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The Banter Page
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If you're wanting to get something off your chest, make general comments about the server, or post lonely hearts ads, then this is the place for you.
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House and game
[Bis] August 20 was third anniversary of my house being destroyed. Insurance quit paying everything and had to hire a lawyer and only FINALLY got settlement back in March! I used up ALL of my funds as the lawyer didn't provide any advances for living expenses, so things are always tight for me right now, though trying to get online theatre classes started once I get all of my lessons made.

[pen] Last I saw, a new slot needed to be made.
[Kagome] much sympathy.
Flash - bang
Gotta put this in even though I wrote it in 2010. It's the 65th anniversary of the best thunderstorm I have ever seen, even allowing for distance lending enchantment and teenage impressability. Spoilt for life at the age of 15.
Online Safety Bill
Important service announcement: You may or may not be aware that the UK government has recently passed the Online Safety Bill. This applies to all sites with 'user-generated content', with only a handful of exemptions. (Witless below-the-line comments and fake product reviews will still be allowed.) So this site will be in scope.

OFCOM guidance is apparently forthcoming, but from reading around the Bill, my understanding is that I will be required to ensure all users are of age and further to act proactively to prevent any harmful content appearing on the pages. The consequences of not doing so could result in bankruptcy-inducing fines and/or imprisonment.

Now, obviously, this is ridiculous. This site has been running for just over twenty years (slightly miffed to have missed the anniversary in January, but there we go) in the spirit in which it is intended (notwithstanding the ever-present risk of the Morden spiral and the harm that can come from falling into one of those). So thank you all for being responsible and permitting the existence of a site that is clean, fun and requires zero moderation.

However, unfortunately, unless the guidance this is forthcoming allows the legal obligations to be performed in a light-touch and quasi-autonomous way, I don't see any alternative to pulling down the shutters and saying goodbye to this place. It's not even obvious to me that an archive of the pages can be maintained without verifying the age of anyone wanting to look at it. So archivists might want to get archiving.

In the most sweeping interpretation of this bill, the UK government will have the choice of either fully providing and even externally imposing the verification system -- a stupefying technical undertaking of something like wartime scale -- or forcing nearly every web forum, wiki, etc., that's hosted in the UK out of business or at least offshore and under non-UK proprietorship. I do not see this going well.
Yeah, maybe I'm being melodramatic. I guess we'll have to see how it shakes out with OFCOM. In the meantime, I've make a few twerks which means that the shutters will fall on any finished game that goes uncommented on for three days. If things pan out as badly as we expect, I'll disable new game creation, and we'll just play everything out...
Three days is a bit optimistic, no?
It's slightly ironic that Orange MC, which is being spammed to death, is the one site which won't be subject to these new rules as it seems to be hosted abroad.
Glass half what?
[Superman] Yes and no. When a game finishes (which hasn't happened for a while), it hangs around on the front page for three days, then you have to delve into the bran bucket of eternity to find it again. Until now, it's been possible to resuscitate games from there, but now it won't be. I don't recall that last time that happened for a reason other than spamming activity, so I don't think anyone will be too put out.
MCiOS is located in outer space, so will also duck the legislation. It's possible that OFCOM will set a threshold of as to what constitutes a 'significant' number of users, which I am sure we'll fall well below, so maybe we'll not be affected after all. On the other hand, the fact that each and every word we post is visible to the entire universe, maybe we will.
Well, given that every participant passes an exam (aka Cymraeg Epistolariat) and can create and close forums at will, one can only conclude that everyone is an approved moderator and thus exempt. As for exposing the tender masses to the awful, pornographic reality of wordplay and transit stations, well; I've been at some pains to discourage spidering. I don't see how someone with the brains of a modern UK cabinet minister is even going to find the place.
"In the meantime, I've make a few twerks..."

No wonder they want to shut you down.
The Drugs Don't Twerk
Could be a pun game in this... "Britain isn't twerking" or somesuch... "Twerking 9 to 5"
Go to twerk on an egg (the title of almost least four TikTok videos)
Twerking In A Coalmine .. going down, down, down
Adopt boreal speech
Pay's good but t'werk's 'ard.
Hi ho, hi ho...Here's an approximation of what the associated dance number in Disney's live-action remake of Snow White will look like.
Grieving
I'm so sad and crying at times. I had to make that terrible choice of saying goodbye to one of my dogs, Niblet, on November 27. I talked to him and asked him if he wanted to go to heaven or stay o earth. I always had a way of communicating with him by showing him the fingers and he could nose or lick the choice.

His kidney enzymes were so high that the computer coulndn't read them. He could no longer walk correctly. I tried to feed him a tiny piece of ham and he wasn't able to eat it even though he tried. His tongue was so dry because he was dehydrated.

He was my Mama's dog first. When she was really bad in a nursing home, all she would write was "take care of Niblet." I loved and still love that little baby so much. I truly believe he is in heaven, but it is difficult.

Thankfully, my little service dog, Radar, is just fine and is with me.
Brainstorming
Also,

I was wondering if y'all could help me brainstorm. I'm trying to figure out ways to promote my online theatre classes. As a friend of mine said, it just takes the one right person to get the ball rolling. I've told a few local connections about the classes and that they'll let people know if they know of anybody.

Also, perhaps on how to get more followers on TikTok. I'm VERY SLOWLY gaining followers. If I get to over 1,000 followers, then I can be a guest on the LateTok show (I'm pretty sure the reason for that is simply because that's what you need to go live on TikTok) and obviously, I could also go live on TikTok to answer questions about theatre - like I see vocal coaches go live to answer questions about the voice and singing. So, if you have ideas, please let me know!

And if you are interested, you can find more info at https://theatregeekery.neocities.org
Storm approaching.
[KagomeS] I'm sorry about your dog - they have such short lives compared to the amount of life they bring to ours. We just have to make sure that those short lives are the best.
And this theatre thing... maybe - maybe - the way to bring TikTokkers to your theatre skills is ... to make TikTok content that tells people how to put theatre skills into their TikToks, or identify the theatrical techniques that TikTokkers are already using? I'm thinking of something in parallel with the linguists and etymologists who keep appearing on my Instagram reels. They make post after post by digging deep into language and introduce their mini-lectures with a trending TT reel or something newsworthy or a factoid, give a burst of proper intelleckshual linformation in very ordinary and usuable context, and then encouage viewers at the end to 'Follow along if you feel like it. I'm thinking in particular of https://www.threads.net/@abraham.piper with 600,000 followers.
Ooh, I think Pen's is a great idea. "How to stage a play in 180 seconds"
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