Well, it certainly makes a statement!

 I'd previously blogged about my search for a throne... Last week I spotted this one on the Merchoid website. Given the state of the royal coffers right now, I might need to crowd-fund it...

Does it look comfortable? Not sure...

Administration - What am I working on this week?

 "And I discovered that my castles stand upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand" (Coldplay, Viva la Vida)

Although, in this case, you can substitute "plans" for "castles"...

So I don't think I'll be able to do the Great Lakes Regional Micro-Summit this year. Between a lack of action on the part of someone who was supposed to get back to me, and my own life "stuff", it's just not going to come together in time.

But I've already got two new ideas to replace it that I'm working on! (Neither of which, sadly, is any sort of event, in-person or otherwise.)

First up, Slabovian Geographic: I'd mocked up a cover a few years ago (see picture), and I used Slabovian Geographic as a "backstory" for my expedition at the end of last year. Now, I think I want to figure out how to make a "zine" using Slabovian Geographic as the theme/title. If nothing else, it might make an interesting giveaway at the next MicroCon-type event. Although, to do it "right", I'd want glossy printing, which would be expensive. Sigh. Big ideas, small treasury, as usual. 😖

The Slabovian Geographic cover I mocked up

The other idea I had sort of harkens back to my childhood. I was growing up when the "Choose Your Own Adventure" (CYOA) books became popular, and today I came up with the idea of doing a MicroCon-themed CYOA. The idea would be that you're attending your first MicroCon, and you are presented with various choices about who to talk to and what to do, and based on those choices you end up with a good or bad experience at MicroCon. I'm still workshopping the idea a bit, but I think it's got potential. I might even do it as an online experience using Twine, "an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories" which would hopefully allow me to embed pictures from previous MicroCon events as part of the story.

A peek behind the throne, as it were

 I've mentioned before that I've tried (twice) to get Google Adsense activated on this blog, but both times Google's feedback (without explanation) was that it was a "low-content blog", whatever THAT means. Why am I doing that? Well, I'm not trying to do this to get rich, but it would be nice to cover some of the expenses. 

Here's the high-level statement of account for the royal coffers for 2025:

Line Item	Amount
Balance as of 1 January 2025	$1,605.73
Income for 2025	$421.50
Expenses for 2025	$1,536.64
Balance as of 31 December 2025	$490.60

The "expenses" mentioned are largely related to MicroCon 2025 - fortunately that only happens every two years. Even then, that line does not include personal expenses related to MicroCon, such as travel, hotel, food, or uniforms. It's related to the souvenirs we gave away, as well as a sponsorship of the event itself. We also spent $142.60 on postage, $33.27 on photocopying, and $98.35 on printing (i.e. Christmas cards). This is an expensive hobby!

Currently, we have one semi-regular source of income - a tax of 50% on all regnal lottery winnings. That is, I play a weekly lottery game or two, and if I win any money, then half of the winnings goes into the coffers. If I ever win a large prize, Slabovia will benefit.

So, yeah, given that I still don't have full-time work in the so-called "real world", I've been trying to figure out how to monetize this hobby without selling things (other than myself), which is why I've been working on building up a social media presence, although it's not exactly taking off like wildfire. I feel that maybe this is because I'm not exactly controversial, but, well, how can I put this? Royalty shouldn't be controversial (other than their mere existence, which some people feel is controversial enough) - as I've stated before, the monarchy endures, which means it shouldn't really comment on the political controversy of the week.

This lack of funding is something that every micronation eventually faces. In alchemy there's the concept of a prima materia, or first material, the material from which everything else is constructed. Well, money is basically that - with enough money you can realize your micronational vision, whatever it is. But it's important to remember that every other micronation is in the same situation - none of us has excess money just lying around, so trying to make money off of other micronationals is pretty much doomed to failure. Some micronations do make a bit of money off of each other by selling stamps or currency to those that collect it, but this is a small subset of the overall (already small, maybe even micro-sized) community.

Unfortunately, I don't have any answers on this as to how a micronation can make money. Macronations can tax their citizens, impose tariffs, and have various other financial instruments to fill their coffers. Micronations mostly just hold out an empty cup and ask for "Spare change?" (That raises the idea of setting up a Ko-fi page, but I'm undecided on soliciting donations from the public.)

The current state of the royal treasury...

Wasn't I supposed to be doing something...

 Me, at home... "Ahh, such a quiet and relaxing evening, nothing to do. Why do I feel like there's something I need to do? Well, let me check my social media. Huh, my blog post for today didn't publish? Wait, no, I didn't HAVE a blog post ready for today!"

Oops.

In lieu, please accept the slide deck from my 2023 MicroCon presentation, Defense of the (Cyber) Realm.

It probably could have used another editing pass or two, but I think it conveys the main message pretty well - cyberwar, unlike other types of "micronational war", really can be a threat to micronations!

Me while giving the talk at MicroCon 2023

Why I try to never comment on "world events" here

 There is a lot going on in the world today, but I try never to address it here (although I can be fairly vocal about my opinions in person). Why is that? There's a couple of reasons.

First, to some extent, micronationalism is an escape for me, from a world where I have to worry about things like rent and inflation, the economy, and the political crisis of the week. Within the micronational world, I'm royalty, with the respect of my citizens and my peer leaders from other micronations. 

Second, I'm quite sure the macronations (i.e. the major political powers in the world) don't care about me and my micronation. There's no up-side to being noticed by them, and in this age of "big data" and social media data-gathering, there's no impetus to make my opinions known here. It's not going to make a difference in how the "big guys" act and it might attract unwelcome attention.

Finally, I don't think I'd bring anything new or interesting to the mix. Anything I have to say is already said by many others, some of whom are more highly qualified in their opinions than I am.

So, while I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a "reality-free zone", it's certainly an area where current events aren't so current.

A photo from my first coronation
Slabovia has always tried to be a bit "different"

Games, simulations, and micronations

 Last week I put up a post about "Collect It All", a card game derived from a CIA training tool. That's got me thinking about games and simulations more generally, and how and why they might be useful to micronations. However, I'll preface this by saying that micronationalism itself isn't a game. It's not a roleplaying game, it's not "playing pretend". Depending on the micronation, there are some elements of imagination involved, but assuming that we're all just playing games does a disservice to the whole community.

Games as training tools are quite common - as we discussed previously, the card game "Collect It All" is based on a CIA training tool, and this article discusses other CIA-developed games used for training their analysts.

Games can also be useful for training people for situations that might be too difficult or costly to replicate in normal life. For example, Slabovia uses the Artemis Starship Bridge Simulator to train crews in starship operations, in case we can ever afford to buy one.

First, the obvious: military "war games" have been used to teach militaries the basics of tactics and strategy for a long time - the game of chess dates back to the seventh century, although it's been modified somewhat over the years. Tabletop "sand table" exercises are also a staple of teaching battlefield tactics at military academies, and modern "micro armour" (1:285 scale) miniatures can be purchased to replicate these exercises at home. Board games such as Risk or Axis & Allies present an abstracted form of warfare which can help develop more strategic thinking.  Oh, and then there was the time that some wargamers won an actual war.

In Slabovia, we've been discussing holding a "staff college" training day where our Navel (sic) officers would play various such games. At one level, it's an excuse to hold our own private gaming convention, but we won't talk about that. 😉

More recently the military has also used video games as training; the US military was using networked video games (err, training simulators) via something called SIMNET back in the 1970s, well before the Internet was a public resource. As the home PC market expanded, and as the Internet reached more homes, it seems inevitable that "armchair generals" would want to use the electronic medium. For example, the civilian mil-sim video game "Harpoon" is based on a US Navy training system that was itself based on a miniatures-based simulator. 

Another genre of games that can be useful for micronations is "resource management" games where players have to manage limited resources as they try to claim territory. The classic board game here would be Settlers of Catan. Games such as Pandemic can help teach responses to health crises, which dovetails somewhat with my recent talk about emergency planning for micronations.

There's also a game called Diplomacy, where players take the roles of politicians at the turn of the last century (the game starts in 1901), which does feature the making of alliances, but also encourages the breaking of such alliances, so perhaps it might teach the wrong lessons to some folks.

I don't know anything about it, but apparently there's even a video game called "Commander in Chief" (also known as "Geo-Political Simulator"). The Wikipedia entry for the game states that it "allows a player to simulate being a nation's head of government". There were also several sequels to the game, including "Rulers of Nations" and "Masters of the World".

In summary, then, the use of games as training tools is well established, and there are a number of such games that can train micronational leaders on various aspects of leadership and government.

Was chess one of the first wargames?
(Picture from Microsoft Word image library)

My talk from the Digi Micro Summit

 I previously posted the slides I presented at the Digi Micro Summit here. If you actually want to hear/see it presented, there's a recorded version here, or you can just watch it below.

Picture for the Al-Gore-Rhythm
Yes, it's from MicroCon 2025 - the Digi Micro Summit was VIRTUAL

An Intelligence Training Tool - and a fun game!

Did you know that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) uses games to train its analysts? Let's talk about that!

Today, I'm continuing to discuss intelligence techniques, but I'm doing so by looking at a card game called "Collect It All". This game was developed by a CIA intelligence analyst named David Clopper, and was used to teach new recruits at the agency about collection techniques. Originally it was classified "Top Secret", but (after some redactions) it was released into the public domain.

The game can be played in one of two ways - cooperational or confrontational. In confrontational play, the players are different intelligence teams or groups competing with each other, while in coop play they are all on the same team.

There are several kinds of cards in the game, divided into two decks: the crisis deck and the collection deck.

The crisis deck includes a number of possible crises that the players have to avert by gathering enough intelligence based on the difficulty of the card representing that crisis. Every crisis card has a difficulty rating between 1 and 9, as well as symbols indicating which of the intelligence aspects (political, military, economic, and/or weapons) the crisis involves. Each crisis also has a point value between 1 and 3, indicated by dots in the top-right corner of the card - these are used in confrontational play, as the first play to resolve ten points of crises wins.

The crisis deck with a few of its cards.

The collection deck has three kinds of cards: technique cards (divided into HUMINT, GEOINT, MASINT, SIGINT, and OSINT), "Reality Check" cards which can help or block a technique card, and "Resolution/Manager Challenge" cards - the resolution aspect of these cards is used in cooperative play to determine if a crisis was resolved successfully, and the manager challenge aspect can be used in an advanced form of confrontational play to force the player to explain how the technique actually applies. (These latter cards are removed for a simpler confrontational-play game.)

Reality Check cards can help or block a technique

Resolution/Manager Challenge cards

Basically, you use technique cards to gather information about a crisis, provided that a) the range of the technique is at least as high as the difficulty of the challenge, and b) the technique card matches at least one of the intelligence aspects of the crisis (political, military, economic, and/or weapons, as stated before). The difficulty of the crisis determines how many successful techniques are needed to defuse that crisis, so for a three-point crisis card you'll need to play three techniques that aren't countered by Reality Checks. If you play a technique on a crisis successfully, but it's not enough to defuse the crisis, then it stays "in play" until additional techniques are played to reach the challenge's difficulty. This means that, during confrontational play, another player could steal the crisis that you'd only partially solved on your turn.

A selection of technique cards

You can download the original (heavily-redacted) materials released by the CIA here (PDF, 104 pages), or there are vendors online that sell games based on it, such as my version which came from Techdirt and Diagetic Games. And if you want a peek at some of the other games the CIA has developed and used as teaching tools, this article is pretty interesting.

Holiday cards received in 2025 (and early 2026)

 Every year we send out a number of holiday cards (I don't normally refer to them as "Christmas cards" because, frankly, not everyone celebrates that specific holiday - inside they say "Season's Greetings" rather than "Merry Christmas"). Probably as a direct result, I also get a number of holiday cards back. Today I thought I'd post a picture of (almost) all the cards I received this past month - hopefully no more arrive (I got a couple of late arrivals just last week). I'm not including the one I got from Slabovia's Crown Prince Stephen, as it depicts his daughter who is a minor and I'm not putting her picture on the Internet because that's just creepy.

Top row (left-right): Molossia, Aigues-Mortes, Obscurium

Middle row (left-right): Duckionary, West Who, Dracul

Bottom row: The Aerican Empire, my chancellor's family, Ladonia, one of my citizens

Fun fact: the card from my chancellor's family is based on artwork painted by his wife!

How about another intelligence post? Let's talk about red teaming!

 Hey, it's been a hot minute since we've talked about intelligence (i.e. spy stuff). As a reminder, micronations generally DON'T need an intelligence service, but it's fun to talk about, so here we are.

Today I want to talk about "red teaming". Red teams mean different things in different contexts, but it's all ultimately the same thing - having a team on your side whose job is to "think like the other guys" in order to be able to anticipate what "the other guys" might do. (The name comes from military exercises, where the friendly force is deemed "blue" and the other side is "red".)

For example, the United States Air Force uses "aggressor squadrons" (the Navy and USMC call them "adversary squadrons") which use the tactics, techniques, and procedures of the enemy, in order for their own pilots to be familiar with them, which can give an edge in a fight.

Over in the cybersecurity world, "red teaming" is a form of security testing that's one big step beyond "ethical hacking". Red teams can use almost any tactic to try to gain access to facilities and information, within reason. This can include lock-picking, "seeding" the parking lot with USB drives that have malware on them, launching their own phishing campaigns, and other tactics a real attacker might use.

Back in Spook Country, red teaming can help you to avoid two separate but related pitfalls, either of which could result in intelligence failures. First, done properly, it can help you to understand that your adversary doesn't think like you. They have different values, goals, and priorities, and may even come from different cultures, and red teaming can help identify those and prevent the "mirror image problem" (meaning that you assume the other side thinks just like you do, with the same motives, values, and understandings). Second, it can help you escape the mental trap of "They're the bad guys" because once you start to believe that, you can start to believe all of the tropes that modern media assigns to "bad guys". It's important to remember that they're doing their job, just like you're doing yours.

In order to successfully use red teaming, you need to understand the other side's culture, history, organizations, and overall objectives from a real perspective. This is why, for example, the CIA used to hire a lot of people who studied Russian literature in university, because Russian literature shaped the national psyche, and thus informed their culture to a large degree.

The big risk of red teaming (in intelligence or in cybersecurity) is overconfidence - assuming you've got THE answer. I.e., in cybersecurity, you might assume your red team found all of the ways in and you've blocked them. Well, no - your red team found all of the ways in that they looked for, but there's no guarantee that they looked for everything. The reverse of that is also true - you can go nuts trying to figure out what might have been missed, and you can always run another test, and another, and another - basically, you can never finish, if you're so inclined. After all, the organization you tested today isn't the same organization that'll be there next week - new servers, new software vulnerabilities, new people joining the company, it all means that there's always another potential way in. Since red teams can be sneaky and under-handed (as can the other side!), their methods can also lead to resentment among the people they've come in contact with, and even mistrust of management.

On the other hand, there are definite benefits to "thinking like the other guys", and to be honest, it can be quite fun sometimes. Just make sure you can take their shoes back off, when you're done wearing them...

If you want to know more about red teaming, you can check out the CIA's Tradecraft Primer (which devotes a page or two to red teaming, among other techniques) here, or the US Army's Red Team Manual  (which is devoted to the subject) here.

Picture is unrelated.
(Probably...)

My slides from the DigiMicroSummit

 This past weekend, I gave a short talk on the topic of "Emergency Planning for Micronations". If a video is made available I'll link to it, but for now here's a link to the deck (PDF format) I presented. It's only intended to be a brief introduction to the topic given the 30 minute time allotment, but hopefully there's interesting and useful information for people. A video should be available soon as well.

This is from my MicroCon 2025 talk. I've only included
it because posts with pictures perform better.

Expedition report - Deerlick Creek

To mark the Intermicronational Year of Exploration, the Slabovian Geographic Society recently dispatched an expedition to find the headwaters of Deerlick Creek, a minor tributary of the Don River that runs near the Slabovian Embassy in Toronto. The expedition report can be found here.

The expedition "shows the flag"