Vaes Erteiers Cuncuriais,

I would like to take this moment to announce on behalf of el Partì da Reformaziun that, following discussion among the Partì membership, the PdR has entered into negotiations with the Free Democrats of Talossa with the intent to form a government during the 57th Cosa.

At this time, all aspects of this Government, its personnel, legislative program, and even our nomination for Seneschal, are up for discussion. This discussion will take place not only between the PdR and FreeDems, but with possible supporters on Votes of Confidence as well.

I anticipate that there will be some who do not receive this announcement well, and to them, I would reiterate that part of the purpose of the PdR's very existence was to present an open ear to all regardless of political differences; to rise above the back-and-forth that appear to have taken deep root in our nation's debates. You will always find an approachable and thoughtful figure in the government when the PdR is involved, and it is my hope that you can trust el Partì to keep any coalition partners, in this or future Cabinets, accountable and away from complacency. While there are obvious Organic issues that will be unable to be addressed during this Cosa -- as evidently desired by the voters, whose will I respect -- it is my goal to pursue other reforms that will attract broader support from both the Government and Opposition.

Remerceat al pópul per voastră confiençù, éu remainéu,


Mic'haglh Autófil
Cäps Naziunal, Partì da Reformaziun

Congrats to everyone on their results! I don't know who the eight of you are that expressed confidence in a pair of newcomers, but I don't intend to let you down.

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on April 01, 2022, 07:35:25 PM
DIEN 7 votes - 17 seats
FreeDems 30 votes, 76 seats
PDR 10 votes, 25 seats
RCT 1 vote, 3 seats
TNC 31 votes, 78 seats

These results are unofficial until the Electoral Commission certified them.

What happens to the last seat? I only count 199. Is this one that would end up being assigned by the King after the first Clark?

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on April 01, 2022, 10:06:32 PM
I'm thinking also that major changes or staffing decisions such as emeritus, movement from Fellow to Pursuivant to Herald could be more formalized. This is a college, after all, so perhaps some system of voting for future shifts? Just an idea.

-REH

This sounds like a smart idea to me. Having at least some clear set of guidelines can only reduce confusion.

- TLF

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on March 30, 2022, 02:23:21 PM
Three things:

1) Nice!

2) Would you like to collaborate with me on like a Talossan language edition?

3) The newspaper name has a typo, it should be Tascaragnhă .

1) Thank you!

2) Certainly!

3) Y'know, I seem to recall copying that directly (since I don't have an ă key), so I'm not sure why it's misspelled now. Thanks though.

Alright, both of you take this somewhere else please.

AD, I will say I'm open to what you may be able to contribute, but I also reserve the right as editor to reject anything submitted. shrug (Too much extra-Talossan politics is a no-go for sure)

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on March 29, 2022, 04:05:30 PMVuode cannot into space

And thus, a meme was localized  ;D

This is a public notice that I intend lo lock the participants in and generate a schedule this coming Sunday, April 3. Any teams that various organizations wish to enter, or any provincial teams that their corresponding residents wish to rename, please contact me before then.

The debut issue of La Tascaragnă Nouă

Putting this here for now, simply because I'm not sure if there's a place to make suggestions to the Minister of STUFF, but:

I wanted to track down some places one could get custom flags made. I've found a few options, and would be happy to help facilitate things on behalf of whoever ends up as MinSTUFF in the next term.

Unfortunately, I could find only one business in the GTA that might make flags -- and I mean might. These may be the sort of feather-shaped flags used outside businesses as opposed to standard rectangular flags. In any event, they can be found here: Olympus Custom Print.

I did find a few other places that more obviously do "flags", and can create custom orders.
Hit-Tex Flags
24 Hour Wristbands
MBR Marketing
Humphrys Flag Company

Now obviously I can't speak to design vs. quality of any of these places just yet -- we want to make sure we get our money's worth, after all -- but I at least wanted to get these things out there as a prelude to hopefully bringing more TalossaWare to the people.

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on March 26, 2022, 06:05:46 PM

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on March 26, 2022, 05:40:36 PM
I'm not a math guy, but I guess I don't understand why one number doesn't win. That's what I would have assumed - you buy one or more tickets for a dollar each, and if you buy the winning number, you get whatever the pot is for that drawing. Or split it if someone else picks the same number. Pretty low stakes, very simple. Although maybe a dollar wouldn't be enough of a pot if only a handful of people enter, so it might make sense to start off with pricier tickets.

But you guys are engineers and math people, so there are probably good reasons that I don't understand.

I endorse this design. The only mark against it is that it's a bit boring. In that case you could reduce the number of options from 59 while keeping multiple "balls"

Pretty much the other option, if 59 isn't as important. The key is to balance between winners coming up too frequently and winners coming up not frequently enough.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on March 26, 2022, 05:35:19 PM
We could probably do what Rouge Elephant advises now, and if in some future year we want to redeem the fellowship, we can do that. Would that work?

Sounds like a fair compromise to me! 100% on board with the damnatio memoriae of the previous fellowship holder, for reference.

- TLF

Quote from: Caleb Frenibuerg on March 26, 2022, 05:04:30 PM
Perhaps they just pick 1 number? I'm trying to work through this.

I like the idea of picking multiple numbers, since that also allows you to sort of "tier" the prizes. Also, depending on how many choices you let people make (pick one number, but still have multiple entries per ticket?), you don't need many tickets sold before you start approaching a point where it becomes certain that you have a winner week after week. Just my 2 cents, of course, but I like the idea of having it build up a bit on occasion.

Alternatively, to alter the odds some, you could also avoid having repeat numbers in the draw. (Think of how actual lotteries work -- only one ball with a given number in the drum, usually.)

There's also the possibility of using a "bonus" ball. Say you pick two numbers from one through 59, but then also a third number from, say, 1-8. Getting all three is necessary for the grand prize, but not as hard as getting all three when all three numbers could be from 1-59.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on March 26, 2022, 02:05:14 PM
Okay, I took a first pass at consolidating the rules and reorganizing them.  There was a lot of repetition and the organization didn't make any sense to me.  I also added some info about badges and banners.  Right now it's on the talk page:  http://wiki.talossa.com/Talk:Rules_of_Heraldry

I'll fiddle with the formatting a bit more, and simplify a bit more. A couple of the sections are a bit too long and need subheadings, and some categories need to be made into lists. But anyone have any thoughts thus far?

I think it feels much easier to read. Well done.

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on March 26, 2022, 04:04:03 PM

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on March 26, 2022, 03:18:05 PM
I further propose that that earlier list of the inactive has stood for a long time, and we should act with some common sense about these inactive folks, and be a bit more consistent. We should create the unnamed positions of Fellow emeritus and Pursuivant emeritus.  Heralds should probably be permitted to keep their titles for life, even when moved to an emeritus status, as now.  Then we should make the following changes:

The Odd Fellow, Iustì Canun, should be stripped of all office and privilege, and he should be formally ejected from the College and stricken from its rolls.

The former Lookout Fellow, Sir Tamorán dal Navâ, UrN, the former Long Fellow, Davíu Lundescu, the former Well-Met Fellow, Tímoþi Asmourescu, and the former Oblivious Auditing Fellow, Pôl d'Aurìbuérg, should all be appointed as Fellows emeritus.  They are welcome to return and assume a named position at any time (assuming they are Talossan citizens at the time).

The Mellow Fellow, Owen Edwards, the Well-Met Fellow, Cresti d. I. Nouacastra, and the Jolly Good Fellow, Alèxandreu Soleighlfred, should all be moved from their positions and appointed as Fellows emeritus.

The Penzance Pursuivant, Sir Mick Preston, UrN should be moved from his position and appointed as Pursuivant emeritus.

I'd also like to see that the title of The Odd Fellow is never able to be used again by any future fellow.

I'm for all of the above, though while I am familiar now with the background, I do question whether it is better to never use the title again, or to reclaim it. Could go either way, I guess.

- TLF

Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on March 24, 2022, 08:05:09 PM
It's great to see new citizens taking initiative!

With that made clear, I have some concern about how the mathematics of this lottery are going to shake out.

The number of unique combinations of four numbers between 1-59 (assuming the order doesn't matter, which my understanding of the rules) is the sum of:

Cases in which all four numbers are distinct (ex: 1 2 3 4): 59 choose 4 = 455,126
Cases in which one number appears twice (ex. 1 2 3 3): (59 choose 3) * 3 = 97,527
Cases in which one number appears thrice (ex. 1 2 2 2): (59 choose 2) * 2 = 3,422
Cases in which one number repeats four times (ex. 1 1 1 1): 59 (pretty obvious)
Cases in which two numbers appear twice (ex. 1 1 2 2): 59 choose 2 = 1,711

For a total of 557,845 possibilities. Since each line can only contain one of these possibilities, each line has only a 1/557,845 = .000001793 chance of winning on a particular draw.

The pricing of the tickets clearly encourages people to buy five lines on each ticket, so assuming each ticket has five unique lines, the chance of a ticket winning on a particular draw is 5/557,845 = .000008963

Similarly, suppose twenty tickets (with five unique lines each) are sold, which is pretty optimistic. The chance that anyone wins on a particular drawing is 100/557,845 = .0001793

Suppose that all of the tickets remain in effect until one of them wins. The number of drawings required before any of the tickets wins is a geometric random variable with distribution:

Pr(D = d) = .0001793 * (1 - .0001793)^(d - 1)

For example, the probability that the first win occurs on the 10th drawing is:

Pr(D = 10) = .0001793 * (1 - .0001793)^9 = .0001790

The mean of this distribution is 1/.0001793 = 5,577

If a drawing were held every week, we would not expect anyone to win for over 100 years!

If anything, the Treasury would surely benefit from being able to loan out the proceeds at interest while it waited for anyone to win.

I am happy to join this project as Chief Actuary to help come up with a more workable design.

Assuming my math is right, if we used three numbers, that time period drops to about 8.25 years. If we only used two, it would drop to about 18 weeks. No?

I'm all for this. Sort of ties in with what I was thinking recently about Japanese mon vs hanko -- mon are roughly equivalent to arms, whereas hanko are more like individual signatures than anything inheritable. Hanko seals/stamps are actually frequently used in Japanese business documents where we would use a signature in the west -- some classes of hanko are registered and considered more formal than others, for use in business, whereas others are more for personal communications (analogous to how I sign "Mike" instead of my full name when sending cards for, say, Mother's Day).

-LF (?)