Taxes?

What the hell is going on

Of all the time periods I have played, I have never been more flabbergasted than the 2010's. It's not the most glorious experience I have had - My first invasion of France in 1870 had Ride of the Valkyries playing at the perfect moment, nothing will top that. It's also not the most miserable experience I have had - The first day of the battle of Kursk led to me not being able to sleep, and hallucinating about looping artillery loaders that didn't work. I did not enjoy the 1400's in the first place.

So what the fuck is going on man. There is not a single intuitive system in this period. And I don't even own the DLC yet. Litterally before the game starts it's confusing. Why is there a gender that is shown as being unavailable if you don't have DLC? That's a new low, even for this game. Also, from what I can tell, the other animals are just there to lead up to you playing the "human" game which doesn't have a goal. The 'goals' seems to be a tiny recommendation/quest that tells you what to do, but half the time it's almost exclusively just "survive and recreate" or based around some gimmick that the engine now supports.

I have about 192 thousand years on the game now, and I've finished 2 campaigns, one on Japan and one on South Sudan. I've also played the other, larger economies but never to completion.

So here are my questions, and though they are meant as rambling, feel free to answer them if you want to.

Why do I chronically lack homes? Wait, actually, no, its: Why do my construction companies not turn a profit even if I'm missing like 1200 homes a week? Wait, wait, I got it now, what I'm really asking is: Why the FUCK do my markets have the most chronic, incurable and penetrating case of tectumitis I have ever witnessed in my fucking life? I can build 30, 40, no 60 high density urban spaces in a fucking row, they will all be at full occupancy, I have them on the 3rd method (the one where they live with children but not extended family), and I just look at the housing deficit growing, what the fuck does it all mean!?

What the hell is an 'economic strategy', and why does the game take such fucking pride in relaying the information that the USA's attitude has changed and is now protectionary (previously aloof)? From what I can tell, this changes NOTHING about their behaviour, their liberty desire, or their worth to me, neither as a nation or as a person.

How. The hell. Did they reduce race relations to that. And get away with it. And you know what? I prefer it! I genuinely fucking do. I love the 1840's as much as they next KKK member, or whatever, but being able to just determine overall race relations in an area based on a series of numbers, rather than the horrendously complex musical culture of the last, is nice. No idea if it's a better system if you actually want to minimize the penalties of bad race relations, but a more comprehendable text nonetheless.

How the hell do I manage pollution? I make the carbon capturing places, i bankroll the fucking technologies, i ask for the fucking good news, but they aint coming, chief.

THE ETERNALLY SHRINKING MIDDLE CLASS SYSTEM IS THE BANE OF MY MISERABLE, UNWELCOME EXISTANCE. YOU FUCKERS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT.

The government bonds system is a great way to make me take time out of managing the index funds to make more loans that i at best have a 50/50 chance of paying off without MORE loans? What was the idea behind this mechanic? That I planned out the long term national budget? That I was prepared for the annual expenses of my country?? They jump up and down like a frog on cocaine. It's just an annoyance, forces the player to waste their time constantly fucking sending them to the top of the queue, and serves zero purpose other than that.

And finally, most of all: how. the. fuck. does. the. economy. work. you know what? I dont wanna know. Dont fucking write it. the gdp, the PLC's, the tourists(when there are any), will remain a mystery and i dont ever want to lay eyes on THAT GODFORDAMMED GDP LINE EVER AGAIN.

And this was supposed to be a BUILD-UP DECADE!? What the hell happens in the next one, then?

Stoic excercise: The reverse marshmellow test

Time to train up some dicipline! Remember that real dicipline isn't about muscular men at the gym, or soldiers obeying orders. True dicipline is personal and comes from within yourself, and nobody can force self-dicipline upon you (hence the name). The reverse Marshmellow test Take a piece of candy, chocolate, marshmallow, whatever you want to have. It doesn't have to be candy. It can be anything, so long as you desire it in the moment. Place either 1 or 2 pieces in front of you.

Should you pick 2 pieces: Allow yourself to take one, WITHOUT guilt. You are mature enough to make your own decisions and guilt is the bane of happiness. Set an arbitrary amount of time for yourself. It shouldn't be too long, because this is an active excercise that will take the time you set for yourself. I'd recommend 15 minutes AT MOST, but 2 minutes is much more reasonable. Even just 40 seconds is great! Now place the two pieces in front of you, sit down, and don't do anything. Neither productive nor unproductive. You may let your thoughts run as wild as you like, but you physically have to sit and look at the two pieces (this is the only reason why you shouldn't go for more than 15 minutes. It may take out a chunk of your day if you go any higher). If you manage to wait the time you set for yourself without taking the first piece, you may take the second. You don't have to eat it, but if you do, you can do it with a feeling that you 100% entirely earned that piece. Should you pick 1 piece: Put the piece in front of you and set some amount of time for yourself. Sit down and look at the piece. You don't have to clear your mind, but you may not do any chores/actions, practical or otherwise. You might notice that you aren't focusing on your piece, but instead practical work to do or just whatever it is your brain is thinking of. This is okay. Let the brain do what it wants, this is natural and healthy for a mind to do. It will eventually get these small 'chores' done and you will either be at rest or back to focusing on the piece. It's boring, but just keep waiting until the time is up. When the time is up, take your piece and eat it if you feel like it.

Bonus challenge! Try to convince yourself in your mind to take the piece early, or that you're just wasting your time by sitting idle (you're not, and believe me when I say that you waste much, much more time on other things).

(mid-challenge) What if I rationally don't want to do this anymore, and I'm starting to feel uninvested/in a worse mood? Fair enough! This may happen if the time that was set is too long. Here's what you do in the situation: You cancel the excercise. You haven't done anything wrong and you shouldn't feel guilt or shame. In at least an hour or so, you can try the excercise again if you'd like, with a shorter time. Finally, remember that 30 seconds isn't a bad time, and isn't important how long you can go for. You just have to be willing to challenge yourself with your time.

What the meaning of life isn't.

Nobody knows what the meaning of life is, this is pretty commonly known. However, people are surprisingly good at knowing what the meaning of life isn't! For example:

If I asked you: "is the meaning of our time here on earth to drive cars?" You'll probably answer no, because intuitively, cars isn't... the meaning, yk? Obviously you can argue why with examples and reasoning, but you don't need those to know that driving cars isn't the meaning of life.

Is the meaning of life eating food, surviving and then having offspring? Some people will say yes, and it's a fair answer. Biologically, it is why we are here, after all. But most people don't find this a satisfactory answer, which is where the question takes a more spiritual turn. It's less "what is my purpose" and more "how do I feel accomplished in life". Accomplishment is a hard feeling to keep. You may have it, periodically, but it quickly slips away. This is the same with happiness.

Humans have (due to advertisements and ESPECIALLY social media) gotten used to the idea that being happy means actively experiencing happiness all the time. It doesn't. Being happy is more of a skill, something you steer towards when given the chance but otherwise don't stare longingly at when you don't have it.

This goes for men, too.

confidence guide for awkward girls 💫

LEARN TO SHUT UP. this is the first advice because it is probably the most important one, but the one that took me the longest to comprehend and master. girl, literally just shutting the fuck up does wonders. most of the times I was embarrassed out of my mind was coz I said something completely avoidable, only because I believed that being quiet was either rude or more awkward than whatever I rambled at that moment. bzzt, WRONG! being quiet means first of all being non-reactive, which gives you time to really reflect on what's being said and whether or not it even requires a response, and guess what; like 80% of the time, it does not. you are allowed to not respond, nod along, go "hmm" or "oh!" and leave it at that.

LEARN TO "FAKE" SMILE. this may seem controversial but it helps me so much. I've always been accused of looking mean, bitchy or just too serious, especially since I started to shut the fuck up (see previous item). and I am guilty as charged: I do have a RBF and when I am focused my eyebrow goes ò_o and I look judgemental and almost evil, and when I tried to balance it out by being funny or witty, it just came off even more awkward. the solution? I've started practicing a fake smile in front of the mirror when I was about 13 years old until I got the muscle memory of it so perfectly that now it's my response to nearly everything that I don't want/can't respond to. throwing an easy smile into a conversation will make you seem relaxed and in control even if you're bubbling anxious inside, and people will feel more at ease with you. also: learn to be generous with compliments, and try to make them your auto-response as well!

STOP COMPARING YOURSELF. comparison is the mark of insecurity and envy, and it's one of the ugliest and most useless habits you can have. yes, useless: what benefit do you get from comparing your face and body and circumstances to somebody else's? and please don't pretend you're getting "inspiration" from them. listen, you are your own lane. you are your entire universe. there is no other life to be lived, no other body to embody. this is it. these are the cards you were dealt with. the longer you try to peak into somebody else's cards, the longer you'll be ignoring yourself and neglecting your game. abandon ideas such as comparison, imitation or judgement towards others. confidence starts and ends with focusing on yourself.

LEARN TO CUT PEOPLE OFF. accumulating people in your life like they're pokémon is gonna be your downfall, because it's obvious not everyone can stay. imagine if a growing tree held onto all its leaves and branches, even the ones in obvious decay, how ugly and weak that tree would be, how much energy those dying parts would steal from the new ones in need of flourishing. it's the same with relationships. when someone disrespects you, hurts you, or simply doesn't align with you anymore, and you find excuses to keep this person around, what you're doing is betraying yourself, and how are you gonna have confidence in someone who betrays you? learn to cut people off or to simply let them go, and watch yourself become lighter and brighter.

QUIT BEING A BITCH. something people don't seem to understand is that the rude, conceited, mean girl persona is always revealed to be a small, petty and insecure rat on the inside. I've wasted years of potential connections trying to emulate the Blair Waldorf-y, Regina George-y vibes, trying to balance out my awkwardness with what I thought was their fierceness, because I was missing the whole point that their confident selves were lies. no girl or woman who is confident in herself spends any amount of time being a bitch, scheming to take people down, minding everyone else's business to make sure she stays on top. true confident people are kind even in the face of rudeness, they glow in shadows; their strength lies in tenderness. the sooner you give this mean girl show up, the better.

ABANDON YOUR NEED FOR APPROVAL AND COMPREHENSION FROM OTHERS. seeking approval is a very obvious trap but seeking comprehension is also dangerous, because the second people start doubting or questioning you – which is always going to happen when you decide to make a change of habits, traits, lifestyle etc – and you decide to explain yourself, you're accepting the premise that what you're doing is incomprehensible. if you're truly sure of yourself, there will be no need to assure others of yourself. if your peers or strangers don't understand it, so what? that's their enigma to sort out. respond to yourself and yourself only. if you understand and approve yourself, that's all you need, period. live for your damn self.

GOOD LUCK, LITTLE STARS 💫

Trying to explain the nature of dicipline.

Dicipline, and especially self dicipline, is not something that you can force through sheer willpower. You have to do useless things to get it. And you can't tell yourself that you're doing it for the sake of dicipline, it doesn't work like that. You have to do things for no reason. And if you find yourself asking: Why am I doing this? you should answer: "I'm doing this unnecessary task because it is unnecessary."

After all, when your boss tells you to do a task that is useless for your work, or you have to learn calculus that you will never, ever use in your adult life, will you have a better time with a brain that is geared towards hating unnecessary things and will feel frustrated over the task, or one that not only is used to dealing with these types of tasks, but can even find meaning in the meaningless, through dicipline.

Imagine if animals made those documentaries about us.

"Here we see, a Homo Sapiens. This one is out hunting for a meal tonight."

(Camera pans to a prime cut of meat)

"The ribeye steak is a delicious temptation"

(Human looks in his wallet) "The human uses his frontal lobe to calculate whether or not he can afford it. The human brain is very overengineered, and takes more than 20.000 factors into consideration at every decision."

(Human closes his wallet) "Hm. Perhaps not in the budget right now. This human is running out of time. The store closes at eight, and if his children are to make it through the night, they need sustainance. Normally, their mothers milk would provide for them, but due to Dolfin-made contaminents, most human-breasts are clogged with microplastics."

(A few shots of human kids looking cute)

Yes, yes, yes!

Only thing I can add to this is telling yourself "I will do x", where x is something that is somewhat inconvenient. The point of x is doing it because it sucks and is inconvenient. Doing this wont just build dicipline, it also shows your brain that you're loyal, which builds up trust, and eventually self esteem. X also shouldn't be a large thing, and can be a series of things.

RECLAIMING DISCIPLINE CAN LOOK LIKE:

• keeping small + manageable promises to yourself daily

• healing your attention span (ex: reading books, watching movies without scrolling, letting yourself be bored)

• moving from "I'll try" to "I will"

• reframing pain + difficulty as often where the growth happens

• showing up as the person you want to be

• making mindful & nourishing choices VS choices that result in instant gratification

Remembering that time the Soviets pulled a 1:1 recreation of a B-29 (pictured) out of their asses, slapped a red star on it and called it the TU-4.

As far as I understand, they seemingly did this by attempting to make it a 1:1 replica, even when they had specific technologies or building techniques that were superior.

The Soviet Union also had to reverse engineer it from near scratch, as even the thickness of the Hull had to be figured out (America used imperial whereas everyone else used metric), and the very best thing about it is that their main motivation to do all this was to show the Americans that they had the ability to drop a nuke (which, mind you, they had just barely invented), with the whole 'we engineered your $60 billion dollar plane in two years" aspect merely being a bonus.

They made the plane as close as possible to prove to the US that they had a bomber that could attack the mainland, because that was easier than making a new design and proving what they wanted to prove.

Greed is the product of two things: The idea that money reduces misery. The idea that you are miserable.

And indeed, it is true. A lifetime fuelled by greed will make you miserable, and the only prospect of getting new money will ease your misery.