I use Windows 10, but unfortunately my desktop build is pushing 9 years, which means some of my components aren't Windows 11 compatible.

Considering just doing a motherboard/CPU swap, or building something new and setting up a Linux partition for everyday use and a Windows partition (or just Wine maybe) for things I need it for. My brother's a big Linux guy, I'd wager he'd be excited to help me out with an install. The catch is that the latter option is expensive...

Quote from: Carlüs Éovart Vilaçafat on January 23, 2026, 11:50:43 AMSome ideas that immediately come to mind:
In the Cub/Boy Scouts we had pocket hangers with strands where beads could be added. Perhaps something like this:



Explorer Scouts also have a braided ribbon sort of thing that pins are added to:

Fellow Eagle checking in, and may I just thank the Green Town Pursuivant for blowing a thick layer of dust off some old memories with these images! (As long as we don't go the old Tiger Cub route of a t-shirt with iron-on patches...)

If we're going to make a logo, perhaps something related to the ship emblem of the Immigration Ministry would be appropriate? Could even be a hybrid design -- MinImm uses a ship, the Seneschal's emblem is a star. So why not a sextant? The recipient has helped the new citizen find their way to Talossa, much as a sextant helps ships navigate the seas using stars.

- Foxmouth

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on January 19, 2026, 04:42:48 PMI think it should also be viewed with an eye towards activity on Wittenberg and a holistic sense about how things are going.  I'm not quite sure how to quantify the latter, though.  It might just be impossible, unless we do regular surveys (which I still think would be a good idea, just maybe a little much right now).

One would think the de facto Minister of Public Records might recall the "Wittenberg Usage" tab on Infotecă? That seems a good a place as any to gauge activity, at least in terms of the nation overall. It would be a good first step.

It is interesting to see the Seneschal reverse his "low immigration = house on fire = Government's fault" stance from the previous term. One wonders what caused him to change his mind.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on January 19, 2026, 04:22:47 PMI am also of the opinion that the Seneschal's artificial carve-up of the immigration stats of my last Government because "it doesn't count because of external factors" is deeply politically dishonest. The Seneschal cannot be shaken from his belief that immigration rates are a function of Government policy; that if immigration is low it's because the Government doesn't care about immigration, and that when he's in power, he can make immigration flick up with his policy choices. But this is simply proven wrong, if he has to falsify the immigration stats from the previous government, to eliminate the impact of something out of the Government's control (without doing the same to all previous governments).

This smacks of the same sort of "just asking questions" rhetoric he has employed before ("I promise I'm not saying Miestră is abusing her authority -- I'm just bringing it up so I can insinuate really hard!") but if he wants to be honest and exclude all outlying months:

- Every term's immigration average sits between 0 and 2, so we'll exclude any month over 2 new citizens as outliers.
- In the time period we're examining, the other months we'd exclude are April 2022, October 2023, and March 2024.

In other words, the table above would look like this:

Seneschal	Cosa	Months	Nats	Nats/Mo
T. Davinescu	56th	10	6	0.60
T. Davinescu (excl. Apr. '22)	56th	9	3	0.33
Plätschisch	57th	9	4	0.44
Tzaracomprada	58th	8	11	1.38
Tzaracomprada (excl. Oct. '23)	58th	7	8	1.14
Excelsio/Sant-Enogat	59th	9	9	1.00
Excelsio/Sant-Enogat (excl. Mar. '24)	59th	8	5	0.63
Schivă	60th	9	6	0.67
Schivă	61st	8	13	1.62
Schivă 61st (excl. Oct-Nov)	61st	6	4	0.67
A. Davinescu	62nd	1	0	0.00

If we exclude "outlier" months, the first term of the Avant! coalition improved on the final term of TNC government, and held the line in their second term. While I still think it's dishonest to carve out any months, I find it a little amusing that doing either option honestly puts the Avant! terms in a good light.

The other metric that would be useful -- especially if we're looking at activity -- is the attrition rate. How many citizens from each term have already lost their citizenship?

- 56th Cosă: 1/6 (17 %)
- 57th Cosă: 1/4 (25 %)
- 58th Cosă: 7/11 (64 %)
- 59th Cosă: 1/9 (11 %)
- 60th Cosă onward: 0's all around, though no one here has been a citizen long enough to lapse anyway. Thankfully, no renunciations either.

Simply padding the rolls does us no favors.

Polls are something I've been meaning to incorporate into TN for a while now. Figured we'd get divisive off the bat. :P

Quote from: Antaglha Xhenerös Somelieir on July 21, 2025, 05:14:02 PMHonestly I don't mind the "send back" concept, however I do think that after this stage, the Senate should be able to amend the legislation as part of its role as a reviewing chamber before sending the legislation back to the Cosa. Or even just sending the reasons (both requiring a majority of senators to agree on what is send to the Cosa) it has been rejected. Although this is a more complicated system, but might be a sort of middle ground solution. And help with making the senate feeling more useful than it realistically is at the moment.

As Senators are already permitted to describe their reasons for voting against bills, I'm not sure any sort of official reconciliation process might be necessary, but I'm open to hearing what others think before sending this to the CRL.

During the recent Informal Session, MC Miestra Schiva posed a Terpelaziun to the Minister of Propaganda, which was answered in his absence by the Seneschal. "Does the Minister now believe that Breneir Tzaracomprada, condemned unanimously by the last Ziu for sexual harassment, is now a fit and proper person for the Ministry of Propaganda to collaborate with?" The Seneschal's response was genuine, but one that we feel reveals a difference of standards between this Government and the Opposition.

Essentially, the Government's position is that it is improper for the Government to refuse to work with any Talossan, regardless of their conduct. Certainly, it would be inappropriate for the Government to refuse to work with someone due to a simple difference of politics, but this is not a difference of politics, this is a rehabilitation that has not yet been earned. The Seneschal himself has agreed that S:reu Tzaracomprada has yet to offer any apology for his conduct that appears genuine. His response went so far as to liken a refusal to publicize S:reu Tzaracomprada's media channel to a refusal to publicize newspapers published by members of the Opposition. The latter would indeed be inappropriate, as it would represent a stifling of the free press. The former, however, is not tied to what S:reu Tzaracomprada believes, or what he says, but the things he has done. It is his actions that have earned him his current status as a pariah, not his views.

The issue comes back around to what the URL has repeatedly identified as the Progressive Alliance's flaw: an inability -- or a refusal -- to separate the personal from the political. This is an important skill to cultivate in politics, and it would be in the interest of the country if more parties were capable of doing so. Criticism of one's actions and views are taken as criticism of character, and this has led to the sort of political atmosphere that is now unfortunately common in Talossa.

This may surprise some, but we feel it would actually be a good thing for Talossa in the long run if S:reu Tzaracomprada were able to rehabilitate his public image. But the first step must come from him -- a genuine apology to his victim. Perhaps a period of "laying low", so to speak, following his apology. Letting time heal wounds. Unfortunately, the usual responses in times like these are blatantly passive-aggressive in tone, complete with smiley emoticons to really drive home that he does not care to redeem himself. Doubling down, as he does, gives us little confidence in his prospects. Continuing to shun him until he considers his actions would be significantly more effective when it extends to government action. Unfortunately, this Government seems content to give him what he wants anyway. The URL recognizes that doing so minimizes the discomfort he has caused his victim, sweeping everything under the rug for the sake of false positivity yet again.

Prior to the Informal Session on Sunday, the URL was approached by the Seneschal with a request. One of our colleagues in the Cosă is facing a dire situation that may prevent them from voting on the Clark entirely this month, and the Seneschal asked for an arrangement to avoid bringing the Government down on the first Clark. URL Secretary @Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC suggested pairing, a method where individual legislators, opposed on a given vote, agree to abstain when one of their pair cannot attend the session. In the interest of civility and out of our respect and well-wishes for our absent colleague, the Union of Free Reformists has agreed to offer the Government a pairing arrangement for the January Clark.

• In the short term, we agree that such a request from the Government is very reasonable, given the circumstances.
• Sir @Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP has already volunteered to switch his Vote of Confidence to Austaneu on the January Clark; and will be doing so shortly.
• This arrangement will preserve the margin by which this month's VoC would have been expected to pass.

The URL would like to send our best wishes to our absent colleague.

Mic'haglh Autófil
Tanáischteu del Regipäts

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on December 31, 2025, 05:11:16 PMThere is a great example, which I wrote about once, where I compared the same chapter about former Seneschál Tamorán dal Navă before and after he fell out with King Robert.

That was one of the issues of Qator Itrins, if I remember my Talossan reading correctly.

62RZ01: PER. I believe we have gotten a fair compromise made to this bill, and will support it.
62RZ02: CON. Given the opposition to this bill from some individuals with a good deal of experience with our legal system, I cannot support it. I'm open to looking at altering how advisory opinions work, but they appear to still be of use in some form, and this bill deletes them outright.
62RZ03: PER. I have some reservations about the removal threshold being a simple majority, but these can be addressed with additional legislation.
62RZ04: CON. I've made my stance pretty clear on this elsewhere.
62RZ05: AUS. Given the actions taken by the Foreign Ministry under the previous Government, and that the current one has not yet rescinded them, this bill seems somewhat weak compared to the current official position. Frankly, I'm more concerned with trying to stop democratic backsliding in Talossa.

VoC: NON

Begging the Seneschal's pardon, but it appears in his edit to his bill, he altered the text of the "currently reads" as opposed to the "shall be amended to read" portion in Item 1.

Edit: I see he's fixed it, carry on.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on December 28, 2025, 04:08:18 PMSo what's the deal? Why would we want to alter the immigration procedure so that the government no longer has the ability to halt the process, and instead requires the cooperation of the opposition?

The simplest answer would be that the Seneschal himself has campaigned against the Immigration Minister having a secret, unilateral veto over citizenship applications. One of his most zealously-delivered criticisms was his concern that the Immigration Minister could simply reject applications they found objectionable, including on political grounds. While this was obviously not happening under the previous Immigration Minister, it is a valid concern more generally, and an effective way of addressing this would be to require the permission of a politically-opposed individual in order to terminate an application. His bill, after feedback from others, finally addresses the "secret", but not the "unilateral". Why settle for fixing one when we can fix both?

Let's maybe take stock of what each side would stand to gain from a compromise:

Government gets:
- Basically everything they want out of the PPA2, including addressing the secrecy of the immigration process.
- Regaining some of the trust from the Opposition that they have squandered before the Cosa has even been seated.

Opposition gets:
- Addressing the unilateral nature of the Immigration Minister's power, which we believe to be of equal importance.
- An indication that the Government understands the necessity of government by consensus during the term to come.

Both sides get:
- Their respective leaders as co-sponsors of this bill (assuming the Seneschal is open to doing so).
- "Partial credit" for improving the accountability and impartiality of the immigration process.
- As a result, all involved get to count this as "a win" for their side, so to speak.

The country gets:
- An immigration process that can be better held accountable.
- A "lowered temperature", to an extent, that can hopefully lead to further collaboration on practical issues facing the country.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on December 28, 2025, 06:00:53 PMI do really think we should get to actually talking about why we would want to change the immigration process to require the opposition leader (Mic'haglh right now) to approve of halting immigration.

As previously noted, that would be any member of the opposition, not just myself. Just wanted to clarify in case you had actually failed to notice the first time I corrected you, and are not simply mischaracterizing the plain text of the bill in an attempt to spin a narrative.

Sir Marcel has done a good job of offering criticism of this bill (in terms of form, content, and process) but to add a few other points in parallel:

- The people who suffered most under KR1's harassment back in the day have stated — back in 2019, mind you — that they would need to receive some kind of fence-mending from Ben to be comfortable with inviting him back.
- They have not yet received any such apology or anything from Ben in the six years since he tried to re-immigrate. He has had ample time and not used it in the slightest.
- Therefore, it is not appropriate for the Ziu to invite him back at this time.

This bill requires us to extend the hand first, when the proper way to make amends is for the one who caused the harm to swallow their pride and reach out. The door has remained open for six years, and no attempt to walk through it has been made.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on December 27, 2025, 08:42:16 AMIt feels like the phone number is still a pretty important requirement to have. There are a couple of applications from the past couple of days to be processed, and I think the main way I would check their authenticity if I doubted them was to call their phone numbers. What are the changes that have happened in how people are reachable? I'm not 100% sure what that means.

Alright, then let's see what other people think.

QuoteSo the other change from the main bill is that you would need to sign off on the public halting of anyone's application process? That is a pretty dramatic change, S:reu Opposition Leader, because I'm not aware of much else in the law where the Opposition gets to share government powers. Could you tell me more what you mean by the carrot and the stick? Who is the donkey in the metaphor?

Not necessarily myself, or any other future Opposition Leader. Could be anyone. Could be Miestra, could be Iac Moritzescu. Anyone who shares the concerns of the Immigration Minister about a given prospective citizen. Interestingly enough, Immigration is actually one area that the Opposition has had a stake in before, the difference there being that back in the day it was only the Leader.
Also, to be clear, the donkey in the metaphor is an immigration process in need of accountability and transparency.

QuoteThe last thing I'll note is that your bill as written conflicts with the Public Process Act, so probably we will need to tweak it so that it can be considered alongside that.

As this bill does everything the Public Process Act does and then some, it renders the PPA redundant. On the upside, this means that I am certainly open to co-sponsorship from the Seneschal (as well as Sir Tafial) in return for dropping the PPA, to make sure credit is distributed as deserved. Unfortunately, with the Government's actions early in their tenure eroding what little trust they enjoyed among the wider Ziu, I do not believe the appetite exists from our side to engage in what I'll call "Wimpy-style dealmaking" ("I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"), so I think it's best to try and work on a single compromise bill rather than to play hardball.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on December 26, 2025, 10:23:35 AMOkay, but I was really first asking about the phone number thing. You don't explain that in the bill or anywhere else. Could you please unpack that for us?

Ah, you asked me to "explain any other differences that might exist", so I was focusing on the main functional difference between this bill and the PPA. Since this bill is deliberately intended as a compromise act that can safely count on the approval of the Ziu, obvious similarities with the PPA are to be expected.

The deletion of the phone number requirement is mostly due to changes over the years in how people are reachable; the previous Immigration Minister had even mentioned that this is likely an outdated requirement. It is also probably the least important change in the bill, so I am flexible on it if it means we can look at the rest of the bill.

Quote from: Xheralt Del'Encradeir on December 26, 2025, 02:54:11 PMWHY is there deletion of the user account?!  That is very unfriendly and not conducive for reapplication.  Say instead "Wittenberg access shall be restricted to the level of access permitted other non-citizens (Landing Pier, etc.)"

Deletion of the user account is not a change enacted by this law, to be clear. That appears to have been first put in place by 35RZ22, if not before even that. 35RZ22 was passed on the December 2005 Clark, so we've been doing things this way for 20 years now. If you think that's something we should look at, I'm ok with that, but I'd like to keep this bill focused if possible.

Independence Day issue of TN. Read it while you still can!

Alternate Link

Full Issue Archive

The other main difference is the inclusion of that bolded text in Item 3:

Quote5. If, at any point during the process, either before or after creation of the Wittenberg account, the Immigration Minister and any member of the Opposition determine that the prospective immigrant shall not be considered further

This is that "dilution of power" I referred to, the clause that actually removes the Immigration Minister's power that the PA campaigned against. The IPRA portion is the carrot, the PPA portion is the stick, and it would seem to make the most sense to do both.

As the title implies, this is meant to be a good-faith compromise between the Public Process Act and the Immigration Process Reform Act that improves upon both.

- The PPA was criticized for doing nothing to actually prevent abuses of the law and requiring the Immigration Minister to "tell on themselves", so to speak. The re-introduced version, to its credit, addresses the latter more effectively, at least.
- The IPRA's dilution of power was well-received, but some criticized the introduction of a new bureaucracy needed to do so. This bill still dilutes ministerial power, but does so without the creation of new bureaucracy, so hopefully the IPRA's critics will look upon this new bill more favorably.

WHEREAS, the current immigration process is noted for several shortcomings, and

WHEREAS, several different bills were proposed in the last Cosa term to address them, and

WHEREAS, these bills largely focused on different aspects of the process, and each had bill had its positives and negatives, and

WHEREAS, a compromise bill focused on a "carrot and stick" approach seems the most likely method to ensure the process is improved as much as possible; then

BE IT RESOLVED by the Ziu that the following changes be made to El Lexhatx:

• Title E, Section 2.1, which currently reads:

  QuoteThe Minister of Immigration shall ascertain to their own satisfaction that the prospective immigrant is a real human being with genuine interest in becoming a citizen of the Kingdom of Talossa. The Minister shall be free to inquire of the applicant on any and every subject, and shall be required to collect the legal name or name used in daily life, postal address (optional if the applicant is under 18 years of age, except for information needed to assign the applicant to a province), telephone number, and e-mail address(es) of the candidate, which information the Minister shall communicate to the Secretary of State. The applicant shall affirm or swear, under penalty of perjury and under the provisions of Lexh.A.16.1., that this information is accurate, and shall provide documentary evidence of the same if the Minister thinks it appropriate.

  shall be amended by deletion of the text "telephone number, ".
• Title E, Section 2.6 shall be created to read:

  QuoteAll immigration applications shall be automatically forwarded to an email address under the control of the Crown. This email address shall not be accessible to any member of His Majesty's Government, but the King shall give access to this email address to the Leader of the Opposition or their designee.

• Title E, Section 5, which currently reads:

  Quote5. If, at any point during the process, either before or after creation of the Wittenberg account, the Immigration Minister determines that the prospective immigrant shall not be considered further, the prospective immigrant shall be informed of this decision, and shall be made aware that a Grant of Citizenship may yet be obtained by the disappointed applicant if an act of the Ziu be passed directing that such a grant be issued. Any account created for the applicant on Wittenberg shall then be terminated.
  
  5.1 Any person, whose citizenship is denied, may in the first case appeal this decision by application to the Secretary of State, and be given the Chancery's contact details to enable them to do so. The Secretary of State may, if they believe the Ministry of Immigration has misused their discretion under Talossan law, report to the Ziu with their reasons for so deciding and recommend that the applicant or prospective citizen be given citizenship by act of the Ziu. Alternatively, the applicant or prospective may reapply by undergoing the entire procedure (minus any successfully completed portions) following the next general election.

  shall be replaced in its entirety with:

  Quote5. If, at any point during the process, either before or after creation of the Wittenberg account, the Immigration Minister and any member of the Opposition determine that the prospective immigrant shall not be considered further, the prospective immigrant shall be informed of this decision, and shall be made aware that a Grant of Citizenship may yet be obtained by the disappointed applicant if an act of the Ziu be passed directing that such a grant be issued. Any account created for the applicant on Wittenberg shall then be terminated.
  
  5.1. This decision may only be made after the application has been processed and posted, and the public must be informed of the minister's decision and the justification for the decision.  The public need not be informed if an insufficient application is being returned to the applicant under the terms of Lexh.E.2.4.
  
  5.2. Any person, whose citizenship is denied, may in the first case appeal this decision by application to the Secretary of State, and be given the Chancery's contact details to enable them to do so. The Secretary of State may, if they believe the Ministry of Immigration has misused their discretion under Talossan law, report to the Ziu with their reasons for so deciding and recommend that the applicant or prospective citizen be given citizenship by act of the Ziu. Alternatively, the applicant or prospective may reapply by undergoing the entire procedure (minus any successfully completed portions) following the next general election.

FURTHERMORE, nothing in this bill shall be construed as an ex post facto attempt to criminalize any associated behavior performed in any ministerial duties of the past, nor shall any such behavior be grounds for prosecution.

Ureu q'estadra så,
Mic'haglh Autófil (MC - URL)

It's worth looking at the Senate as well, just for curiosity, using the numbers from the four Senate races in the most recent election:

Party	% Vote (1st Rd.)	Seats	% Seats	Diff.	Sq. Diff.
PA	40.43	3	75.00	-34.57	1195.08490
URL	36.17	1	25.00	11.17	124.76890
Green	4.26	0	0.00	4.26	18.14760
Ind.	19.15	0	0.00	19.15	366.72250
				TOTAL	1704.72390
				TOTAL/2	852.36195
				GI	29.19524

As we can see, the Senate is significantly more disproportionate than even a 20-seat Cosa. This calls into question the motives and reasoning of those who may support keeping the Senate as-is, while opposing decreasing the size of the Cosa as "less representative".

However, we've seen people discussing changing the size of the Cosa recently, so it's not a bad idea to look at how that could affect things. For example, if the Cosa had 20 seats as recently proposed:

Party	% Vote	Seats	% Seats	Diff.	Sq. Diff.
PA	43.62	9	45.00	-1.38	1.90440
URL	32.98	7	35.00	-2.02	4.08040
Green	13.83	3	15.00	-1.17	1.36890
IDT	7.45	1	5.00	2.45	6.00250
IG/A-S	2.13	0	0.00	2.13	4.53690
				TOTAL	17.89310
				TOTAL/2	8.94655
				GI	2.99108

2.99 is still very low -- that would put Talossa between New Zealand (2.63) and Austria (3.21). Using the same method, a 40-seat Cosa, while lacking historical precedent, would have an index of 1.22. All of these would be perfectly acceptable numbers with respect to proportionality! Any of them are in line with some of the nations considered to have extremely healthy democracies. (For reference, nations like the US, UK, Canada, etc are regularly above 5 or even 10, with the UK's 2024 election delivering a Gallagher Index of 23.73!)