Post Archive

How do I make the national motto a quote, like add the writer?

EX

"How is life"

Me-

* Activates Shield

cant find the discord

hm looks like

free testing for my

orbital weapon

platforms

*activates orbital obliterator*

First

Haibarians are so happy for being included in Refugia's map that all towns are throwing big parties today. Great day for the country's history, thank you everyone.

[

And me!!!, I wanna be next to a shore or something idk, I am too lazy to specify

Hi guys! I just wanted to know if there was a way to find out what irl nation is closest to my nation in nationstates. Thanks if you have any answers!

I mean yeah not exactly, but you get the idea

On the map application form, it lists several wanted attributes for the map; however, the "Culture Group" section is not very clear. What should I do to fill out this part?

A member state is a nation that has been a World Assembly member in Refugia for at least 7 days.

Hi y'all, sorry for being late on this, but it seems like the General Assembly has sprung back to life, with this thing coming up next. The debate thread can be found here.

"Repeal GAR#357" do exactly what it's advertised as, which is to repeal the target resolution, which seeked to encourage a switch to clean energy sources (like solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy et al.) and decrease reliance on fossil fuels (like coal, natural gas and oil) to an absolute minimum, on the grounds of being insufficiently detailed regarding the steps to take to facilitate this transition and failing to solidify international cooperation among member nations regarding its execution. It's a competing proposal against Imperium Anglorum's proposal, which recently failed to make quorum. The author intends to replace the repealed resolution with a better, updated version found here.

Overall, I'm in support of this. The arguments which the repeal makes is convincing, if a bit less substantial than I would like, and I consider the matter of clean energy sources to be of such importance that any and every loophole in the enforced legislation would end up being costly for the health of our multiverse. This repeal seeks to pave the way for a better resolution to take its place, so that the members of the World Assembly can continue its eventful existence and not have it end by an inevitable natural super extinction our real-life world is heading towards.

However, I won't pretend there aren't some problems here. The grounds for repeal, as pointed out by myself above, may seem insufficient to some (YMMV) and I'm not convinced that the replacement draft is quite ready yet, as there are some blatant loopholes that still needs to be addressed. Furthermore, there's an argument which claims that the issues of GAR#357 raised by the repeal have already been solved by GAR#445 "Greenhouse Gas Cap And Trade Program", which makes it look like the author's aiming to fix what are essentially non-problems. I don't believe this to be an adequate reason to lean against this proposal. If GAR#445 did indeed fix the problems GAR#357 had, then it makes GAR#357 useless in nature, thus making it more sensible to repeal and replace it with an updated resolution that compliments GAR#445 too. No need to keep an useless GAR, which only serves to encourage the authorship of future resolutions to cover its shortcomings, on the books then.

What do y'all think about this?

Having just read 357, I see a lot of urging, imploring, encouraging, and only a single extremely vague "requiring" which doesn't isn't even seem enforceable. I don't see anything of substance here being lost.

Welp

Pulled my back today

Gonna be sitting on the couch for the next few days

...

On the bright side, it means I'm gonna be more active!

Welcome!

Do we really need to repeal GAR#357 in order to pass the Clean Energy Act? It's not like there is a law saying we can only have one resolution encouraging clean energy at a time. What's stopping Xernon from just submitting his replacement?

A fruity region? I'm jealous. You must have so many delicious mangoes and tangerines!

Hello just a fan of Sabaton passing through the region

Lol my friends say I'm a very fruity person

tomatoes are a fruit

oh uh

UH OH

OH UH

you're cool !!

Sabaton :eyes:

As aephony being fellow potatoists.. We're offended by:

If I had a strong army like: Moulk2, I would have attacked. Sentences like these can lead into trouble.

I break ties with ANY nation that insults potatoism like that;

And has the urge to even let that come out of their pen/keyboard/mouth.

aephony requests an apology.

And also... tangerines are banned.

touching them or planting them, executed or banned out of aephony.

Orange glad they are being kept under control? I know I am.

I support both orange and tangerine

Honour the watermelon

yes

Hey guys I got a cool idea! Let's put anthems for our nations in our factbooks! You can take a look at mine as an example.

Hello gentlemen I am a new nation in your community.

Bananas for life!

XD

I made mine!

Made mine too

Wow! Y'all are so creative with your anthems! Thanks for participating in this with me!

Although your nation put in a strong proposal to host the next International Football Federation (IFF) Global Cup, your bid was rejected. Instead, the oil-rich nation of Althaniq won, despite a near total lack of football infrastructure. Many are blaming this decision on bribery and corruption on a massive scale.

>:(

oh god thx for lettin' me know, im sorry

who says watermelonists are potatoists

i can tell you for sure i'm a watermelonist that is neutral to potatoes

Hi!

Hoi Refugia! Sorry I'm a bit late with this, but we have a new thing coming up to vote here. The debate thread can be found here.

The Environmental Protections Act seeks preserve parks and "green spaces" around member nations by mandating the establishment of a hotline, urging private park owners to open parks to public and recommending governments to not use "greenfield sites" for commercial development and reuse "brownfield sites" instead.

I'm absolutely against this. First off, this wasn't drafted on the forums or even posted there for garnering feedback before submitting, which makes me extremely reluctant to support this even if it was a really great proposal. Considering that this was co-authored by a previous, experienced author and a longtime member of the WA community, it's even more surprising that the author decided to skip an entire step worth of norms and just rush this. This doesn't give a good impression at all.

Furthermore, it's a really poorly written proposal. There's no definition for the word "green space" in it, which makes it extremely open to interpretation by literally everybody. As cheekily and accurately remarked by a longtime Refugi in our Discord server;

Diving deeper in, Article 1 states that;

This only establishes vague measures, which are full of so. Many. Loopholes. Why do we need a hotline to report problems to? What assurances do I get that my complaint is properly registered with seemingly no overseeing body looking over this entire process? What if I, a private entity, operate a shop on a government-owned park? Will the government be responsible for the maintenance of my shop? What if a member nation is short of funds and can't hire the requisite amount of workers to maintain these parks? Who's going to give them financial support to do so? This is just really bad.

Article 2 states that;

Cool, cool...except is there going to be some administrative body that supervises this?

[Quote=GA_Author;00001]

3. recommends that all owners of parks and green spaces in member states that are open to the public allow all visitors to enter free of charge, especially where this is economically feasible, and

[/quote]

Again, is there going to be some sort of financial compensation for low-resource member nations who implement this? Otherwise it's just going to be really taxing on a nation's funds.

[Quote=ga_author;00001]

4. urges member states to only grant planning permission for commercial developments on brownfield sites that have previously been developed upon, as opposed to undeveloped greenfield sites (including parks and green spaces), to the extent that granting such permission would neither be unviable nor lead to significant harm to the habitats of rare or endangered species.

[/quote]

...what are "greenfield sites"? What are "brownfield sites"? No definitions here make this so full of loopholes and exploitable by particularly crafty members.

What are y'alls thoughts about this?

As I said in the Discord, I'm not entirely sure that can be misinterpreted like that, using the ambiguity of a real term (https://www3.epa.gov/region1/eco/uep/openspace.html). If I mandated in a GA proposal that member states had to put up signs saying 'Fine for staring at this sign', it wouldn't be a valid interpretation of people in those member states claiming it to mean 'Fine to stare at this sign'. Bureaucracy would rain hell on them, those poor souls. Similarly, using the ambiguity of a term with one meaning and one meaning only IRL to support breaking GA law is...iffy. And this isn't a case of reasonable either. Because bending that term beyond the author's intent isn't a misinterpretation. You are following the resolution in a reasonable manner, just reasonable to yourself.

I'm only like 75% believing that this is the case though.

Although what's interesting about reasonable though, and this might be a bit of a textwall, is that there's no good way to properly enforce serious violations of GA law. Fines? They don't have to recognize the IAO. They may just resign membership. And so there's a whole spiral into descent of the meaning of GA law and what matters. All of it might as well have no meaning. So if you really stretch reasonable, then there's no real punishment to it. Does this mean that using reasonable doesn't matter? Because member states could break it regardless? And using reasonable would just make resolutions easier to write? Isn't that a good thing?

An international tribunal should be the final step of how GA violations get punished. Dibs on any resolution like that. While there would be no OOC action for breaking GA law, because it's a game, there would be IC punishments. Not sure if you could sidestep those as easily. But those don't really matter, right? Well, OOC of course not, nothing would happen. OOC nothing would happen to your nation if you violated GA law either. So all GA laws have no meaning OOC? No. They do because people choose to play the game and choose to recognize that they must not break GA law. The GA might as well not exist if nobody squabbled over the specifics of GA law because they wouldn't follow it anyway.

So in conclusion, there needs to be more of an IC punishment for breaking GA law than what's currently offered with easy-to-sidestep fines. And also dibs on a resolution like that.

Responding to your comments Dacay:

- I agree, hotline is weird.

- The government will oversee it. Your concern is baseless here.

- Good point with the private-public overlap.

- This will pay for it.

- No, because it's a suggestion. There doesn't need to be supervision to ensure it's carried out.

- Most parks already are free of charge, I don't think it will be too damaging. Furthermore, it's a recommendation, so no actual worry.

- Yeah, definitions are needed.

hm. That's fair. I agree with that. The 25% prevails.

I do. I just, bleh. I'll be lazy and blame the morning even though it's more on me. I applied it to reasonable and not green space.

I'm quite familiar with it. But if it assesses that a nation is breaking GA law, what happens? Nothing, until GA#440 passed. Then you could get a fine. What if you didn't pay it? Nothing. But it's a game! Yes, but there still aren't any IC consequences to not paying the fine.

OOC didn't change my point. I'm not sure why I even included it.

and watermelons

do not forget the watermelons

We have a history of talking about WA proposals. Dacay initiated a discussion as WAA Councillor.

8 degrees!

Only 4 degrees! And yesterday they thought it would snow but it never does where I live. ☹️

Same, I currently live in Texas, and it NEVER snows here.