it's a game that sucks you in until you start worrying about your imaginary life more than your real one

I am required to inform you that it turns out one of the main mechanical levers of over/under is romance subplots.

The Empire fell generations ago, but transactions are still denominated in its currency even when neither party making the transaction actually possesses any of it. Genuine coins minted by the Empire are valued for their metaphysical
significance in certain magical rituals.

When you need a digital font with an open license, for one…

Magic is considered dishonest on some level by the population at large of The Empire™️, similar to banking and mercantile professions. Like the above, they still rely on it heavily.

Calling Peter Thiel a "conservative megadonor" is honestly a compliment. The man makes cartoon villains look like paragons of virtue.

Related to this, a question: how does "New World slavery" (I don't know a better term) stack up to other historical forms of slavery, in terms of the rights and prospects of the enslaved?

The only one I'm familiar with of these is Thucydides (honorable mention to Herodotus?), from required classics reading in high school - I can't say I internalized much of either.

Thankfully, because we are not premodern peasant farmers, our labor surplus can be used to purchase things like household electrification and Internet access, allowing me to read your blog post from the comfort of my air-conditioned apartment.

The things that a government has to be good at to maintain power do not necessarily align with being competent public administrators, though that certainly helps.

Rock and troll, perhaps?

If your intent in writing fantasy is to depict an idealized society? Many real states can be described as “country of people who have lived here for generations”, which is almost by definition going to be very homogenous (>80%), though very often with one or more small minority groups present.

Magic systems that act like computer programming.

are we making a distinction between states that are actively ethnocentric vs states that simply have a supermajority belonging to one ethnic group?

How does one study history at all, without judging the past? Even the choice of what history to teach or study is an implicit judgement.

This is after restarting the game three or four times after some major blunders, but thanks!

I've possessed myself of a significant fraction of Indochina in the process for not particularly altruistic reasons, though my average SoL is much higher than any of the states I conquered

First game completion, on the tutorial difficulty. I did not manage to achieve international recognition by 1936, but learned a lot this playthrough.