Within a first last the post voting framework, a vote for a candidate that has an acknowledged 0.0000000000000001% chance of winning is functionally equivalent to taking the advice from Carrie Underwood's 2005, Grammy award-winning song "Jesus Take the Wheel" seriously.
With that vote you are tacitly submitting to the whims of the masses which in this election means you functionally endorsed Trump for president. Did you think Trump would do better by the Palestinians than Kamala would? Because your vote for Stein (which was absolutely a vote protesting Kamala's genocide denial) shows an indifference and disrespect for the power of your vote.
Congratulations, you have consciously made the decision to be a single-issue voter and by doing so personally contributed to Trump's reelection. The Palestinian corpses that will be bulldozed to make room for Trump Land thank you for your service.
Voting for a candidate that won't clear 5% is just as bad if not worse than skipping out on the election. That protest vote was summarily ignored before it was even cast and won't effect any level of change. Anybody who decided Kamala's refusal was worse than Trump's everything has fallen victim to the same right-wing disinformation that MAGAts have been slurping up harder than an altar boy at a Catholic Church for a decade.
Harm reduction works and as much as I abhor the Israeli genocide of Palestinians the people who stayed home because Kamala wouldn't acknowledge genocide are still complicit in Trump's reelection.
RekMod is an excellent balance pass and similar to the popular LekMod from original Civ5. There's also mods for the expansion rules/content; Gods & Kings and Brave New World if you prefer to stick to RAW.
Ancient Civilizations and Community Maps add a TON of civs and quality maps, though I must mention that vanilla UnCiv provides very granular control over map generation already. CM does have really sweet "pre-constructed" maps though.
DeCiv Redux and Alpha Frontier are complete overhauls and have little to nothing in common with Civ5 aside from basic gameplay. DeCiv is fun, I haven't tried Alpha Frontier yet though.
Graphics-wise there are tilesets as well as alternate unit art. I personally have 5Hex Tileset and AbsoluteUnits. Looks like some mods have FantasyHex as a dependency as well.
There's many many mods besides these, but this is the list I've personally curated over ~100ish? hrs playtime.
Yeah the private school thing is the only point of contention. I can't decide whether their willingness to hire non-education degrees is a good or bad thing. I'm reasonably confident in my ability to teach (math especially) but definitely lack pedagogy training. I'm taking their willingness to support my certification as a good sign, just concerned about the meantime.
That said, when my options are teaching math to high schoolers or defense sector...pretty easy choice.
Just today I was made aware of an open position for a high school math teacher that I'm finding myself surprisingly keen on. It is a private/charter school which I'm generally ideologically opposed to but in this case it's geared towards sending underserved children to university.
I was that child, only I received virtually zero support from teachers and made a shitton of mistakes trying to figure out university and adulting with neurodivergence. Helping to prepare guide and inspire the next generation actually sounds incredibly fulfilling.
You've falling for the lies that the right has been shouting for decades. We had that education, had reasonably trustworthy information outlets. Both of those institutions have been eroded and co-opted by the GOP for years and years. We are in the endgame of 60+ years of slow, calculated corruption of our institutions. Flaws have been exploited, loopholes created and repeatedly sommersaulted through.
Basing school funding on property values is a sick joke that leaves the impoverished underserved and undereducated. This is why we have a literacy epidemic. Social media and the consolidation of news outlets under billionaires have been the primary drivers of mis- and disinformation. The firehose of shit has been pumping trash down peoples throats for over a decade at this point, filling the brains of people who did not have the opportunity to learn critical thinking or media literacy with falsehoods and false hopes.
Every single person living in any country should have a voice. Citizen or not. Once you allow one group to be disenfranchised it opens the gate to more widespread disenfranchisement of other "undesireables." We need a concerted effort to re-establish robust, evidence-based teaching that goes beyond regurgitating facts, that is equally available and not dependent on your neighbors property values. We also need independent journalism that is not beholden to the whims of a single, disgustingly rich person.
Start there. Start with figuring out how to respect and help the people around you rather than sneering and looking down your nose at them. Your mindset and solution are antithetical to a fair and just system of governance.
Social studies teacher in high school dinged me 5 points for pronouncing epitome as epi-tome. Ended up with 95/100 but it's the principle of the matter.
Mechanical Engineer, graduated a few years ago. Slightly above this age band due to mental health struggles in my 20s. Four years of internships + undergrad research during school. One year, three months of unsteady, career-relevant contract work since then.
Moved from Bumfuck Midwest to a city with plenty of aerospace gigs but can't even get an interview at the grocery store. I'm lucky that my parents and state aid have covered me thus far, have gotten wildly higher-quality mental/physical care here. Behaviourally I'm better than ever but chucking resumes into the void is wearing me down and I'm backsliding on my executive functioning progress.
Employment or a Master's/PhD in Sweden/Germany/EU in general is preferable to the American defense industry but that's a tall and expensive hill to climb (if anyone wants to assist please DM 🙃) and I'm nearly out of time before being faced with moving back home.
The JohnBrowncoats vs the Brownshirts