We're not pledging that we feel honor-bound to work with literally everyone about literally everything, but obviously no one really thought we were, lol.  An election is a heck of a thing, I guess. 

I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to get into an angry fight or whatever.  I'm not going to, sorry.  It doesn't sound fun or interesting, and I don't think it's what the people want.  A big part of our campaign is that we don't want these angry speeches or the attempts to start a fight.  We don't think anyone does, really.  And while I understand that they're part of the URL brand, we're just not interested.

To me, Talossa is about doing fun and interesting stuff.  It gives me the push I might never have gotten to try new things.  In just the last year, I've had that experience so many times!

• I had never done short-form video before just this past month!  (And maybe it shows, lol)  But after that language Tiktok went viral, I thought it might be a fun thing to try.  So I just... did it!  Filmed some short clips, and experimented with editing them together, and started up the whole Progressive Alliance account.  It's been another crazy thing I never would have tried, I think!
• I'm not sure I would have ever even thought about making a website to teach language skills, if it hadn't been for Talossa.  And Tafi, of course, who made it possible at all.  And even aside from the lessons themselves, I learned some new things about HTML.  It's amazing!
• Or to hearken back to an old one, I never even opened desktop publishing software before I started Beric'ht Talossan.  And then I just went ahead and did it, and it ran for two years.

Talossa gives you a chance and an excuse to do things you might never try.  And I can't wait to share that with more people.

The Independent Greens are a different party, led by Garth Spencer.  We remain open to working with anyone from the Green party that we can, with the obvious exception of their leader.  Everyone knows I take the whole thing with Breneir about as seriously as anyone... look at the names on the bottoms of the First Step Towards Decency and the Consequences Act.  Look at the thread for where they were developed.  It is dishonest to pretend I do not take this seriously.

It would be nice for a day to go by without an angry URL denunciation of one kind or another.  Everything's a sign, everything's an outrage, everything is so serious that it merits a little creativity with the truth.

Vote Progressive if you're ready for a change from... well, all of this.

Finally a victory!  Tric'hard, your advice really helped, thank you.  I guess in theory I should have known that a goalkeeper is an important position to fill on my team.

My hair is sticking up.  What do I even hire a hair and makeup team for?

A big thank you to all of our supporters -- we're here for you and we're here for Talossa!

We've talked a lot about our policies and plans, like ending the government's power to secretly control immigration.  But what about our culture... what's our time in office going to look like?  We've been accused of being willing to work with all kinds of people, including His Grace the former king and other parties like the Independent Greens or the IDT.  And to that, we say... guilty!

We will work with you!  No matter what your politics might be, we all have our love of Talossa in common -- and so there's definitely something we can work together on!  We are happy to work with the existing URL, the new super-liberal Independent Greens, or the new super-conservative IDT, because we think there's probably things we have in common with all of them.  Even if our values don't always align in every way, we're going to find some project or idea that we both love.  It'd be pretty shabby to scorn half of the country, just in order to win an election, so we won't do it!

Let's try new things!  Do you have a wacky idea that you're a bit shy to share?  Do you have an ambitious plan to do something crazy?  Share it with Talossa, and as long as it's not hurting anything, we'll try to help!  Talossa is about doing the stuff you want to do.  It gives you an opportunity to be a presence on a national stage and change the whole country's conversation... and that only happens when folks try out their ideas!

Let's have fun!  Talossa is a space for you to have fun and enjoy yourself, and also to learn new things.  We'd love to have you share the things that you like, like your music or your hobbies.  And of course, it's really important that people feel safe and welcome, which is why we've coordinated so much on things like the Consequences Act. 

Let's move Talossa forward -- vote for the Progressive Alliance!

Quote from: Tierçéu Rôibeardescù on Yesterday at 10:12:59 AMI started a solo forgotten Realms/bg3 themed campaign for my wife, using DM guild book domestic adventureurs guide, which shes yet to realise shes actually playing stardew valley xD

lol!  I think solo games must be hard -- although, on the other hand, there's no question about who's the star of the show!

A.  Progressive Alliance

B.  Alexandreu Davinescu

C.  Non.

D.  Yes, I'd like to claim a seat.

BG3 is such a fantastic game, and really the best facsimile for a real game that you could find.  I'm glad that it's gotten you into it... I've been working to getting an Honour Mode resist Dark Urge game done, saving all of the gnomes and everything, but keep coming up short.

One-shots are great, but there's such a limit on developing your character.  You come in with a concept and bounce off of the plot and other characters, but they don't get to change and grow, you know?  In my current game, we're about to hit the climactic moment they've been building towards for more than a year (we're thirty-two sessions in, from level 1 to level 7) and it's been so fun to watch them evolve.

If I did another Zoom one-shot, would that interest you?  I haven't done much Zoom DMing since the pandemic, but I am sure I still have the chops and dndbeyond has a decent map tool.

Posting a clean version of this post for Balloting Day -- and regretting I didn't choose a better cover photo for the video than this doofy one.

On this final day before Balloting Day, I thought it might be a good idea to highlight some of our priorities for the upcoming term.  We're going to try to push for these things to get done, even if we don't win a majority -- just like we saw this past term, where we highlighted the unwieldy immigration form and demanded common-sense changes.  We've been a very effective Opposition, but the more seats we have, the more effective we can be.

One of our policies is to reject negative and angry politics.  You've seen the Seneschal's speech about how they are the "Good" and we are the "Bad," and you've seen the URL emails with lengthy personal attacks.  And while that might work for them, we're not going to take the bait.  The URL is a party of decent people who want to help Talossa, and we just have different visions about how to achieve that.  No matter how you vote this term: if you're a Talossan patriot, you're one of the Good ones.  That's our pledge to you.

We urge transparency in government.  The government should not have the power to secretly control who's even allowed to apply to immigrate... we need the bipartisan Public Process Act!  And let's make sure this power was never abused by anyone of any party or government.  If it was, the people deserve to know.  And on a different note, laws like this should be accessible to everyone -- let's get some regular citizens to read over our laws and figure out what's hard to understand!

We also want to make it easier for everyone to "do Talossa."  That means fixing up our website so that the links all work and the merchandise is available.  It means being vocal and supporting everyone's efforts -- the Seneschal should be an active booster of fun stuff, promoting it!  It means making space to be silly, and never yucking someone's yum.  And let's make sure we have plenty of people to have fun with us: let's turn our lucky breaks into sustained growth, and end these periods of zero immigration for months at a time.

There's a video version of this on our Tiktok, because we also want to put a human face on Talossa.  Let's get away from just message boards, since that's more interesting and makes it possible for us to reach a broader audience.  The people agree -- that's why the current leader in our poll asks for "regular Zoom meetings with His Majesty and the Seneschal."  We can make that happen!

It's time to move Talossa forward -- let's vote for the Progressive Alliance!

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on November 14, 2025, 02:23:59 PMFairly said -- let me say that I can personally commit to a chat with any and all, either way -- and it would be great to have you there, Your Majesty.  Here's a Zoom link for tomorrow morning at 11 TST.

I'm having some scheduling problems today -- my wife is helping produce a big weekend event and she's asked for my help at 11 TST.  @King Txec and @Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be , I hope you understand!  Would some time around 3pm TST (4pm EST, 1pm ST, 9pm GMT) be okay?

Yes, the new version of The Public Process Act is much better, and the enforcement mechanism was a good idea.  I am glad we discussed it and came up with the idea to mirror the emails to another location out of government control.

I think you're bending over backwards to make it seem like it's pointless to make something illegal without an immediate enforcement mechanism, but yeah, I do actually think that a lot of people will hesitate to break the law out of fear of consequences.  I think if you ask most people if they'd break immigration laws, even if they think they won't get caught, that they'd still say they wouldn't do it.  Now maybe your hypothetical "nefarious immoral mastermind" would still do it, but people aren't either Good or Bad.  As I said, most people don't break serious laws even if they think they might get away with it.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP on November 14, 2025, 08:07:43 PMThen why is going through the records to find instances of this currently legal behaviour a worthwhile endeavour?

I think people deserve to know if past governments have been abusing their power.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP on November 14, 2025, 08:07:43 PMThe Public Process Act had no mechanism, aside from perhaps the guilty conscience of immoral biased corrupt future MinImms(?!?!?!) that you are describing there, to ensure that every received application would be "processed and posted", and its rejection justified.

Yes, I think that the new version of the bill is much better.  The mirroring protocol is going to help a lot, and without any extra work for people.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP on November 14, 2025, 08:07:43 PMHow exactly would the Public Process Act have actually fixed the problem at hand?

It would have definitely been a good first step to make it illegal, lol.  I think you honestly underestimate the power of just knowing you're breaking the law.  It's not just feeling bad, it's also the possibility that you might get in trouble later.  Most people just don't break a lot of major laws, even when it seems like it might be the "perfect crime."  I don't think I've ever broken a law (not counting, like, speeding or jaywalking).  I assume you're not out there breaking laws, either, even when you think you'd get away with it.

I do think your point was a good one when we were talking about the bill, though, and thank you again for the keen insight.  The new version of the bill will have an enforcement mechanism.

You were never at risk of prosecution for three very good reasons:

1.  If you are "binning" applications secretly, that's legal right now.  It's shocking, but right now the government is allowed to just delete applications and not process them, whenever they want.  And obviously you can't be prosecuted for something that's legal.

2.  Org.VII.14 explicitly says that the Ziu cannot pass ex post facto laws.  So even if the URL hadn't blocked The Public Process Act, and it had made it illegal for the government to delete applications if they don't like the applicant, you couldn't be prosecuted for something that wasn't a crime when you did it.

3.  You have repeatedly assured us that you haven't been secretly disposing of immigration applications, so you didn't even do it.

At no point have you ever been at risk of prosecution, as I have told you many times before.  There's no theory that would allow you to be prosecuted for anything under that bill.

And folks, this is a really necessary bill.  Right now, the Government can -- legally! -- decide to just throw out the applications of someone based on any kind of criteria they want.  It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that this is a dangerous situation in a small country like ours.

• Imagine a politician who doesn't like an energetic new citizen's politics.  Maybe that application just gets "lost."
• All kinds of people have hidden biases.  Maybe someone applies who's just too different for the bureaucrat who sees it.  Does that application get deleted accidentally, maybe?
• Sometimes former citizens reapply, and maybe they're on someone's wrong side.  Maybe their application never quite gets processed.

We have no reason to think any of this has happened in past years, but we shouldn't have to just hope.  At the bare minimum, it should be illegal to do this.  And the improved version of The Public Process Act has even more safeguards -- without any additional work!

Most Honourable Seneschal, we have been running a positive campaign.  It's possible that Françal said something inelegant, but he assures me you're mischaracterizing what he said.  Either way, it's not going to reflect on our campaign or our goals, since we've been united in refusing to fight like you want.  And I'm sorry -- you're just not going to be able to bait us.

We haven't made any speeches about your personal failings or the foibles of your successor as URL leader.

When we've made criticisms, they've been specific and based in concrete fact.  We link to sources and quote things directly.

We haven't attacked the character of your party as a whole, and we haven't made any kind of unfounded accusations about your motives.

Over and over and over, we have stated our policy goals, advocated for our principles, and vowed to work for a better Talossa... no matter the outcome of the election.

Tonight will be no different, because our goal isn't to victory for the Progressives.  It's victory for Talossa.

We're here because we care about transparency.  The fact that the government is able to secretly "bin" citizenship applications isn't something we're okay with, no matter who's in charge.  We want that power removed, and we want to make sure it's never been abused.  Hopefully the day is not too far off when we can issue a report that there was no malfeasance, and everyone can be relieved.

We're here because we want more Talossans to have fun doing Talossan stuff.  There's all kinds of infrastructure that wouldn't take much time to make, but then we could benefit from for years.  Updating the website, making starter kits for culture so people know where to find resources on things like BBCode, providing a directory of commonly used images... all of that is the work of a few days but would pay us back in years of fun new ideas.

We're here because it'd be great to put a human face on the government -- videos and things that take advantage of this new short-form video virality and try to keep it going.  In our recent poll, our number one option is more regular Zooms where His Majesty is joined by the Seneschal to meet people... wouldn't that be great?

This guy cruised in here with verbose Talossan sentences!  You're damn right I'm going to hope he works with us!

With more people willing to help, not everything's going to fall on the shoulders of people like Tafi or Iac.  We could have a lot more language materials and even just a lot more writing in Talossan!  Heck, we could have entire webpages written in it, or regular language articles.  He's very enthusiastic -- I'm not going to sneer at that just because we don't share a lot of the same political values.

And now this should have hit your inbox -- hopefully all the links and everything work!  As usual, I immediately found a typo, despite proofreading like three times.

Just to clarify, we do not have a formal coalition, but the Progressive Alliance has approached the IDT about possibly working together on areas of shared interest: we love this enthusiasm for our language* and we can't wait to work to get more people into it!

*quick plug for http://talossan.net !

Now in video form here!

Well, I'll be on that zoom at that time, so stop on by 🙂