The Free Land of Tintamarre is a gargantuan, socially progressive nation, renowned for its museums and concert halls, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic, humorless population of 18.175 billion Tintamarriens love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.

The enormous, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Social Policy, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Charlesville. The average income tax rate is 76.7%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but sluggish Tintamarrien economy, worth 652 trillion piastres a year, is quite specialized and mostly made up of the Book Publishing industry, with significant contributions from Cheese Exports, Tourism, and Furniture Restoration. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 35,914 piastres, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

A suspicious number of male students have joined the Ladies' Wrestling League, thieves find battery shops juicier targets than banks, candidates make campaign speeches at the funerals of former rivals, and for the sake of 'public interest' news programs tell viewers how to home-make Sarin gas bombs. Crime is totally unknown. Tintamarre's national animal is the castor, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Tintamarre is ranked 82,469^th in the world and 25^th in The Maritimes for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 96.74 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.