Post Archive

Ouch, that hurt jk.

Apology a c c e p t e d. also my schools IT department is s*it they f*cked my laptop login and thus i can no longer login to my emails and timetables D:

Simply show up to random classes. Become and expert in any field by picking places at random to drop in and complete homework never =)

Thanks <3

Eh, you know, sure it's had its ups and downs like, but now I'm on winter break for two weeks and I'm going to be spending some time with relatives and friends so that's a pretty good prospect. Tá súil agam go bhí beatha is fearr leat <3 God, that grammar is awful.

I'm really thinking of really power-studying Irish these next few weeks. It's been soooo long since I last used Duolingo or just did anything to expand my grammar and vocab and I feel it would be really empowering for me to get back to Irish.

Feels nice to be back in the game. I used to play this like 2 years ago in The West Pacific. Decided to come back see what's changed so what up.

life has been not great but im really happy to be back here, so thats good! i still miss the discord tho

Welcome ^-^ most likely things haven't changed much in two years. At the very least, we've been around as a region for a little over one year and nothing about the wider game has changed in that amount of time.

How are you? It's always nice to meet new people <3

God, I'm really coming to terms with the fact that speaking grammatically correct and not merely intelligible Irish does entail learning the declension scheme. Like, conjugations are fine since there's only ever like two conjugation tables but declensions are just eeh.

Welcome back, people!

A question for American Refugians--who to you is the most appealing Democratic candidate currently out of those still running? You don't have to explain why. I am very conflicted still over my support for 2 candidates even though they're both surging in popularity.

It’s gotta be Bernie for me. I’d obviously love to have a president who wasn’t another old white guy, but he will definitely be the “maximum mitigation of damage” as far as i can tell.

Also, M4A covers transition and I’ll never be able to afford it otherwise (:

Oh, oops lol. Does this version work better? 🇨🇦

This is unfortunate. I only wish to convey my feelings through a flag.

Lol that's okay, don't worry friend. I'm using the emoji of the Canadian flag. If it's not working as an emoji, I'm not worried about linking an image. I'm sure most people know what it looks like :p

That's because Windows doesn't support the national flag emojis yet nor is any color font format supported by all common browsers.

Mostly the flags that I've made don't have any inspiration from anything, I just put things together when I feel like making something. In this case, it *was* a bit inspired from Canada and was originally supposed to be red or green. But I was going through some different hue transformations and this shade of turquoise seemed to settle pretty well.

If anyone's curious, I've put some other flags that I've made into this dispatch https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1223147

Forgive me asking this, as I'm afraid I might not be as clued in on American news as you are. Has proof come out that the "aides" that reported details about the meeting lied, and that her signing onto it was also a lie? I haven't seen that. Also can you give some examples of her rejecting policies that, to my knowledge, she had supported for years before this election cycle?

Great question! I say that she lied about Bernie saying he didn’t think a woman should be president because she herself said it happened in a private meeting, his actions as an activist throughout his career negate that, and when he defended himself, she, on stage, with her mic on, yelled at him for saying she lied (which he didn’t do, he said he didn’t do that, he didn’t call her a liar). The centrist left is so desperate to slander him that they will do anything for it, even lie or stretch the truth. They do it on MSNBC too. Here’s an article about the exchange https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/us/politics/sanders-warren-debate-handshake.html

I should make it clear that the MOST important issue to me this election cycle is universal health care. I’m in my early 20s and filing bankruptcy currently because my insurance didn’t cover any portion of a $36,000 hospitalization in 2018. Overall, I’m 77,000 in debt because I got sick and decided to go to college. If you don’t come from money in this country, you are set up for failure.

Bernie campaigned on health care in 2016. He was the one with a Medicare for All plan. Suddenly Warren was on board.... and then not so much. (Link for proof that she didn’t come out in support of single-payer/universal until this election cycle https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/14/elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all-sanders-044457) She wasn’t on board with Medicare for All, and criticized it until recently. Her M4A plan doesn’t move to single payer until her 3rd year of presidency. AFTER midterm elections. For those of you who don’t know, every two years there are elections for some of the representatives and senators. Half of them are elected during the presidential election, and half are elected two years later. Or, she’s doing it right before re-election, when she could be spending her entire presidency campaigning for it. Obama delayed his healthcare legislation, because he wanted more bipartisanship, and we got saddled with the mess that is the ACA. I would not be covered under her plan, because, even though I am low-income, I am a single woman with no kids, so that means I’m back to square one. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2019/11/18/the-health-202-elizabeth-warren-is-no-longer-a-medicare-for-all-purist/5dd145a788e0fa10ffd20ed8/

I am equally tired of the pandering. I am tired of white women telling me, an LGBT+ woman of color, that I should be voting for a woman and not some old white guy. It’s not like Bernie is any old white guy, he’s a Jewish man whose parents were Polish and Austrian immigrants. He lost most of his extended family in the Holocaust. Unlike some of his colleagues (Biden) his record matches his views. He marched during the civil rights movement, he’s been arrested as an activist. Those actions speak louder than words to me. I see a man who has spent his long career fighting for minorities, and that matters to me more than age and gender.

Sorry for the long post! I just wanted to clarify my position. Would I prefer to vote for Warren over Buttigieg or Biden? Absolutely! But I won’t be voting for her in the primaries.

Oh wow, thank you for the long breakdown on your thoughts. I feel like I understand the situation much better now. I'm so sorry for your having to deal with the medical system, it sounds like a nightmare.

Do you think it's possible that Warren's plan to implement M4A is more likely to work? As far as I'm aware, most of the congressional representatives of the democratic party aren't in favour of it as a policy yet, so a bill probably wouldn't make it through Congress, especially if it's introduced on day one of a presidency.

The treatment of Sanders as just another old cishet white man is strange to me, given that I've seen pictures of him marching for civil rights in the 60s and speaking at a pride event in the 80s. He seems to be a legitimate ally for groups of people who aren't well represented.

I listened to a podcast recently talking about Sanders and his relationship with the media over time. It's fascinating; did you know the young turks guy used to be an anchor on MSNBC? The channel used to be super progressive according to this podcast, but shifted to support Obama on his more centrist ideology with an eye on Clinton running in 2016. That also led them to oust a lot of their more progressive anchors because they weren't happy with the changes.

Also nobody should tell you who you should support just because of your demographic. That's just rude. Just because I'm lgbt doesn't mean I like Buttigieg lol.

(also sorry if it gives you a notification that I suppressed your post, I'm on mobile and missed the quote button at first!)

In my opinion, Warren’s (and anyone else’s) Medicare plans can’t work in the long term. While her plan is better than the “Medicare for all who need it” or “Medicare for all who want it” platforms of others (I’m looking at you, booty judge), it is prone to being dismantled over time.

Basically, what will happen is this. She passes the first stage of her plan after getting into office. Obviously, the plan won’t be perfect. Someone, somewhere won’t get the care they need. That’s inevitable with any plan.

This will immediately get played up by the republicans. “See - m4a is failing. Let’s go back to a private system before it’s too late!” Then, before we know it the midterms come around. A bunch of Republican congresspeople get elected, and all our progress is undone.

A true M4A will avoid this. I like to use the firefighter analogy here. If your local fire department failed to put out a fire, you probably wouldn’t vote to disband the whole service. You might put in regulations, add funding, or any number of other changes. The specifics don’t matter. When a system is designed for everyone, shortcomings are met with improvements.

Now let’s say your local fire department charged 300 of your local currency every time they put out a fire. Or they only fight fires when they determine someone “needs” it, and let the private sector do the rest. In this system, if a mistake happens, people are much more likely to get rid of the fire department altogether. After all, some people aren’t even covered by it, so why should they want their tax money going to it?

I think of healthcare in the same way. The only stable system is one where everyone is covered for all conditions from day one.

Economics can be hard to understand, I don’t even understand it sometimes. I think that the economy WILL take a dip, without question. M4A will be eliminating an ENTIRE industry, but the economy will also recover. Also there is the question of WHO will be affected by this policy, and the answer is: rich people, honestly. Those who are employed at health insurance companies can find jobs working in the medical sector or at other insurance companies (industries come and go, and its easier for white color workers to find replacement jobs than blue collar ones, like the coal miners in WV), but the CEOs of big health insurance corporations like Anthem/Blue Cross Blue Shield? They will take the hit the deserve, in my opinion.

I don’t mean to sound condescending, but I think you should be proud of yourself for taking such a vested interest in politics and economics. I’m a high school ESL teacher and it’s hard to get my students engaged in their civics classes. Even though you can’t vote yet, they’re important issues to understand. I’ll try to make this my last political post of the day, but sometimes I just can’t help myself 😂

w o a h

If at first you don't succeed, yeah?

The problem with private insurance is that it doesn't actually give you much. Your uncle still has to pay premiums up front to have insurance at all, then pay part of each doctor's bill (sometimes quite high amounts). Sometimes, the private insurance companies will fight with the insured person and try to get out of paying for certain things. Your grandmother's VA healthcare is a tax-sponsored system, same as the US Military's TriCare system. It's entirely paid for by American taxpayers, the same way M4A would be paid for. Essentially (the way it works here, anyway), part of your taxes go to the centralised healthcare system, the government issues you a healthcare ID card, and you show that at the hospital/doctor's office. You don't pay anything extra, you just get seen and go. We still have to pay part of/all of medication costs here, and some elective procedures aren't covered, but for the most part we don't have to live under that same stress.

Private companies are always going to work toward their own profit; it's just a reality of capitalism. Therefore, private insurance companies are always going to charge as much as they can get away with, and pay the hospitals as little as they can get away with. When the system is designed so that the government pays hospitals directly, things tend to work a little more smoothly. At least, that's the case in my experience. And since everyone pays a uniform amount to the government for those health services, someone who only rarely visits a doctor (me) can help cover someone who is less fortunate and needs life-saving surgeries. As far as I'm concerned, socialism is empathy, and it says a lot when a government/culture fights back against that, just because they think that the less fortunate are lazy or bad. In my opinion it doesn't matter if someone's lazy, they still have a right to live and be okay.

I hope things work out with your boyfriend btw :) everyone should be welcome to move somewhere that rewards good work and behaviour with actual care.

Fun fact, even though the UK (a constitutional monarchy) doesn't have federalism, Canada (also a constitutional monarchy) does! Technically, all federalism means is that you have two separate levels of government (federal/provincial or federal/state) that have separate responsibilities.

In theory, having the Prime Minister be the leader of the majority party is supposed to result in PMs being somewhat moderate within their own party so that they can appeal to the different wings/maintain the confidence of the House of Commons. It also means that the leader of our executive is aligned with the governing party in Parliament and avoids the problem the US system has where the President can be one party and the House/Senate another, leading to constant fighting and gridlock. That's not to say there aren't problems, of course, just some interesting differences. We also have conventions where everyone in a party votes for party leaders, which is different from the UK, so it's not super relevant to what you were saying at all, sorry 😅 I'm also realising that I don't actually know what the word is when you vote for everyone, Senate and President included.

Tale as old as time.

Cool flag Sylh Alanor even though when it is small like it is on the regional message board the tree looks like a ghostly face and that is spooky.

Also, I see Virandon. Thank you for the explanation and not getting mad at me.

Apparently making it illegal to threaten someone online removes the Public Protest policy. That makes no sense threats and protesting are not the same.

I didn't gain the "No Dissent" policy which I'm glad. I am all for protest but having that get removed for banning online threats? Now that's just annoying, glad I didn't get "No Dissent" though.

I mean the issue was brought up because government officials were being threatened but the ban was on all online threats. And yeah, some of the issues' results really blow me away like how I became completely socialist on accident because I thought I was just going to get an AI assisted economy but it somehow made me socialist and banned private enterprise and made my economy completely controlled by AI.

That exact thing happened to me once. I will leave it to you to find it in this chart XD

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=refuge_isle/detail=trend?censusid=48

It didn't do much for me at the time, but I was pretty heavily reliant on the private sector. Now I've reached a weird equilibrium where I'm capitalist, technically, but my economic freedom is at 18% :p

True! Another thing I don't really get. I'm guessing it's hard to have high employment rates at the same time as high welfare, but genuinely aside from the speed that business happens, most of the actual economy in Refuge Isle is pretty screwy.

I'm voting against. Giving this kind of people the exposure they wanted is bad idea.

Normally I would vote against, but I looked at their RMB and at posts from their allied regions (Fifth Empire and Nazi Europa) and they are all really mad about it. The vindictive anti-fascist in me is pushing me to vote “for.”

In case anyone is curious about what's happening in the world, it's been about 28 days since the Reddit wave, so all the people who made an account and never returned to the game are expiring today. Some five or six thousand accounts were just cleared out, imcluding about twenty here in Refugia.

and what a wonderful 28 days it has been. Thank you all for your inclusiveness.

I'm just glad I didn't outlaw religion in my main country.

Last month someone posted a topic on AskReddit that said something to the effect of "what's the most underappreciated website that needs more attention?" and the top or second top comment was NationStates. Naturally, everyone saw it and like ten thousand accounts registered in the same afternoon.

Literally forgot to answer your question and I was looking through the RMB for a dispatch I was making and remembered. Anyway, I already said this before but the most extreme policy I accidentally made was that I accidentally became socialist. I understand there are some people who are socialist here but I was aiming for a capitalistic society initially but now I've decided to just go with it.

It wasn’t a one-click thing exactly, but after I abolished the court system I assumed I’d have to work to keep that value near zero. As it turns out, it is absolutely possible to have less than zero law enforcement.

Elenaraghaenaris

Well, I’ve got great rehab programs and my overview still says that “crime is virtually nonexistent” in my nation. So I figured law enforcement would be an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer and a violation of civil rights.

My headcanon about the negative number is that some people in my country support a policy of authoritarian anarchy. That is, the state exists purely to cause as much chaos as possible. (Not to be confused with anarcho-authoritarianism, in which the citizens collectively enforce brutal totalitarian policies without the influence of hierarchies)

Understandable, but you're awesome and probably could continue being awesome in another place :P

I’d honestly be happy to join Refugia 2. This place has been my home since I started playing NS, and at the very least I’d like to be in a region with familiar faces.

Im now going to construct the region, Any name suggestions that include Refugia?

boom already a winner x3

Rufugia Incarnate

So we are free to continue to use the Refugia Region

If there's actual interest in it? Sure. I've been having a hard time rallying anyone for a serious conversation lately, and my health isn't great, so giving people pointers to friendly regions was better in my view than them CTEing. But if you would rather use the infrastructure here than move, I'm obviously not going to crush your dreams. That's not what I'm about.