Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on September 26, 2023, 03:45:03 PMI know you guys are running a purely negative campaign, so this is what you've got -- scary smears and silliness.  But I don't think this is the best approach.

Run a campaign about ideas!  Tell the people about what you want to accomplish, rather than what you want to destroy.  What do you want to build or fix?  How will you improve people's experiences here?  How will you grow the country, while still keeping it fun and interesting?  What is the joy you get from being here, and how will you share that joy with others?

It would be very convenient for the governing party if the Opposition never resorted to the dreaded "negative campaigning", wouldn't it?

I think it's pretty obvious how I and many others have been finding/sharing joy in Talossa over the past year; thankfully, it has had very little to do with politics.

Politics is a quest for the seat of power. Many (dare I say most or even all) things that build people up and spread joy can be accomplished outside of it.

The central FreeDem message is that we should win enough seats to prevent the TNC from fully attaining the seat of power, because we are rightly suspicious of what you would do with it.

Sorry if that's not enough sunshine and roses for you.

Quote from: Bråneu Excelsio on September 19, 2023, 06:10:34 PMAzul, fuliensen talossans!
I will say again that personal opinions are not official party policy.

When the time comes to discuss our personal opinions in a purposeful constructive environment, I will be there leading the way, I hope.
I have not answered these questions yet because I am precisely trying to lead an impartial movement that can allow the opinions of others to be heard.
 Is that, being a candidate, counterintuitive? Pouçivalmint mas parç qe la voce da Talossa c'e la voce da toct I tzară. The voice of Talossa is the voice of everybody.


For today, I consider it important to emphasize that I'd rather not reduce the campaign to this issue, we at the TNC have great enthusiasm for creating and sharing fun things in addition to carrying out a clean, transparent and transcendental Cosa; we have the people, we have the energy and the will to lead a path to a stronger more united Talossa.

Bråneu.

As D:na Schivă says, I don't think that not addressing this issue is an option. Well, I guess it technically is an option because it is physically possible, but it is essentially telling the voters that you will not tell them how you will use the power you are asking them to give you.

It is, to be blunt, nonsensical to claim that a political party is "impartial". Being partial is literally what is means to be a party

I get that the TNC is trying to cast a wide net and would rather campaign on administrative ability instead of policy. However, surely you can understand why people would be interested in what your policies are, given that, depending on whether you win and how big the margin is, you may very well be in a position to enact the policies you want.

This is especially important because the TNC's last attempt at succession reform was unacceptable to many people. I am not sure if you were politically active at the time, so the thread may be an interesting read.

You and @Baron Alexandreu Davinescu are pretty much telling us not to worry our pretty little heads over what we consider to be the central and defining aspect of Talossan life. I'll give you a pass but the Baron should know better than to say things like:

QuoteWe're a party devoted to having fun and welcoming others, and we have refused to be defined by just one or two divisive issues.  I wish that the FreeDems would feel comfortable with that

Cosa: Free Democrats
Referendum: Për

IMFAO it would be better to show a moving average here instead of a trend line but now we are really going down the rabbit hole. I would be willing to set that up if you give me the keys.

It's not so much that I think you should spend a lot of time on them, it's that low effort ones can be misleading (even if it's unintentional) and it's often better to not include them at all.

For example, I see you chose an exponential trend line for the number of applications. Do you have a justification for that, other than that it looks nice? Linear models are more parsimonious, and so are preferred in the absence of strong evidence for other models. I also know that linear trend lines  are the default in Excel, so this was a conscious choice to depict exponential growth even though you are pretty much admitting you didn't spend any time thinking about it.

Of course, the reason this is important is that anyone who looks at the chart will get an impression that immigration will probably continue to "grow exponentially" even if that's not an appropriate conclusion based on the data.

Auto-generated trendlines with no context are my least favorite part of data viz

Unfortunately I've had something come up,
so I can't make it

I can probably make it

I can do it

RZ24:

QuoteThe fundamental flaw in the theory of animal rights [is] basic and far-reaching. For the assertion of human rights is not properly a simple emotive one; individuals possess rights not because we "feel" that they should, but because of a rational inquiry into the nature of man and the universe. In short, man has rights because they are natural rights. They are grounded in the nature of man: the individual man's capacity for conscious choice, the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity and need to communicate and interact with other human beings and to participate in the division of labor. In short, man is a rational and social animal. No other animals or beings possess this ability to reason, to make conscious choices, to transform their environment in order to prosper, or to collaborate consciously in society and the division of labor.

...

That the concept of a species ethic is part of the nature of the world may be seen, moreover, by contemplating the activities of other species in nature. It is more than a jest to point out that animals, after all, don't respect the "rights" of other animals; it is the condition of the world, and of all natural species, that they live by eating other species. Inter-species survival is a matter of tooth and claw. It would surely be absurd to say that the wolf is "evil" because he exists by devouring and "aggressing against" lambs, chickens, etc. The wolf is not an evil being who "aggresses against" other species; he is simply following the natural law of his own survival. Similarly for man. It is just as absurd to say that men "aggress against" cows and wolves as to say that wolves "aggress against" sheep. If, furthermore, a wolf attacks a man and the man kills him, it would be absurd to say either that the wolf was an "evil aggressor" or that the wolf was being "punished" for his "crime." And yet such would be the implications of extending a natural-rights ethic to animals. Any concept of rights, of criminality, of aggression, can only apply to actions of one man or group of men against other human beings.

...

There is, in fact, rough justice in the common quip that "we will recognize the rights of animals whenever they petition for them." The fact that animals can obviously not petition for their "rights" is part of their nature, and part of the reason why they are clearly not equivalent to, and do not possess the rights of, human beings.

-Murray Rothbard, from The Ethics of Liberty

I am open to the idea that a select few species (apes, dolphins, etc.) which have demonstrated an ability to reason and thus take true "action" (in the Misesian sense) should be afforded rights beyond the typical non-human animal. However, the preamble of the bill takes a rather more broad view:

QuoteWhereas, sentience is the characteristic of consciousness whereby an organism has a sufficient level of awareness to experience suffering,

However, this misses the important fact that even most "sentient" animals exist on sheer force of instinct and cannot be said to make meaningful decisions about their lives. While I agree that outright animal cruelty should be prohibited on the basis of their experience of suffering, the ability to suffer (which sentient animals have) is not the same as the ability to derive satisfaction from being alive or being free, which even most sentient animals do not have. I thus have no moral qualms with keeping most animals in captivity or slaughtering them (humanely), and in general it is nonsensical to speak of a broad class of "sentient rights" that most sentient beings have no capacity or desire to exercise.

That this bill dispenses with the notion of human rights altogether, as though there is no difference between human rights and "sentient rights" at all, is deeply concerning.

QuoteWhereas, it is therefore a fact that the restriction of the normative and legal discussion and codification of rights to humankind is an unacceptable case of anthropocentric speciesism.

I embrace anthropocentric speciesism as the morally and logically correct position.
 
CON

RZ25 - PER
RZ26 - AUS

Quote from: Zacrïeu Sverdeu on July 27, 2023, 01:11:23 AM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on July 27, 2023, 01:08:13 AMSadly there are no "private enterprise" newspapers functioning, but the Government-issued monthly La C'hronica fills the gap: https://talossa.com/lchronica/

(Incidentally, attention Minister of STUFF: LC doesn't appear to have been posted on the National Website since March?!)

Oh, nice to know, would a "private enterprise" publication be encouraged?

Sent from my Nokia X100 using Tapatalk

We've had several private publications over the years but none are currently operating. See this link: https://wiki.talossa.com/Press

It would be great if someone started another one!

Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on July 23, 2023, 01:55:11 PMChatGPT

From what I understand, the quality of recipes depends drastically on how recently you used it (that is, whether you used version 3.5 or 4).

While I appreciate what this bill is trying to accomplish, I wonder if we could name the day after someone with a stronger connection to Talossa.

RZ22 - PER
RZ23 - CON

Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on July 10, 2023, 07:34:07 PM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on July 10, 2023, 07:10:10 PMHonestly, if this bill means what it says, it should provide a way to include non-human sentients in the Talossan community. Otherwise, it's what the Right calls "virtue signalling"

Thank you, I think that's a great idea. And I am open to suggested language achieving that end.

Unless you are suggesting that dolphins are more intelligent than 13-year—old humans I'm not sure this follows. Sentience alone should not qualify you for citizenship.