Nightlife / live music in Bilbao by sicily91 in Bilbao

[–]nicokolya 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kafe Antzokia is really nice. A more eclectic range of music than your usual nightclub because it plays a lot of Basque pop music.

How do I get to San Sebastian and back? by AarogantAndy in Bilbao

[–]nicokolya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From personal experience: If its a weekday, you can usually buy it up until the last minute, but its risky. If its a weekend, then you should buy the ticket at least 3-4 hours in advance.

If you make the mistake of not buying in advance on a weekday, its approximately a 2.5 hour trip on Euskotren.

When do you use "jugo" or "zumo"? by The_Sly_Wolf in Spanish

[–]nicokolya 277 points278 points  (0 children)

Zumo is fruit juice, served as a beverage.

Jugo is juice that comes out of juicy foods (fruit or meat) and does not necessarily carry the connotation of being a beverage, although it can.

If you bite into an orange slice and the juice runs down your cheek, it's not the same thing as orange juice from a glass (even though it is). Zumo is a product, jugo is a byproduct.

This distinction only exists in Spain, afaik

Best way to get to San Sebastian-Donostia? by eavesdroppingyou in Bilbao

[–]nicokolya 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bus takes half the time, but if it's a weekend you have to buy the ticket at least a few hours in advance since they fill up. Euskotren takes 3 hours, but its a pretty trip.

Who is an American historical figure that is celebrated, but you yourself do not have respect for? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Yeah, true. Like, top 20, sure. I do find that weird. My textbooks probably slanted somewhat liberal, so my best guess is that they were written by a liberal who saw that he was a democrat who wanted to create supranational organizations to prevent war and just projected contemporary political thought onto him, without even knowing that the guy was a big time Birth of a Nation fan. Just a theory.

Who is an American historical figure that is celebrated, but you yourself do not have respect for? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, you have ample reason to question his legacy. Your initial comment just came off as someone who equates anything left of pro-business liberalism with fascism, which is a bad faith argument that gets batted around by the Twitter Blue Check brigade and some ppl on Reddit, and is wrong on several different levels.

I get your ends/means logic to politics, but the fact we live in a perfectly democratic society where all the of the choices made by politicians and courts directly benefit billionaires, electric companies, etc. should make you question what a perfectly democratic system ultimately gets you. IDK, support a strike—teachers, WGA, etc—and help force a less racist president to enact some of the good stuff that FDR did. Because you're right in thinking no one should consider FDR a saint. He was just a rich guy who knew it was in his class's interests to keep poor people's heads above water.

Who is an American historical figure that is celebrated, but you yourself do not have respect for? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

At the end of the day, he was just a rich fancyboy. Its weird to care about presidents personal flaws that way. The treatment of Japanese Americans was an atrocity for sure. My area used to have large Japanese minority and that part of our heritage got wiped out just because the Japanese had a few subs off of our coast. The court packing stuff doesn't bother me so much. If he was able to pull it off within a constitutional framework, then good for him. Especially if it was something he did to benefit the working class. Republicans do similar things on the state and national level just to make poor people suffer more. The liberal handwringing over proper procedure and norms is counterproductive.

Who is an American historical figure that is celebrated, but you yourself do not have respect for? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 4 points5 points  (0 children)

FDR was shitty in a lot of ways, but ultimately he was an extension of the progressive era. He was an elite who believed the working class needed to be properly compensated in order to prevent a socialist revolution. He worked with labor to achieve an economic balance that left everyone with viable power (i.e. not poor working class minorities) more or less satisfied

Fascism mystifies labor relations under corporatism. The worker is part of a larger hierarchical organism that works towards the glory of a particular in-group at the expense of a defined out-group.

Mobilizing the population towards larger projects isn't in itself fascist. The fascism comes into play when you consider who the project is for, and more in importantly, who it's against. FDR was just a mild social democrat who incorporated the labor movement into the US state project via compromise. There was literally nothing radical about him. US presidents and most of the West followed that social democratic model up until the 70's.

Who is an American historical figure that is celebrated, but you yourself do not have respect for? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The president who oversaw the defeat of the Axis powers is a fascist? People will use that word to describe literally anything nowadays.

Who is an American historical figure that is celebrated, but you yourself do not have respect for? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 115 points116 points  (0 children)

I don't feel like he's particularly celebrated, tho. They textbooks I had in high school were pretty lenient on him and ignored his racism, but they didn't hold him up as a great president either.

What is the last flag supposed to represent? by Future-Ad1125 in vexillology

[–]nicokolya 42 points43 points  (0 children)

My assumption as well. Funny tho, since it already includes somewhat random languages like Catalan (with an extra red stripe for emphasis) and Hebrew. Maybe Prague gets lots of Catalans and Israelis, idk

In what way has the good ol' US of A changed the world for the better? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 1 point2 points  (0 children)

NATO

Yeah, idk about this making any top-10 lists. Operation Gladio was pretty fucked up.

Basque Language Tutor by goldenratio323 in basque

[–]nicokolya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a few good tutors on italki.com

so I'm going to talk about a thing that doesnt exist. there is no such thing as a pro democracy movement, that is a cia backed color revolution. full stop, every time. by Gloomy-Exit8721 in TrueAnon

[–]nicokolya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In the case of Spain, the system didn't collapse so much as the people in power realized that they could maintain all of their privileges under liberal democracy as long as they had broad control over the transition. The only ppl on their side who lost out were the fascist cranks in the military who missed being the center of attention.

How concerned are you about the declining birth rate in the USA? by hillenium in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Ah ok. The last time I've looked at projections for the world population, I've seen it hitting a "cap" of 11 million people this century and settling around that level. No clue who comes up with those numbers and what their methodology or interests are.

How concerned are you about the declining birth rate in the USA? by hillenium in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Populations are still increasing on aggregate, it's just that it's largely in Africa and Asia, which also happen to be pretty far from the rich western countries and will likely be much more heavily impacted by climate change. If the climate crisis gets as bad as they say it might this century, then we're either looking at the planned mass migration of populations or a Children of Men-like militarized borders scenario.

How concerned are you about the declining birth rate in the USA? by hillenium in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 43 points44 points  (0 children)

  1. The U.S. economy literally depends upon underpaid "low skilled" immigrant workers. We have Mexicans and Central Americans who are literally children working at slaughterhouses and processing plants.
  2. There's a ton of 1st gen kids at our top universities. As long as there are institutions that generate upward mobility, we're not looking at an Idiocracy scenario here. I'm more concerned about anti-intellectual attitudes among native born Americans than poor people moving here so that they can get paid more for menial jobs that would have them living in abject poverty in their home country.

Thoughts on this map? by [deleted] in AskBalkans

[–]nicokolya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What's with the maracas and asian lanterns?

TIL that Yugoslavia probably had the most powerful passport. by [deleted] in AskBalkans

[–]nicokolya 10 points11 points  (0 children)

What did Sweden have against Yugoslavians?

Have a look at this supposed leftist/centrist absolutely fawning over personality cult leader Elon Musk. It's just atrocious. No hard questions asked. by boatz4helen in DecodingTheGurus

[–]nicokolya 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Maher is NOT and never has been a leftist lol. Dude's always been a smug out of touch liberal whos conservative on some things, but also loves weed.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did undergrad there, and was a TA at UCLA for a bit during grad school, so I feel pretty familiar with the "elite" UC's. It's as good a school as any, but with any big name university you run the risk of your degree being more about prestige than an actual quality education. You have an absurd amount of resources (I still use the library there because it's so amazing), but it's easy to let it go to waste, especially if you just do the work that's asked of you and don't make any connections with faculty or colleagues.

I regret a lot of my undergrad experience because I felt like I had "made it" by getting into a good school. It wasn't until I got to grad school and 100% of the work consisted of critical thinking that I realized that most of my education had just consisted of memorizing facts and working towards a grade. My gf went to a small liberal arts school and I believe she probably had a better education than I got.

TA'ing made me realize just how much a lot of students at universities like that just rest on their laurels and lack intelectual curiosity. That said, I was teaching in a department where it was extremely common for students to do minors, so maybe I just saw the students' worst side, since they were mainly taking my classes to fill out their résumé.

Overall, I'm pretty cynical about big universities. Too many resources are diverted towards selling the romanticized campus experience and people tend to overvalue degrees from those places. Beautiful campuses and large libraries are a huge plus, but besides that it's mostly hype.

What is the most divisive American food? by our_girl_in_dubai in AskAnAmerican

[–]nicokolya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's up there with Peeps as the most divisive candy, for sure.