This Saturday (11 Apr) at 10am TST, come join His Majesty the King and your elected Seneschal for a Talossan Coffee Hangout!  There won't be any formal business or anything -- just hanging out, drinking coffee or tea, and friendly chit-chat!  Ever been curious to ask something or wanted to just talk?  Stop and by and have a nice little chin-wag with your head of state and head of government!

Possible Topics

• MicroCon
• Favorite current TV shows
• Can we get the king to say something overtly partisan so he gets in trouble?
• Sandwiches

Okay, these are printed and I am very happy with them as a result.  I'm just going to keep printing them to build up a good amount of stock, and then send out the ones that have been claimed along with an appropriate number of pips.  In the interests of making this feasible for the long term, pips will be all one color and I'll make a bunch of those too.

REMINDER: if you want to claim the first issue of the only physical award ever given out to Talossans, you're running out of time!  Recruit a friend to the country, or just apply for your award for a past recruitment, and we'll send it to you for free!

I was going to announce this, but I think it's even better for the Funziun appointee to do so!  Huzzah!

We are fortunate to have a good number of people all pitching in to assist on things.  The time and sweat of our volunteers in the Cabinet and the Civil Service are all essential to making Talossa work, and Zirecteir Autófil is a shining example.

I think he's selling himself short by not discussing his efforts a little more.  In the background for the past few months, this is something that has been repeatedly revisited as we've worked to figure out a central issue that left TalossaWare defunct over the past year.  I think people sometimes end up assuming that this sort of thing is simple, but today's announcement is the product of months of work.

I want to thank the Zirecteir for his excellent work, and I can't wait to make a purchase from our store... TalossaWare once more!  Huzzah!

It is also First Contact Day, but I'm not sure anyone celebrates that as a holiday.

The Kingdom of Talossa would like to wish a happy Holy Week and Easter to all of our Christian citizens and a belated Chag Pesach Sameach to our Jewish citizens.  Even more belatedly, Eid Mubarak to our Muslim citizens.  Whatever your celebration this spring season -- spring/autumn equinox? is that a celebration? happy equinox! -- we hope that you celebrate it with joy and laughter.

I'm loving these reveal posts.

Party leader elections are occurring in our private forum -- stop by and speak your piece (or run to lead us!)

Xhorxh, we've talked about this: your staffers can't wear something this shockingly stylish, since it would make everyone else upset.  How is poor @Françal I. Lux going to feel when he puts on his regulation onesie?

I'm going to start playing the Cosmere RPG (set in the world of Roshar from the books of Brandon Sanderson) with my friends.  I'm having a hard time creating a character!

Quote from: No·ac'h L. Clå on March 30, 2026, 07:40:59 AMFor me specifically I preordered a game set to come out on the 16th and I've got some social plans with others. What are yours?

What game?

If we win our placement match, do we get to join the playoffs?

There's four places for pips, in case anyone accumulates that many. If they accumulated more, of course, we could simply send them a second badge.

I'm not sure what to do the pips in. It might make sense to make them a standard size for something like sequins, or possibly it makes sense to just print out some little things to put in there.

I don't do a ton of 3D design, so this was a great opportunity to sharpen my abilities. I would just like to point out that this is get another example of one of the amazing benefits of our country: if you're enthusiastic and spend time trying new stuff, you can get better at things or learn entirely new skills.

Okay, I did a quick mock-up of what I was thinking.  And I have to say, I like it a lot better.  It requires less work (important when we're thinking about the future), it's a little more flexible, and it looks good.

Great! The only thing I'm wondering is if maybe the whole thing with the cord is unnecessary. Maybe it makes more sense to just make divots where pips can be glued. This design is meant to be able to be turned any which way and still look correct, but the cord thing kind of makes that impossible.

Okay, I printed out some prototypes that came out well.  Getting the clip to print right and still be able to smoothly remove supports took a little tweaking.  Unfortunately, the first batch were comically small!

However, this batch turned out perfectly... exactly what I imagined.  The cord press-fits into the back, although it can be secured with a drop of glue for added security.  Here's a pic, with a d6 for comparison.



I'm open to any suggestions about improvements, but I'm honestly pretty happy with the results.  This is designed to be put on a lapel, pocket, or sash.

Yes, and that's essentially what we're going to be doing.  But I have been advised that it's better practice to have a dedicated @Talossa.com email account for the purpose, and that's the technical issue right now.  We want to be able to keep track of who accesses all of this personal information, I think, for the purposes of compliance with some sort of regulation.

The Minister of Technology is working on a solution to create an account, which our system isn't set up to handle, and when that happens, of course your Majesty will be central since you will be the legal custodian of the account.

Here, what I'm talking about will just be a short-term solution to comply with the law in good faith.

Paging @Danihel Txechescu , who might be able to assist.

Reporting out a little early, since I'm not sure how busy I will be this weekend, I can say that we've had an unusual number of incomplete applications all in one short time.  They were missing anything about themselves and/or address information.  I investigated to see if there was something weird going on, but I think it's just a coincidence.  Still healthy levels of interest.

For period: 1 March 2026 to 31 March 2026
----
Incomplete: 6
No Wittenberg: 10
In progress: 5
Successful: 0
Total applications: 21

Zooming out a little over the last three months in total, we can see some useful numbers:



We're at 200% of our naturalization goal, which is great, and we're doing it without ushering in people who appear disinterested in Talossa.  There's been half a dozen people in the pipeline who have technically qualified to immigrate, yet their obvious apathy has resulted in no petitions for them.  So our healthy rate is not just quantity, but quality.  Good job, Talossan citizens!

It's interesting to note that there's a pretty sharp winnowing effect at work -- half of all applicants fail because they aren't interested enough to get on Wittenberg, and half again fail to stay interested once they're here.

There appear to still be technical difficulties with making an Opposition stand-alone account, so I will be consulting with members of the opposition to discover what their preference might be for the time being.

For period: 1 January 2026 to 31 March 2026
----
Incomplete: 12
No Wittenberg: 31
No post: 6
In progress: 11
No petition: 0
Successful: 6
Total applications: 66

'Incomplete' refers to those applications which were not filled out correctly or completely, and which were returned with an explanation. 'No Wittenberg' refers to those applications which were complete, but in which the applicant did not go on to make an account on Wittenberg. 'No post' refers to those applications from the period in which the prospective never made a post and so the process has been terminated.  'In progress' refers to those applications from the period which were complete and in which the applicant is still being considered. 'No petition' refers to those applications which were complete and considered, but for which no petition was received. 'Successful' refers to naturalizations completed.

It seems strange to insist on including insulting language, even if it's unintentionally insulting.

Quote from: No·ac'h L. Clå on March 22, 2026, 07:12:31 PM

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on March 22, 2026, 01:41:13 PMThey were on the show?!  The American version?  Wow!

Yeah I was surprised! I didn't know the lady but still pretty cool!

If you find out who it was, please tell me.  I'm a seriously big fan... I've even applied to be a contestant!