Messages

She knelt down and whispered something to it, some sort of secret magic words only the simplebots and Emily knew.

Ah yes
sudo help me get to the 16th floor

[*GONG*]

The portal shut, and the gateway disintegrated. Luca now stood alone on a stone platform floating in this dimension of isolated space, the entrance to the dark and sprawling sub-surface world. In this place, platforms of solid material haphazardly connected to one another through narrow pathways of floating brick and stone – the Unified Relocation Link. Dull rainbow skies flashed above and rumbled when sporadically visible torrents of power and data transferred from distant cloud to distant cloud. These paths could take you anywhere, with the right knowledge and access.

This one, however, led back to the Admin Tower, fulcrum of Calamity Refuge's governance and the conduit through which this chaotic, raw internet magic was refined into a usable state. It wasn't far using this shortcut. A stone gateway door could be seen some hundred and fifty metres away. All that was needed was to walk across the precarious pathway, and not look down.

Luca closed their eyes and exhaled. Arch-Admin or not, that local's device wasn't going to get fixed any time soon; it probably wouldn't be fixed at all. Another casualty from the last shockwave that passed through the internet plane. Ancient PHP devices were increasingly unstable, running them at all came with a good bit of risk. Detonation, spontaneous combustion, opening a portal to the sun. Such were the traditional gifts from the maddened wizard who created that power. Running them centuries after the fact only tested fate, but many still relied on these relics' functionality. A convergence of tradition, apathy, superstition, and inaccessibility.

It had been 35 years since the last PHP sage walked the Refuge, so when those devices died, Luca was left with two options: Declare the device permanently non-functional and possibly, painstakingly recreating its abilities using different magic, or use the Refuge's limited resources to have the device renovated by one of the few remaining sages elsewhere. Well, this month's resources had already been expended doing just that and, even then, the URL pathway to get there was a 125km walk.

Luca started down the path, and looked out at the horizon to their right. The sound of massive gong rang in the distance, like a brass bell the size of a house. It emanated from one of the rainbow-hue clouds in the distance with a distinct white radial pulse. As it expanded, it hit another, closer, cloud which repeated the tone exactly. The Rumour Mill, carrying updated DNS information from server to server. This place was about to get a lot louder, and it would be ideal to not be in this space when the propagation pulses arrived.

A little hurried along now, Luca hopped to the stone gateway and input Tower credentials to unseal it. The stone door split down the middle with light.

*GONG* ... *wheeeehw*

Yes, that's definitely what it sounds like when it's getting closer.

Then the door split again in two chevrons, left and right, at 70 and 100 degrees at the top and bottom halves of the door. Is this new? Has it always been like this? Does it really take this long to open a door to the Admin Tower? The four chevrons rotated back, away from the opening revealing two large triangles of light at the entryway's top and bottom.

*GONG* ... *WHEEEEHW*

Yes, it's certainly closer! Holy shit this door takes AGES. The remaining bits of the door panel were now sliding open left and right now. It should...yes, just be enough for a...particularly slight...build to...squeeze...okay yes!

Luca burst into their study on the 17th floor. The URL doorway shut immediately. Weird how it takes a whole lot longer to close a door than to open it.

I've been thinking more about how code-based magic might actually be *done* in this world, and I'm thinking that there may be (at least) three primary ways.

The first is like, in a pre-prepared format. Scripts, which can be literally scrolls or items that have the data of the scrolls embedded within them. These things are typically pretty stable, mostly tested, tend to do what they're meant to do and nothing outside that because of their take-it-at-face-value nature. The code is pretty tangible, concrete, and not meant to be changed (although it possibly could be with tinkering). Simple devices can have simple scripts in them and be pretty easy to make, use, and transport. Complex devices can run software that is more advanced, but works on the same premise, although transporting them might be difficult if they're not ancient relics or otherwise expertly made.

A second that I'm thinking about can be something done on the spot, run directly on the server a la bare metal. Arcane hand-gestures, having this stuff materialise in the air, lots of colourful light. The scale and complexity of that on-the-spot creation would be determined by the caster's own technical abilities. It's basically like testing in production though, and that can go bad in a hurry if the person has no idea what they're doing or accidentally fucks something up. I've mentally taken to calling this the "Emulated Just In Time" method, or ejit because you have to be a bit of an ejit to think it's always good, safe, and will never backfire on you.

A third is basically the above, arcane hand-gestures, having this stuff materialise in the air, lots of colour, but within demarcated barriers of light, forcefields, or Dr Strange's mirror dimension. It's an area that you can see and pass into, but it's been technically separated by dimension so that if something of your code magic fucks up and detonates, it won't affect you or anyone else. It is the safest way to create scripts or larger projects like web applications, which would be represented as a building of whatever scale the complexity or narration needs.

I think there are probably more ways of doing things than this, and it doesn't at all speak to all the other types of possible magic like elemental or Emily's nature magic, but it's just something I had a mental thought of while I was in the shower today.

Gabriel said I could do this.

He said that like three years ago, but you know.

Heya,

This is the OOC discussion and planning thread for FT2. Like the name implies, it's based on the FT universe, CalRef's original RP. The reading of that RP is not necessary or required. We're just going to use its environment and themes, basic rules, etc. It's my goal to use the best parts of that universe, scrap the ones that are a little to archaic (farewell lolcatz) and have more fantasy adventures.

The premise is that everything online has a fantasy interpretation. Code is magic. It's a part of everything and makes everything up. Think of a building outside. It's made of stone, but imagine if you swung a hammer at it and broke a bit off, and looked closely at it -- you'd see a hollow html exoskeleton with a a css theme that gives it colour and texture. Code can also be used as scripts or spells. Websites are worlds, dimensions, or realms, you can travel through them via portals, google streetcars, etc. Passwords are locks, forum boards are buildings, most everything that's apart of CalRef is a structure. Notably, the Admin Tower is a kind of central control point that has a lot of important interfaces, facilities, and some of us just live there.

A lot CalRef's processes are automatically done, things like optimising sessions, clearing caches, calculating statistics and other vital operations that keep things moving. In this universe, those tasks are done by SimpleBots, robotic creatures of various sizes and shapes. Although each SimpleBot is specialised to do certain automated tasks, any of them can act as a terminal in a pinch (if they have connection), some are sentient and have morals, and none of them can be too far away from Calamity Refuge for too long before they cease function.

This incarnation of FT takes place a hundred internet years after Rebirth. So, in that regard, we don't have to worry about ancient OG characters (unless their controller happen to show up again). The internet, at large, has just face a shock apocalypse that has left most smaller realms in the internet plane with massive damage or degradation. So I suppose we are trying to cope with that, reorganise ourselves, and rebuild.

DO I HAVE TO KNOW THE KOMPUTER THEEINGS? No, not really. But you're online, aren't you? You experience the internet, even if you're non-technical, and you can probably think of a fantasy version of the things you do. Originally the FT story was inspired by just events that happened around the community, then they went in a purely creative direction. And I think anywhere in between is alright. Admins might know how to use script magic, but you might have some kind of piece of software (device, weapon, or tool) that let you do certain static things. Maybe you don't know how it works, but you know how to work it.

Anyway, post any questions comments or ideas you have and we can work together on them.

If you travel along the paths of the interwebs, seldom will you find a place that is completely free from the wreckage of things long past. Origin civilization is built on top of the ground, but newer civilization is built on the ruins of the old. Like pottery fragments, occasionally pieces of the past will be unearthed by a plough, sowing the seeds of a new harvest, or become the basis for some convoluted procedure that traces its roots to something simultaneously more and less dysfunctional a century prior. Such is the state of things in the post-apocalyptic internet – ruins on top of ruins, upstarts and fallen empires. One fallen empire, was Calamity Refuge.

"Eeehn Ieh wahsn ahrouhunden thah ckharhner ehn ghihvehn thah ckhahmpriehsahr ah ghoohd keeek eehn nenenehks'd theengehnehsee eeasha ploomhminha smhokeh," said a spirited local with hands dug into his linen vest pockets. He circled the compressor madly as he spoke, clearly distraught over the loss of the device's functionality.

That device was a magnificent elevated stone tripod, three metres high. It was made of sandstone block and inlaid with dull, indigo-coloured PHP 5 runes, hovering just above the stone surface. A metre up the point of the tripod's convergence, the sandstone column was no more, shattered by some substantial force. Still, the runes seemed to contain some residual magical charge. Periodically, the runes would fade and blur, and then pulse back to life, both in brightness and sharpness.

"Uh-huh," Luca said absent-mindedly from the ground. Head back against the dirt, they were inspecting the underside of the tripod to collect the error log output. Normally something exploding, even in the middle of a distant field, would trigger an apache error log event which could be seen remotely. This was no exception, but the report wasn't exceptionally useful. Luca looked to their left at their SimpleBot companion of just 5cm, which reported the entry from its SSH terminal:

        [Tue Jul 18 15:11:08.458192 2023] [pid 1058044] [remote] 2023-05-26 21:52:00 True

Most excellent. Often has one wanted to know "True", without context, to divine information about the nature of the world. After all, what is true? What is false? What is right? What is wrong? Only Apache2's 1058044 process can decide. So, it would seem collecting the reading from the device in the field was the only reasonable option.

"Eeehnanoo uan noos hahnah geeheht thah ckhampriehs aahtnpoot aehn gheyaeyht thah deeyahspetch weeathah auhth thah ckhahmpriehsahr..." he continued. Mostly likely he used to use the device's text conversion to publish some kind of news thing to his local village. The sun was a burning beacon of unwanted illumination and searing heat, but the local was working competition for being greatest general pain at work in this particular moment. Luca stopped and pulled themself to the side of the device to lock eyes with the man.

"What IS your accent, anyway," demanded Luca.

The man's eyes grew wide with a sudden great enthusiasm: "FAREIGN!" he exclaimed.

"Right..." said Luca squinting. It must have been the heat that lapsed their judgement to even come here today, but here they were, they might as well collect the output. Spinning through the inset dial, text was now flickering to life. Such and such unable to stat, unable to...verify redirecting URL, blah-blah-blah. Ah. Here we are. Forty individual missing functions in subs_template_default. Additionally, an error was created when trying to load the error handler, which created a feedback loop. That probably exploded the device.

"...annehnanwheaothoonth thah thools eafahtan me treeadh thahn-" he stopped speaking, at last, when Luca emerged from the ground and brushed the dust off themselves. "Wheheal? Wheaht eeas deeah proobhvlem?" he asked.

"It's fucked," Luca responded. The SimpleBot jumped from the ground to land on Luca's shoulder.

"Fhahkehed?" The man asked, confused.

They turned back to the open space of the field and snapped a finger. A translucent aqua lectern materialised in front of an equally translucent arch; a temporary gateway for a Unified Relocation Link. Luca drew a glyph onto the lectern's interface, and a portal crackled into being from the edges of the archway, revealing a swirling, chaotic world, and a winding stone pathway through it.

"Fucked." Luca replied and stepped through the portal.

"Bvheaht ehahoore thah aeaharken aedhamvhenisther..." The local was beside himself in a state of disbelieve.

Luca turned back to the local. "So I am," they said, and the portal shut. The gateway disintegrated.

I think I poked around on Runescape forums a bit in like 2004, but never in a lasting way. I was bouncing around online games on miniclip for a while during the two days a week I had access to the internet. Then, on a summer trip to my relatives in Illinois, my late uncle was playing this kinda weird furry frogger-like game called Varmintz, and then there was another called Rebound (which I think the company renamed to Ricochet for whatever reason), and his wife played I think it was called shapeshifter, which was a progressively high speed puzzle-matching game.

They were things to watch, so I watched them. And on the very last day of one of this trip he said, 'you know, you can get these yourself'. I said 'oh yeah?' He said 'they're on RealArcade' (which was basically 2004's Steam/Epic). Just as soon as he said that, my mother's special friend materialised out of the void to whisk me away from the room as fast as she possibly could. No idea why, maybe it was in response to that namedrop or maybe she would have done it either way. But I think about that that narrow moment sometimes, because it was how I found the Geneforge games and how I found the Spiderweb forums. It took me a few years after that to realise, hey, you know you can just google spiderweb software and find their forum and oh my god there's a Geneforge 3 now too? They're making 4???

I made an account in like January or February of 2007, but I didn't actually stick around and try to have a conversation until two weeks after my 14th birthday which was later that year in September. I had just seen a meetup that spiderwebbers had posted about in the general board, and there were something like five or six of them there. I thought 'wow'. Here I am on a farm in fuckall nowhere, but holy shit using the power of the internet, these people made friends out of nothing and that means so can I. It'll take years, but it'll happen. It did, and it did.

In 2007 I was an annoying kid and the mods on Spiderweb were up their own ass. What was cool at the time was to expect forum posts written like peer-reviewed scientific papers, and that's a big ask for a 14 year old who likes the "post" button. Sudanna tolerated me which was nice, and I guess I got in trouble enough times that Vergil invited me to CalRef. At the time, CalRef was the sort of counter-culture spin-off community for people who still really liked spiderweb games Avernum and the other ones. Like many others who answered the big recruitment push at the time, I hit mod the same day I joined, which was a totally responsible thing to do. But it worked out I guess because it gave us what every teen and tween really wants -- a title! Huzzah, onward to rule the world! It is a bright day!

It also really helped that in the months before I remembered that Spiderweb existed, I was really into creative writing, and I was staying up late those nights to just some up with random stories on my laptop because it was fun to write. Little did I know, I could have been doing that on the internet with other people who also liked writing, and were much better at it than me. So I did, and Jewels (who was an admin here and a primary writer for FT and ANWO) sorta nudged me in the direction of being a little better at writing and a little less abrasive.

I still was and likely ended up causing more fights than I stopped. And I really feel for all the people who had to deal with me both then and even now, because rose tinted glasses also leave regrets. I certainly have no shortage of them. Still, all of it was good, not that I didn't get angry or sad or stressed. I loved the people here, even the ones that despised me, because they were my family and collectively we could work on things together and make things together and play games together and that was great.

As far as I remember, which could be inaccurate but I don't think it is? But the first Refugi meetup of people who did not grow up in the same town together was when I moved to Denver and Zoe visited my apartment sometime between June and August of 2012. And that was really cool! Meeting a friend who I had only known from the internet was awesome, and Zoe was awesome. It was a little bit of a hassle because we lived like a half hour away, but we went over to each other's places a good bit. A few months later, we went to go see Vergil who was visiting Colorado Springs on a school trip. That was also great because he was also awesome.

And those were really the ice-breakers, I think. We were all at an age where we were increasingly capable of mobility, so more trips started taking place and more people started meeting up independently. Also Sylae/Keira moved in with me at the end of that year, which was certainly brought a notable shift in how things worked. The next year was 2013 and although it didn't start out that way intentionally, we ended up doing a Year Five (tm) get together, and that happened to take place in our apartment with like five or six people. I don't think we ended up making a chart of meetings until Slarty did one on Spiderweb and we added in a lot of connections, and later on I cleaned up a smaller CalRef version just for us.

I hit admin the next year (2014), and we kept making and doing things (namely Minecraft servers in this era and various Steam things). Zoe moved in the year after that (CRC Calamity Refuge Commune era), and then we moved in with Sudanna and friends two years after that (CRCE (East)), which was cost-effective but short lived, as there were way too many people in a confined space. I don't think the site was too active during CRCE because a lot of stuff just happened in meatspace at that point.

I didn't try venturing out of the online CR/SW sphere until 2017 and when I did, I think I realised more and more how good we had it, just based on how the rest of the world had developed independent of us. The outside world was not nearly so close and interconnected, and their community spaces were not nearly so, uh, free of nazis. And while it was nice to get a reminder of what the alternatives were, it was nicer to actually have the option to go back and not deal with that.

Anyway things happened and now we've somehow timeskipped to it being two months before I turn 30. I'm way older than Jewels was when we joked that she was the ancient mom of the site. But the site exists and has activity and people in it. Somehow we survived every other SW satellite community, saw the rise and fall of social media giants -- some of them anyway -- and changed our activity focus URL and servers a dozen times. Some things happened along the way and it all gets to a point where there's too much to talk about and I'm not even sure I understand it.

I started writing a CalRef total history post long ago while I still remembered most of it, but eventually it got to a point where I didn't really know how to continue without incidentally offending people, and not really knowing if all the details really mattered to anyone anyway. But a lot of the older people were ready to move on with their interests. Relationship troubles made me one of those, too. We hadn't really done a big recruitment push since 2014 and CalRef had been slowly declining in activity since then. At some point at the end of 2017 Keira asked if I wanted to take over CalRef and I said sure.

The over-arching principles of staff have always been that the mods are responsible for the well-treatment of members, the admins are responsible for the site continuity, and the arch-admin was super in charge of site continuity and atmosphere. The atmosphere was pretty caustic and dead, and continuity looked pretty shaking, so naturally I planned a bunch of relatively radical reforms to take stock of the now-sprawling network of twenty-five domains and sub-domains, trim them down to what was needed and used, update that software, find things to do, start recruiting again. And the response was pretty much a naive Ship of Theseus argument. Would it really be CalRef if I did that, said some prominent mods at the time.

And the answer is basically yes but also no, which is the same thing it's always been. Because the CalRef from 2008 was certainly hard to recognise in 2012, and the CalRef from 2012 was certainly hard to recognise in 2016, and the CalRef of 2016 was certainly hard to recognise in 2020. You know, that's just kinda life. I'm sure it'll be true again in the future too. As a relic from the OG times, basically my thinking is that my job is to and keep CalRef's core values alive. What is that? I don't know. A place you can meet and talk to friends in a relatively safe space, there's some lore, themes, and iconography hooks, there's some dedication to FOSS ideals and being community driven and not profit driven. But a community of friends that do and make things is like, what the most important part is, and the rest is just cool decoration.

We're at the five year point in my Arch-Admin tenure now, and empirically I feel like I've accomplished it, which is to say that CalRef now is larger than it ever was before, we certainly had more activity than ever before even if it wasn't really on the forums. I recognise from a number standpoint it's good. But I also have lingering creeping doubts which I think about every single day of my life, about whether this was really the best I could do, if this is really being true to OG values, and if that sort of thing is even worth pursuing. The stress of running this place has been more than anything else I've done in my life because it meant so much to me when I needed a place to fit in the most. So that's what keeps me going and motivated despite living as much of my life since registering as I had up to that point.

I want to do better, and I want people to be able to have the thing that I did if they need it.

Unfortunately 2023 already had it's single-banger with Legend of Zelda WindWaker III, and there was a Warframe update which was pretty hotly anticipated since 2019 that launched this April. But I'm not expecting too much more for the rest of the year.

I'm waiting on Endless Dungeon, which is a less-aesthetic sequel to Amplitude's Dungeon of the Endless, but their speed and quality since being acquired by SEGA has been questionable. Endless Dungeon's release has already been delayed by six months, and I don't know that it looks like it has as much content or charm as the original. But it's on my wishlist still either way.

I'm also waiting on Hyperlight Breaker, which like Endless Dungeon is another game that's moving away from its pixel art style that I liked into a 3D model system. I'm not really sure why developers decide to 180 their art style for a sequel when it was so central to the theme of their earlier work, but if I remember right, even CrossCode is doing a similar shift. Maybe people feel like they have done everything they can with a 2d environment and want to do something different, maybe they don't feel like people want something that looks the same as a last game unless it's 3d. It's unclear, but Hyperlight Breaker is still on my list because I enjoyed the first game and that reputation alone will make me give this a chance.

The internet isn't too old on a geological timescale, but the ability to have a fully-developed conversation with another human person, to whom Googling the answer to a question was never an option not on the table in their lifetime, is quite significant. For the websites which still have the strength of motivation and blessing of continuity to do so, many will take the opportunity to engage in a bit of self-congratulations after a period of, say, fifteen years of continued life. But the internet has changed a lot in the last fifteen years, both tonally and culturally, such that taking one's self in a vacuum and pretending all is business as usual comes across as a bit daft to me.

The Refuge has long operated on the idea of independence and separation -- the idea that whatever was going on outside of our space, within our space we retained agency over our pocket dimension, detached from life's woes. Such was the promise of the internet: A separate world within which you could create your own. Yet, slowly, the internet's priorities would change. As corporate commodification took over, open-sourced projects became rare and free services like web hosting became unheard of. The internet is increasingly no longer a realm where someone creates and idea or tool for the benefit for friends and strangers, it is where one creates a premium subscription Discord bot to pad their résumé while applying to a job analyzing bulk private data for Facebook.

Those trends are hard to ignore and harder still to productively deal with. Even for those who would still like to uphold a world full of possibilities, why does everything feel so dismal and draining? The answer, of course, lies in the very question. "Everything." The world is full of everything and, in a world full of everything, we forget that it used to be full of nothing. In a world full of nothing, you have the ultimate creative license, the most-complete permission set to make whatever thing you want with whatever attributes you think it should have. Yet, in a world with everything, we force our own ideas and visions into existing frameworks, platforms, standards, and monopolies that dilute and disfigure them to the point of being unrecognisable or never being made at all.

So, for this particular self-congratulatory anniversary post, I'd like to invite people to take a break from their various platforms, podcasts, and social media. Free yourself, if only for today or any day you read this post, from the opinions, expectations, and influences of others. Take a trip outside to a wooded area, if you can. And let your mind clear of all the societal bullshit that you have been carrying around. Vacancy acquired, use the mental space to imagine what you would most like to see in this world, or what you most like to think about. Regardless of your current abilities, could you express or represent that thing with creative writing, art, music, or coding?

Wouldn't that be a better use of your time and mental energy than whatever social burdens you've been carrying around? Then you should absolutely pursue those and disregard the rest. Tell your burdens that you don't believe in any of this shit anyway, and fuck the consequences. You only live once, so you might as well start doing it. If what you want doesn't exist right now, today is the day to start making it. That is what the internet is for.

Happy Refuge Day, 2008 - 2023

[YES, PLENTIFUL LIGHT, DO YOU SEE?]

Dot 3.10: I Can Show You The World

YES, PLENTIFUL LIGHT, DO YOU SEE?

Demonstrations

    Region   

    Delegates   

    World   

And all of it is ass!

It's the time of year again where I once again bring you new piles of free shit for use in your various NationStates pursuits. This one establishes vast databases, which the server can only estimate contain 83.5 million entries. These entries report historical facts about regions and the world itself, which has long existed on the internet, but has been rarely used outside of my dispatch reports due to the data's cumbersome scale.

That said, last month my computer spent some two and a half weeks processing the files into a more usable format, and I spent some two and a half weeks after that getting my code to manage it more reliably. The result is three major functionalities being added to Dot's commands.

Additions to Region

The first exciting development is in the region command. You can keep using the command like normal to get an overview of a given region, but now there are three new buttons:

• The first lets you pull the roster of nations, which you can filter by WA or non-WA in a sub-menu, and output those to a telegram list or a BBCode table downloads. This replaces the old was command, which has been fully retired.
• Next is a button to graph a region's activity (the days since its nations, respectively, last logged in), which will allow you to catch CTE waves in advance.
• Finally, there is a button that will allow you to use the new database and output a host of graphing data.

The graphing option includes population, WA information, delegate power, and much more. All of it can be graphed individually or layered with a second set of data as a dual y-axis. If you're using a dual graph, you have access to world data too (more on that later). Whatever options you pick, you can download it as a .csv. So if you don't like how Dot procedurally graphed it, you can remake it with your preferences or for your own projects.

If a region had a delegate during the graphing period, it will be highlighted in the output, although this can be toggled off. Delegate overlays will not print a name if they do not take up at least 10% of the chart area, and delegate names that are lengthy will be trimmed unless their term was very long. Note that before July 17, 2017, NationStates did not include endorsement data in its data dumps, and that information can no longer be retrieved or recreated.

Historical Delegate Leaderboard

Since we now track who was a delegate of what region and when, we can also plug in dates from the past and get better insight as to what the power-regions were in times gone by. The delegates command has a new button that pops up a modal for you to plug in a date. You can input any date (in YYYY-MM-DD format) within the last eleven years and Dot will pull the information, simulating the command with that day's historical leaderboard data.

These historical leaderboards can be traversed with the embed's page buttons, just like normal, but you can also export them as a .csv table for your own projects too.


The World At Your Fingertips!

This is a command to give some overview information about the world, such as population, total regions, total World Assembly members, and delegates. It also provides a list of the top 10 currently trending dispatches and the current top 10 regions by World Assembly members.

Like the region command, it comes with buttons to graph world activity to see CTE waves in advance. It also comes with a graphing option to see the last 28 days of new nations founds. Please note that this button has been relocated from its old home in the telegrams command and can no longer be found there. Finally, there is a button to generate a variety of more complex world-specific historical graphs. This include histories on population, World Assembly members and delegates, total regions, total endorsements, founds, and much more. As before, you have the option to graph one item of data, or mix it with another on a twin axis.

For all of these graphing options, you can receive a .csv download of the information if you would like to generate your own graphs with it.

Check out the links in the sidebar to the right, demonstrating the commands and their intended operation. Because these new features rely on so much bulk data and open-ended operator options, I expect there will be a few bugs that CalRef staff didn't catch in testing, so feel free to report those when you come across them. Some commands are intensive and you will need to wait up to 30 seconds for the server to assign your request processing time. If it takes longer than 30 seconds, it probably broke.

Minor Changes Since 3.9.4:

• Re-added channel typing for intensive processing commands
• Retired scale graphing for the version command
• Fixed a bug where region would no longer display SC resolution themes for applicable regions
• Fixed a bug where recruit in assistance mode would produce an error on finish or timeout

Add Dot to your server via the invite link on her main page, or on her Discord profile and support CalRef on ko-fi if you're feeling generous.

Recall: Falafelandia, Councillor of Operations

Observing that Kifleeki, Resident and World Assembly member of Refugia, was ejected and barred from the Region on July 1^st at four in the afternoon, Pacific Time, by Falafelandia, Refugia Councillor of Operations,

Witnessing that the Councillor, under RRS 3, stated that the Resident was barred "after a hateful profile in the Discord."

Recalling this is not a criterion of ejection or barring under RRS 2, that the regional chat server is under the jurisdiction of the Calamity Refuge Code of Conduct, not the Refugia Revised Statutes, that the Councillor of Operations is not a Calamity Refuge staff member at this time, and that a picture of an individual eating chicken does not constitute sufficient evidence for removal under the Code of Conduct either way,

Noting that appeal of this ban is currently improbable due to the practical context of a vote achieving quorum -- The Councillor of World Assembly Affairs is being filled on an interim basis by the Arch-Administrator, the Councillor of Foreign Affairs is on leave for an extended period of weeks, and the Councillor of Operations would be the subject of an RRS 3 appeal or an RRS 9(c/d) probe,

Aware that the Councillor removed all existing Wards from the Region upon entering office, shunning the protections and advice of the Region's most trusted and experienced security experts,

Aware that the Councillor has made statements in the past, depicting Refugia's Regional vote being the "third largest on the raider side", in flagrant disregard to the Region's legal and cultural status as a neutral region,

Aware that the Councillor has previously attempted to plagiarise The Admin Tower dispatch as an overview for The Brotherhood of Malice, where the Councillor holds foreign allegiance,

Finding, therefore, that the Councillor primarily seeks to use the Office to advance their external agendas, and displays gross incompetence regarding their duties within the Region, itself, and

Recalls the Councillor of Operations, initiating an RRS 10(b)(i) election, effective immediately.

Authored by: Refuge Isle
Seconded by: A Million Dreams

I think it reads well, the only issue is that if the goal of this is to prevent foreign influence... is being in the WA enough to prove that Refugia's your main priority? A lot of places use IP citizenship or just don't care about WA stuff at all, not to mention some places don't even tie their leadership position to their WA Delegacy.

If the concern is to prevent foreign influence, Member-States should be restricted from holding citizenships in other regions, or at least government positions. Otherwise, anyone who isn't Delegate, security councillor, or R/Ding can just plop their WA here and then nothing much really changes. When picking between a WA-centric position in X region (citizenship, Del, R/D, vizier) and Refugia, then WA is a good indicator of someone's priorities. Otherwise... it isn't, not really. And I do get that most exemptions are to Delegates or R/D peeps and so preventing exemptions would stop most types who would get MS here from getting it with an exemption, but that doesn't change the greater concern over foreign influence imo.

If the concern is mostly to get rid of a mechanism that hasn't been used for its intended purpose, and the preamble is just flowery language, fair enough.

Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents.

You are correct that the draft is not intended to be a personal attack and should not be perceived as one. It also does not impact anyone who currently has an exemption, only those seeking one in the future.

Refugia doesn't carry out IP checks and citizenship applications, as most other regions do, and it almost certainly never will. I do not like any system where and in-group can subjectively look at every individual applicant and decide "yes" or "no" based on their own personal feelings, biases, and alignments. I like straight rules that apply to everyone equally and transparently. One should not seek permission, one should seek the right. If you have the right, you get the goods, no questions asked.

Saying people cannot even be citizens of other regions is, in my estimation, unreasonable, unenforceable, and beyond the jurisdiction of the Revised Statutes. Our years of history demonstrate that WA restrictions have been useful, not only in Refugia, but in Conifer (which had a similar system of enfranchisement). Just as requiring people to have a nation in Refugia to gain access to the chat has been a useful mechanism for keeping out low-effort trolls, it is even more unlikely for a GP player (where a WA is a valuable asset) to keep that status in Refugia if the region is not their priority.

While you may say that this system would only prevent influence from delegates, influence-based security positions, r/d players, and other citizenships which require World Assembly status, I think that set covers 100% of the areas of concern. And those players are welcome to WA up in Refugia during elections if they want, just as they're able to set aside three months of WA time in Refugia for a term in office.

It is almost certain that they will not do so in a region which cannot be raided if they do not care about it.

I believe Lyxu/St Leone was initially granted an exemption for a 1 year WA ban, however as he is a WA nation once again this no longer applies to any current exemptions.

Right, as seen here there are Member States which have WA exemptions that are also WA members. They're at the top of the list. Non-WA nations which have exemptions are at the bottom of the list.

There is currently no capacity to vote-remove or sunset an exemption; it can only be revoked by the nation updating in another region or being ejected (RRS 5(b)).

What will happen to people with currently active exceptions?

A generous read would yield that the statute only impacts the application process, and does not reference extant exemptions.

No, and Also Go Away: Part II

PREAMBLE. Whereas RRS 5. and its subsections were written in 2019 with the intent of providing enfranchisement and government participation to nations which have been banned from the World Assembly, as the Region's founder had been in the past,

Recognising that the statute has never been used in this capacity,

Perceiving that the many World Assembly Exemptions granted by the Regional Council fall into two categories -- Delegates reigning outside of the Region, and Residents wishing to undertake military operations as a component of a foreign power,

Reflecting that it is difficult or impossible to carry out foreign commitments while remaining impartial to the Region, and that foreign interference, influence, and subterfuge invites more negative consequences and hardship to the region than the opportunities it grants,

Believing the truly invested will commit their efforts to the Region when it becomes an interest and not a resource,

Abolishes RRS 5. and its subsections, and decrements the Refugia Revised statutes by one thereafter.

Authored by: Refuge Isle
Seconded by:

[If you are linking to files or images under the old URL schema (.cc or .network), they will stop working at the end of the year, or an indeterminate period of time afterwards.]

We are now half-way through the twelve month long transition of domains.

Notable:

All sites that except for the wiki now warn users that the site is moving.

All automated email services (lost password, account confirmation, etc) are now sent from .ca addresses.

Archive's email service is working apparently for the first time in four years?

It is, once again, a good time to remind everyone about the domain moves. If you are linking to files or images under the old URL schema (.cc or .network), they will stop working at the end of the year, or an indeterminate period of time afterwards.

OwO

OwoowowowowoO

That concludes today's announcement.

[Demonstrations]

Untitled Development Journal 42

Greetings, I thought I would write a quick note about several smaller-scale updates I've done over the last week.

Firstly, Eyebeast and Tart have been given some subtle updates, including:

• More compact headers and footers.
• Buttons that are supposed to help mobile navigation now only show up on devices the site thinks are mobile-shaped.
• Discord embeds are slightly nicer.
• Eyebeast now has a new icon/logo, a new background, and other CSS that (I think) is slightly nicer to look at.
• Eyebeast region names are now hyperlinks, and we track the new tags that NationStates added (frontier, colony, embassy collector)
• Tart has been updated to talk about governor mechanics instead of founder mechanics.

Demonstrations

    Recruiter   

Dot has been given some patch updates too, we are now on version 3.9.4:

• Dot is now available on Discord's App Directory.
• familiar's pulls have been improved (we're running ipod shuffles and not "true random" to up the diversity), and individual familiar moods are now slightly milder.
• Fixed a bug where an operator would roll an impossible familiar.
• Fixed a bug where give wouldn't correctly report that a transfer succeeded.
• Fixed a bug when calling info via context menu on a user that was no longer in the server.
• Fixed a bug where info said everyone was a bot.

More notable changes:

Refuge staff members now have the ability to manually run Nightly outside of its cron cycle. Sometimes NationStates takes a long time to update. When it does, our server pulls a data dump at midnight (PDT), only to find that NationStates still has the data from the previous day. This causes a lot of sites and services to show old data, even if it looks like things updated. If you or someone else notices that Nightly's data is out of date, locate a CalRef staff member and they can run the script again.

The WAs command is being retired and its abilities are being rolled into a new button in region. So you can use the region command to pull a region, and click the new "Residents" button, which will spawn a menu that you can use to get a telegram and table output of all nations, WA-only nations, or non-WA nations. WAs will be deleted entirely in 3.10.

When it comes to recruitment, I've reworked the recruiter command to have a lot better structure on my end, and also given it the ability to let a server admin set what regions they want to exclude from telegram recruitment. You can use the new Set Excluded Regions button to remove nations which were founded in regions you are disinclined or treaty-obligated not to recruit from. When using the pop-up that this button creates, you can enter a region name or NationStates URL. When entering more than one region, separate your entries with commas or linebreaks.

Finally, the new method of setting a recruitment template is to just drop the template directly into the option field. So /recruit %TEMPLATE-29351171% is all you need.

That's all I can think of for now. Byeee~

CalRef II: The Jefferson County Fairgrounds
CalRef II: THEDAY
CalRef II: The Rapture's Pre-Chorus
CalRef II: The Literary Translation of Nodding Your Head for Fifteen Minutes
CalRef II: THE GREAT PURGE
CalRef II: Saint Mary, Mother of God, Mother of This Fine Sidewalk
CalRef II: Binge on God, Clerge to the Masses
CalRef II: Taking the Elevator to the Gym in Your House

I have seen the potatoes true power, I am at their mercy. We will sing songs of their righteousness. We shall cook with them. Pleasant and succulent potatoes, placed lovingly upon my desk with the light gleaming off of its robust exterior. I raise my hands into the sky and cry out Its divine name. A flash of light overwhelms me. The potet, I exclaim in shock and awe, it has been transformed into a bowl of hashbrowns. By the one, the two, the three, the four, the five, the six, the seven! We will never know their gifts. The potatoes lay there in the bowl now, perfectly ripe for the taking. My mind transcends in wonderment at the possibilities. Energy fills my body as the excitement channels through me. I would run, but running has been banned; it is unseemly. So I wiggle my arms left and right as a display of my profound approval and satisfaction at the gift of food in starchy potato form. Praise the sun.

HumanSanity: 81
Emily: 67
Luca: 59
Argo: 30
Kal: 17
Aav: 14
Wasc: 10
FLP: 7
Ziz: 5
Dyll: 5
Fox: 4
Zuk: 2
Catherine: 3
Ruby: 2
Sueloc: 1
Istillian: 1