Slate: Why are engineers more often terrorists than other professions?

Jobs and the nature of the field argues slate.

Vampire Spam

I got spammed by a vampire... it is a great deal les frequent now, but they are worse than ever...

[15:29] LotusEffect Darkwatch: hey cutie
[15:29] Lillie Yifu: hello
*spammed bite*
[15:32] Lillie Yifu: loser
[15:32] LotusEffect Darkwatch: i see
[15:32] Lillie Yifu: no you don't but then losers like you, never do
[15:33] Lillie Yifu: so play count spamula with some one else
[15:33] LotusEffect Darkwatch: haha your funny
[15:33] Lillie Yifu: that makes one of us
[15:33] LotusEffect Darkwatch: yeah funny looking MUTE dick head.

He's part of the management at Pixie's Paradise Club,and is a paying member, so he knows he can get away with this, since LL almost never bans permanent members for anything.

More change like this and Jeb will be in the white house.

I count the bodies long in the numbering
I feel river of blood flowing down over the cataract of blivion
I don't know why we love you like we do.
You take our money and burn us like cigarettes.
Washing us clean of our birth

Take to me to river, drown me in water.
Baptism in the worship
Change we can bereave with,
only hope till there is nothing to be pried from our fingers.

1600 bodies, blown through some yet to be built wall.

Take me to river, drown me in the water.
I carry no cross,
and now you know why.

It's just war. Just war. Just war.
Just like the one, we lost before.

As they say, a memo for the clue impaired

No really, I don't make these up...


[23:37] sneaky Tigerfish: u into voice?
[23:37] Lillie Yifu: with people I like
[23:37] sneaky Tigerfish: u will like me
[23:38] sneaky Tigerfish: give me a try
[23:38] Lillie Yifu: umm I already dislike you
[23:38] sneaky Tigerfish: w/e then
[23:42] sneaky Tigerfish: i did not do anything
[23:43] Lillie Yifu: I am sorry I've handed out all my clues, you'll have to ask the next person for one.
[23:43] sneaky Tigerfish: just being be a bitch for no reason
[23:44] Lillie Yifu: that was stupid

Oh and by the way

for you face light haters out there, you can turn off attached particles and lights. Bling and lights go away, and, at that point, they don't create as much lag as the prim clutter you are wearing yourself.

Bling has been noxious for some time, long ago leaving the tasteful and interesting behind, and reveling in the ugly. Face lights are generally badly made, but not all of them.

If you don't know how to turn them off, don't be rude to those of us who do.

There is a sim in particular that I'm going to avoid, precisely because the local ignorati have started a crusade about this, not realizing that other things, such as color changing titlers, are much worse.

In the days of those days

Julie Bindel is a long time crusader on the front lines of sexual violence. Sexual violence is a pervasive part of almost every woman's imaginary world, even those who have never expereinced more than the most mild forms of it, because I don't think any of us can say we've never experienced any of it. This is because the threat of it is all around us, and it is a fear that pierces into the core of our most hard won possession. That is, namely, our sense of personal bodily control. Autonomy is won in slow hard steps, and sexual violence, the threat of it, and the imagination of it, destroy hat autonomy.

There is also the other part, and that is that pregnancy and reproduction necessarily involve the loss of this very same thing. As a result, sexual violence stares back at us from our fantasy life. Where and how to draw the line of the push in, is no easy thing.

Bindel writes in the guardian as follows:

It started about 10 years ago: prior to this I had no male friends. There were certainly men in my life whom I liked and respected, but no one I would meet up with for a drink and a heart-to-heart. Why? Not, dear readers, because I am a man-hater. As I have written before, I only hate those who rape and abuse women and children, and those who do nothing to stop other men doing so.

The bunker mentality is easy to come by, but I can only imagine what it was like to be part of radical feminism in that time. But the bunker sensation, that sensation where it seems that there are wolves with teeth and fangs in every direction, is common to every time and place I think. Little Red Riding Hood survives as a story, because there are so many woods to travel through.

I am sorry for her that she did not have the ability to have friendships with men until late in life. I am also even more sorry for a world where I understand how it happened.

And could happen tomorrow to a young woman trying to be herself.


And is probably happening now.

Professional Sexism at work

AWGroupies is a techie group. It had a prupose once, but it has become mostly a chat room for projects.

Now think on something. He's a real person, probably a manager or other person with some position. If I were to apply for a job at his company.. would I get it? No, he'd find a way to sink me,for, basically, not submitting to his "master" fantasies.

I've been told I am too aggressive about these things, but the reality is the reverse: sexism is endemic in the technical fields, and women who do not submit to it, and push back, are first treated with contempt, and then with hostility.

The half-anonymity is a threat: he can strike back at me from his real, in sl terms, identity, with his professional connections, if I don't accept his imposition on me.

[2009/12/15 0:56] Herc Serpente: There was a time when "jazz" referred to more than music
[2009/12/15 1:26] Herc Serpente swings the bat, hitting only air
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: I'd really like to get to know you, I like your blog. Chatted with you as an alt on AW Groupies, I don't usually disclose our 'relationship' though
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: add the people i meet here
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: odd
[2009/12/27 16:32] Lillie Yifu: hello
[2009/12/27 16:33] Herc Serpente flushes with excitement
[2009/12/27 16:33] Lillie Yifu: How are you?
[2009/12/27 16:34] Herc Serpente: i'm not usually so tongue-tied
[2009/12/27 16:34] Herc Serpente: you haven't even completely rez'd, but i can admire your subtle tan lines
[2009/12/27 16:35] Lillie Yifu: thank you. I like deail
[2009/12/27 16:36] Lillie Yifu: you are stillmostly gray to me
[2009/12/27 16:36] Lillie Yifu: so waht brings you here?
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: I enjoy the arts
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: theatre, especially
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: erotic themes are, in particular, attractive
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente's fingers trace the tan lines on your chest
[2009/12/27 16:38] Herc Serpente: Sometimes it's possible to find partners who share a similar appreciation
[2009/12/27 16:38] Lillie Yifu puts his hands back on his chest.
[2009/12/27 16:38] Lillie Yifu: I'm not one to be pawed randomly
[2009/12/27 16:38] Herc Serpente looks to see if his fingernails need trimming
[2009/12/27 16:40] Herc Serpente: did you think it a random gesture? It was made with careful intention
[2009/12/27 16:41] Lillie Yifu: That's true.
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu: don't talk to me again
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu spits in his face
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu: hows that?
[2009/12/27 16:43] Herc Serpente: unexpected, perhaps unprovoked? A "no thanks" would be less ambiguous
[2009/12/27 16:43] Lillie Yifu: Definitely provoked, asshole

models revolt over revolting heels

There's no reason for these things.

SL Blogger/Musician Needs Your Help

Details here.

She's asking to help by buying her CD of acoustic folk.

Tour Eiffel 2

Tour Eiffel 1

The new version is much better than the old texture driven one.

Trust

I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people, those who have enough money to live, and those who don't. Quantity isn't the issue. 

They don't get each other, and that leads to trust problems.

Any man who asks a woman "are you an escort?"

Isn't going to score with her if she isn't.

I'm thinking of burning a bridge

I will decide in the morning.

[not going to do it.]

Dark Star of the Ballet Stage leaves us

Georgina Parkinson radiant physical presence who moved with a tremendous power in every gesture, and taught an exacting way for students to express that power within themselves, has died. She danced with the Royal Ballet during the peak of Sir Fredrick Ashton's reign, and came to be the ballet mistress of American Ballet Theatre.

There was an androgyny to her face, an almost vampiric stretched quality to her movements, and a tremendous flexibility that defined the unbending steel of her poses. She flowed into positions, and then sustained them, and taught that same way. At the same time, she was always discussing, always changing, always searching, always fitting. For the dancers she knew had talent, she would work and weave their own uniqueness into the steps. She talked about how having a role created on you was an intensely personal act, and how it had worked in the Royal in her time, how the choreographer would set the problem, and the dancers would have to solve it, often having their changes added to the steps.

This vibrant seeking artistic freedom rested on a basis of absolute assurance in technique, and it was liberating, even for those who could only touch their toes into the sea of freedom that she had once sailed on herself.

Near sunset

Wish my forgotten wishes, and feel a forgotten rhyme,
from touch of the forgotten lore,
and dust upon forgotten times,
from droplets of forgiven hours,
that fall from forsaken flowers.

Narcissus, first flower of forgetfulness,
whose Lethe bathes us in our sleep.
Give the forgotten memories,
that we never can forget.

Forge a forgotten fire,
from a forgotten flame,
forgetting is more beautiful than any recall.

Lillies that fill the valley,
roses by other names,
lilacs by the courtyard bloom,
and daffodils follow the rain.

For each forgotten petal,
that opens in forlorn passion,
their finds a place,
where rests your face,
upon my lap,
and fear no evil,
even in the valley of death.

For I have forgotten the fears,
that are whispered in years,
in cradle and crib.

Set me feet on an earth unborn,
untorn by wars,
unturned by years,
untouched by tears,
undrenched by sorrows,
unblemished by age.

It has been forgotten,
because it never was in their hearts at all.

There is something to be said

about a blingtarded avatar with a tag that reads "Intelligence is hot."

Delicate impulses that reach for the caress of keys,
that softly hold all the arcane secrets of the heart,
if only we should dance upon them,
and leave behind that trail of steps,
the tracks of the windings of a mind
that fumbles with the meanings of its motion

Ian Welsh's avatar

I redid Ian Welsh's avatar, the first version being a rough job in a hurry. I think he's pleased with the results, even if SL isn't his thing.

Also this one...

I tried to capture a kind of brooding romantic look to him, because I think that is what lies underneath his writing, or so it seems to me when I read it on his blog.