Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on Today at 09:32:12 AMWe have that board game! We only tried playing it a couple of times, but maybe we should give it another chance.

Well I can't claim to be a boardgame expert, but it's great fun and pretty simple to pick up! Plenty of expansions you can pick-and-choose to round it out too.

We have that board game! We only tried playing it a couple of times, but maybe we should give it another chance.

Any chance I can transfer my success here over to my world cup bracket? Mads Pedersen would maybe make a good football player...

I thank the MZ for the question, and I am happy to answer it. 

Let's first get some useful numbers, if we can.  The MZ is comparing the first six months of this term with nine months from the last.  I am sure that was an accident, so let's get out the information that we need.

The month after the election was January, and it's been six months since then.  We have had nine successful naturalizations, and that was with a pause in our promotional strategy to see if it was working.  During the previous term, the month after the election was April, and six months after that was September.  In this period, the Government in which the MZ served saw a total of three successful naturalizations.

So then, how have we been so successful that we've tripled the immigration rate?

First of all, we've actually implemented almost all of the recommendations of the bipartisan Royal Commission on Immigration.

• The TalossAssistant program has restarted, with six inaugural members who have dedicated themselves to the effort: King Txec, Françal I. Lux, Moinul Moin, Sir Lüc, Barclamïu da Miéletz, and myself.  We have had a lot of great success to start with, but we need to make sure that the efforts continue past immigration to include new citizenship.
• We have restarted the Pretz Pätriotic del Seneschal and made it into a physical award.  It looks like there will be three recipients for the inaugural awarding.  But while this might help spur some similar activity, we haven't seen a lot of fruits yet.
• The New Citizen's Guide has been updated and put onto the website, and then sent to our two newest citizens.  Previously, it was a PDF and not really very much used... we think this new version will be a lot more successful (and a lot easier to improve and update).  This also is recent, though, so it might not be the cause.
• His Majesty has made it clear he'd like to issue Royal Charters to anyone starting a new effort.

But as you can see, it doesn't seem like this explains our success.

Similarly, the threefold improvement is probably not a result of our changes to the immigration system:

• Obviously, it's still a good thing we closed the hole in our security.  We're no longer exposing the personal information of hundreds of people, including every citizen who'd immigrated in recent years, to anyone who gains access to any account with edit rights. 
• And obviously, it's a good thing we're able to look in detail at what's working and what isn't working.  A secure and easily-analyzed database of our immigration data is a very important tool. 

But neither of these things are likely to be very relevant.

No, we think it's most likely down to our promotional efforts.  In January and February, we posted on Reddit in interested communities (just a couple of posts, actually... not a lot!) and we posted a promotional video on social media.  Then we didn't do it for a couple of months.  And now again this past month we resumed.  And during that span when we didn't do any promotion?  Zero new immigrants!

This is great news, since it means we're not entirely trapped by secular forces or luck.  I mean, it's still going to be great if we get lucky... remember when the viral language Tiktok video that happened to get made that spiked a lot of interest last term near the end?  But we don't have to just cross our fingers and hope!  We can do things to make it better and get more interest!

So to answer the MZ, we plan to build on this success.  Frustratingly, I can't make new videos right at the moment, but that should hopefully be remedied.  And we can definitely still promote other ways, which we will do.

Brief trivia moment: with EVC and MMM winning stages already, they both confirm their record of getting a stagewin in every edition they competed in. GHST is the only other team who may also join them by winning one of the remaining 17 stages. Team in the Wind is not competing in this edition, but they also technically share that record by winning three stages in the one leg they took part in.

With their stagewin on Sunday, Velociposse became the third team to win 20 stages in TCAT; there was a "hidden" small race to be the first to cross that threshold between them, the Mençeis and Cyclohexane, and they indeed all won a stage already, but Cyclohexane initially stood at 18 stagewins (now 19) and the Mençeis at 17 (now 18). The Mençeis also overtook Port Maxhestic for fifth overall in the all-time stagewin ranking. Gonna be interesting to see who among the three will get the most after this leg is completed!

Stage 4  »  Carcassonne  ›  Foix

Yesterday TCAT departed from my favourite boardgame's namesake town, for a medium mountain stage that looked perfect for a breakaway. We did indeed get a large one, with riders from most TCAT teams and plenty of stagehunters, but the win went to Mads Pedersen (EVC/MMM/REX), more of a punchy sprinter, who survived the couple of significant climbs along the way to get an important victory for his point classification aspirations - given he will be at a disadvantage to the pure sprinters in the flatter stages to come.

Other than the Dane, only Mathias Vacek (CHX, 10th) and Vlad van Mechelen (CFA, 13th) got stage finish points, which means we get a pretty low scoring result for everyone but the three Pedersen teams. The stagewin itself goes to Esqipă Velocostă, who moves up three places, as does REX; while MMM, a very close second today, solidifies their grasp on the lead for the time being.

Standings after stage 4:

Pos	±		Team	Pts Ove	Pts Today
1st	(=)		Maritiimi-Maxhestic Mençeis (MMM)	1932	+348
2nd	(+1)		Cyclohexane (CHX)	1715	+192
3rd	(+3)		Els Talossaes Rexhital (REX)	1652	+347
4th	(+3)		Esqipă Velocostă (EVC)	1640	+354
5th	(-3)		Gordon Hiatus Support Team (GHS)	1639	+89
6th	(-2)		Velociposse Florencia (VFL)	1590	+95
7th	(-2)		Cézembre Caçeirs dals Mailintzarăs (BDC)	1409	+71
8th	(+1)		Cézembre Fieschā (CFA)	1259	+106
9th	(-1)		Naziun Cjovani (CJO)	1234	+62

Today, the first bunch sprint finish is almost certainly coming up, with the pure sprinters finally getting a chance at delivering for their teams. Might be a good chance for Velocostă to get two in a row, as the only team with two sprinters (Pedersen and Bittner), or for Velociposse to also try and get a second win thanks to Philipsen, potentially the fastest pure sprinter among those picked in TCAT.

Laleh - Some die young

Ásgeir - Going home

Chris Holsten - Slå hjerte, slå

Estimat Túischac'h, I rise today with a Terpelaziun for the Immigration Minister, @Baron Alexandreu Davinescu .

Per the Government's numbers, since January 1st of this year, Talossa has received 135 applications for citizenship. Of those, nine have resulted in successful naturalizations, a success rate of 5.88%. Per Infotecă, the previous Government term saw 101 applications, 13 of which resulted in successful naturalizations, for a success rate of 12.87%.

Earlier in this term, the Minister has argued that an increasing number of applicants would naturally lead to an increasing number of new citizens, an argument that appears to be based on the assumption that the percentage of successful applications would remain constant. Given that the success rate has fallen under this Government to less than half of its previous figure, it is obvious that such an assumption was untrue. As the nation still has yet to break even on citizen count from when the current Government took office, can the Minister explain how the Government plans to correct from the unsustainable path they have led us down, with what little time in office remains to them?

Quote from: Tierçéu Rôibeardescù on July 06, 2026, 04:44:34 PMjust from a minor bit of research (on an entirely separate matter), currently reads in El Lexhátx section C:

Quote1.4.2. No Public Record or Archive under the control of a Governmental body and/or the Royal Civil Service Body shall be destroyed, erased or otherwise disposed of without the written authorisation of the Royal Archivist. This Authorisation or Refusal must be announced on Wittenberg within three days of such Authorisation or Refusal is made. Authorisation or Refusal by the Royal Archivist for the destruction of an Archive may be overturned by a resolution passed by the Ziu.

as well as:

Quote1.4.4. Any person who damages or causes to be damaged any Public Archive or Record in the control of a Governmental or Royal Civil Service body; or damages or causes to be damaged any Public Archive in the control of a Private body, Community and/or Individual; or removes, destroys or erases such Public record or archive otherwise than in accordance with this provision or any other law, shall be guilty of a Class A misdemeanour if such damage, removal, destruction, or erasure was wilful, or guilty of a Class C misdemeanour if such damage, removal, destruction, or erasure was reckless.

Im going out on a limb here that 1.4.2 may apply to the wiki? Im a little rusty on my legal interpretations, dont @ me if im barking up the wrong tree

I would say 1.4.2 in particular does not apply to the wiki, as it is not currently under control of either any Governmental body or the Royal Civil Service.

That said, since all page revisions are archived on a wiki, to me it seems like damage, destruction, erasure, or disposal would be difficult to argue (in part since such a stance could make it difficult to edit the wiki without breaking the law...)

Just my two bence, but I think that instead of advancing legislation designed to produce a chilling effect on speech the Government doesn't like, we should probably determine how TalossaWiki should be administered before we go about trying to set policy for it. Until we do that, it essentially remains a private enterprise.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very interested in the possible tie scenario. (I'm inclined to root for a chaotically close outcome...)

In the meantime, for my coworkers, I guess it's Go Spain?

Do you have ideas about things Talossa should be doing? Maybe some things you want to see introduced or improved? Do you want to get involved with the group that believes in moving Talossa forward? If so, you're in luck -- all you need to do is join the URL!

The Union of Free Reformists -- l'Uniun dels Reformistaes Livereschti in the national language, or if that's a bit of a mouthful, the URL or simply the Union -- is Talossa's party of progress, democracy, and liberty. If you believe that things could always be better; if you believe that honesty, transparency, respect, and accountability are important; if you have good ideas and want people to actually hear you out; if you want a party that knows you're more than just your vote: the Union is the party for you!

How to get involved? It's pretty easy, really -- all you need to do is message either the party's President (that's me) or the Secretary (that would be @Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC ) and let us know you'd like to join.

As this Cosă term winds down, we'll be going over the state of Talossa's affairs and where we believe the country ought to go next. If you want to help us breathe a little bit of life back into the country, we'd be glad to have you on board.