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Little did I realize that the region has become a desolate place as of late. There are only about eight members online at a time when it's usually twice that. And I've been having to wait hours before getting any constructive response to my posts, if at all. I hope the supposed summer slump hasn't kicked in all too early.

If you look at the most active members of the forum overall, a lot of them have either taken leaves of absences, have announced reduced activity, or have gotten busy in real life...we're not functioning with all cylinders going, so things have been lacking the last few weeks...I hope that it isn't long-term either, but it's hard to tell. =/

I hope this isn't permanent. I know that many are gone, but knowing that I'll be gone soon as well, I'm doing the best I can to contribute activity here and now.

And what's weird is that with the lull in activity has come a lack of citizenship applications, I believe, though I'm not sure if that's an NS-wide phenomenon or on the part of the Ministry of Integration.

That's a combination of fewer nations joining NS and fewer nations being recruited by us. NS has lost about 11k nations in the last few weeks, and the number of nations we've recruited to so far this month is about half of where we were last month. The combination of the two...well.

I don't think we need to panic yet, but we do need to do more work to keep the forums an attractive and fun place. We need to make sure that there are interesting and fun discussions going on even when there isn't a Werewolf game going on, for example.

I see you've taken an effort into updating the NationStates Wiintreath page in order to attract Wintreans from the RMB to the forums, and I commend you for that

Thank you! There's still a few more things that I want to do, but it's a start.

Yeah, I believe that we're suffering from a lack of citizenship applications mostly because the top users of NS are high school/college students/millennials, who are all generally more busy at this time of year because of finals.  :/

I see I've missed much.

Anyway, this was fairly depressing, and reminded me a lot of South Africa. I really do hate the power the state receives with socialism.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/venezuela-is-falling-apart/481755/

I never knew you could have salty-flavoured coffee...after some experimentation, I now know. >_>

Me when I get a new game:

Me when I'm able to get an old game up and running flawlessly on an emulator:

This is why I can never be satisfied.

I absolutely loved when I got my hands on Doom and Uncharted 4, and likewise some of my other favorite newer games, but my reaction to getting older games like Jersey Devil and Bugs Bunny - Lost in Time working on PSXFin was 10X more excited than any newer game I've ever gotten.

I see I've missed much.

Anyway, this was fairly depressing, and reminded me a lot of South Africa. I really do hate the power the state receives with socialism.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/venezuela-is-falling-apart/481755/

I read that article the other day, is South Africa really nearly as bad as Venezuela is right now? Like, I know there's some extremely serious problems in SA, but if they're on the level of Venezuela then I wasn't aware. 


On an unrelated note, I've been stressed as hell lately (what else is new) and wishing there were more hours in the day. There's not enough time for me to keep up with school, keep up with practicing all of my instruments, keep up with current events/history, keep my house/room from becoming a giant mess, maintaining my region in NS, sleep, etc. That being said, I'd probably still end up procrastinating and fucking around for 90% of the day no matter how much time there was. It just gets stressful sleeping 3-4 hours each night and not having accomplished nearly as much as I want to. Over the summer, I'm planning to start running so I'm in shape for marching band and Drum Corps auditions in November, and to teach myself precalc so I can skip ahead next year. I'll only bring one instrument with me to Florida (where I'll be spending most of my summer), so hopefully I'll have time to do everything I need to and still relax some.

Rural South Africa (which is most of the country), and many of the poor city areas, are comparatively bad to Venezuela, but it's not a perfect copy of how shitty things are in Venezuela at present (though Venezuela at least doesn't have to deal with nearly as much racial tension).

Our currency is rapidly imploding, though, and our economy is just going from bad to super fucked up in no time at all, while the president buys himself R5 billion luxury jets and stuffs the faces of his many wives and children in his ultra mansion at Nkandla--all of which were bought at the expense of the struggling tax payer, and not through his salary.

Economists even reckon that the Rand (indicated by the letter "R", it is our currency) could fall to as low as R60 to the US$ by 2018, while it's currently trading at around R15 to the dollar.

When the ANC took over in 1994, we were trading at R3 to the dollar. Then we began changing city names for no good reason, enforcing racial quotas that gutted any semblance of merit (also driving the people who actually knew their shit out of the country), implementing ridiculous land reform policies (driving away more people who knew their shit) and generally bringing fuckery to all levels of our society: increased taxes for the rich, which then gets misused by the politicians, and not for anything useful like, you know, maintaining schools or roads or even our state power utility, Eskom (which has now been bankrupt for quite awhile).

Falling education standards led to unskilled labourers, led to lower pay, led to unemployment, led to crime and corruption. That coupled with laws that protect the criminal led to the police not being able to do their jobs properly (along with the newer batch of policemen not being skilled enough because our education system became broken), led to wide-scale demoralisation, led to cynicism, led to apathy, led to institutionalised corruption in all state departments.

And all of it is because of how much power the socialist state has, and how unaccountable it is.

That said, Mandela and Mbeki weren't corrupt, but they were about the best you could hope for in a state system that is so unaccountable and powerful, yet filled with politicians who didn't even receive any type of formal education to begin with.

Yup, we're pretty much fucked, unless Ramaphosa (Mandela's favourite) can work some miracles--assuming his party even recognises what a bind they're in and acknowledge he's the best person for the job, but unfortunately, many wish to give the presidency to Dlamini-Zuma, Zuma's (our current, completely unschooled, incompetent, corrupt president) ex-wife who will pretty much maintain the status quo.

Oh, and free health care? What a joke. The state hospitals are severely understaffed and overworked, the hygiene standards are incredibly low, and you're more likely to die there than if you'd just stuck it out and tried to fix the problem yourself. God forbid you don't get a serious illness, because then you're pretty much fucked without medical aid.

To top it all off, and this is really the final nail in our coffin, many people would rather see our universities close down completely unless government can give free education and crack down on Afrikaans as a language of study. Excellent reasoning, I tell you.

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out. If boys think they are bullied by other boys, they will be doubly surprised at the anxt of the young women! They may not feel they relate to the new sex after all. Lol. Same with girls who think they're boys. School officials will have much trouble on their hands. Maybe the sexually confused will finally actually see that they are not in fact another sex. You can't steal the divine nature of womanhood or man's virility. It's going to be complex but I still don't think there will be many real experiences but I may be naive. I bet they put a few new bathrooms in schools. The students who suffer from this mental illness probably will be seeking as much privacy as possible.

- My Lovely Mother

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out. If boys think they are bullied by other boys, they will be doubly surprised at the anxt of the young women! They may not feel they relate to the new sex after all. Lol. Same with girls who think they're boys. School officials will have much trouble on their hands. Maybe the sexually confused will finally actually see that they are not in fact another sex. You can't steal the divine nature of womanhood or man's virility. It's going to be complex but I still don't think there will be many real experiences but I may be naive. I bet they put a few new bathrooms in schools. The students who suffer from this mental illness probably will be seeking as much privacy as possible.

- My Lovely Mother

No offence to you... but I don't think I like your mother...

Rural South Africa (which is most of the country), and many of the poor city areas, are comparatively bad to Venezuela, but it's not a perfect copy of how shitty things are in Venezuela at present (though Venezuela at least doesn't have to deal with nearly as much racial tension).

Our currency is rapidly imploding, though, and our economy is just going from bad to super fucked up in no time at all, while the president buys himself R5 billion luxury jets and stuffs the faces of his many wives and children in his ultra mansion at Nkandla--all of which were bought at the expense of the struggling tax payer, and not through his salary.

Economists even reckon that the Rand (indicated by the letter "R", it is our currency) could fall to as low as R60 to the US$ by 2018, while it's currently trading at around R15 to the dollar.

When the ANC took over in 1994, we were trading at R3 to the dollar. Then we began changing city names for no good reason, enforcing racial quotas that gutted any semblance of merit (also driving the people who actually knew their shit out of the country), implementing ridiculous land reform policies (driving away more people who knew their shit) and generally bringing fuckery to all levels of our society: increased taxes for the rich, which then gets misused by the politicians, and not for anything useful like, you know, maintaining schools or roads or even our state power utility, Eskom (which has now been bankrupt for quite awhile).

Falling education standards led to unskilled labourers, led to lower pay, led to unemployment, led to crime and corruption. That coupled with laws that protect the criminal led to the police not being able to do their jobs properly (along with the newer batch of policemen not being skilled enough because our education system became broken), led to wide-scale demoralisation, led to cynicism, led to apathy, led to institutionalised corruption in all state departments.

And all of it is because of how much power the socialist state has, and how unaccountable it is.

That said, Mandela and Mbeki weren't corrupt, but they were about the best you could hope for in a state system that is so unaccountable and powerful, yet filled with politicians who didn't even receive any type of formal education to begin with.

Yup, we're pretty much fucked, unless Ramaphosa (Mandela's favourite) can work some miracles--assuming his party even recognises what a bind they're in and acknowledge he's the best person for the job, but unfortunately, many wish to give the presidency to Dlamini-Zuma, Zuma's (our current, completely unschooled, incompetent, corrupt president) ex-wife who will pretty much maintain the status quo.

Oh, and free health care? What a joke. The state hospitals are severely understaffed and overworked, the hygiene standards are incredibly low, and you're more likely to die there than if you'd just stuck it out and tried to fix the problem yourself. God forbid you don't get a serious illness, because then you're pretty much fucked without medical aid.

To top it all off, and this is really the final nail in our coffin, many people would rather see our universities close down completely unless government can give free education and crack down on Afrikaans as a language of study. Excellent reasoning, I tell you.

Christ, I had no idea it was that bad. Here's hoping something miraculous happens to reverse that current trend.

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out. If boys think they are bullied by other boys, they will be doubly surprised at the anxt of the young women! They may not feel they relate to the new sex after all. Lol. Same with girls who think they're boys. School officials will have much trouble on their hands. Maybe the sexually confused will finally actually see that they are not in fact another sex. You can't steal the divine nature of womanhood or man's virility. It's going to be complex but I still don't think there will be many real experiences but I may be naive. I bet they put a few new bathrooms in schools. The students who suffer from this mental illness probably will be seeking as much privacy as possible.

- My Lovely Mother

I'm going to have to second Hannah on this one.