I have long thought that those who die whilst they are Talossan citizens should retain their citizenship, though (of course) lose any voting rights, or the requirement to respond to referenda.

Several citizens have, over the years, died. All of us are getting older - I, for example, am 77 years old. If I retain my citizenship whilst alive, why should it be stripped from me at my death? I am also, for example, a citizen of Ireland - and even after my death I shall remain so. Let us bring Talossa into that honourable club that do not disown their dead.  The deceased can, truly, be honorary citizens.

Please?

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on July 05, 2022, 04:09:06 PM
King Robert briefly declared Talossan Standard Time to be GMT sometime in the 80s. He thought better of it when it proved... impractical for daily activities.....

UTC (not GMT) is used worldwide in weather forecasting, but translated to local time for informing the public. So it's not entirely impractical - Talossans just have to be more, well, Talossan in quoting dates/times.

I still think that Talossan time should use a "48 hour 2 second" day (though maybe we can drop the two seconds!) to recognise the fact that any given day of the week ends 48 hours after it starts on this planet.  The start of a day is the instant it starts on the International Date Line - the appearance of the leading edge; and the end of a day is the instant the trailing edge of the day (24 hours after the leading edge) also reaches the International Date Line as it disappears.  This has the truly Talossan eccentricity - nay, logic! - of there being two Talossan days active at any one moment.

And why should we not? This is Talossa, after all - not any other country!  ;)

And timezone? It definitely should be UTC, to reflect our global reach.... but I'm probably going to be shouted down on that suggestion too!

I'm definitely a Euro-Talossan, and I speak French.... but I live in the UK. I shall not, alas, be in Paris during July... but any Talossan is more than welcome to visit me at 11A, GU24 8QP, UK  (and, yes, that is an address accurate to my house).  FYI I live next door to a pub - very handy! But phone me first! (send PM to get my phone number).

(You can use Google maps to find my house, if you want).

My votes for 57th Cosa election, June:

RZ1: PER
RZ2: CONTRA
RZ3: PER

VoC: YES (Üc)

If it is not specifically forbidden, it is allowed. Period.
That is a prerequisite of personal freedom.

Bringing together is harder than splitting apart.

Each of us has his/her own ideas about how this universe started, and how it is maintained, but the usual description in scientific circles is that of a Big Bang – a huge splitting apart.  Some of us believe that the universe exists by fiat ("Let It Be"), some believe that we do not know, some that we can not know – but whatever our beliefs we can see that ordinary physical matter sometimes joins together – but far more often splits apart.

Talossa split, and ten years ago Talossa joined back together.  But as with all reunions the shape of of the new after Reunison is different from the shape of the old.  Whether those differences are good or bad are part of our political, legal, cultural, and personal discussions and public statements.  Is this a kingdom? Could it/should it be a republic, a dictatorship, an anarchic agglomeration, a group governed only by vote with no full-time appointments, a dating agency, a collection of blogs...? The list is (quasi-)endless. 

But we are who we are, and how we are – a faintly chaotic group almost randomly coming together, like atoms in the physical universe, to form faint gasses, visible flexible liquids, hard lumps of matter – and then redissolving, splitting into component parts, which are not always the same parts that first joined together.  We form political parties, and let them disappear; we start publications, and then these too disappear after some months or years; the one thing that seems to remain is the language – but even that is the subject of learned linguistic discussions, and many different points of view.  A Hebrew-speaking friend of mine observed "two Jews, three opinions", and the like is true for Talossa too.

Talossa will never be the whole world: Àl Glheþ Talossan will never have as many speakers as Esperanto or Danish or Arabic or Mandarin; El Legeu will not be declared and adopted by the United Nations; Talossa's acquisition of Cézembre (L'île Interdite) will not be the subject of external judicial review – but Talossa can be, and should be, a micro-image of the real world, a Petri dish of cultural experiment and international conversation.  We can show the world, in our little way, the negative results of conflict, splitting – and the positive results of coming together, reunion.

Let us celebrate our bringing together, for bringing together is harder than splitting apart.  And more worthwhile.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on April 07, 2022, 05:01:10 PM
....
It's concerning that outdated spelling and a grammatical error are part of the law...

Laws in all countries - not just ours - become more and more out of date in language as well as social relevance.   To understand some laws in the United Kingdom, for example, you need dictionaries over a hundred years old - or reference to more recent litigation which restates the (old) language in modern terms ... though the old language is what remains as the statute. Don't be concerned... at least, not within the meaning of the Registration of Emotional Status Categories (revised) Act, 1952/E.II-1 Section 7 Clause 3 et seq.  ;) ;)

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on January 22, 2022, 04:14:42 PM

Quote from: Danihel Txechescu on January 22, 2022, 03:19:14 PM
I thought it was "King John" and not "King John I".

it's both, but the latter is more formal. He's the first King John! He would be the third King Robert, if that were his name, or the second King Florence.

In some countries "King xxxx" is just that ... until there is a second "King xxxx", and only then is the first one "King xxxx I".  In the UK there has been only one Queen Anne - so that's what she is called. She will become "Queen Anne I" only when there is a "Queen Anne II", and, of course, thereafter.

I am puzzled why the date on that card is for the eleventh day of the 28th month... perhaps using the ISO standard for dates would clarify this purely-USA confusion??

The tune used in the UK is very slightly different....

Aha! A Questionnaire! Let's see how Talossan I am...

Q1. Do you have a favourite sports team? Who and why?
Sports? I've never been interested in sports... Sumo is perhaps my favourite – but that's not a team sport.

Q2. What are your favourite hobbies during your free time?
Reading, listening to music, writing music, writing books.  Highest on the list, though, is listening to music.

Q3. Pixar or Marvel?
<puzzled look> ?? what??

Q4. If you had the opportunity to live in the capital city of any sovereign nation, other than Talossa, which would it be and why?   
Oh, that's easy – Paris. It is beautiful, it I full of great art, it is elegant, I loved the food there... and it's where I first visited on my honeymoon.

Q5. How do you cut your sandwiches? Diagonally, not at all, or another shape? Maybe you take off the crust?
Probably diagonally – though on picnics they're square-ish. I don't really care how they're cut – just let me eat them!

Q6. Do you have a favourite podcast to recommend?
No one favourite, though I do listen to some of the BBC podcasts from time to time.

Q7. Apple or Android? 
Silly question <grin>: Apple, of course! Is anything else possible?

Q8. What is Talossa's most attractive feature?  What brought you here?
Its people and its eccentricity.

Q9. Which one of the Rocky movies is the best?
<another puzzled look> What? What are you talking bout? (Actually, I know what you're talking about, but – really – that's an obscene question!)

Q10. Skydiving, or deep-sea exploratory submarine?
I would love to go deep-sea.  The water on this planet teems with extraordinary life, and elegant complexity and huge emptiness and dense crowds of living creatures: it is beautiful.
Now if you had asked about outer space – ah, that would have certainly been at the top of my list.

Q11.  What is your favourite movie and why?
Not sure. Princess Bride? Coming to America? Shakespeare in Love? West Side Story?

Q12.  Do you have a favourite Avenger?
<yet another puzzled look> what?

Q13. What would be three books, articles, or other such materials that you might recommend to all of Talossa for reading?   
Three very different books: "Once On A Time", A.A.Milne; "The Faber Book of Modern Verse" (1952 edition); "Life A User's Manual" / "La vie mode d'emploi" Georges Perec.
Why? The Milne is a lovely fairy story, both adult and child, full of humour. The modern verse is precious to me, as sentimentally part of my teenage years, and beyond – my real introduction to poetry. The Perec is just like a delicate jigsaw puzzle (analogous to his own description of it), which links together different strands of narrative into one beautifully entwined whole.

Q14.  Who/what is your favourite music artist/band/genre?
Ooh – this could be a long answer! My favourite music is that of Bach – his organ works in particular – though Mozart is nearly as good. The artist(s)? I'm not sure that I have one favourite: it is the music itself that speaks. Genre? Boring, I know – but without doubt classical. And that covers everything from the 12th century to the 21st, and (in my opinion) includes jazz and Stravinsky and Ives and Vivaldi and Debussy and... <insert long list here>

Q15. Are you a reader, a writer, a speaker, or a listener?
I read a lot. I write quite a bit. I speak in public quite often – and I get a huge amount from listening.  So, all four.

Q16. What are your distinct and separate feelings on the colours of green, red, and pink?
We can see more shades of green than any other colour (I am told). When I look out of the windows where I live there is green everywhere. Red reminds me of infrared, and heat, and red shift, and danger and fire. Strong, violent. But pink? I am fed up with pink being a "girl's colour". I'm a bloke, but I have pink shirts; my wife is definitely a girl, and wears blue. My daughter is driven bonkers by the fact that boy's teeshirts have brutal logos on them, and are of "macho" colours – brown, khaki, brilliant orange with power words and heroes emblazoned on them, but girls clothes are pink and soft and have fluffy edges and pink and have no pockets and pink and don't like mud and pink... Which is a pity, because there are some very lovely pink flowers.
And girls do like mud.

Q17.  Do you have a favourite flavour of ice cream? If not, what is a favourite dessert? 
Um chocolate-ginger... or maybe rum and raisin or perhaps raspberry ripple... my wife is a wonderful cook!

Q18.  How do you feel about jam versus jelly? 
Translation, please. Jam is the sticky stuff, usually a preserved fruit with sugar, which comes in a jar. Jelly is that wobbly stuff that's transparent / translucent, sometimes is served (wobbling) on a plate, and of all sorts of (wobbling) bright colours loved by kids (including me). One of my friends says that it's impossible to find completely vegetarian jelly, but (hush) don't tell your animal-loving friends.

Q19. Do you play any video games in your free time? Which?
Not really. Sudoku occasionally.

Q20.  If you could eat an apple right now, or a pear, which would you rather?
Depends on the time of year. Right now (middle of June, northern hemisphere), an apple; but later in the year, when the pear tree in our garden is in fruit, a pear.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on June 14, 2021, 09:05:29 PM
....
Hmmm. You know, I forgot that I put the term "Talossan values" in there, and I'm not sure I still like it, so happy to hear alternatives. I think honestly we have to go at this through a negative definition - i.e. it's far easier to declare that a Court is not "credible" or doesn't abide by our values than the other way around (i.e. it doesn't provide a fair trial in the way we would recognize it in Talossa, because of lack of judicial independence or serious bias against certain kinds of people.)
....

My personal opinion is that Talossa should accept NO other court as binding over Talossa. That is, if a citizen is convicted in some foreign court of some offence, then it is up to a Talossan Cort in the first instance to accept or ignore that foreign ruling. "Does the alleged offence contravene Talossan Law?" is the first question, and "Has the foreign court reached its opinion in a manner that seems, to Talossa, to be just?".  Thus we, in Talossa, should decide, case by case, whether to proceed under Talossan Law and jurisdiction, and are not inevitably bound by any external judgement (except, as I try always to remind us, for offences against human rights as internationally recognised).
In most cases this will be an easy decision - for example, an offence committed in and tried in California is very likely to be accepted within Talossa with no further real questioning; but an offence allegedly committed in Iran, and tried there, requires careful - very careful - inspection by us before we proceed. I have Iranian friends whose tales should not be listened to if you are at all queasy; some of my friends are refugees here in the UK on the basis of their having spoken publicly about police brutality.

Thus, I suggest, Talossa should accept the rulings of NO foreign courts, except those upholding internationally recognised human rights.  This would mean that we have no obligation to define within our Laws the meaning of "just" and "unjust" in foreign courts, but only in our own.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 13, 2021, 12:37:06 PM

QuoteA court may order the suspension of all or part of any sentence, for a period of time not to exceed two calendar years. At the end of the period of suspension ordered by the court, the suspended punishment is rescinded if the offender has not violated any condition of the suspension.

This seems weird.   Two years is not a long time for probation, especially for serious crimes.  I'd suggest five years.

Be careful to define, within Talossan Law, the meaning of the word "probation"... I believe its meaning differs on the two sides of the Atlantic.

I have now paid $5.00 US.