at the time so you have to take it as a period piece but it's still a great story, and politically-correct novels of our time like "The Bird King" have basically copied the same story line and even scenery. So I thought "Kim" was going to be even worse and it wasn't, actually, you need to read it through. Yes, people used to say "mankind" and "man's first step" and all the rest. I'm used to thinking of "resilient" in NGO terms so I apply it to situations like Chechen and Ukrainian war refugees torn from their homes or torn limb from limb, not...a virtual world for affluent Westerners to sit in their pajamas and RP. You know? Resilience in a virtual world? There's a very, very simple pathway to virtual world resilience: log off! Remember that CSI episode on SL that we were all fascinated by? And the "Log off! Log off!" scene? But to put all of that aside and look at SL in its own terms...I think the key is to have good graphic settings. DO NOT CLICK that button on the viewer now that says "Improve Your Graphics" because it makes it WORSE. Dial everything down. Take off "avatar" view. Take down particles. You know the drill. I just spent another evening with a friend TPing around aimlessly, lagging, crashing, trying to find some good live music or even just a place to shop at Fantasy Faire without dragging around in freeze frame. So we got a bit of shopping done, a bit of sight-seeing of the builds but the music wasn't workable. So, like the weather, wait an hour, and the Events list changes, you'll likely find something to your taste. Weedstock is in session although apparently mainly bikers and folk. I found this great show recently called Billy Bob and the Psychedelic somethings with old progressive rock tunes and a particle shows. So that's the second point about resilience: patience, ability to keep looking and suffering crashes. Recently, another friend contacted me like 4 times and never caught me online, and I thought she had something urgent and specific, perhaps news of a show, a request about rentals info, some other time-specific matter. But instead it seems she just wanted to chat. I think she's on another time-zone. So I couldn't talk for long because I had to get to RL chores. And that's another piece of the resilience -- the ability to withstand the time zone challenge. SL overcomes space; it doesn't overcome time. Certain relationships seem to consist entirely of asynchronous communications so I try to keep them up -- I send a link to something interesting to read or watch, in or out of SL, a freebie, and LM to some gallery or whatever. And months -- years even! -- go by where I never see that person inworld, let alone talk to them in "real time" yet I feel as if we are "still friends." Yet a third friend recently told me about a gatcha sale, I couldn't get it to hit the right thing, finally he bought it for me when he swung by and the tumbler clicked, and send it to me. I haven't seen him in ages -- and like a tenant I have, he keeps in touch by gifts (I send them too). So I would save give gifts. I wish the system had a thing whereby it would permanently leave a record tht a thing was a gift, so you could display that table or dinosaur egg in your home and it would say GIFTED BY PROKOFY NEVA on it as a conversation piece LOL. I have had to face a great deal of disruption and loss in RL and SL. And I can only say the advice to all friends in RL working for any government or large corporation: keep a crime file. You can't always act, but keep a crime file, maybe you will be able to put it together to take action in the future. And if it is more along the lines of personal relationship trauma or suffering the loss of a person through RL death or leaving SL, write a journal even for just a few minute a day, it helps. Journaling advice and workshops get awfully twee or intensive and long-term -- a few minutes, and not even every day, sometimes even once every few weeks, can make a difference. In that light my Just One Thing program which I got from yet another friend -- try to accomplish just one little thing each day, perhaps something you have been putting off. Chunk up the task. This applies to RL or SL. You will have a great sense of satisfaction if you actually unbox all your purchases and look at all the event gifts and toss most of them.

This "bought in" and "no longer works there" stuff is likely a factor in SL as there have been tons of turnovers in SL. There are very few Lindens that have been here since the dawn of time; some have died in RL at this point it's been so long. I was just reading Vicki Boykis' nerd newsletter on this phenomenon of groupthink and people having beliefs that you "can't do" something because "we've never done it that way" and newcomers not being able to get the group to see the obvious problems. That can happen in any company, even a non-programming environment (although most offices are driven by the programmers). Bellisseria is obviously a growth engine for LL, and while I'm aware people think it's a loss leader still, I don't see that they could be rolling out that many new homes if it really were (i.e. that the cost of Mole labour and materials is higher than the uptake of new premiums). So it works, and while they are willing to change things in terms of templates or buildings or trees or whatever, I don't think they are willing to consider changing the aquisition process. If anything, as Andrew Linden used to say in the early days, the growth needs to be throttled. That might seem counterintuitive, but the CS can't keep up with too much of a surge. There's an interesting slide show at the anniversary which I hope they post on YouTube or somewhere inworld permanently because it gives you some insight into how they think as they put out Bellisseria. They're in god-mode, thinking in terms of laying things out on a grid in big squares and the quality assurance that goes with it. They think of templates this or templates that. They don't adopt the consumer perspective even though some of them might actually have Linden homes or decorate them and go inside of them for special occasions. And there's no need for them to be sent out on the equivalent of Door Dashes like the engineers are forced to do at that company because, in the inimitable words of Kenny Linden, "There's always another guy to buy the island." Don't like the way it's done and you quit and give up and delete your home? Someone else will be along shortly.

Yes, that's true as well. There's a certain sim I've watched for ages and sometimes I fly around it with that HUD to find empty Belli homes, and never find anything. I never got into the Trads, they seemed cramped. But then the Chalets are cramped as well. Meanwhile, you could fit a roller rink in the Ranches.

I still like the thrill of the chase, which takes me back to my youth, in the early days of SL when you shopped for First Land. Coming from The Sims Online, where you just select ANY parcel that is free and take it, when I first came to SL, I kept right-clicking on land that appeared empty and it never "sold". I was mystified for days. Much later, a Linden explained it didn't work that way. Then I went on the hunt for "First Land," an old program the Lindens had back then whereby if you were under X number of days as a newbie, you were eligible to buy designated 512 parcels for only $512. I had heard so many scare stories about it and how everything around you goes south and turns to hideous grief builds and obscenities, that I dithered and dithered for weeks on end. I could see for myself what happened to the sims with "first land" which turned into a giant postage-stamp sheet of horror. Naturally this program got gamed and exploited by land flippers and the Lindens ended it eventually and Linden Homes became the replacement ultimately. But back then, given those conditions, finally, I reckoned that if I chose a steep, rocky waterfront I could sail from, but wasn't "attractive sandy beach land," I couldn't go wrong. I still have that land, in Refugio. I underestimated the ability of other people to create havoc. That you could make an alt and go and do the same thing and then link all your lots in a group never dawned on me and I waited way too long to learn that as well. (Not sure we had that robust "knowledge base") back then. There I was, clinging to a rock and singing to myself "We live in a beautiful world (yeah we do, yeah we do)" , a hit song of that era, when this really aggressive oldbie, angered that some of "her" sim had been turned into first land parcels, grabbed them on alts and then put boards over them so you couldn't tell they were for sale. Until I learned how you can see underneath the boards and indeed how you should always take off "volume" to see what the land really is all about. A newbie friend of mine came and got a boarded-up parcel. We then found ourselves fired upon, orbited, surrounded by ban lines, subjected to particle attacks and spam etc. The very first thing I purchased in SL was a weapon called "Axe of the Leviathan." I also had the superstitious idea that this might aid me in combat with this person battling for the whole sim, who had the same last name. It didn't. Even so, I'm still there, and she isn't. Ah, Second Life! Ah, youth! So yeah, I like to get a random surprise scouring the areas of Belli. Putting in a ticket feels like paying a phone bill or something, not as fun.

I wasn't able to check every single account just now but from what I can see of several where I recall attempting Linden homes, you're right, nothing comes after March. It's all in February. I thought it had occurred *again* only in Sakurasseria this week (not Fantasseria) because I selected the house, then hovering over it, couldn't get the post office box to do anything, couldn't get anything to work. I relogged and kept trying. Finally, I realized I was not on the parcel that I had selected, but the one next door. Derp. So it's all good!

Where can you see that dancing bear?

I think the system is quite frankly designed to drive you to Premium Plus, if only for a month, because you get to keep the house you've picked with a PP account, even if you go back to regular premium a month later. I've done this once and may do it again.

That may be the reason. They may also have the logic that abandoned lots were chosen, after all, so could in theory be chosen again, unlike those not chosen, so why not put them back in the pool? They are more likely to be taken.

Oh, so you're saying ANOTHER strategy to play the Game of Homes is to use the alt NOT to hold the not-so-bad one so that you have at least *something* after 3 days, but to hold the dogs, so that they don't keep recurring. I'll try that next time!

I can't understand why it is so hard to have the system just not let you repeat what you alreay tried. You only get 5 tries. So that they aren't wasted, it shouldn't do repeats. OR if it *does* do repeats, it should generate another chance. Maybe that's easier to do? If I take 3 alts and work one themed house area for 3 days, that's 45 chances, correct? So why the same list over and over, and dupes on each one? I see not just desirable houses, but actually empty houses that just never appear in the list. Instead, it's the same limited stock, as if it is not drawing from the entire stock of non-taken Linden homes. I don't see how it could possibly be doing that, given the number of repeats over time, and sometimes in a row. If it were truly drawing from the entire stock of all vacant or abandoned Linden homes in a theme, there would be far fewer repeats. This is what I don't get.