Good work!
The snake is real 
spoiler Hint 1: it's near a leaf.
Hints!
spoiler Hint 3: it's near both a stick and a leaf!
Hint 2: it's near a stick.
give up? Here's a last hint
The leaf is green and it's to the left of the stick
What’s your take on the Armed forces
Only useful for pushing for a professional military to undercut the landed gentry's power. If you're doing a colonialism they're also useful for pushing that.
I understand the building up of productive forces but I’m at the stage where I need to build up the military to ward of the baying American hounds as I also look to crush them in the future.
Playing Mexico I bet. At minimum you need enough armament buildings and battalions to keep your soldiers and conscripts equipped well enough to fight off major powers to a white peace. After that it's all about building productive forces.
And at the moment, because of this my government is comprised of right wing igs.
That's fairly standard for most of a run in a non-industrialized power. Now that I think of it it also helps increasing your peoples literacy rates. There's like a decree that let's you do that. So if you aren't in need of money or are trying to boost infrastructure building/quell turmoil At the moment most of the time you want your most populated or industrialized provides to be under that literacy decree while working on getting some kind of education system going.
But I don’t want the war pigs to have too much power to stage coups and not sure if they’re at odds with the industrialists and capitalists
Purely depends on who the leader is, whats their ideology, whether or not you're stepping on their toes too much with whatever reform you're pushing, etc. Like if you got a royalist leader of the Army, its obvious they're going to get super pissed off if you try and institute a republican system or enfranchise more voters but a moderate or whatever other kind of leader won't really give a shut. Try paying attention to the dynamics of power and interests between the factions and when they do or don't coincide in movements.
But which ones, all the igs seem reactionary
Pick and chose your battles over the decades. Undercut the theocrats when the gentry don't really give a shit about religious rights, undercut the gentry when the theocrats are more worried about religious rights over secular rights. Utilize the divided interests of the petty bourgeois and the bourgeois that run contrary to the gentry and church to push for more modernization but be wary of when all four interests coincide. So on and so forth.
You're most likely playing a economically-sociologicslly backwards nation that's transitioning from feudal relations to capitalist to socialist. You have to work progressive measures in one step at a time with the understanding that up until a certain point of development, capitalism is a progressive force in relation to the transformation of the ownership of the means of production and control over the State.
I mean maybe once in a blue moon you could get lucky with the dicerolls and get like an anarchist peasant leader with the homesteading law in place making what'd commonly among the largest factions suddenly be radicalized over night while being in a military alliance with a major power letting you just ratfuck your way to communism while letting the imperialists fight in your own civil war against the reactionaries then spend the rest of the game shooting your GDP to the moon and roflstomping all of the world powers in wars of containment boy that China run was wiiiild
To be fair it's been years since I read it
This reminds me of the concepts explored in the anime "psycho-pass" but with the added caveat that reality has to be extra fucking lame and absurd. Cops of the future are gonna be using AI chatbots to make shit up about random people to legally justify shooting them
Depends what country you're in. Nominally speaking, build up productive forces to allow the capitalists to supplant the aristocracy/landlords and continue industrialized while waiting for some flavor of socialist to take leadership of the trade unions, peasants, or intelligentsia then try to help them build popularity while undermining the bourgeoisie then when theres sufficient political power/representation in the government by them ram through council republic and prepare to stomp down a counter-revolution. Usually helps to have a major power in alliance or defensive pact to help weirdly enough. Stomp the reactionaries, continue solidifying the socialists hold on power by pushing as much socialist laws through before whatever socialist leaders you have die forcing you to wait for another radical leader. Usually having the worker coop, farming collective, and universal voting laws help the most in keeping the dictatorship of the proletariat safe from legal counter-revolution from other interest groups.
If all that sounds a bit too hard still, just play France until the Commune happens and side with the commune in its event while holding a Marxist-Leninist perspective on seizing power.
Fair assessment. I literally haven't heard anyone cite fucking Tocqueville since my days in my paleocon u.s poli-sci brainwashing classes in uni.
Like the only thing I particularly remember from that book was Tocqueville more or less calling American citizens homogeneously fucking mid no matter where he ventured to.
it's like saying that the Thirteen Colonies were directing British imperial policy in the 1700s
The perfidious yankee colonial puppetmasters manipulated the Crown and their sock puppet King George IV into attacking the French in the French and Indian War
70
On Labor Day, think of the children working graveyard shifts right under our noses
(www.usatoday.com)
It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that, on (fake) Labor Day, (LETS GO MAY DAY) we devote our attention to a subset of the American population who should not be working, or at least not working in jobs that are entirely inappropriate for them. Children.
According to the Department of Labor, the number of minors involved in documented child labor violations (not including the ones that are never reported) increased a mind-boggling 472% between 2015 and 2023, with teenagers working late night shifts, too many hours and working in hazardous environments.
It's not hard to speculate that, as labor shortages have worsened in this country, employers are turning to those under 18 to fill those gaps.
It's not supposed to be this way.
Victoria Britain is back, baby! Don't let yourself get Oliver Twisted over the fact, Guv'nah! Now get out of school and get back in the factories! 
I get a feeling you'd enjoy the poetry and storytelling in the portraits section of black myth: wukong, which is basically the compendium for profiles of enemies you fight in game.
Like it's genuinely enjoyable material that is both fulfilling in art and philosophy. Both of which were completely insufferable for me to learn in college from insufferable people.
My favorite entry is from the "wolf assassin" portrait where his poem reads
Hills and rivers, nature's way,
Kindness grows like grass and wood.
Plants may fade, then bloom in May,
All shall still stand where they stood.
Once upon a time, a young wolf followed a grey elder wolf to learn the art of hunting. Despite his cleverness and diligence, the young wolf struggled to catch any prey. One day, the pale elder commanded him to find food alone or face hunger. Then the young wolf, hiding in the shadows of the mountains, finally managed to catch a rabbit. However, instead of eating it alive, he gently licked the rabbit's wounds, as if to heal them.
The rabbit took the chance and fled into a pond, struggling to swim to safety, but the young wolf in pursuit forced it back into the water. Just as the rabbit was about to drown, the young wolf rescued it, softly nudging its head and helping it breathe. The rabbit woke up conscious but bewildered. Suddenly, the distant howl of the grey elder startled both of them. In his panic, the young wolf accidentally crushed the rabbit under his paw.
Heartbroken, the young wolf wept bitterly. As the elder approached and inquired, it became clear: the young wolf couldn't bring himself to kill the rabbit, so he repeatedly spared its life. Yet, he also feared his own hunger, and that's why he refused to let go. Acknowledged, the grey elder then advised, "Your false kindness brought misery. Instead of hesitation, both of you would have been better off with a swift end."
The grey elder's words seemed to have dawned upon the young wolf. Later, it honed a lethal technique of hurling whirling blades from afar for stealth kills, believing this to be the ultimate form of mercy towards its adversaries.
Like it screams character to me for what's essentially a faceless monster you may fight a handful of times.
Some more poems
For the snake patroller guai
As seasons turn, from slumber it parts,
Hidden in green, a hunter with arts.
Small in shape, it devours the grand,
Or strikes a pain no cure can stand.
For the wolf stalwart guai
Neither sky cares, nor earth will hold,
By liquor's laugh, bold spirits unfold.
In drunken dreams, a cosmos wide,
Wake with worries cast aside.
For the Crow Diviner Guai
He knows the world's fate through divination,
Yet cannot secure his own salvation.
In what he thought was a place of peace,
Fate's tangled threads never cease
I genuinely don't like soul-like games, but this has been the one exception to my feelings on the genre.
Fat-tailed sheep
101
Real talk sometimes I wish the Persians won just to see how wildly divergent history would've been.
(hexbear.net)
Also between this and knowing he ate cottage cheese with canned pineapple or ketchup has me conflicted on this dweebish monster
119
THATS THE NEAT PART
THEY DIDN'T
I'm gonna see if I can summon Stalin with the books he owned.
Now take this, make 50 of them, then replace the stars on the u.s flag with 'em.
And throw on a thin blue line for good measure.