Q4 Report; in which I help Soror with some maths

I was reading soror Nishi's post about Second Life being bigger than Hong Kong. I did comment on her blog but I thought that with my recent CEO experience running MisoCo© that I could help her out more in a post because it's very complex (not complicated) and she is my friend, and you help out your friends, right? (plus I still have Marketing on a retainer fee so I might as well use them, they cost enough) Ok so -

Getting granular in the digital dirt

Flashy presentation

As we can see by this Web 2.0 Ajax-driven Flash-enabled Google cloud-widget, using the same font (Arial Standard Bold) even with autokerning, Second Life is obviously bigger than Hong Kong. There are more letters, for one thing. Both of them have 2 Capitals: Hong Kong's is Central (formerly Victoria when it was under British control) and Second Life's capital, which is its shoppers. But also there are 8 normal Letters in Second Life and only 6 in Hong Kong. Hong Kong uses the same three letters twice, meaning that in reality Hong Kong (I would start using the abbreviation "HK" at this point for streamlining and reading smoothitivity but I do not wish to become entangled in some monstrous Hello Kitty legal copyright yarn) only has two Capitals and three Letters. "Second Life" demonstrates its obvious moarness here by using the same Letter only once and sporting a surplus of linguistically-distinctive potential over the word-unit "Hong Kong."


If you run "Hong Kong" through an anagram program, the single result is "Honk Gong" (you could give them a little leeway and say it's actually two results, Honk Gong and Gong Honk, but that is a mere semantic quibble). Rather pitiful don't you think, when you realize that "Second Life" has a possible 578 embedded variants! There's not even a percentage for how much this kicks "Hong Kong"s butt!!! (in non-marketing, real-people-speak you could say "teensie" or even "bitty" or "weeny")


And let's look at some of the potential value spinoff vector-points embedded in "Second Life":


Declines of; Licensed Of (wow pretty revealing ne? the whole copyright issue)
Coifed Lens, Diced Felons (I guess this was the gambling and whorehouses stuff)
Coined Self (now that's a good one)
Second Leif (hmmm, the landlord-tenant-Prok issue)
Doc Felines (this is obviously the Furries)
Ice Fondles (hahah oops i just blew my PG blog rating)
Conies Fled (predicting the Bunnies Vs. Ponies War?)
Cone Fields (*shrug* dunno, maybe they are from France)
Close Fiend (is this about stalkers???)
Once Fields (predicting the growth of SL from a bunch of empty sims?)
Scone Flied (I believe this is a hidden slur on Asians and Scotsmen)
Iced Elf Son (showing the move of most of Elf Clan to other sims)
Code Self In (another deep metaphysical correlation)
Clod Fee Sin (a warning to LL about the tier pricing issue)
Doc Feels In (not sure if this is PG or a reference to Prok's FIC)
Cods Eel Fin (sounds like a Brian Eno song or band)
Fenced Soil, Fenced Silo, Fence Idols, Fence Old I's (you decide)
Feces Lid On (a clear reference to segregating weird stuff on Zindra)
Scene Fold I (showing SL's creator/builder driving engine)
Slice Fed No (claiming that SL does not harbor CIA spooks)
Clones Def I (showing the whole digital-copyright controversy)
Once Id Self (more metaphysics)
Con Ed Flies (corporate roots showing here)
Con Lid Fees (this means tier)

... and those are only a minor selection of the results!


Clearly we have shown that at least lexicographically, "Second Life" is both larger in a physical sense than "Hong Kong" and that "Second Life" contains a ginormous density of actual crunchable data, which shows the economic potential Linden Labs has in Second Life. Because all that market data is pure gold, my friend; there's a million companies chomping at the bit to buy it; it's the coming currency. Just ask Google or that other social networking site that goes by the initials "FB", which btw, despite appearances has only has 4 possible variants [Cafe Book, A Bock Foe, A Fob Coke (which could get them sued by Coke© in a flick) and Fa Be Cook] (which is why it is stupid for Second Life to demean and lower itself trying to be a FB-clone; obviously they have, or soon will have hit their limited-potential saturation point and will go into rapid decline; people will only remember them as a MySpace clone in the future, just like MySpace is now)

Hong Kong is relatively tiny

But wait; there's still more!

...as they used to say in the commercials before companies got so cheap. If you look on a globe of the world and squint you can find Hong Kong. Even if you count the bitty chunks of rock sticking up out of the ocean that some people call "islands" (which is kind of exaggerating or wishful thinking) the main area of physical density is pretty clear. You can put a ruler on it. It has boundaries, and even on the globe or a good map you can see that Hong Kong is rather tiny compared to all the stuff around it, like Asia.


But Second Life is global! Its reach is worldwide and even farther (because an astronaut signed into Second Life from the International Space Station once so that means Second Life might be said to be galactic in reach). This so obviously trumps Hong Kong's measureable area of influence as to be emo-sad. Tens of thousands of people from all over the world check into Second Life daily; how many check into Hong Kong? Probably we could get that data from the big hotels there but I am fairly confident in guessing that there are, for example, a lot fewer Australians in Hong Kong on a daily basis then are in Second Life. Conversly, how many Hong Kong people (Hong Kongers?) are in Second Life? I bet it isn't that large of a demographic, whereas Second Life could easily contain the entire population of Hong Kong, by just adding more servers and load-balancing the throughput.


As you can see above, if you take a screenshot of Hong Kong on a global map and lay it over a screenshot of even one of the Linden continents, it disappears into it like your favorite diamond earring into deep pile carpeting, where you can't find it for weeks then step on it hard with your bare heel one night and not only smush the setting and pin but incur a fairly painful bone bruise that stays with you for a week. No sane person would argue that this is a good thing, or that the earring is somehow larger than the carpeting because the carpeting did not ambush or impact your foot with such unexpected viciousness; that would be ludicrous. Plus as you can see, the ocean is covering a lot and that doesn't count.

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Someone like Wizard Gynoid or Tateru is much more capable of plunging their virtual hands into these festering swamps of data to, say, abstract average population densities and new signups for Hong Kong vs. Second Life over a defined period of time or something like that. If that someone was Glyph Graves, they'd probably take that data and turn it into something breathtaking and pretty. If they were SaveMe Oh, they would probably shout at it and hit it with a bat; someone like Kranfel would see a field of pretty flowers; Nazz Lane would wax poetical and Apmel would probably flirt with it. But I am not them; I can only theorize from the information that I have. Perhaps they will take up this issue in time.


Unfortunately, my own time is up for today, having just barely scratched the surface of this metaphorical scab. It should suffice to say that, using just a few examples from our Market Research Division, it is easy to demonstrate that soror is unfortunately misinformed as to what exactly "Second Life is bigger than Hong Kong" means and I hope that I have helped her start to understand this complex issue (I think it is good that she makes such wonderful trees and stuff; I don't think she's quite ruthless enough for the data-driven brawling of today's modern marketplace).


If you would like a more in-depth analysis and figure-driven exegesis of this issue, please send a self-addressed return-postage-paid envelope with your name, address and a money order or international bank draft (no checks, please!) for 19.95€ to cover processing and handling costs to:

MisoCo©
Agni Grid
Second Life

Please allow 4-6 weeks for us to make a bunch of pretty Powerpoint, Flash and Ruby On Rails cloud-stuff to send you.

COMMODITY - Final Report

COMMODITY - Bought & Sold

COMMODITY is finished for submission to the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge for the January 2011 Round. The submitted work consists of the ghost-shell of the missing Pieces O' Miso©, a graph of the stock value and sales performance of the Seed Work, photos of the deconstructing of the Seed and a Cheap Digital Knockoff© of the Seed**

SLurl: Commodity - Final Report

The response was gratifying and much more than I had hoped for; within 48 hours all Pieces O' Miso© were purchased. I would like to thank the Speculators/Co-Creators of this work:

Ignatius Onomatopoeia
Traci Yiyuan
Kandinsky Beaumont
Free Wee Ling
Dividni Shostakovich
The Dove Rhode
Apmel Goosson
Alizarin Goldflake
Rowan Derryth
PJ Trenton
Wizard Gynoid

Together we raised 2900L for the Artist's Prize Pool, had some laughs and engaged in a dialogue about selling, buying, marketing and appreciating art and the debate between philanthropic support and the importunities of marketing.

I would also like to thank Jayjay Zifanwe for his understanding and support of this work. Jayjay took a chance on allowing me to place the Pieces© on sale despite the rules of the UWA space stating that it not be used for commerce. Jayjay has claimed that he doesn't know much about art, but his understanding of the concept and meaning of this piece makes doubt the veracity of that statement :)

** Speculators, fear not: the Revelation textures were replaced by a generic one reading CHEAPDIGITALKNOCKOFF (and other changes) so even if someone attempted to duplicate/copybot this replica, they wouldn't have a copy of the Seed Work or your own Revelation. Your Value Index remains high.


Some thoughts from this piece's performance:

- Wizzy raised the question on my blog about commercial activity in the UWA space. COMMODITY wondered whether "voting with your dollars" is a legitimate index of worth for a work. The actual "artwork" cannot be purchased, as it involves the use of blog posts (free) and the participation and interaction between the Speculators and myself (unavailable for purchase).


- The issue emerged of "being connected" as a crucial part of the ability to see or own artwork in that the initial awareness of the work and the availability of parts of it for purchase were dependent on being in the right place at the right time (the initial Group Notice), reading the right press (blogs mentioning the work) or knowing the right people (word-of-mouth sales).


- One Almost-Speculator confessed to me that she really wanted to participate but couldn't stand the thought of having a body part of mine hanging in her inventory. Isn't that sweet?!?! My attempt to make her feel better by telling her about the trophies hanging on my wall in my mansion in Oblivion did not work too well, despite my assurances that they were mostly Goblin, Heretic or UnNatural body parts and looked quite pretty :(


- Hilarious dialogue ensued when FreeWee suggested I sell my cat next. We speculated on whether I could have raised the initial Prices, kept the body parts separate (ears, toes, fingers, neck) for a greater profitability or that we might convince Bryn Oh to do the same thing, which would probably result in UWA being able to pay all of its SL bills for the next 5 years :D


- Some dark thoughts surfaced in a dialogue with Trill Zapatero on whether I should now take the joke farther and put another copy of the work out with the salable parts intact once more. This was a really interesting exploration, invoking the ghosts of market tactics (shifting the presentation from artwork to commodity), consumer bait-and-switch ("contract between consumer and provider is subject to change at any time") and the trust between artist and Speculators (we are participating/purchasing because we believe in the integrity of this unique work) being subject to betrayal (I saw the success of this work and couldn't pass up the big spacebux or: my agent made me do it).


- It was far too easy to do the parody of a stockholder's meeting. From having to type for attorneys for years, seeing Bill Gates or Steve Jobs do presentations and reading the notes of Linden Labs meetings or watching Philip Linden videos on You Tube, the words just fell onto the page. Sad, isn't it?


- I was happy when Ms Yiyuan wrote me to tell me she had purchased my Chest and later my Pelvis; it gave me great comfort to know these crucial parts of myself and most intimate inner yearnings were not on display in some bachelor's Love Den :D

COMMODITY Update: Stockholder's Meeting

COMMODITY Day 1 - 7 missing Pieces O' Miso©

*taps microphone for attention* Gentlemen and Ladies?

[slips on scholarly-scientisty glasses]

As we can see by this PowerPoint presentation, less than 24 hours after COMMODITY was placed, 7 Pieces O' Miso have been purchased. There being 16 Parts to the Work, this is close to a 50% sales ratio and consequent reduction of the visible parts of the Seed Work. At this time we are unable to say how many, if any, of the Judges have seen the Seed Work.




I have listened to Marketing/Sales argue vociferously about my pricing tier and my decision to include the digits with the outer appendages; I think that, given this overwhelming response to my Initial Public Offering, my conclusions as to the market value and timing of the offer have proven my decisions were the correct ones. Let Steve Ballmer throw a chair at that!

c_^

The 7/16 Reduction Ratio of the Work means consequently that the Value of the remaining Pieces has risen considerably. The Participation of the Speculative Angels has already increased the Real Net Worth of the UWA Artist's Prize Pool to the tune of over 1200L, and that's nothing to sneeze at. I am sure all of the artists participating in the UWA Challenge will join me in a round of grateful applause for these Speculators.


This also means that the Work itself has gained in intrinsic value, being now a communal effort and not just that of the solo artist *bows modestly*, creating itself through the interaction and participation of the viewing public. We will not be able to put a final Real Market Value on this Work or its Parts until the Round is done for January, which is when whatever is left of COMMODITY will be removed from sale. The resulting Carcass will be the final physical piece and will incorporate photos of the deconstruction of the Pieces by date as a record of the initial Work, a list of the Speculators/Participators as co-creators of the final Work (subject to their agreement) and these blog posts.

c_^

The Price of course does not change for the individual Pieces, nor will I condone switching to a Bidding War approach. Following Sales/Marketing's advice, we'd now be doubling (or more) the price on the individual extant Parts and gearing up a factory in Taiwan or China to pump out cheap digital plastic replicas of COMMODITY for Wal-Mart.


You know my views on this matter. I believe these ideas, typical of Old Business Thinking, would damage the intrinsic value of the work, substituting a negligible transient gain in market income for a long-term reduction in value and consequent consumer demand, resulting in an overall Net Loss for this piece. This would be fiscally irresponsible.


Furthermore, it would incur negative feedback and negative brand desirability from the Speculators who will lose confidence in our integrity and from the Art Community itself. I have also quashed the idea that we harvest the names of the Speculators for Marketing's use or that we somehow figure out how to turn COMMODITY into a Facebook-clone or Minecraft -_-


I believe, as many of you are aware, that the S/M division is mired in a 19th-century business paradigm that refuses to budge from its entrenched, or should I say entombed, market strategy. This is not the Wild West, gentlemen, nor are we Robber Barons or the Railroad. We are a small company with one asset, namely myself. We must be nimble; we must be flexible and creative in our approach. It is obvious to me that S/M does not understand this Work and therefore I must discount their advice. I think that the overwhelming response to this IPO speaks for itself, and I hope I have your continued confidence in this campaign.

Thank you.

*sits to applause*

[other photos of the missing Parts can be seen on my Flickr account]

COMMODITY - Artist For Sale!

COMMODITY at UWA

ARTIST FOR SALE!

A Good Investment! Artist can only Appreciate in Value!

AVAILABLE FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY AT THE JANUARY UWA 3D OPEN ART CHALLENGE!*

SLurl: Pieces O' Miso

Each part of this COMMODITY (arms, legs, stomach, pelvis, etc) contains a singular dream, memory, confession, nightmare or wish (Revelation) of the ARTIST which has never been told to another person! No two pieces are alike!

No one else will know this personal part of the artist! The value of each Piece O' Miso© is contingent on sharing this secret with only the artist. Buyer gains the right to talk about this secret with the artist!


You may right-click on any Piece O' Miso© and BUY it; then right-click again and TAKE it. Each Piece is an ORIGINAL and will not be duplicated nor sold again. When a Piece is gone it is gone!

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This piece speaks on the issue of the commodification and marketing of art.

Art works follow economics of scarcity: the rare, the unique; high demand, finite supply. Where does the fungible value of unique, "priceless" commodities like art works and antiques come from? From desire, symbolic wealth, and ownership of a scarce good. Context and perception is all. Commodities show value, translate into cash value, only by circulation and exchange in the marketplace. Art objects are not exchangeable one for the other like other commodities: art economics is based on scarcity of unique objects. Some argue that art does have a "Satisfaction" (utility) value (Grampp), and cannot be explained purely by exchange value models.

Artworld hierarchies of value and cash value

* Scale from the legitimate but low value works in galleries from $500-1000 to the small fraction of works that hit the auction houses for huge amounts ($500,000 to millions).

* Wealthy prestige collectors increase value and visibility. Prices of sales to and from private collectors are often well-known in the artworld and used as investment capital.

* The influence of museums, international shows, and the price of works (the Saatchi effect) on the saleability of an art work.

* Economic variations in funding of art around the world--state sponsorships, grants, public spaces, free art school tuition and conditions of the commercial art market, the business of galleries and museums all affect the price of an artist's work and labor.

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The actual "artwork" being submitted will be dependent on the investment capitol prospectus of myself as an artist; who will buy... what parts will they buy... what will be left of "Miso" when this round of the Challenge is closed?


When each Piece O' Miso© is purchased, it will be removed from the work and a ghost outline of itself will be left in place. These ghost outlines are nonpurchaseable, as is Miso's Face© (an actual texture made from my avatar's usual facial skin). The purchaser will be able to look inside the piece and view the text of each personal Revelation. The textures are no mod/no copy/no transfer. The value of these bits of myself will be contingent on the buyer never sharing this information with anyone else but me.


Another issue being addressed here is the accessibility of art. How many people will see the seed artwork in its entirety, if and before any pieces are bought and spirited away into collections?


I will continually visit the piece and photograph it in its various stages of disappearance... depending, of course, on the pertinent question:

Is Miso's stock RISING? is it VENTURE CAPITAL MATERIAL?!?! Or will I end up with all my parts, doomed to bankruptcy and drawing pictures of pet dogs for doting old ladies?


*Lest you think this is a crass commercial project (and start screaming at Jayjay or FreeWee), know that all monies from the sale of Pieces O'Miso© will be donated to the artist's prize pool for the Challenge. It's not about making a profit ^_^


** my limbs are cheap, but you'll have to cough up some hard Ls if you want my pelvis (with a most personal revelation) :D

Arte Y Parte: Major Spanish Art Magazine Explores SL Arts

"In its twelve years of existence Arte y parte, published [RL] every two months, has been consolidated as one of the most consulted art magazines in Spain and Portugal" [via Google].

'La Vanguardia Ingravida En El Metaverso', an in-depth article by Holala Alter [nee Julio Juste Ocaña] on the metaverse and particularly the artists and art scene in Second Life is featured as this month's cover story. The magazine is available now in pdf [which explains my slow translation] and in print throughout Spain and Portugal [waiting for the mail breathlessly!]

Although mi poco de español es muy malo, with Google's help I have hacked out a quick translation and some understanding; the article is very positive and comprehensive, exploring the metaverse as a frontier for new forms of art.

Holala has also written about the efforts of the University of Delaware, the University of Western Australia, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Bowling Green State University, Ohio University, the University of Grenada and the Pontifical University of Peru for their efforts and leading positions in exploring and supporting the artistic exploration of the metaverse; familiar names to those of us working in the arts in Second Life.

Also mentioned are fellow artists Dancoyote Antonelli, Merlina Rokocoko & Newbab Zsigmond from Pirats, Sasun Steinbeck's Galleries of Second Life, China Tracy, AngryBeth Shortbread, Douglas Story, Desdemona Enfield, Dizzy Banjo, Poid Malkovich, Sabrinaa Nightfire, Giovanna Cerise, Treacle Darlandes, Fuschia Nightfire, Blue Tsuki, Betty Tureaud, Typote Beck, Max Bobair, Aneli Abeyante, Glyph Graves, Glenman Jun and Luko Enoch.

This is a major effort to introduce people in Spain & Portugal to the digital arts frontier through a prestigious and respected arts magazine and I am excited for all of us working in this new medium.

¡Hurra!

Word Play - Visualizing Google's Bi-gram Data

Those who know me know my fascination for the spoken and written word (perhaps too much so) - the way words fold together; how phrases and useage reveal underlying thought processes, assumptions and hidden structures of thought and orientation - semantic networks. I am also fascinated with maps; I regularly check into CAIDA (The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis), TouchGraph, Google Maps Mania, Google Analytics and other sites to poke around and play with the datasets and visualization tools which deal with the net.

A really interesting set of visualizations is offered by Chris Harrison on his Word Association page using an advanced plugin for Word Press. The plugin is a powerful datasieve that sends multiple queries to Google, Alta Vista and several other search engines and accumulates word frequency data which can then be ordered and arrayed in various ways.

The Word Association page has produced some thought-provoking information on word frequency and links - for instance, the word 'he' is often found with 'argues' while 'she' is often found with 'loves' (on Men/Women) [I love that ^-^]. Also interesting are Adults/Kids, Faith/Science and my favorite (because I get into this argument a lot) - Art/Design.

Chris is a four year Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University and a Microsoft Research PHD who has been providing associative maps and visualizations for huge data sets including Amazon, Digg, the Bible and many others. Take a poke into his visualization projects page for other interesting and thought-provoking data.

Agitprop: coda and finale

As a coda to my recent agitprop/psyops postings, I'd like to quote some sections of a seminal document which helped to express my beliefs in the world in which I choose to inhabit.



This document - A Declaration of The Independence of Cyberpace - was written by John Perry Barlow (of The Whole Earth Catalog & Electronic Freedom Frontier fame), one of our early community leaders in cyberspace. It was written in February 1996, a mere 18 months or so after the establishment of the World Wide Web, as a reply to the Telecommunications Reform Act.

In that short time we, netizens of this new country, observed the beginning of the conflicts which have struggled titanically for the control of this new medium for the last 15+ years. We have grappled with issues Mr Barlow so eloquently expressed for us all in this document and which are again gaining attention and discussion.

If you read blogs like soror nishi's, Botgirl's and other writers on the metaverse you will recognize these topics, and the topic of information/disinformation/propaganda I have recently written about and their pertinence to the larger picture of what this technology is doing to us and providing for us. As a citizen long absent from active participation in this community and world, I am happy that such issues and topics are once again being explored and discussed.

Quotes from the Declaration:

"Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live."

"We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity."

"Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule."



"Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish."



"We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before."


amen.

Am I crabby... or just impatient?

Techdirt has a wonderful post by Mike called New Year's Message: From Pessimism To Optimism... And The Power Of Innovation. It has several really-well-stated points, but one I'd like to highlight is this one:


"The point I was trying to make was that I definitely see both sides of that argument. I'm amazed every single day by some of the amazing things out there. And yet, at the same time, I'm frustrated by anything that gets in the way of making it even better. So, I'm super optimistic about innovation, and all of the possibilities out there. And I believe, quite strongly, that you cannot stop innovation -- but you absolutely can hinder it. So any "anger" that people feel, which may give them a sense of frustration and pessimism is my frustration about the roadblocks and barriers and hurdles that people throw in the way of this innovation -- either due to a misunderstanding of innovation, or through laziness and an unwillingness to change to take advantage of those new opportunities. "


Mike says it better (and more succinctly) than I can. I realize some of my posts lately, esp. the ones dealing with Wikileaks and the attempts to corral and lobotomize the net, are very intense and probably boring to people who want to read about art. I have explained my reasoning before: art is about life, and the net is my home, so things that involve the net involve my home.


Most of the Second Life politics regarding LL I have left to other better-informed writers than myself. Since I don't get around to very many shows or openings for various reasons, I can hardly be an art pundit, commenting regularly on other people's work. So I blog about my few and occasional showings.

What I do write about is what affects my thinking, my moods, my work and my home. Having lived through the earlier net politics (MS's sabotage of HTML and Netscape, the monetization/billboardization of the web, the monopolization of the backbone pipes and the killing off of independent and local ISPs, etc), I am very aware and sensitive to business/political moves that could lead to the narrowing of the possibilities of this fantastic and revolutionary medium.


So please, as Mike so very well writes, try to see my "anger" as frustration and warning regarding the topics I write about that impinge on the freedoms and possibilities inherent in the net. I love it, unashamedly and unabashedly. I've been here longer than most people and I wish to see only the furthering of this expansion into a future that is positive and enlightening for all.

Predictions for 2011

Well, everyone's doing it, so here goes:

- I predict that people will keep making predictions about the future of Second Life and everyone will be surprised when a virtual comet crashes into Point Zero and knocks SL off into an elliptical orbit that will send it deep into the Oort Cloud.


- I predict that Bat Boy will be seen in Second Life.


- I predict that somehow, one of Pathfinder's leaps through a hypergate will loop him back in time. He will take charge of Linden Labs, and suddenly we will find ourselves in a much more interesting world immediately. But we won't remember the previous world (this one) so no one will be aware of this.


- I predict that if Wizzy keeps sucking the lifeblood out of noobs, Linden Labs will offer her a job.


- I predict that soror will finally make a tree that causes all her other trees to link up into a huge hyper-universal entity and that, as new worlds are discovered, we will find soror's plants have already migrated there on spaceborne spores or something.


- I predict that Lalo will have difficulty finding an authentic Southwestern taco in Indianapolis and his cat will gradually come to enjoy the new place.


*wipes hand across forehead shakily*
the Spirits depart... I can say no more.

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btw, this post on Pathfinder's blog is really good.