Message from @mattforney
Discord ID: 633047323815182385
I am prob going back to Budapest soon once the merch store is online to get some models for a store shoot
Melissa used to do that for a living, I'll ask her if she can hook me up with some photographers etc.
I do photography, but unfortunately not portraits or modeling
ah cool
this project's not coming to fruition for a few months
the first book hits the production line, then I talk to my friend at the merch store and he gets the shirts etc. up
he uses generic models but I want to go the extra mile because I have the money
Isn't it feasible to run it from there? Lack of models?
I looked into it, the scene in Georgia is a joke
everyone with a clue has moved to Russia or Europe
the economy here is in freefall after Putin's flight ban
that's good from an expat perspective because the value of the lari has sufficiently declined to make Georgia one of the cheapest expat destinations in the world
but it's bad because human capital is fleeing left and right
also Georgians are...incompetent
to put it mildly
starting to suspect those "low corruption" indices are goosed
How so? Lazy?
it's very clannish and everything here relies on familial connections
Tbilisi is a bit better than the rest of the country
The latin American model, I see
not as bad as Armenia but still very annoying to deal with it
Hungarians and Poles are more on the ball
Hungarians are a mixed bag, but I like to work with them.
Georgians have had visa-free access to Schengen for a while and anyone with a bit of capital is leaving
there are already a ton of Georgians living in Poland
when I went to Warsaw for my friend's wedding in April, the Uber driver who took me to the Warsaw airport was Georgian
same thing will likely happen if/when Armenia gets visa-free access
They go then the way of Bosnia
Poland has depleted Ukraine's stock of guest-workers and they need more
yeah the ex-FSU states outside of Russia, Belarus, and the Baltics are basically going to get worse
Brain drain is the fertile grounds for future migration waves
they're losing human capital to the E.U. and Russia
and they're also flashpoints for CIA fuck-fuck games
Georgia will probably have some kind of color revolution shenanigans next year
there was an attempted uprising over the summer when the government declined to give extra police protection to the pride parade and they had to cancel
also, during an international conference of politicians from Orthodox countries, one of the Russian invitees gave a speech from the speaker's chair at the Georgian parliament
that ignited a week of tantrums from the opposition
the incumbent party are a bunch of cowards, despite basically being in the same position as Fidesz, having near total control over the government and country
in response to the protests, they changed the electoral law to remove the threshold
since they're only polling at about 20 percent that means five million parties will get seats in the parliamentary election next year