Per

Per.

That's terrible news. Rest in peace, S:reu Verbotten. You will not be forgotten.

Then, why did Penguinea and the Talossan Republic vanish into the void? I doubt it was because of a lack of physical vicinity.

Penguinea lost its common ground, its mutual agreement on what it was supposed to be or to become. While one group of citizens wanted to remain the kind of toy nation that Penguinea had always been, others wanted to build up something that nowadays would be called "social media". A third group, maybe a one-man group, forsaw the final impact of the coming split of the already tiny group and therefor tried to propagate a "big tent" for all Penguinean splinters. We know what became of all of this... some friendships lasted, but Penguinea, Polyphony etc were gone.

The Talossan Republic was built for growth, but after a turning point it began to shrink and was on its way to get terminally stuck in apathy. So it got one step further than Penguinea insomuch as there still was enough common ground to transfer the whole thing into a larger united Talossa.

To repeat myself, I doubt that more physical closeness would have turned away the eventual failure of these two projects. With the same group of participants, they would have been going approximately the same way to a final dissolution.

Quote from: Ián S.G. Txaglh on October 02, 2020, 06:21:18 AM
we substitute the physicality by meeting here, virtually, which cognitively creates weak bonds and does not inspire much activity. to our minds, it is not much real and subconsciously appealing. we have to accept, that embodiment and enactment are irreplaceable in social life. "out of sight, out of mind" proverb says that with full force; "sight" means here a physical interaction (sorry for obviousness, but i want to be as precise as possible).

What about literature, art, music, science, religion etc? Sometimes the biggest adventures are happening in our minds, and there's a lot of social life going on merely by intellectual exchange. Looking at where we (the two of us) are coming from in terms of our micronational experiences, Penguinea, Rep. Talossa and what not eventually provoked our real world meetings, but before this, we couldn't escape from getting lost in an overwhelming narrative which created strong bonds, iMHO.

Being part of a "real" nation may be generating less feelings of "strong bonds" for various reasons. I'll never meet all the 82 and then  some millions of people who make up the country where I am living. But a nation and a culture aren't constituted exclusively by physical meetings.

There was one question, which forced me to chose a random reply, though. Something like "which way of communication would you prefer to the communication by Wittenberg". But the latter *is* my preferred option, and I couldn't post the questionnaire without chosing one of the options that I definitely don't prefer.

King John may be demonstrating some of the innate flaws of monarchy, but he does not compare to Henri Capet. Let's not forget that he did not undeservedly inherit the throne; it's the opposite, as a Talossan hero he has been asked and elected to walk in the far too big shoes of a monarch. I wish he would give way to a constitutional reform that abolishes monarchy posthaste, but I'm finding it inappropriate and an undue lack of respect to post guillotine jokes in the context of the current frustration with the lax performance of our head of the state.

Off topic: I'm yet another musical solo sailor over here, nice to see that so many of you are sharing this passion. The corona lockdown in March and April made me "dig out the DAW" again, to say it in the words of Adam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nz4PXdkTTE

Where have all the Fiovans gone? (If they're all gone AWOL, they certainly don't need a Captain to guide them.)

Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on September 26, 2020, 05:02:56 PM
First voted on by Dieter Vercáriâ for the 2013 edition.

Oh well. This song reminds me of a particularly golden summer morning in the early 1990's. Quite a few years before I discovered the internet and Penguinea. What a busload of time has gone by... :)

Everyone who's trying to dethrone a sitting King for howsoever good reasons will have to do a crappy job that might shake and break the nationette. Incapable Presidents with a constitutionally limited term could be disposed with less ruckus, simply by waiting for the next regular election.

I don't think it's wrong to have protected spaces like the Chat Room, but I wonder why it should be neccessary to hide fun things like (e.g.) the Talossan Top Twenty away from publically visible spaces.

Maybe nasty arguments could simply be drowned in a multitude of fun topics, for instance by reducing the number of subforums of subforums.  The more every particular whimsy talk has to be taken to its own rarely frequented niche, the longer it takes to find all the pearls of the everyday talk of Talossans, and the more the heart of Wittenberg is just looking like a dry boring desert where nothing interesting is ever happening unless a wild uncontrolable argument is exploding like a shell.

Quote from: Ián S.G. Txaglh on September 09, 2020, 04:48:38 AM
regarding monarchism, i am not impressed by the arguments presented in la s'chinteia XIV. i do not much care if the person is called president or king or shah or big-violet-bambaloo, until she/he has such a position in our political system, that it is substantiated, she/he cannot play a partisan or possess absolute power over anything.

if talossa needs a royal backbone for a long term stability, i do not really like it, cos it would be an artificial glue; talossa needs a strong civil society to survive, not an empty shell refillable at need. one (wo)man cannot be talossa, we all have to be.

i would understand a ceremonial, entertaining and representative role of the head of state, but never anything beyond constitutional monarchy with strict division of powers. we need no figurehead, but also no robert-the-first-like l'état, c'est moi tyrantosaurus.

what kingdom of talossa definitely needs is a good jester. jesters of bohemian kings are legendary (brother paleček or žito the mage).

If we're looking at the surviving, stable European monarchies of today, the sitting Queens and Kings are well trained professionals on their thrones. From their birth to their inthronisation they have been trained for their job. Even a hobby horse monarch with best intentions will never be able to impersonate a pocket scale edition of someone like the unique Queen Elizabeth.

Yes, may be our small nationette could need a good jester, someone with a sane sense of humour and a lot of some sort of an innate kind of wisdom. Anyway it might be a cruelty to sentence one of us laymen and -women to serve for a life term a the helm of this quirky little society.

Maybe King Robert I as the once juvenile Founding Father of Talossa deserved the right to wear the Talossan crown for a lifetime, but by his unworthy misconduct he gambled it away. After his "abdication" the monarchy was only respirated because otherwise it would have been enevitably logical to join the 2004 Rebels who had founded the then prospering Republic of Talossa.

Anyway, a simulated narrow gauge monarchy will never work well in our tiny part time country, that's my message today.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on July 28, 2020, 05:45:56 PM
Which is more offensive: when I don't say what I think about NPW policies, or when I say what I think about them? Choose one! ;)

I don't want you to shut up. All I want to say is that I disagree wholeheartedly when this word "irrelevant" is popping up in the context of the proposal of  the NPW.  8)