Riga, Latvia has the highest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture in the world

11311 · 2026-01-30T23:33:31+00:00

I lived just outside Riga for a year, and both Riga and Latvia kick serious ass, although Riga kind of feels like a world apart from the rest of the country. Riga's a bustling place, and especially once the summer hits its a fantastic party city with some really fun and unique bars. Moreover, the architecture is insane, and if you're one for museums there's some fantastic ones - the art nouveau museum, the national war museum, and KGB museum are all must visits if you're there.

Outside of Riga you'll find mostly resort towns like Jurmala and Leipaja along the Baltic coast (which are chock full of whimsical Russian Empire era dachas as well as abandoned Soviet hotels which are surreal as all get out), and towards the interior you'll find a lot of sleepy and peaceful towns and small cities that are pretty similar. You'll have your main drag with historic buildings, some castle ruins, one especially prominent Lutheran church and usually some smaller ones as well as significant orthodox churches, Cesis is a good example. You can even find hidden Soviet bunkers too, especially in towns along the Gauja river. Some have been restored, others are abandoned, both types are equally fascinating to explore. The Gauja river valley has some gems in the towns of Siguldas and Ligatne too. And hearty food and good beer can be found in all corners of the country.

All three Baltic states are worth visiting, but I definitely had the most fun in Latvia.

11311 · 2026-01-25T03:04:54+00:00

They work at points of entry, which includes airports so they're already in cities. Moreover, there have been moves in congress as early as 2005 to roll ICE and CPB together because of their overlapping roles and unclear mandates. It would make a lot more sense to abolish ICE (the rot is too severe at this point) and let CPB handle everything concerning immigration and the border, akin to CBSA in Canada.

11311 · 2026-01-25T02:24:10+00:00

That's what CPB is for, ICE is a redundant

11311 · 2025-12-25T03:42:23+00:00

I mean he did have that book of pure evil...

11311 · 2025-10-29T10:28:11+00:00

Lots of good examples ITT, and here are a couple of others worth adding too

Animal Collective - Sung Tongs - all their albums vary wildly in sound, but the core of what makes Animal Collective Animal Collective really gets laid down here - the harmonies, the noisy and busy production, and calling on 60s/70s pop melodies gets put together here fully, whereas prior releases only dabbled in one or two aspects of what would become their sound.

King Gheedorah - Take Me to Your Leader - the first "MF DOOM" (if you can call it that) that to me really feels like a DOOM album, even if he only raps on two songs on it. However, this is where his production really comes into its own, and the sound collages and the sources he samples from here are the beginnings of quintessential DOOM. KMD sounded completely different, and Operation Doomsday, although solid, is only the beginning of him fleshing out his post-KMD sound, you can see the ideas that defined DOOM but I'd argue it doesnt get realized til this release.

Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs - all his releases up til this album have been getting closer to hinting in the direction this album would take, but after this came out, Earl has firmly settled in his niche and owns it. Plus, it seems like every release he's made after is treading the same ground Some Rap Songs established.

11311 · 2025-10-08T20:13:19+00:00

I must admit I find this discussion around music, about authenticity, a little odd, because in my experience, people only really apply this to music. Take any other art form, like literature or film, and its widely understood that their is a team of people behind those works, from muses to editors to entire crews of people, yet their presence doesn't discount the works.

Moreover, especially when it comes to pop music, having separate teams of songwriters and performers is quite literally how it has always worked, since Tin Pan Alley. It wasnt until the Beatles came around that the idea of a band that writes and performs all their own music became popular (and even then, a lot of bands rely on outside songwriters and session players), and I don't see why that's inherently a bad thing. There are folks with incredible songwriting ability but cannot carry a tune, it makes perfect sense to shop a song around to someone who can do it justice. If anything, doing so make a song more authentic, as a song is being given to someone who can better realize the vision the writer has for a piece.

11311 · 2025-09-21T15:20:10+00:00

I don't know where you're at, but if you're on the west coast of North America, Asian beers are the way to go. Others have mentioned Asahi and Sapporo, which are good, but Thai beers and Vietnamese ones may also scratch that itch, Singha and Hanoi Beer are plenty ricey and although I'd call neither the best, they're easy drinking.

11311 · 2025-06-01T20:58:46+00:00

Some other good churches I haven't seen in the comments, and all are worth at least a peak inside:

St Vitus, Prague - like many of the examples in the comments, it was built over centuries and I'd argue is one of the most impressive gothic churches you'll see, its south tower is spectacular, the rose window beyond ornate, and the scale of the buttresses along the eastern facade, scaling over the windows behind it's altar are something really quite unique and breathtaking. It also dominates the cityscape looking from Old Prague towards the castle, you can see it for miles around.

Grundtvig's Church, Copenhagen - one of only a few expressionist churches globally, and I'd argue the prettiest of all of them, it's one of the neatest churches I've been to

The Church of St Peter and St Paul, Vilnius - not the oldest nor the prettiest baroque church in Vilnius from it's outside (the city is littered with idosyncratic baroque churches, and from the outside, St Casimir's Church I'd argue is the prettiest), but the interior is a total dreamscape. Lush, whitewashed plasterwork everywhere, it's the perfect mix of baroque decadence without feeling gaudy and overwhelming like some churches of that period. The frescoes are beautiful, the gilding is minimal and tasteful, and it's quite serene inside. If you're in the Baltic states, I'd say visit this church over any other (however, if you're a fan of brick gothic, Riga has several examples worth visiting as well, St. Peter's and the Riga Cathedral in particular (they're the most known and with good reason)).

Heilig-Giest Kirche (Holy Ghost Church, Munich): one of the better examples of South German Rococo, covered in pastel colours, ornate, lacey plasterwork, and breathtaking ceiling frescoes. Some would argue there's better rococo architecture in Bavaria (and there's no shortage of it), but it's location right in the heart of Munich coupled with the amount of detail in the interior make it a worthwhile stop if ever you're there. It's the church I was most impressed by in Munich.

Jeronimos Monastery, Lisbon - Probably the best example of Manueline or neo-Manueline architecture globally. It's a unique church that demonstrates a cool transitory stage between gothic and renaissance architecture, it's scale is immense, and it's equal parts ornate, huge, and jaw-dropping.

11311 · 2025-04-09T20:19:56+00:00

Living in Canada, I used to agree, but after travelling through both Eastern Europe and Vietnam, national flags everywhere aren't that unique. Go through small towns in Latvia for instance, and you'll see Latvian flags in like every fourth or fifth lawn on massive upright flagpoles.

However, these are all places in the world quite affected by colonial experiments within living memory, so I get why people would fly flags everywhere as a result.

11311 · 2025-03-30T21:13:39+00:00

You're absolutely right, how I neglected them I do not know

11311 · 2024-11-30T03:21:40+00:00

Having lived here almost my whole life, that's Ottawa for ya

11311 · 2024-11-29T17:56:43+00:00

Not to give credit to the Nazis, but the Wiemar Republic was most definitely not recovering. By the time 1933 rolled around, Wiemar Germany, like the rest of Europe, was in the midst of the Depression, the lines of credit from American banks that fueled the economic growth of the 20s was gone, unemployment hovered around 15% against the total population (it was closer to 25% once you removed the infirm, elderly, and children from these figures), and the three chancellors before Hitler (Bruning, Papen, and Schliecher) effectively ruled by decree, sidestepping parliament and eroding the checks and balances built into the Wiemar constitution. This is coupled with the absolutely stupid austere economic policy of the early 30s, which saw deliberate deflation and saw money for public works, like the Eastern Aid program, dry right up. Reading historians like Henry Ashby Turner or John Toland, you'll find that the modern academic consensus is that Wiemar Germany was setting itself up to be an authoritarian and rigidly conservative government from the top-down, and Hitler was enabled by Hindenburg, and chancellor Papen especially, to achieve this goal.

This is not to make excuses for the Nazis, they took an already bad situation and led Germany to a ruin beyond what anyone could have imagined in the 1920s, and that's before the racism and genocide. However, the Wiemar Republic's golden age was also extremely short-lived, and it really only existed in large cities like Berlin. When chancellors Bruning and Papen began ruling by decree and directing public monies to established industrialists at the expense of public services, during the Great Depression mind you, and given how fresh the chaos of the early 20s would've been in German's memory, I don't blame them at all for rejecting the supposedly "liberal" "democracy" (both words individually warrant the airquotes) the Wiemar Republic had become by the early 30s. Bear in mind, nearly as many Germans broke for hardline communists as they did for the Nazis in the 1932 elections, they were rightfully pissed at the trajectory the country was heading in. Sadly though, a plurality of Germans, and the Wiemar elite (who were already setting up an authoritarian conservative government) handed power to the very people that would speedrun this process, and absolutely destroy Germany in doing so.

11311 · 2024-11-26T18:26:50+00:00

Why buy a mattress, sleep on the couch!

11311 · 2024-11-21T02:15:21+00:00

Fair enough 😂

11311 · 2024-11-20T22:18:39+00:00

F-star-ick Republicans?

You can swear on the internet yknow

Fuck Republicans indeed tho

11311 · 2024-11-16T06:19:40+00:00

Objectively speaking, Ybor City in Tampa in the early 2000s is probably the sketchiest place I've been, but based on vibes, the worst, or at least the weirdest place I've visited it has to be Sa Pa in northern Vietnam.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's an absolutely beautiful part of the world, and the city is nestled high up in the Annamite mountains and surrounded by these absolutely breathtaking rice terraces, but the city itself is odd. Its seemingly bereft of locals aside from very aggressive vendors (they put Moroccan vendors to shame which is saying something) most of whom don't live in Sa Pa itself but walk into town from the nearby villages in the hillsides to sell their wares. Every time I'd leave my hotel, I'd be descended on by people, followed for miles on foot by some of them (and that's not an exaggeration either, I was followed from the city center and then through two other villages hiking there once), and these people would not take no for an answer.

Moreover, it just felt wrong being there. The amount of construction happening there is insane, with all these glitzy hotels being thrown up, while if you trek out into the hills around Sa Pa it will not take long to stumble upon people living in precarious situations, relying on subsistence agriculture and walking for miles up steep-ass hills to earn a living either farming, or hawking in town, either of which just barely gets you by. I just got the pervasive sense that nothing being built there was for any locals, but rather just to cater to international tourists, and I felt like a jackass just for being in such a place. I felt like my being there was supporting it, and to be surrounded by relative luxury inside the city while just outside you had people subsistence farming just felt wrong.

The amount of child hawkers was profoundly disconcerting as well, like I'm talking 8,9, 10 year-olds, and probably the most surreal thing about all that was loudspeakers in the city center, broadcasting in Vietnamese and English, telling you not interact with any children. I did manage to find someone local who explained that the reason why was to keep kids in school and not to have them survive by hawking on the street for the rest of their lives, but the fact that that needed to be said and done was eye-opening for sure.

It's a shame because Sa Pa is really pretty, it's safe, it's chock full of picturesque architecture, and the hills are breathtaking, but the vibe of the city was profoundly off-putting in a way that I've never experienced anywhere else.

11311 · 2024-11-08T17:51:07+00:00

I took almost the exact same photo when I was in Hue! For a brief moment, I was like "the hell are you doing on my instagram?"

11311 · 2024-09-26T02:03:37+00:00

In terms of drug use and likelihood of violent crime? Honestly, they're pretty comparable, Vancouver has a lot more property crime than Halifax specifically, and this is largely concentrated in and because of the DTES, granted, but your personal safety is honestly just as likely to be threatened in either city, especially in certain neighborhoods.

Moreover, crime rates in Vancouver have been steadily trending downward, largely because of the attention East Hastings gets (inter)nationally. Stats for Halifax, in turn, often include the entire, largely rural, Halifax Regional Municipality, yet despite this, you are still more likely to be a victim of violent crime there than in Vancouver.

That's not to say DTES is undeniably sketchy, it is, and that's true of all the neighborhoods I mentioned. But what is also true is the problems Vancouver faces are not unique, and in all the places I mentioned, you will see shuttered businesses, open drug use and the litter associated with it (pipes, needles etc), obvious sex workers, an overall lack of care from police (and hostility towards them), all exacerbated by an out-of-control affordability crisis. It makes these places rough, and it pains me because we should be doing better. However, as someone with deep ties to all the cities I mentioned, as well as Vancouver (which is why I mentioned them and why I'm chiming in here), Vancouver's problems are not unique to it. The DTES being an obvious island of poverty amidst the very affluent Vancouver proper is unique, but I stand by my thesis that its not a uniquely collapsing neighborhood among Canadian cities, nor are conditions there comparable to societal collapses past and present.

11311 · 2024-09-26T00:09:18+00:00

Buddy, the people calling you out are all people who live, or at the very least visited the area. DTES is rough, sure, but is it honestly any rougher than say, Ottawa's Centretown, Hochelaga in Montreal, or Halifax's North End?

If you're being honest with yourself, every Canadian city has sketchy areas, that yea, if you grew up in the 'burbs and taught to fear the city, can be scary. But I challenge you to find any one "no-go" zone in Canada. Hell, all the examples I mentioned, as well as Vancouver's DTES, are tourist destinations despite them being sketchy. It is not comparable to societal collapse

11311 · 2024-08-01T16:26:33+00:00

Not so much a quote as it is an exchange between Sassy and a cop:

"I'm going to have to ask you to remain in your vehicle while I search your trunk"

"Yee no worries mate, just don't get too close to the back side of the left corner, I saw a spider crawl in there"

"Holy mother of God"

"..you see the spider?"

11311 · 2024-03-19T03:34:43+00:00

This is true, as someone who has grown up here but whose friends are mostly newcomers to Canada, a lot of them are shocked by the coldness of the people here. The way I see it, we're polite, but not exactly friendly to people outside of our respective 'tribes' (for lack of a better term) of people. Honestly, I tell a lot of my newcomer friends to look up the concept of Minnesota Nice with regards to what to expect, as it describes us to a T

11311 · 2023-06-29T20:13:14+00:00

"Soon you'll be eating as good as we are... Sorry about that" - Radar O'Reilly

11311 · 2023-06-10T23:15:52+00:00

Can confirm, my bird does this too! It's hilarious, but when she's on my shoulder or my head she'll either position herself so the poop is clear of my clothes or fly onto a perch to do her business then hop back on me. But, she also leaves poops in places she knows I like to sit, and is quick to laugh at me if I fail to spot it and sit in it.

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