This has nothing to do with annoyance. Just to be clear, here is the sentence in question:

QuoteThe party seats shall total 200, or another number which may be set by law, with the provisos that any such change will not take effect until the next election following the passage of a calendar year; and that this number may never be less than twice the number of Senators minus one.

The way that IV.2.1.1 is phrased currently, the word "such" in the subordinate clause listing the provisos refers back to the directly preceding subordinate clause, not the whole sentence. Choosing to interpret that sentence in such a way that these provisos apply to all changes to the size of the Cosă instead of merely "such" change such as "another number which may be set by law" would risk rendering it ungrammatical to me. Amending this part of the OrgLaw is not merely setting "another number" "by law", but a direct modification of the baseline, and the provisos still would only apply to statutory law overriding that baseline.

Then again, maybe I'm not as good at speaking English as I thought...!

As part of our "try a lot of new things" initiative, we want to try to create real enclaves of Talossa.  By the end of next term, we want three real Talossan embassies in three countries.  We're talking flags, signed commissions from His Majesty on display, and a placard with more information.  Give people something real to make Talossa feel more real, and we'll get people with more earnest interest.  If we record audio versions of La C'hronica, we can even have a soundtrack!

Think about what it means when someone walks into a coffee shop in Zürich or a pub in Melbourne and there's a Talossan flag on the wall with a royal commission next to it. That's not a website. That's not a forum post. That's a real thing in a real place, and it makes people stop and ask questions. Every single one of those conversations is worth more than a hundred Reddit ads, because the person asking is already curious!

The audio La C'hronica angle is also bigger than just ambiance for an embassy, too. Right now our newspaper is a text document that maybe forty people read. An audio version turns it into something you can listen to on a commute, something you can share with a friend who would never click a forum link but might listen to a five-minute podcast-style recording. It's another surface area for contact with people who don't know we exist yet. And if we're already recording audio, we can clip highlights for social media, for the embassy playlist, or for whatever else we come up with.

Forum-based communities have been declining across the internet for twenty years. Wittenberg is the heart of Talossan civic life, but the forum format has real limitations for attracting and retaining new members. New citizens face a wall of historical context, inside references, and ongoing debates into which they have no point of entry.  The official unofficial Discord has been a fun side community -- we should look into how we can integrate it (or an equivalent) into our civic life.  It turns out that saying "hi" on Discord is a first step some people like more than a forum post.

The data backs this up. We know that Wittenberg activity correlates with immigration applications, and we know that ghosting during the naturalization window is our biggest bottleneck. People drop off because they lose momentum, and momentum is easier to maintain when you can just pop into a Discord channel and see people talking than when you have to navigate a forum thread with six months of context you missed. Discord isn't a replacement for Wittenberg -- the Cosa isn't going to debate legislation in a chat room. But Discord can be where someone wanders in, says "hey, what's Talossa," and gets a human response in ten minutes.

We also need to be honest about what the forum format costs us in terms of the kind of citizen we attract. Right now, we self-select for people who are already comfortable with forums -- and that's an increasingly narrow slice of the internet-literate population. Plenty of people who would make great Talossans, who would write laws and learn the language and run for office, never get past the first look at Wittenberg because the format itself feels like homework. Let's broaden our horizons a little!

We have cool Google Map overlays and a lot of people who have been interested in cantons right down to the ground, but there's no good map anyone could print.  We should change that and get together a high-quality image of our national territory, with overseas possessions inset, and make it beautiful and well-marked with specific cultural landmarks.  It would be something else to put up at our embassies.

A good map does something that no amount of text can do -- it makes a place feel like a place. Right now, if you want to see Greater Talossan Area geography, you're pulling up a Google Maps overlay on your phone and zooming around. That's fine for utility, but it doesn't hang on a wall. It doesn't make someone say "wait, what is this?" when they see it framed at an embassy or pinned up in someone's apartment. We need a proper cartographic product -- something with the provinces clearly delineated, key landmarks labeled, the overseas possessions inset in the corner, maybe even some Talossan-language labels for the major features. Something that looks like it belongs in an atlas, because Talossa belongs in an atlas.

And this is another one of those projects where the investment pays off in different ways.  The map goes on the embassy wall. It goes in a press kit. It goes on talossa.com as a downloadable PDF. It's one more piece of real, tangible Talossan material culture -- something you can hold in your hands that says "this is a real country with real geography and people who care enough to make beautiful things about it." We've got citizens who have poured years of love into the canton-level detail of this territory. Let's turn that love into something everyone can see!

The Organic Law is definitely a law, and the Ziu just reaffirmed the intended waiting period that must elapse before a change in the size of the Ziu is in effect.  I think it's pretty plain, even if it seems annoying.

I think you'd have a stronger case if you were arguing that the clock was reset to start over, really, as opposed to the clock being eliminated.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on August 03, 2026, 07:01:09 PMIn my opinion, it's hard to read "law" in such a way that it doesn't include the Organic Law, though, and I wouldn't quite understand how to make it that way so that the proviso doesn't apply.

Not hard at all: "set by law" refers to statute, like elsewhere in the OrgLaw. Org.IV.2.1 allows itself to be overridden by statute, with some added conditions, namely that enforcement is delayed by at least 12 months and that the statutory Cosă size may not dip below 15. When this section gets modified by an amendment directly, these restrictions shouldn't apply.

Splitting this from the main thread was the right call, but I do hope this will get cleared up before Balloting Day.

Group 5 - stacked

Knights of Cydonia - 4
The Chain - 3
Sympathy for the Devil - 2

Voyage, Voyage - 1
HM: A Quiet Life

HM: My Body Is a Cage

HM: Africa


Group 6 - difficult choice

You Can't Always Get What You Want - 4
Blue Monday - 3
België - 2
Acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido acida acido - 1
xHM: Sweet Dreams

HM: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Done.

I will not run for re-election, and IDT is dissolved.