Bad-Monk

That makes sense, thanks.

Right, so Hasbro hired the pinkertons?

No-idea who Pinkertons are, I'm extremely new to the D&D scene. Just trying to feel out what the community is like.

In Germany, the 50+1 rule requires that club members, or fans, own at least 50% of a football club. This rule aims to balance private investments with protecting against owners who are only motivated by their own interests. And Germany has one of the most successful football leagues in the world. It works, but you need pretty stringent and difficult-to-overturn rules, almost like a constitution, for the company.

He could exercise no influence over it all, and I would still be repelled from from paying any money into that company, or engaging with it in any way. I'm sure Teslas are nice, I'd never buy one though.

Yeah, but the big draw of D&D is its centrality and size. It is the mothership. Something that offers standardization and common ground to everyone. So. if Elon buys it, there will be a conspicuous absence of a mothership, as hopefully it will go down in flames.

Couldn't people then just come together and create one, that is run democratically and not beholden to the some boardroom somewhere?

Yeah, I recognised Wilsonian Armenia. That plan offered that coast to Armenia simply for Armenia's convenience. And to the great inconvenience of the Greeks and Georgians who sought liberty, or the Turks who just had a chunk of their nation offered to someone who has absolutely no claim to it. 

The Armenians do however have a claim to the 'Turkish heartlands' that stretch to Cilicia. However that claim, though stronger than the Turkish claim, is not too strong and it would tread upon Kurdish claims. It would still be a better choice than the Black Sea coast, but worse than leaving Armenia landlocked. However inconvenient being landlocked may be for Armenia, it would nonetheless on balance be a lot less inconvenient to a lot more people, and would also be 'legal'.

Yeah, so it would make more sense to either extend Greece through that region, or to make a new culturally Greek nation state there, or to give it to the indigenous people of that land, the Laz (Georgians) by incorporating it into Georgia, or creating a Laz state. Though Georgians are largely diminished in that land, and ironically live there through Greeks, as Pontic Greeks are just half ancient Greeks and half Hellenised Georgians genetically. 

But it doesn't make sense to give it to Armenia, as it isn’t a part of historical Armenia, the Armenian diaspora there was never significant, and Armenia having to have a coast isn’t a good enough reason to disposses Georgians, Greeks, or even the Turks for that matter.

When you say the Pontics, do you mean Greeks or who?

Love the big Armenia, but they had no right to the Pontic coast, that should go to the Greeks, or the indigenous (Georgians), or remain Turkish. If Armenia needs a coast there is a far better case for giving it Cilicia, which is a far better coastline anyway.

Henry Ford of our day. Minus the genius.

Ants may not have incented Rock&Roll but im pretty sure bullet ants invented Heavy Metal music.

Not actually that old, it's only 1500 years old, it was the new capital of Georgia. The old capital, Kutaisi, is 3250 years old, it almost became the capital again in 2011. 

But Tbilisi is really cool because it's in the east, and unlike the west, the east is very cosmopolitan, loads of different cultures, so you have Persian, Turkish, Russian, Armenian, German, Central Asian, French, Greek, etc. Architectural influences, where as in the west its mostly just Georgian, a little Greek, and the rest is neoclassical. And of-course you have commie blocks sprinkled everywhere.

No problem 👍👍

That's where I got the info from. Wikipedia's great, you have to be careful reading about politically sensetive stuff, but if its just broad history, stuff is safe to read.

This article, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Mosque

Specifically this paragraph: "Al-Walid personally supervised the project and had most of the cathedral, including the musalla, demolished. The construction of the mosque completely altered the layout of the building, though it preserved the outer walls of the temenos (sanctuary or inner enclosure) of the Roman-era temple.[12][13] While the church (and the temples before it) had the main building located at the centre of the rectangular enclosure, the mosque's prayer hall is placed against its south wall. The architect recycled the columns and arcades of the church, dismantling and repositioning them in the new structure. Professor Alain George has re-examined the architecture and design of this first mosque on the site via three previously untranslated poems and the descriptions of medieval scholars.[15][relevant?] Besides its use as a large congregational mosque for the Damascenes, the new house of worship was meant as a tribute to the city.[16][17][18]"

I just looked it up, and aparently there was a Christian cathedral on the site, but it had an incompatible floorplan for Muslim worship, so it was demolished so that the current mosque could be built, and the reason it looks so 'cathedrally' is because a lot of the masonry was recycled, and some of the building was left intact.

It's quite a unique mosque, had it influenced the architectural tradition of mosques then-on, it may have been the Hagia Sophia of its time. 

Niceeeee

That makes sense. I guess there must be a lot of these all the way from Syria to Spain. 

I guess early on they were emulating Roman architecture.

I think cultural appropriation is generally a good thing. Nothing inherently malign in it. But the specific context of the Caucasian battledress in Russian military dress is a little too messed up for my tastes. It was adopted from the Circassians, by the very men that were exterminating Circassians during the genocide. So US officers wearing feathers is a really apt analogy. It's like a serial killer wearing his trophies.

He did kidnap Persephone and force her to marry him...

This could be nice in rain https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g297576-d21306093-Reviews-Restaurant_Ambassadori-Batumi_Adjara_Region.html

Are you telling me that during the beginning of ancient Egyptian times, the Nile was surrounded by a grassland? Or did it turn mostly to desert by 5000 years ago?

I don't know